The impact of a user generated content website in Tourism. Conducting a qualitative research of scores in accommodation profiles in Tripadvisor and its impact on Majorcan accommodation

Abstract

[eng] Internet and the vast aggregation of information that it allows has clearly shaped the way individuals exchange and receive information. The experimented increment of interaction of people with the technologies has resulted in an emergence of websites devoted to aggregate content and data, and tourism is a field evidently affected. Most of these platforms canalize user-generated content in terms of reviews or ratings. This user-generated information has become part of the decision-making process and trip planning, influencing tourism consumers. One of the most well-known information aggregators is TripAdvisor, that has monthly fluent traffic of 350 millions of users and where hospitality is a key feature, 6,2 million of its content is composed by accommodation profiles. This research aims to study, within the Majorcan accommodation frame, the relationship between the different rateable indicators shown on the website profiles and their overall satisfaction using correspondence analysis technique. It also intends to outline the differences between hotels located in the different studied municipalities or the hotel category, if any. To do so, both correspondence analysis and its geometrical representation also supported by ANOVA analysis and descriptive statistics were used. This study allows identifying different level of satisfaction of the tourist depending on the hotel category that he is staying. This is evidenced by the rates in the different aspects (“Service”, “Quality of Sleep”, “Location”, “Quality-Price” and “Rooms”) that compose the Overall satisfaction of each TripAdvisor Profile. It also demonstrates the relation between the customer satisfaction and its propensity to review its online profile.