The Formation of the Image of Top-Ranked Hotels through Real Online Customer Reviews: A Corpus-Based Study of Evaluative Adjectives as Image-Formers/Providers

Abstract

This study is grounded on a corpus-based analysis of evaluative adjectives as hotel image-formers/providers conducted from a multifaceted yet complementary perspective which departs from the notion of destination image formation (Gartner, 1993;Baloglu & McCleary, 1999, Gylling, 2004 among others) focused on a specific aspect, that of the hotel of destination, and to a specific genre, the online (hotel) customer review. The corpus of study, which contains more than 250 000 words, is made up of more than 1200 online reviews of top-ranked hotels retrieved from the popular website Tripadvisor.com. WordSmith Tools 5.0 was used to analyse and categorise the evaluative adjectives in the corpus from three perspectives: firstly, adjectives were initially classified according to frequency and/or saliency criteria; secondly, in terms of their implicit degree of positivity/negativity; and thirdly, according to the kind of evaluation provided. Subsequently, the main features evaluated in any hotel online customer review (value, rooms, location, cleanliness, and service) and their frequently associated adjectival evaluative acts were analysed to determine their collocational behavior and thus the way such appraisal patterns contribute to "destination image formation", that is, to form an impression on specific aspects of top-ranked hotels. The paper is aimed at showing that evaluative adjectives in online customer reviews are critical in the interpretation of subjective expected values, and that a correct understanding of the kind of image they transmit in the tourist-to tourist digital interaction through reviews provides an opportunity for destination marketers, in this case hoteliers, to enhance the psychological and symbolic values as well as the benefits of the destination according to improved communication strategies and language usage.

Corpus-Based Analysis of the Most Frequent Adjective on Covid-19

“…First, it chose a wordlist on sketch engine to figure out the most frequent adjective in the COVID-19 issues. In the corpus composition, the result of wordlist frequency indicated the coherence and appears to be well balanced and representative (Marzá, 2013;Sinclair, 1991). There were heaps of choices in wordlist, such as the classification of noun, adjective, verb, etc.…”

“…It literally can be applied for framing the issues due to the fact that it is directly able to modify the noun in which noun and verb are not able to do it (Baker, 2003, p192). The adjective is the words capable of condensing, evaluating, classifying entities or describing qualities (Marzá, 2013). Adjective plays a relevant role by modifying, adjusting, modulating or elaborating the meanings of nouns.…”

“…There were numerous studies using the corpus approach, especially in observing adjective such as the use of corpus to analyze the adjective in imaging or promoting hotel and tourism (Durán-Muñoz, 2019;Edo Marzá, 2017;Marzá, 2013). The use of corpus approach was applied to figure out the adjective in children short story and novel (Mia, 2018;Salim & Saad, 2016).…”

Oralización Y Polifonía en La Lengua Del Turismo 2.0: El Caso De Las Plataformas De Reserva Hotelera

“…(Calvi, 2016b). En cuanto a las opiniones de los turistas, también se destaca el uso de las formas evaluativas de grado máximo e hiperbólicas (Edo Marzá, 2013).…”

Феномен Іміджу В Сучасній Лінгвістиці

“…Аналіз дискурсу відновлення іміджу чилійських компаній у період кризи проводила М. С. Валдебеніто [23]. Н. Е. Марза простежила особливості кон-струювання іміджу готелю на основі онлайн відгуків клієнтів [21].…”