Online Travel Reviews: A Massive Paratextual Analysis

A theoretical framework is proposed to treat, as a whole, OTRs and their surrounding paratextual productions as generated by the reviewer (UGC) and/or the webmaster (WGC) and the findings in both regions are in agreement indicating that the most frequent keywords of UGC and WGC are complementary.

Abstract

Within the context of the enormous growth of traveller-generated content (UGC), such as travel blogs, travelogues, and online travel reviews (OTRs), paratextual elements are of crucial importance for other users who can take advantage of the wealth of first-hand travel information available online. That is why a theoretical framework is proposed to treat, as a whole, OTRs and their surrounding paratextual productions as generated by the reviewer (UGC) and/or the webmaster (WGC). The framework is used to extract the image perceived by the traveller and transmitted by the webmaster through analysis of titles and other paratextual elements of a random sample of 300,000 OTRs of two tourist regions of the European Union. The findings in both regions are in agreement indicating that the most frequent keywords of UGC (good feelings) and WGC (destinations and attractions) are complementary.