Revisiting Tourism Destination Image: A Holistic Measurement Framework Using Big Data

Abstract

Understanding and being able to measure, analyze, compare, and contrast the image of a tourism destination, also known as tourism destination image (TDI), is critical in tourism management and destination marketing. Although various methodologies have been developed, a consistent, reliable, and scalable method for measuring TDI is still unavailable. This study aims to address the challenge by proposing a framework for a holistic measure of TDI in four dimensions, including popularity, sentiment, time, and location. A structural model for TDI measurement that covers various aspects of a tourism destination is developed. TDI is then measured by a comprehensive computational framework that can analyze complex textual and visual data on a large scale. A case study using more than 30,000 images, and 10,000 comments in relation to three tourism destinations in Australia demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed framework.