ISLAND TOURISM EXPERIENCES
- LanguageENG
- URLhttp://db.koreascholar.com/Article/Detail/351796
p.1349
In consumer perception, sensory marketing plays a key role in promoting hedonic consumption and influencing customer experience. This relationship should be even more emphasized in services such as tourism. Due to its diversity, Cape Verde, a small island developing state (SIDS) according to OECD, has recently been promoted by its national tourist office as an archipelago of the islands of the senses. As such, this study aims to identify the main dimensions of tourist experience in one of the islands, Santo Antão, based on user generated content (UGC). Social media, namely online travel reviews, have been reported not only to influence consumer decision making but also to exert the strongest impact on behavior intention (Aye, Au & Law, 2013). Moreover, online reviews have been increasingly used in tourism services as well as considered by tourists as most useful and trustworthy (Au, Buhalis & Law, 2014). Taking into account the recognized limitations of traditional research methods, such as surveys, and the opportunities given by Web 2.0 sites, this research collected data of online reviews on that island of the senses from TripAdvisor, totaling 111 web reviews from its 10 most important tourist attractions. Data was subjected to content analysis by using Leximancer software in order to extract and organize information on words, concepts and themes stemming from visitor narratives. This lead to the generation of a concept map showing thirteen as the most common themes by their level of importance. The most frequently mentioned ones were crater and view, followed by hike. Place, landscape, island and sea came next. These were then followed by clouds, people, guide, taxi, mountain and water. This study analyses these findings bringing academic literature to the discussion. The current study was performed to add value to existing scientific research by fostering a deeper understanding of tourist experience in island destinations and focusing on an under researched country like Cape Verde. Management from national tourism organizations will likely benefit from this research since by implementing our text mining procedure to online reviews they can significantly improve their monitoring capabilities and be responsive to tourist feedback. These study´s limitations trigger the need to extend this research to other Cape Verde islands with the goal of identifying additional dimensions characterizing the diversity of this archipelago. This will also be matched with a thorough analysis of demographic and psychographic characteristics of the reviewers.