An american tourist in Portugal : destination image as represented in blogs and online reviews

Abstract

This dissertation presents a qualitative study of online blog entries and reviews written by american tourists after or while visiting Portugal. We coded the texts and organized the identified features into as extensive list of categories, also noting the valence of the attitudes expressed about those features. This was done to describe a tentative destination image that american tourists may have of Portugal. We explore the applications of blogs and other user-generated content for the tourism industry and suggeste future directions of research within this area.