Do Local Residents and Visitors Express the Same Sentiments on Destinations Through Social Media?

The opinions and feelings expressed by users in their comments through social media have a great influence on other users and their tourism-related decisions. This study, based on a novel sentiment analysis, has analysed 3,000 tweets by local residents and 3,000 tweets by tourists at 10 major destinations in Europe with the aim of finding out their polarity. The results show that, in general, the tweets by both local residents and tourists tend to be positive. However, some destinations have high percentages of neutral and even negative tweets. This fact shows the importance for destinations of conducting sentiment analysis studies and strategic branding, involving a greater implication and participation of their publics.

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