The central role of customers in Web 2.0 applied to tourism: an analysis of Italian tourist destinations based on TripAdvisor reviews.

Abstract

The spread of social media, no longer just as a platform to meet and reconnect with friends but used to find advice and opinions from other users has meant that the importance of review sites is growing. UGC (User Generated Content) are platforms where the user plays a central role: it is all content created and published by people who are not paid by the company, it can be any kind of content, including blogs, web pages, images, social media posts, and reviews. In the tourism sector, many sites have been developed where travellers can comment and post a review of their stay, from the hotel to the restaurant to tourist attractions. Added to this is the phenomenon of Big Data, which allows platforms to collect and process data from users of the sites. The purpose of this processing is to understand for each Italian location, reviewed until April 2021 on TripAdvisor, what is its strength and therefore the element that attracts the most tourists to that area. And thus, analyse whether what tourists are looking for is offered, and therefore whether there is a fair offer that meets market demand.