Conveying tourist ratings into an overall destination evaluation

The decision-making process concerning tourism destination choices is nowadays strictly related to the information gathered online and social media are the new form of tourist information offices. Viral diffusion of information through social communities influences and promotes the image and reputation of a tourist destination. New media are therefore crucial in discovering and enhancing notoriety of natural and cultural heritage of small or less known areas. We present, by means of a multicriteria methodology, a way to summarize customer (tourist) evaluations of a destination and to compare them with the DMO (Destination Management Organization) evaluation in terms of, e.g., cultural heritage, attractions and natural resources. The results are expressed as inductive rules representing how multiple ratings and reviews posted by tourists could be conveyed into single scores useful for travel destination selection and benchmarking.

The decision-making process concerning tourism destination choices is nowadays strictly related to the information gathered online and social media are the new form of tourist information offices. Viral diffusion of information through social communities influences and promotes the image and reputation of a tourist destination. New media are therefore crucial in discovering and enhancing notoriety of natural and cultural heritage of small or less known areas. We present, by means of a multicriteria methodology, a way to summarize customer (tourist) evaluations of a destination and to compare them with the DMO (Destination Management Organization) evaluation in terms of, e.g., cultural heritage, attractions and natural resources. The results are expressed as inductive rules representing how multiple ratings and reviews posted by tourists could be conveyed into single scores useful for travel destination selection and benchmarking. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.