Online reviews on heritage to develop cultural tourism: the case of Naples

In the current web 2.0 scenario, tourists have became more aware and more independent in searching information and making decisions. Although the growing role of social networks, UGCs and WOMs, in tourism has revolutionized communications and the marketing of tourism destination and it still remains an underdeveloped research topic. At the same time, the importance of experiential involvement of the tourist is growing. The aim of this paper is to analyse cultural tourism through a study of online reviews on Heritage sites from TripAdvisor website. Our main objective is to "capture" the impressions and emotions linked to the experience of the tourist, to analyse how every single cultural tourist attractions is perceived, to highlight similarities and differences between attractions and identify tourists' preferences. This study focus on the city of Naples by using data from the TripAdvisor data-base for a total of 12.592 online reviews. Findings identify five components which shape characterise the way in which tourists respond to the cultural attractions. It emerges that the emotional elements connected to the socio-cultural attraction are stronger than the 'cultural' dimension, used in the strict sense of the word. Research findings have contributed to the analysis of perceptions on heritage consumers' reviews. As regarding practical implications, this paper makes suggestions to policy makers and operators involved in cultural tourism to develop the marketing of destinations by providing a marketing tool which can be used for a more effective communication in cultural-tourist services.