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Travel Blogs and Their Implications for Destination Marketing

Article in Journal of Travel Research · August 2007

DOI: 10.1177/0047287507302378

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TRAVEL BLOGS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DESTINATION MARKETING

Bing Pan, Ph.D.

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management
School of Business and Economics
College of Charleston
66 George Street
Charleston, SC 29424
Email: panb@cofc.edu

Tanya MacLaurin, Ph.D.

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management
School of Business and Economics
College of Charleston
66 George Street
Charleston, SC 29424
Email: maclaurint@cofc.edu

John Crotts, Ph.D.

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management
School of Business and Economics
College of Charleston
66 George Street
Charleston, SC 29424
Email: crottsj@cofc.edu

1
 TRAVEL BLOGS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DESTINATION MARKETING

ABSTRACT

This study first explores the nature of travel blogs as a manifestation of travel experience.

Through a marketing perspective, visitor opinions posted on leading travel blog sites were

analyzed to gain an understanding of the destination image being communicated including its

strengths and weaknesses. Travel blogs on Charleston, South Carolina were collected through

three most popular travel blog sites and three blog search engines. The blogs were analyzed

using semantic network analysis and content analysis methods to gain insight into what bloggers’

were communicating about their travel experience. The qualitative results demonstrated that

travel blogs are an inexpensive means to gather rich, authentic, and unsolicited customer

feedback. With the advances of information technologies and increasingly large numbers of

travel blogs, automated travel blog monitoring is a feasible and cost-effective way to help

destination marketers assess their service quality and improve travelers’ overall experience.

Keywords: travel blogs; destination marketing; semantic network analysis; content analysis

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TRAVEL BLOGS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR DESTINATION MARKETING

INTRODUCTION

Research has shown that interpersonal influence arising from opinion exchange between

consumers is an important factor influencing consumers’ purchase decisions. Word-of-mouth or

advice from friends and relatives often ranks as the most influential source of pre-purchase

information (Crotts 1999). Though there is a body of literature suggesting Word-of-mouth can be

manipulated by marketers (Smith and Vogt 1995), the bulk of the literature suggests that meeting

and exceeding visitor expectations is the only viable means of inducing positive word-of-mouth.

The Internet has become a major source of information for travelers and a platform for

tourism business transactions. Specifically, the tourism industry is today’s leading application of

the Internet in a business to consumer (B2C) context (Werthner and Ricci 2004). According to

the Travel Industry Association of America, 67 percent of the online travelers in the United

States search for information on destinations or check prices or schedules via the Internet; 41

percent of them book airline tickets, hotel rooms, or rental cars via the medium (TIA 2005). With

the increasing amounts of travel related online information, tourists have enormous number of

choices as to where they travel and what they do, and the Internet will continue to influence and

shape the tourism industry more so than any other sector of the economy (TIA 2005).

To date marketing researchers on the topic of the Internet have primarily focused on

online consumer behavior and Internet advertising strategy (Hoffman and Novak 1996; Werthner

and Ricci 2004; Yadav and Varadarajan 2005). Moreover the marketing of destinations has

3
primarily focused on the potential of the Internet as a B2C medium where firms and organization

promote and sell their products and build customer relationships (Gretzel, Yuan et al. 2000;

Wang and Fesenmaier 2006). Though the Internet is an important medium for travel information,

the confidence the consumers place in Internet advertisement is low (Kwak, Fox et al. 2002; Cyr,

Bonanni et al. 2005). Often overlooked by many, the Internet provides new ways in which

individuals learn about tourist destinations and their products and services directly from other

consumers. The Internet has provided a new platform of communication which is similar to

word-or-mouth which could empower consumers. Travelers can email each other, post

comments and feedbacks, publish online blogs, and form communities on the Internet. Blogs, as

“push-button publishing for people” have gained more and more popularity (Cayzer 2004).

Currently there are 31.6 million blogs on the Internet (Perseus 2005) with 40,000 new blogs

coming online each day (Baker and Green 2005). As essentially a consumer to consumer (C2C)

medium, Internet blogs has important implications for destination marketers that have been

overlooked by researchers.

When word-or-mouth goes digital, it poses new possibilities and challenges for tourism

marketers (Dellarocas 2003). The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of travel

blogs as a manifestation of travel experience, and through a marketing perspective, assess visitor

opinions posted on leading Internet travel blogs and understand the image being communicated

about the destination including its strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, its purpose is to

highlight and refine a qualitative methodology that destinations could use to assess visitor

perceptions as well as their positions in the marketplace. Traditional visitor intercept surveys

asking subjects to rate a fixed set of destination attributes along Likert scales might be an overly

4
blunt and clumsy tool in understanding visitors likes and dislikes and the information they will

likely share with others. Instead, travel blogs as uncensored and rich expression of travel

experience are a cost-effective way to collect travelers’ feedbacks and potentially provide a

quality control mechanism.

LITERATURE REVIEW

This section reviews relevant literature in marketing, consumer behavior, and information

technology areas on the nature of word-of-mouth and online blogs in order to provide a

conceptual basis for the discussion on travel blogs and the relevant research methodology.

Opinion Leadership and a Model of Word-of-Mouth

Consumers learn about the attributes of a product in various ways: through

advertisements, word-of-mouth, price, and sale quantity (Vettas 1997). However, a tourism

product is in essence an ‘experience good’ meaning that the product is based upon a bundle of

services and experiences by their very nature that are hard to assess prior to purchase (McIntosh

1972). The advice from other consumers who have prior experience with the tourist destination

and who are interpersonally available will no doubt rank as not only the preferred source of pre-

purchase information but the most influential in travel decision making (Crotts 1999). Word-of-

mouth has been defined as informal communication between consumers regarding the

characteristics, ownership, and usage of a service or product (Westbrooke 1987). Different from

marketing information from mass media, personal communication or word-of-mouth is viewed

as a more credible source of consumer information.

5
 Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1944) have discussed a two-step flow of

communication in which political views were influenced largely by the communication between

voters themselves instead of the influence of mass media. Thus, political information was firstly

transmitted from the mass media sources to the audience, and then secondly within the audience

themselves through word-of-mouth. The opinion leader is the agent who is an active user and

who interprets the meaning of media messages or content for other users. Usually the opinion

leader is held in high esteem by those that accept their opinions and their advice is sought by

other consumers (opinion seekers). As the originators of word-of-mouth, opinion leaders are

especially interested in a product field, are exposed to mass media about the product category,

and are trusted by opinion seekers to provide knowledgeable advice regarding the product (Piirto

1992; Weimann 1994; Walker 1995).

Past research has investigated the sources, mediating variables, motivations, and

outcomes of word-of-mouth. Consumers often learn about a product through real consumption

experience or mass media (Dichter 1966). Driven by the motivations of altruism, self-interest, or

the expectation of reciprocation, some consumers may spread product knowledge through word-

of-mouth (Grewal, Cline et al. 2003). However, this process from product knowledge to

voluntarily spreading word-of-mouth is mediated by several variables. Research has shown that a

good customer-employee relationship could foster the produce of positive word-of-mouth

(Gremler, Gwinner et al. 2001); higher level of consumer involvements will lead to higher level

of word-of-mouth activity; the consumers’ affective levels will also influence its amount

(Westbrook 1987); the intensity of surprises in the consumption process is positively correlated

with the volume of word-of-mouth (Derbaix and Vanhamme 2003). On the recipient’s end, both

6
positive and negative of word-of-mouth could influence a consumer’s loyalty, product

evaluation, and purchase decision (Westbrook 1987). However, the changes of attitude of

behavior of the recipients are mediated by their evaluation of information sources. Research

shows that they do not readily change their attitude based on negative word-of-mouth since their

sources may not be trustworthy (Laczniak, DeCarlo et al. 2001).

Blogs as Online Word-of-Mouth

With the advancement of the Internet, consumers now are able to access not only

opinions from close friends, family members, and coworkers, but also strangers from all around

the world who may have used the product, visited a certain destination, or patronized a property.

More consumers are relying on online opinions for their purchase decisions, for example, from

which movies to watch, to which stocks to buy (Guernsey 2000). Searching and reading other’s

opinions about a product can help a consumer save decision making time and also make better

decisions (Hennig-Thurau and Walsh 2003). More importantly, according to Bickart and

Schindler: “the Internet extended and changed the nature of word-of-mouth communication and

its impact on consumer behavior as well as the methodological approaches used to examine it”

(Bickart and Schindler 2002). Thus, a new methodology is needed in understanding blogs as

online word-of-mouth.

As an important format of digitized word-of-mouth, blogs are gaining more and more

popularity. Blog is a shortened word originating from ‘web log” (Chow 2005). The form is

familiar, frequently updated, reverse-chronological entries on a single Web page (Blood 2004).

Recently, audio and video blogging from mobile devices is also available (Baker and Green

7
2005). Currently there are 31.6 million blogs on the Internet (Perseus 2005) with 40,000 new

blogs each day (Baker and Green 2005). Perseus (2005) randomly surveyed 10,000 blogs on

twenty leading blog-hosting services; sample demographics reported 68.1 percent were females,

ages ranged from 13 to above 50 with 94 percent under the age of 30. Pew Internet Research

shows that around 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults have created at least one blog and 27% of

Internet users have read blogs (Rainie 2005). The number is expected to continue rising (Figure

1). Both blog creators and readers are more likely to be male, young, broadband users, Internet

veterans, relatively well-off financially and well educated (Rainie 2005). The distribution of

influences as measured by the number of in-links to the blogs follows the power-law distribution,

which makes only a small percentage of blogs the most popular and well-read ones. Most blogs

are read and linked infrequently especially for those recently built blogs (Marlow 2003).

Furthermore, according to Nardi et al. (Nardi, Schiano et al. 2004), Internet users blog for

various reasons: to document one’s life; as a commentary; as catharsis and outlet for their

feelings; and as a thinking tool. These are all intrinsic motivations indicating the genuineness of

travel blogs as visitors’ experiences which are similar to travel journals. The various bloggers

have made blogs a different media other than the mere communication of product information.

___________________ Insert Figure 1 Here _______________________________

In a aggregated level, when word-of-mouth goes digital, this form of communication is

different from traditional word-of-mouth in three important ways (Dellarocas 2003): 1. with the

low cost of access and information exchange, the new types of word-of-mouth will appear in a

unprecedented large scale and will create new dynamics in the market; 2. the format and

8
communication type between those communications could be controlled and monitored

precisely; 3. new problems may arise since users could be anonymous or intentionally

misleading, and 4. online blogs may be captured out of contexts and may induce multiple

interpretations. Blogs and the information clusters formed around them through links could

provide connections between otherwise disconnected smaller customer groups. Thus, they

possess the potential to transform the blogspace into large virtual communities. However, the

anonymity and almost free accessing and posting of online space make collusion a potential

problem for both customer and marketers (Dellarocas 2003).

Recent study confirmed that blogspace is a complex and rich environment. Based on

more than one million blogs in livejournal.com, Kumar et. al. (2004) demonstrated that the

blogspace exists at least three layers: the individual bloggers who are defined by their

demographic characteristics; a middle layer of pairs of bloggers is constructed based on

friendship; a higher layer of interest groups and virtual communities explained by geographic or

demographic correlations (Kumar, Novak et al. 2004). In a global scale of online space, Google

bombing is a phenomenon in which savvy users of Google take advantage of Google’s algorithm

and blogs, and further manipulate the search results when the users type in a query in Google

(Tatum 2005). Google’s PageRank algorithm utilizes the link structure of the web space to locate

the most authoritative web pages (Brin and Page 1998). Blogs are actually the tool that Google

bombers used in manipulating the hyperlink structure of the web space and subsequently

influenced the returned results in Google. This demonstrated that different from physical word-

of-mouth, blogspace can create virtual relationships and communities and its influence move far

9
beyond the readers of blogs; it actually creates a new type of reality through search engines in

the online space.

Travel Blogs and Online Word-of-Mouth

Similarly, the emergence of travel blogs will inevitably influence the link structure and

the content of the information space for visitors, and will induce different information content

when a visitor searches for destination-specific information on the Internet. A tourism product is

in essence an ‘experience good’ (McIntosh 1972). At the moment of decision making, the

consumer must act on impressions of the product’s attributes gathered from often imperfect

sources of information. Thus word-of-mouth and digital word-of-mouth will inevitably become

the preferred travel information source (Crotts 1999). In this sense, tourism marketers need to

understand this new technological phenomenon and its implications for marketing and promotion

of a destination, instead of being driven by it blindly. With the rapid development of Internet

technology, it is vital for the tourism marketers and the tourism industry in general to understand

the nature of travel blogs and their implications for destination marketing.

METHODOLOGY

In this research a case study method was adopted to explore the nature of travel blogs and

their implications for destination marketing. Various research methods were used to gain insight

on the nature of travel blogs about a specific tourist destination. Bloggers’ demographic

information was researched as were the characteristics of the travel blogs. The text contained in

blogs was collected and analyzed by word frequency, semantic network analysis (Doerfel 1998)

and content analysis. Various qualitative data analysis techniques were adopted in hopes that

10
other researchers would replicate this research to gather information on visitors’ experiences at

their tourist destinations.

Charleston, South Carolina, United States

Charleston, South Carolina was selected as the tourist destination to collect qualitative

blog data. Charleston is located in the Low Country of South Carolina and faces the Atlantic

Ocean. The area is composed of three major cities or towns: Charleston, North Charleston, and

Mount Pleasant with a combined population around 600, 000 (U.S. Census Bureau 2005).

Charleston boasts a rich history with the firing of the first shot of the Civil War of the United

States. It is also one of the best preserved cities in America’s Old South with many Pre-

Revolutionary War buildings (Porter 2005). In 2004, Charleston received 4.7 visitors. The

tourism industry created about 105,000 jobs and proves to be a leading economic

driver(Charleston CVB 2005). Charleston is ranked as the 6th “Top City in the United States &

Canada” according to Travel and Leisure magazine’s tenth annual World’s Best Poll. It has

consistently placed in the top 10 domestic travel destination for the pat 12 years by Conde Nast

Traveler magazine’s prestigious Readers Choice Awards (Charleston CVB 2005).

Data Collection

The three most popular travel blog sites, travelblog.org, travelpod.com, and

travelpost.com were identified through searches on Google on September 7, 2005. Searches on

the three sites for blogs on Charleston, South Carolina yielded 30 blogs. Additional search

engines, technorati.com, Google blog search, and IceRocket, were also used to identify an

additional 24 blogs on travel experience to Charleston. In total, 54 blogs were collected on

11
September 12, 2005. Of these, fourteen did not contain content relevant to a travel experience in

Charleston, South Carolina. Instead, the bloggers might have been Charleston locals, or stopped

in Charleston en route to another destination. The remaining 40 blogs contained content relating

to visitors’ experiences in Charleston. These 40 blogs were placed in a master file for qualitative

data analysis. Each blog retained its title and identification information.

Data Analysis

After detailing the general characteristics of bloggers (demographical information) and

their blogs (time of blogging and the lengths of blogs), the full text of the 40 blogs were

aggregated and analyzed using semantic network analysis and content analysis. Semantic

network analysis has been found to be a useful framework for the construction and analysis of

communication content (Doerfel and Barnett 1999). Many researchers have argued that the

meaning of a concept can only be determined by the relationship with other concepts, and a

model of networked concepts can accurately determine their meanings (Woelfel and Fink 1980;

Barnett, Palmer et al. 1984; Palmer and Barnett 1984). Programs such as CATPAC II (Doerfel

1998) and TextAnalyst (Megaputer 2005) can be used to generate semantic network from

communication content. In this study, a semantic network of the bloggers’ experiences was

generated from the analysis of the full text of all the travel blogs to the Charleston area using

TextAnalyst. Content analysis was also performed on the travel blogs (Weber 1990). An iterative

process of content analysis was followed. Two researchers independently coded the blogs; upon

further discussion, a master coding scheme was constructed. The blogs were finally were coded

using two dimensions, which are the aspects of tourism amalgam model (Cooper 2005) and the

directions of the comments (positive or negative).

12
RESULTS

The characteristics of bloggers and blogs revealed the nature of travel blogging. The

results of semantic network analysis and content analysis for travel blogs to Charleston were

detailed to reveal the strengths, weaknesses, and the competitive environment of Charleston as a

tourist destination.

Blogger Profiles

The demographic information of the bloggers was gleaned from the hosting sites through

different methods. All the sites allow users to post their personal portraits in their profiles; their

demographic and personal information can also be inferred from their blogs and usernames; on

travelpost.com, the users can choose to disclose their age, gender, location, and occupation in

their public accessible profiles. Through these methods, certain demographic information was

obtained on 34 out of the 40 bloggers. For all bloggers, most were from the United States except

one from Thailand and one from the United Kingdom. For the 13 users who choose to disclose

their ages, their ages ranged from 21 to 64 with an average age of 38. Two cohorts of users

seemed to be present: one cohort in their 20s to 30s and the other in their 50s and 60s. For those

users who disclosed their gender, there were eleven females (55%) and nine males (45%).

Blog Profiles

For most blogs, each piece contains the description of one trip from one traveler. There

are exceptions: for example, in one case two bloggers produced several posting for one trip in

which they described one day’s experience in each. All the blog sites show the time the blog was

13
added; some sites such as travelpod.com and travelpost.com ask the bloggers to enter the date

they traveled. Additional information about the trip could also be inferred from the blogs

themselves. There were 18 blogs which the researchers can infer both the trip dates and blog

posting dates. One blog was posted the same day the trip was taken; four blogs were composed a

few days after the trip; four blogs were posted 2-10 months after the trips; the rest of the blogs

were posted more than one year after the trips were taken. The longest delay was a post in 2005

about a trip taken in 1968. Interestingly, one account is not always associated with one blogger:

there is one family and two couples who co-own one blog account besides other single

individuals. However, it was not clear who in the group composed the blogs. In addition, some

blogs contain both pictures and text about their trip to Charleston. Among 40 blogs, 11 contain

pictures. The number of pictures range from 1 to 53. The number of words range from 4 to 1,972

with a mean number of 444 words.

Frequency Analysis and Semantic network Analysis

The travel blog text was analyzed by word occurrence and frequency using TextAnalyst

(Megaputer 2005). Words commonly used in constructing sentences (stop words) were

eliminated using a stop word list such as “the”, “a”, “of”, and “is”. The analysis resulted in the

construction of a table of the ‘Most Frequently Used Keywords’ that appeared in the blogs

(Table 1). The most frequently used keywords demonstrated that travelers express every aspect

of travel experience in their travel blogs, including attractions (e.g. “plantation”, “city”, and

“Fort Sumter”), accommodations (e.g. “hotel” and “inn”), dining (e.g. “restaurant”, “dinner”,

“menu”, and “lobster”), and transportation (e.g. “car”, “drive”, and “road”). The travelers were

mostly impressed by Charleston’s “plantations”, and they tend to talk about their en-route (“car”

14
and “drive”) and accommodation (“hotel”) experience. Dining also is one type of most

remembered experience (“restaurant”, “dinner”, and “menu”).

_____________________ Insert Table 1 Here _____________________________________

Semantic Network Analysis

Semantic network analysis provided a useful framework for the construction and analysis

of meanings and impressions of Charleston as a tourist destination. The most frequently used

keywords reported above were used to construct a semantic network diagram from TextAnalyst

(Megaputer 2005). Word frequency was illustrated in the diagram by size and color of circle

surrounding the word, i.e. large frequency is illustrated by a larger and darker colored circle, a

less frequent occurrence is illustrated by a smaller and lighter colored circle. Lines drawn

between the word circles illustrate the proximity of occurrence of the words. The semantic

diagram provides a graphic representation of Charleston as a destination (Figure 2). From the

graph, several clusters of keywords could be identified, indicating the types of travel experience

as represented in travel blogs on Charleston. Charleston with its major tourist attractions and

related accommodations and dining is the most prominent cluster; the second major cluster is the

driving experience related to the trip; the third one is specifically associated with plantations, an

unique type of attraction in Charleston; smaller clusters of keywords are connected with dining

experience, camping and museum attractions. The results demonstrated the kaleidoscopic nature

of travel blogs in representing travel experience. Every aspect of the travel experience, from

visiting attractions, dining at restaurants, to relatively ancillary activities such as driving and

camping all become the major content of blogging and constitute a part of travel experience.

15
_____________________ Insert Figure 2 Here _____________________________________

Content Analysis

The researchers used NVivo (2004) software to perform content analysis on the blog

data. Each of two researchers independently coded the content by constructing topical categories

dependent on their own analysis of the blog content. No prior discussion of categories took

place between the researchers. NVivo tools enable the researcher to create category trees to

illustrate relationships between different categories. Strengths and weaknesses were also coded

for all content that possessed positive or negative comments related to the blogger’s travel

experience while in Charleston. Upon completion of the researchers’ independent coding of the

blog data, coding trees were compared. This comparison demonstrated many similarities and

differences in coding. All categories identified by the researchers were used to build a composite

enabling the formation of a master list of categories. The tourism amalgam model developed by

Cooper (2005) was adapted by adding subcategories identified in the independent coding

process. Cooper considers destinations as amalgams creating an inseparable tourist product. His

original destination amalgam model includes attractions (artificial features, natural features, and

events which provides the initial motivation to visit), amenities (accommodations, food,

beverage, retailing and other services), ancillary services (related marketing efforts of tourism

organizations and others), and access (transportation, car rental, and local transport) (Cooper

2005). The model could also be used to categorize travel experience since they encounter every

aspect of the destination as described in the model and their experience is also integrated, holistic

and inseparable from one aspect to another. However, from initial coding, the researchers

16
discovered that the aspect of “ancillary services” is almost irrelevant; a new category of “overall

impression” is necessary since sometimes the travel bloggers talk about their overall experience

with evaluation on the whole trip without referring to any single aspect of the trips. The final

standardized coding categories with the numbers of codes were listed in Table 2.

__________________________ Insert Table 2 Here _______________________________

Researchers repeated the independent coding of the blog data using the standardized

category codes shown in Table 2. Upon completion, coding comparison indicated that

researchers were more consistent in their coding but significant differences remained in the

number of items coded. Upon closer examination it was revealed that most differences could be

attributed to varying coding practice. One researcher coded multiple lines as one item, while the

second researcher coded four keywords in the same text lines as four items. A detailed set of

coding procedures were developed to assist in the third coding. In the final data coding, the

researchers followed the rule that one sentence should be taken as one coding unit. Thus, the

final coding scheme follows two dimensions: one dimension follows the different aspect of

tourism amalgam model; the other dimension is on the personal evaluation of various aspects of

the amalgam, either positive or negative, in order to understand the strengths or weaknesses of

Charleston as a destination (Table 2). Pure neutral descriptions of the trip are very few and

ignored since the goal of the content analysis on strengths and weaknesses of Charleston. Figure

3 depicts the complete procedure for the content analysis.

___________________ Insert Figure 3 Here _______________________________

17
Strengths and Weaknesses as Reflected from Travel Blogs to Charleston

Strength and weaknesses identified in the coding process were calculated. A total of 177

positive and negative comments were articulated about Charleston in the travel blog text

including 134 positive and 43 negative comments. Thus, three out of four comments made about

Charleston were positive (75.5%). Looking at the major categories, the results show that

attractions are the major strength of Charleston (17% negative comments), especially on the

history, hospitality environment, and water attractions. The major complains about the city come

from access issues, especially on automobile travel (6 and 75% negative comments). Amenities

also have a relatively high percentage of negative comments (32%). Looking more in-depth in

the coding on the secondary level, the results show that the four major complaints were weather

(too hot in the summer), food (trashy food in fast-food restaurants and hotels), parking and road

signs (hard to find a parking space and unclear road signs). Three of the four complains on

overall impression were about the high price of the destination in general (Figure 4).

_______________ Insert Figure 4 here ________________________________________

The visitors also compared Charleston with the following cities: Chapel Hill in North

Carolina, Santa Barbara in California, New Orleans in Louisiana and Savannah in Georgia.

Those cities are more likely to be the competitors of Charleston in drawing visitors. This

provides destination marketers with benchmarking cities. In the future marketing campaign of

Charleston, marketers need to pay special attention to these cities in terms of monitoring their

marketing efforts and tourist volumes.

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CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

This study revealed that travel blogs are authentic and untainted manifestation of

travelers’ experiences. Analysis on the blogs revealed strengths and weaknesses of the tourist

destination. Travel blogs can also be a useful tool in monitoring the competitive environment of

a destination and provide valuable customer feedback that is superior to Likert response survey

measurements.

The Nature of Travel blogs

Travel blogs qualitatively cover every aspect of a visitor’s trip. From the overall

experience of traveling, anticipation, planning, packing, departure, driving, flying and delays en

route were all reflected in their travel blogs. Their experience involved the kaleidoscopic

perception and senses of a destination: from attractions, accommodation, dining, to access and

overall impressions. Most of the descriptions were experiential and subjective in nature. For

example, driving was always one major part of their traveling experience. On the other hand, a

part of that experience was positive for some visitors while negative for others. For example,

food was found to be both a positive experience for many visitors but a negative one for others.

In a more detailed analysis, it was revealed that the major complaints about food were mainly

coming from quick service or free breakfast in hotels; the satisfactory dining experience was

from fine dining restaurants in the Charleston area.

19
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Destination and Its Implications for Marketing

The results revealed that the major strengths of the destination lie in its attractions: the

historic charm, the southern hospitality, the beaches and water activities; the major weaknesses

were weather, infrastructure (roads and traffic), and fast food restaurants. “Pricy”, as one of the

overall complaints, also stood out. Again, different types of dining experience were reported as

both strength and weaknesses.

Compared with New York and Boston, lodging, attractions, and food in Charleston are

not significantly higher, if not cheaper. Why did travelers complained about the price? Despite

the majority of comments are positive, the travelers also have expressed many complains about

the infrastructure, especially on limited parking space, road conditions and traffic signs. In order

to understand these complaints, the researchers looked into the city as a whole. Charleston has

gained tremendously growth in the last decade. The Charleston-North Charleston Metropolitan

Statistical Area is the 96th largest metropolitan area in the United States; its population has

grown from 430,346 in 1980 to 583,434 in 2004 with a 35.6% growth (U.S. Census Bureau

2005); the visitor volume has steadily increased from 3.2 million in 1997 to 4.7 million in 2004

(Charleston CVB 2005). The data show that the greater Charleston area is moving toward a

major metropolitan region in South Carolina as well as the coastal south. However, the images

developing from the travel blogs reflected a discrepancy between the image of Charleston as a

town, versus the reality of a major metropolitan city. Thus in order to build a healthy industry in

Charleston, more investment needs to put into the infrastructure. In addition, marketers need to

promote a transformation of the image of Charleston, from a “town” with a single dimension of

historic heritage, to a metropolitan area with multi-dimensional attractions, such as beach,

20
seashore, golf, historic heritages and natural beauty. These results demonstrated that analysis on

travel blogs can reveal detailed and in-depth information about the characteristics of a

destination, which can not be gathered from the Likert scale measurement on visitor surveys.

It should be noted that blogspace, like the Internet in general, is changing in real-time

with new blogs being added and deleted everyday. In general, an automated monitoring system

for online blogs could be proposed. The system starts with the definition of research questions.

From the help of web crawlers or RSS (Real Syndication Feeds, which allow Internet users to

subscribe the websites or blogs) (Wikipedia 2005), the destination marketers could monitor the

dynamics of customer feedbacks. Figure 5 proposes automated mechanism and procedures for

monitoring travel blogs and thus providing a real-time customer feedback and quality control

tool for destination marketing. First, the researchers need to identify and define the question and

the goal of the study, whether it is the analysis for strengths and weaknesses of a destination or a

hotel, or the effects of a marketing campaign; then those keywords related to the questions could

be generated, for example, a city’s name or most commonly used complain words; the

researchers could then manually search the blogspace using identified keywords, or using RSS to

track blogs in real time; those blogs could be manually or automatically downloaded, aggregated

and analyzed using semantic network analysis or content analysis. Similar to the results of this

study, this procedure will likely produce insightful and cost-effective marketing implications for

tourism organizations and businesses.

______________________ Insert Figure 5 here __________________________________

21
METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

This study represents the first of its kind in applying semantic network analysis and

content analysis on blog data in order to understand the competitiveness and customer feedbacks

of tourist destinations. Several issues need to be taken into consideration when applying this

methodology for other destinations. These include data collection issues and the issues of unit of

analysis.

Data Collection

Data collection methods proposed here are the initial steps in understanding the nature of

blogs and the implications for destination marketing. The researchers need to be aware of the

following issues in adopting the methodology: the travel blogs are not collected from a random

sample of all the blogs about Charleston; rather, they are collected from searching through major

travel blog sites and three major travel blog search engines. The manual data collection method

is a form of non-random sampling of the blogspace, which can and should be replaced by

automated and complete random sampling in the future, with technologies such as RSS (Really

Simple Syndication) as described above.

Unit of Analysis

Another issue in the process is the unit of analysis in the content analysis stage.

Depending on the goals of the research, and the researcher conducting the research, a word, a

sentence, or a paragraph could be the unit of analysis. For example, a travel bloggers who visited

Patriot’s Point, one of the major attractions in Charleston, wrote about her experience in five

paragraphs with very detailed description on each ship and room she visited. If the goal of the

22
research is a destination, one coding unit would be sufficient for the analysis; if the goal is to

specifically understand the strength and weaknesses of Patriot’s Point, then each sentence, or

even each phrase, should be coded as one unit. It also should be noted that the coding categories

are not defined but emerged through the initial analysis. Depending on different goals of

research, coding categories might be different.

In general, this case study shows that blog analysis can be a useful way to detect the

strengths and weaknesses of a tourist destination. Special attention must be given to the coding

and analysis process. Depending on different goals of research, the unit of analysis and coding

categories will be distinct. Novel software tools could be used to automatically tracking the

dynamics of blogspace and potentially provide a quality control mechanism.

FUTURE RESEARCH

It is our hope that this research will be refined and replicated by others to better

understand a destinations strengths and weaknesses from the impressions of prior visitors who by

their actions are willing opinion leaders. In addition, we hope that this paper stimulates interests

among researchers as to the characteristics or profiles of these online bloggers. For those who

choose to pursue this line of inquiry, we encourage you to capture subjects’ national culture of

birth and residence since the role of opinion leaders has often been shown to vary across national

cultures (De Mooij 2004). In particular, subjects from countries along Hoftstede (2001) power

distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance dimensions will likely vary in terms of role,

tenor, and willingness to offer interpersonal opinions (Hofstede 2001). On the other hand, the

opinion seekers in the interpersonal exchange are a neglected area of study as well. Comparisons

23
between those providing personal influence in contrast to those who are recipients of the

information is to our knowledge an area that has been poorly investigated (Wright and Cantor

1970).

24
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 List of Figures

Figure 1. Growth of number of blogs from three hosting sites (Persus 2005)

30
 Magnolia
Plantation
Dinner Recommendation

Drayton
Boone Hall Plantation
Salad Tomato
Sunday

Cafe
Fennel Lobster
Acre
French

Millitary Museum
Aircraft
Yorktown USS
Menu Carrier

Restaurant South Carolina

Campground Lake
City
History

Town
Patriot's Point

Charleston
Inn
Road
Wentworth
Rental Drive
Hotel
Harbor

Fort Sumter Calhoun

Mansion Car Folly Beach Marina

MPH
Fort Moultire

Figure 2. Semantic Network of Travel Experience to Charleston

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 Two Researchers' Independent Coding on
Travel Experience and Positives and
Negatives Comments

Comparing Two Topical Coding Categories

Constructing Master Coding Tree Following

Tourism Amalgam Model

Independent Coding by Two Dimensions:

Dimensions of Amalgam and Positive or
Negatives

Comparing Two Coding, Cleaning Up and

Coding by Sentences

Figure 3. Coding Procedure for Content Analysis on Travel Blogs

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 Amenities
Accommodations
Food & Beverage
Shopping
Other Visitor Services
Attractions
History
Natural Environment
Hospitality Environment
Water Attractions/Activities
Other Attractions
Access
Air Travel
Local Transportation
Car Travel
Train Travel
Overall Impression
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Positive Negative

Figure 4. Positive and Negative Comments in Travel Blogs to Charleston

33
 Identify research questions

Generate keywords relevant to research

questions

Search blog sites or aggregate through RSS

Filter and download relevant travel blogs

Automated semantic network analysis or

manual content analysis

Market analysis/quality control report

Figure 5. Automated Quality Control Mechanism/Market Analysis through Monitoring Travel

Blogs

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 List of Tables

Table 1. Most Frequently Used Keywords in Travel Blogs to Charleston

Keywords Frequency Keywords Frequency

Charleston 75 owner 8
plantation 24 lobster 8
city 23 history 7
car 14 cafe 7
hotel 13 Magnolia 6
drive 13 Boone 6
aircraft
French 12 carrier 6
town 12 museum 6
restaurant 11 Yorktown 5
South
Carolina 11 mansion 5
dinner 11 acre 5
Fort Sumter 10 Sunday 5
Patriot's
menu 9 Point 5
inn 9 salad 5
fort 8 Folly Beach 4
road 8 harbor 4
hour 8

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 Table 2. Number of Positive and Negative Comments

Total Percentage of
Positives Negatives
Comments Negative Comments
Attractions 81 16 97 17
History 35 2 37 5
Natural Environment 15 8 23 35
Hospitality
5 1 17
Environment 6
Water
14 2 13
Attractions/Activities 16
Other Attractions 12 3 15 20
Amenities 32 15 47 32
Accommodations 8 7 15 47
Food and Beverages 22 8 30 27
Shopping 2 0 2 0
Other Services 0 0 0
Access 3 8 11 73
Air Travel 0 1 1 100
Local Transport 1 1 2 50
Car Travel 2 6 8 75
Train Travel 0 0 0
Overall Impression 18 4 22 18
Total 134 43 177 24

36

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