Georeferencing sentiment scores to map and explore tourist points of interest

Abstract

[EN] Tourists are increasingly involved in co-creating attractions’ symbolic images, sharing their experiences and opinions on websites like TripAdvisor and other similar rating and review platforms. In this paper, we propose a strategy for analyzing people’ opinions about tourist points of interest, using an Ambient Geographic Information approach to georeference the polarity scores of reviews. Visualizing these scores on a map can be used to obtain helpful information for implementing strategic actions and policies of institutional and business actors involved in the tourist industry, as well as to help users plan their future experiences. A case study concerning the reviews of the restaurants in Naples (Italy) shows the effectiveness of the proposal.