Title: Feature extraction of travel destinations from online Chinese-language customer reviews

Authors: Qiang Ye, Rob Law, Shi Li, Yijun Li

Addresses: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street, Harbin, 150001, China; School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. ' School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. ' School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street, Harbin, 150001, China. ' School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street, Harbin, 150001, China

Abstract: Many customers presently browse a large number of online reviews prior to making purchase decisions to access the word-of-mouth comments of other customers about the products and services in which they are interested. Therefore, online customer reviews serve as a feedback mechanism that can help suppliers to improve their products and services, thus gaining competitive advantages. More specifically, the product feature extractions from such reviews are expected to further illuminate the views and attitudes of customers. This study analyses the customer reviews that are posted by Chinese speakers about travel destinations. Our new approach is based on a recently introduced data mining approach that further explores reviews about travel destinations as a particular type of product. Experiments were conducted using datasets comprised of the reviews of three travel destinations in mainland China that had been posted on the internet. The empirical results prove the validity of the proposed method.

Keywords: travel destinations; destination reviews; product features; data mining; feature extraction; China; Chinese language; languages; customer reviews; online reviews; virtual reviews; internet; world wide web; purchase decisions; word-of-mouth; feedback mechanisms; suppliers; product improvement; competitive advantage; customer attitudes; Chinese speakers; datasets; Xian; Zhangjiajie; Jiuzhaigou; services technology; services management; model applications; tourism management; tourists.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2011.038665

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2011 Vol.15 No.1/2, pp.106 - 118

Published online: 21 Feb 2015 *

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