Evaluating Research Methods on Travel Blogs

Abstract

The increase of online diaries, or blogs, has not only affected communication channels, but also the way tourism destinations are being promoted and consumed. To date, few studies have focused on the content of travel blogs as a rich source of destination marketing information. A review of the current research on travel blogs revealed that the two most popular research methods used to analyze the content of online diaries are content analysis and narrative analysis. This paper provides a discussion of the strengths, weaknesses and implications of using content analysis and narrative analysis on travel blogs. After a presentation of alternative research methods on travel blogs, the authors present industry and methodological implications related to the nature of online diaries.

Keywords

travel blogs research methods content analysis narrative analysis

Introduction

The substantial increase in online social networking has not only influenced the way people communicate and share information but also gained the attention of researchers and marketers because of its potential to influence consumer purchase decisions. The U.S. Travel Association (USTA) found that more than 93 million Americans used the Internet when planning their trips in 2010 (USTA 2010). The Internet provides travelers with information on tourism products and services, facilitates tourism transactions, and offers new ways to learn about tourism products and services directly from other consumers (Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007). By June 2008, Technorati, a blog search engine, indexed more than 100 million blogs. Its 2009 “State of Blogosphere” report stated that about two-thirds of bloggers are male, 60% are between the ages of 18 and 44, and the majority are more affluent and educated than the general public. The same report stated that 20% of the blogs surveyed were tagged as travel blogs (Technorati 2009). Travel blog websites such as TravelBlog.org offer worldwide access to people looking to share information with others about their travel experiences. TravelBlog.org hosts more than 450,000 blog entries; it has more than 150,000 members, with about 100 members joining every day (About TravelBlog 2010).

As travel blog sites such as TravelBlog.org and TravelPost.com continue to grow in popularity, there is a growing recognition that they facilitate powerful discussions that could affect consumer decisions and destination images and even reshape the communication networks previously dominated by traditional information suppliers (Wenger 2008; Xiang and Gretzel 2010). In so doing, travel blogs represent a relevant area of consumer research. Because travel blogs express the tourists’ experience at a specific destination, tourism marketers “need to understand blogs as a new technological phenomenon with implications for marketing and promotion of a destination” (Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007, p. 38). In hopes to reach out and learn about the online traveler and how the information posted on travel blogs can aid in business management, a growing number of researchers have analyzed the content of such online word of mouth, finding it to be a significant source of marketing information. Several scholars have argued that travel blog content can be used for various marketing strategies such as improving and monitoring destination images and products by responding to tourists’ demands and expectations, and also adjusting competitive strategies (Carson 2008; Litvin, Goldsmith, and Pan 2008; Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007; Wenger 2008). Moreover, travel blogs can offer destinations a deeper understanding of bloggers’ production and consumption of tourism products (Banyai 2010; Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert 2009; Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2008). Akehurst (2009) argued, if market research would focus more on travel blogs, the results may provide greater and more long-lasting impact as compared to traditional marketing tools, which may not assess hard-to-reach market segments.

Although travel blogs offer destination marketers a window into tourists’ travel experiences, research analyzing the content of online travel diaries is still in its infancy. Because of its novelty and likelihood of growth over the coming years, there is a need to investigate current research methods appropriate for analyzing blog content. Thus, the purpose of this study is to review and examine the most popular research methods used to study travel blogs and to discuss their usefulness, effectiveness, and shortcomings with the intent to influence the thoughtful analysis of travel blogs. This article is also aimed at providing guidance to destination marketers looking to use travel blogs for strategic marketing.

What Are Travel Blogs?

Puhringer and Taylor defined travel blogs as

individual entries which relate to planned, current or past travel. Travel blogs are the equivalent of personal online diaries and are made up from one or more individual entries strung together by a common theme (for example, a trip itinerary or the purchase of a round the world ticket). They are commonly written by tourists to report back to friends and families about their activities and experiences during trips. (2008, p. 179)

Blogs offer the opportunity to reveal tourists’ interpretations of tourism products and experiences, and to express tourists’ impressions, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, all that may otherwise not be revealed in a more constrained research environment such as personal interviews. The popularity of blogs has grown substantially over the past few years as advancements in communication technology have become more accessible, thereby enabling people to engage more easily in social commentaries. Today, Internet users are better positioned than ever to tell their stories. McCabe and Foster argued that stories provide a “mechanism to escape, becoming immersed in plots, characters, descriptions and accounts contained therein” (2006, p. 194). Moreover, stories deliver “an interpretive viewpoint of each traveler and their journey into the open spaces of our world” (Pudlinger 2007, p .47).

The constraint-free feedback offered by tourists on their travel blogs provide destination marketing organizations (DMOs) with information about tourists’ perceptions and impressions of the destination, thus shedding light on how tourists interpret the destination. Through online travel stories, tourists communicate with an audience and construct their identities. Narratives are then “a potential route through which to explore how persons in society relate their experiences as ‘storied events’” (McCabe and Foster 2006, p. 195). Destination marketers ought to pay particular attention to electronic first-person stories as they provide “multiple interrelated information about particularities of a destination, including, but not limited to attractions, facilities, infrastructures, and a more abstract value such as the overall atmosphere” (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2008, p. 309).

It is also important to identify what travel blogs are not. Although social media provide various channels for information dissemination, not all consumer-generated comments are considered blogs. What differentiates the “blog” from other social media sites such as virtual communities (e.g., Facebook) and review sites (e.g., TripAdvisor.com) is the communication scope. As such, virtual communities are described as groups of people who exchange information and ideas through Internet bulletin boards and networks (Rheingold 1993), whereas travel review sites allow consumers to provide both qualitative and quantitative reviews of tourism products such as hotels, attractions, and other travel experiences (O’Conner 2008). By contrast, travel blogs are online diaries and stories meant to provide information and engage the reader in the travel experience. While the distinction between the various social media outlets is clear, some researchers refer to data gathered from TripAdvisor.com and other review sites as data gathered from travel blogs (Crotts, Mason, and Davis 2009; Dwivedi, Shibu, and Venkatesh 2007).

Method

An examination of travel blog research conducted using the search words tourism travel blogs on Google Scholar revealed that a majority of researchers utilized content analysis and narrative analysis to analyze travel blogs. Both quantitative and qualitative empirical studies were examined, with careful attention given to how travel blogs were defined. This examination resulted in research looking at consumer review sites (e.g., TripAdvisor.com) and other social media sites to be excluded. Also, because this paper focuses on the method of analysis used to examine the content of travel blogs, those studies failing to identify and explain the methodology used were excluded.

Content Analysis on Travel Blogs

Content analysis was employed in the majority of studies examining travel blogs. In these cases, attention was given to activities undertaken at the destination, positive and negative perceptions of the destination, overall impressions of the destination, demographics, and identity creation. Wenger (2008), for example, analyzed 114 travel blogs related to trips to Austria to understand similarities and differences between the blog posts and Austria’s tourism markets, and to identify positive and negative perceptions of Austria as a tourism destination. Specific themes such as “season of visit, motives for travel, sights and attractions visited, services used, modes of transport, problems encountered in the journey, and the images associated with Austria as a destination” (p. 172) were developed to categorize the content of travel blogs. Similarly, Carson (2008) content-analyzed 25 blogs about travel to Australia’s Northern Territory with attention being given to comments related to locations, activities, tourism products, events, and transportation. Content analysis was also used to monitor visitor attitudes in terms of positive, negative, and neutral experiences. Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts (2007) content analyzed 40 blogs related to travel to Charleston, South Carolina, to gain an understanding of travelers’ experiences, and of Charleston’s strengths and weaknesses as perceived by tourists.

The image of tourism destinations as projected on travel blogs is another common research topic. Choi, Lehto, and Morrison’s (2007) study, for instance, examined Macau’s destination image on the Internet to identify image representations and to assess consistency over various online information. Law and Cheung (2010), meanwhile, analyzed 120 travel blog entries to gain insights into Chinese tourists’ overall perceived image of Hong Kong. Banyai (2010) content analyzed Western tourists’ blogs to examine the various perceptions, impressions, feelings and beliefs related to Dracula and Dracula related attractions. On the other hand, other content analyses of travel blogs examined the interactions and identity creations taking place within the travel blog environment. Enoch’s and Grossman’s (2010) interpretive analysis of blogs written by backpackers from Israel and Denmark examined how people of different nationalities interact with the Indian culture, and identified the unique characteristics related to the blog and the bloggers’ identities. Lastly, Karlsson’s (2006) discourse analysis examined how diasporic identities and a sense of belonging are created within a group of Asian American travel bloggers.

The content analyses of the above mentioned studies have not only focused on tourists’ impressions, perceptions, attitudes and behaviors, but also on the demographic profile of travel bloggers. The Austrian blogs revealed that about 60% of blogs were written by women, and more than 65% of bloggers were between the ages of 21 and 40 years (Wenger 2008). By contrast, the Charleston-related travel blogs revealed that the majority of bloggers were from the United States, with the average age of 38 years and an almost equal distribution between males and females (Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007).

In terms of the activities undertaken by travel bloggers, the content analysis of Austrian related blogs revealed that the most visited cities were Vienna and Salzburg, where tourists visited town centers and architectural buildings such as cathedral and fortresses, indulged in dining, attended classical music concerts, and took tours (Wenger 2008). The blogs on Australia’s Northern Territory revealed that the most talked about activities were outdoor and wildlife activities, such as “sunset or sunrise viewing of Uluru, ‘camping under the stars’, the rim walk at Kings Canyon, the jumping crocodiles tours in the Mary River new Darwin, and boat cruises of Katherine (Nitmiluk) Gorge” (Carson 2008, p. 116). Other information sought from travel blogs included modes of transportation and accommodation used while visiting the destination and the overall impression of these. For example, Law and Cheung (2010) found that 73% of comments related to the transportation choices in Hong Kong were positive, with the subway being the most popular transportation mode for tourists, which was perceived as being “convenient, quick, and clean, with clear directories in stations” (p. 315). Overall, researchers found that travel bloggers tend to complain about things such as opening hours for shops, poor signage, low accommodation service, the weather, high prices, accessibility, food quality and service, parking, and attractions (Carson 2008; Law and Cheung 2010; Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007; Wenger 2008).

Strengths and Weaknesses of Using Content Analysis

By content analyzing travel blogs, researchers can gain access to “every aspect of a visitor’s trip. From the overall experience of traveling, the anticipation, planning, packing, departure, driving, flying, and delays en route were all reflected in the travel blogs. Visitors’ experiences involved kaleidoscopic perception and sense of the destination: from attractions, accommodations and dining, to access and overall impressions” (Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007, p. 42). By using content analysis when researching travel blogs, destination marketers can also gain access to the demographic profile of their visitors, specifically the Internet-savvy traveler.

Moreover, content analysis can also be utilized to discover gaps in tourism promotion. When content analyzing Macau related Internet sites, Choi, Lehto, and Morrison (2007) found that tourists’ impression of Macau is that of a historical heritage city, but that the images portrayed by tourists did not match those promoted by the official tourism office. Similarity, Banyai (2010) found that tourists’ image of Dracula as a tourism attraction does not correspond with that promoted by Dracula Castle tour guides. By identifying these gaps destination marketers can address and improve their marketing strategies by promoting a destination image based on the tourists’ impressions, perceptions, demands and expectations of the tourism product.

However, content analysis can also have its drawbacks. The use of computerized software oftentimes results in losing the blogs’ reflection of “real life,” of “what happens in reality” (Hookway 2008). The extraction of words from phrases, even phrases from paragraphs, might result in meaning loss in that words and phrases could be taken out of context and misinterpreted. Quantitative content analysis methods, which are most used by researchers, raise the question of capturing the truth-claims of the travel experience. The lack of research allowing for the understanding of the travel experience components and tourists’ expectations may result in marketing strategies based on assumptions and “trial and error approaches rather than strategic and persuasive experience engineering and methodical evaluation” (Gretzel et al. 2006, p. 125).

Thus, the arguments in favor of content analysis are primarily focused on the methodology’s ability to provide destination marketers and tourism researchers with general information regarding visiting tourists, their activities at the destination, and gaps between the supply and demand sides of tourism. However, the objectives of quantitative content analysis to produce counts of words and measurements is often contested by researchers interested in the deeper and more detailed information in the text. To reconcile, Krippendorff argued that both types of content analysis are indispensable: “quantitative/qualitative distinction is a mistaken dichotomy between the two kinds of justifications of content analysis designs: the explicitness and objectivity of scientific data processing on the one side and the appropriateness of the procedures used relative to a chosen context the other” (2004, p. 87).

Narrative Analysis on Travel Blogs

While content analysis is the most popular methodology used to analyze the content of travel blogs, narrative analysis is gaining ground. Narrative analysis as a research methodology has been used to gain insights into tourist-constructed identities, meaning making associated with their experiences, and temporal and spatial characteristics of travel experiences. Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier (2008) used narrative structure analysis to identify key marketing elements from tourists’ blogs to aid DMOs in facilitating and managing travel blogs. The data sample was selected from tourists’ blogs posted on the Pennsylvania Tourists Office website. The narrative structure analysis of the Pennsylvania blogs included characterization, temporal dimension, relational organization, and space categorization. The creation of six different characters allowed the individual bloggers to relate to the character in real life and feel more comfortable narrating. Only three travel genres were included in the analysis: History Buff (two stories), Culture Vultures (three stories), and Hipster Roadtrippers (three stories).

The analysis process involved deconstructing the stories into episodes and quotations, coding these quotations and episodes, and interpreting the relationships between codes. The deconstruction of stories followed the concept of narrative structure suggested by Escalas (2004a) based on the chronology and causality of the events. Events were organized on the basis of their temporal dimension (beginning, middle, or end of narrative), on the sequence of events (focusing on three time intervals: morning, afternoon, and evening), which allowed the researchers to learn about the bloggers’ activities and the time activities were undertaken; and also “by their relational organization of goals-actions-outcomes” (p. 306), which revealed why and how well the bloggers perform their actions. Finally, “based on the episodes and episode schema, the experiences represented in the narratives can be plotted into spatial movements” (p. 307). Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier plotted the bloggers’ travel patterns, paying particular attention to the attractions visited and the routes taken. The visual representation of the travel experience provided the researchers with the space categorization for each travel genre.

In a different study, Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert (2009) analyzed 30 travel blogs on three different travel blog websites, namely, travelpod.com, travelblog.org, and travbuddy.com, to gain knowledge of how tourists construct order and make meaning from their experiences. The researchers used Mishler’s (1995) framework based on the interactional and institutional contexts in which stories are created, recounted, and consumed to analyze the social aspect of the narrative. The analysis revealed that most bloggers had a desire to communicate with an audience insofar as they used terms such as you, and included personal characteristics in the narrative to show the bloggers have a historical social relationship with the readers. Moreover, descriptions of tourism destinations and experiences revealed that bloggers imbued their experiences with meaning based on previous occurrences and expectations. To analyze the structure of the narrative, Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert (2009) used Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) structural model of narrative involving a sequence of six elements: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution, and coda. The narrative analysis revealed that “most bloggers told their stories chronologically: their narratives started from the beginning of their trip, when they left their home, included their travel towards a destination, their various activities in the destination and finished with the end of their trip” (p. 68).

Lastly, Berger and Greenspan (2008) used narrative analysis to examine the involvement of technologized storytelling in the creation and manifestation of identities. The blog diary of the 2005 Canadian Everest Expedition provided the researchers with a portrait of climbers’ “struggles, adaptations, celebrations, grief, and relationships between travelers, the mountain, and supporters around the world” (p. 110). The chronological events leading to the postexpedition religious service held for Sean Egan provided researchers with insights into the participants’ identity construction and their manifestations of social identities. The narrative analysis further revealed that participants reiterated their identities as climbers and as Canadians, but also constructed new identities by combining their professional research identities with the recreational identities.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Using Narrative Analysis

While the utilization of qualitative research techniques has been recognized by social science researchers (Hookway 2008; Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2008) as a valuable and needed tool to examine and uncover the tourism experience, narrative analysis has its strengths and weaknesses. Narrative analysis on travel blogs offers researchers and destination marketers insight into how tourists create meanings and identities based on their travel experiences. It further provides an opportunity to identify key events and the details surrounding these, including the chronological sequence of the events that contribute to the developing of the tourism experience (Glover 2003; Riessman 2008; Webster and Mertova 2007). By using narrative analysis on travel blogs, tourism researchers were able to note the underlying patterns across various travel experiences by uncovering the common plots in the travel blogs.

With respect to weaknesses, for those destinations looking to gather quick information about their target markets, narrative analysis may not offer time-efficient results or data that can be generalized to a greater population. Because of the qualitative nature and manual process of analysis, narrative analysis can result in high costs. Furthermore, the composition of the research text brings up the issue of voice, where the researcher “struggles to maintain his/her own voice in the midst of an inquiry designed to tell of the participants’ storied experiences and to represent their voices, all the while attempting to create a research text that will speak to, and reflect upon, the audiences’ voice” (Clandinin and Connelly 2000, p. 147).

Thus, narrative analysis as a research method on travel blogs finds its advantages in the ability to provide tourism marketers with a window into tourists’ experiences at the destination, a chronological story illustrating the creation of meanings based on tourists’ interactions with the tourism products. The gathering of unique insights about tourists’ and their experiences does however come at the expense of tourism marketers oftentimes looking for quick marketing strategies in order to increase tourism flow to an area. Nevertheless, Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier argue that “a thorough analysis of tourists’ narratives . . . will provide an in-depth understanding of the underlying message and persuasiveness of the stories” (2008, p. 300).

Discussion

McCabe and Foster (2006) believe tourists have a narrativistic attitude. Tourists communicate experiences and memories of visited destinations through stories of their own interpretation of the experience. The analysis method chosen and used by tourism researchers to examine the content of tourists’ narratives depends on the research objectives and research questions. If the information sought pertains to tourists’ activities at the destination and their main perceptions and impressions of the destination, content analysis seems to be the preferred research method. Otherwise, if researchers are looking to bring to life the chronological story of tourists’ experiences at the destination, along with the identities created and the meanings assigned to tourism experiences, narrative analysis is the driving force. While “there is a growing interest in travel blogs from academic researchers” (Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert 2009), the majority of research on travel blogs has been limited to using content analysis to extract common themes related to tourism destination image, tourists’ behavior, and their attitudes toward a destination. Travel blogs need to also be examined as “textual artefacts” to gain knowledge about how tourists construct meanings from their travel experiences as part of their identity management (Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert 2009).

Narrative Analysis as a Research Method on Travel Blogs

Narrative analysis is found in many marketing fields, especially in studies trying to analyze and understand consumption (Pace 2008). Carù and Cova (2006) noted that to understand consumers’ emotions and experiences, marketing researchers should use narrative analysis to convey the deeper meanings of the consumption experience. Brand consumption researchers also agree that narrative analysis provides the tools needed to investigate the interaction between the research subject (the consumer) and the research object (the brand) and to examine the construction of the consumer’s self (Schembri, Merrilees, and Kristiansen 2010).

Before trying to understand the overall experience, the researcher has to first introduce the narrator in terms of personal identity to contextualize the cultural background in which the story took place (Glover 2003). Through narratives, bloggers assess and reassess their identity by reinforcing personal traits. Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert argued that “narratives created in collaboration with known others can be harnessed to convey self identity to a wider audience” (2009, p. 65). However, narrative analysis sometimes starts with already-established identities, as illustrated in the travel blog research done by Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier (2008). The researchers noted that “characters in a story are lived identities to which people can relate in real life. The Roadtripper blogs introduce and label their stars with titles related to, and images corresponding to, the travel genres” (p. 303). However, “in narrative inquiry, people are seen as composing lives that shape and are shaped by social and cultural narratives” (Clandinin and Connelly 2000, p. 43). By having already-established identities within the travel narrative, the reader has a predetermined path of meaning creation, and the narrator is stolen of the opportunity to invoke meaning in the reader. Moreover, the historical characterization of the narrator based on past experiences might be unseen because of an already established and imposed identity. Thus, the interaction (personal and social) dimension of narrative analysis (Clandinin and Connelly 2000) will be affected.

Along the identity dimension, narrative analysis is also focused on continuity (past, present and future) and situation (place). The structure of a narrative involves a set of clauses: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, results or resolution, and coda (Labov and Waletzky 1967), which can aid researchers identify key events and the details surrounding these. Webster and Mertova (2007) argued that the identification of critical events is the driving force of narrative analysis because they are unplanned and unanticipated, they exist in social settings, and may even change the tourists’ feelings and lives. Recognizing the importance of understanding the temporal and chronological dimension of tourists’ narratives for marketing purposes, Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier (2008) deconstructed tourists’ blog narratives to examine their movements in various times of the day, along with the places visited in the time intervals. Each time interval included more or fewer episodes depending on how many attractions were visited and for how long. However, the temporal and spatial deconstruction of narratives does not offer information about why and how the tourists performed their actions.

While the relational organization of a narrative is explained by researchers in different ways, such as a goals–actions–outcomes organization (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2008), or a set of clauses (Labov and Waletzky 1967), narrative analysis is also aimed at discovering what the story is about, what happened, and why it is or it was important. These elements all make reference to events, characters, and feelings as applied to the tourism experience, and they are essential to structuring the interaction in which the story is told by guiding the narrator and the reader to ensure that experiences and events are understood and worth narrating (Johnstone 2001 as cited in McCabe and Foster 2006). The deconstruction of Pennsylvania travel blogs based on the goals–actions–outcomes structure “enables blog readers to understand the plot by association the process of justification in their minds, why and how well the characters perform their actions” (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier 2008, p. 306). Moreover, the structure of the narrative offers information about the setting, time, place, situation, and participants (orientation); what happened during the experience (complicating action); what the events meant to the narrator (evaluation); and how it all ended (resolution) (based on Labov and Waletzky’s structural model of narrative form, 1967). Similarly, Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert (2009) found that most travel blogs started from the beginning of their trip and finished with returning home—chronological organization that is also evident in Berger and Greenspan’s (2008) narrative analysis of the 2005 Canadian Everest Expedition.

Furthermore, the relational organization of the narrative can act as a sense making tool for blog readers. Bosangit, McCabe, and Hibbert (2009) noted that one blogger drew from past experiences to give meaning to her travel experience. The creation of meaning can also be presented in narratives in the form of product evaluation. Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier (2009) interpreted bloggers’ positive and negative feelings to invoke the meanings they assigned to various tourism products. As such, it was found that most narrators assigned positive meanings to their experiences. This step in narrative analysis can provide destination marketers with a sense of how tourists create meanings based on their interactions with tourism products. It is therefore undeniable that tourists’ lived experiences offer destination marketers with rich information about tourists’ activities and the way they create meanings at the destination. Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier argued that

tourism experiences constitute spatiotemporal mobility; that is, experiences take place within meaningful spatial and temporal contexts . . . stories characterize spaces with the experiential values they can afford for tourists, including, but not limited to, the functional, the materialistic, and the aesthetic, sensual qualities of the place. . . . Therefore, it is argued that tourists’ narratives provide the information necessary to develop a meaningful framework upon which to distinguish places and their network relationships into different products or brands. (2008, p. 301)

Moreover, Smith and Weed (2007) noted that narratives are important to researchers interested in people and their experiences. Narrative analysis can help researchers interpret and represent people’s experiences at a destination, and also examine how experiences are “re-storied” by the bloggers in a way that enables them to create meanings. Narrative analysis provides destination marketers with information about the sequence of tourists’ activities, along with information on attractions visited and duration of visit. The feelings, images, and thoughts invoked by tourism products are essential to tourism marketers looking to understand the impact of their products on visitors. The uniqueness of each story is likely to create an emotional bond with other consumers, which can ultimately attract more tourists to the destination.

Content Analysis as a Research Method on Travel Blogs

While the term content analysis is more than 60 years old, its historical use in philosophy, rhetoric, and cryptography has changed over time to encompass various disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics, sociology, and business (Krippendorff 2004; Neuendorf 2002). The term content analysis is often associated with quantitative research methods involving the “analysis of message characteristics. It includes the careful examination of human interactions, the analysis of character portrayals in TV commercials, films and novels; the computer-driven investigation of word usage in news releases and political speeches; and so much more” (Neuendorf 2002, p. 1). However, content analysis can also involve the observation and interpretation of the text by coding and grouping words or images into categories or themes defined by the researcher, a more subjective technique (Krippendorff 2004; Smith 2010). Therefore, content analysis can be empirical, involving the counting of words or phrases, or measuring observable text characteristics such as spaces devoted to ads and photographs in print material (Smith 2010); but also subjective where the reader is invited to make sense of what is written. Krippendorff (2004) noted that the meaning of the text is dependent on the surrounding environment and the reader, and that it is the researcher’s job to make inferences from texts based on the research context and objectives.

Wenger (2008) and Carson (2008) both used content analysis when researching information on travel blogs. The content analysis looked for references related to motives for travel, season of visit, modes of transportation, attractions and events, destination images, and so forth. Although the actual analysis process is not conveyed, it is implied that the researchers followed a deductive category application in which already formed categories were assigned to data based on theoretical background or already created frameworks. However, how these categories were established is unknown, leaving the reader in the dark as to how the content analysis was actually performed, bringing forward issues related to validity and reliability.

A distinction between quantitative and qualitative content analysis is necessary to understand how the categories and themes were created. While the findings of Wenger (2008) and Carson (2008) both present a more quantitative picture of their analysis process in the form of frequency and percentages of each theme, the content analysis was more qualitative in nature as their own interpretation and understanding of previous literature and data examined determined the creation of the themes. The ambiguity of the analysis process would have been corrected had the researchers provided the readers with a sense of the methodological background used in developing the themes and also with an explanation of how and why the themes were assigned to the data. Moreover, the reliability of results is further questioned by the lack of mention of intracoder reliability. Both researchers fail to explain the circumstances under which the data were coded.

A clearer understanding of the use of qualitative content analysis is presented by Banyai (2010), who took an interpretive approach to research when analyzing Western travel blogs related to Dracula tourism. A similar method to that of grounded theory was used but one that did not culminate in the creation of a theory. The key process used involved the construction of themes based on theoretical background and the researcher’s experiences, understanding, and interpretation of the data. Such interpretivist approach to content analysis was also taken by Enoch and Grossman (2010) whose content analysis of Danish and Israeli bloggers provided information on the language used when narrating and the interactivity with the Indian culture and their audience.

Content analysis was also performed using various computer software such as TextAnalyst and CATPACII. Choi, Lehto, and Morrison (2007) used CATPAC II to content analyze various Internet travel information sites, including 14 travel blog websites. “CATPAC is designed to conduct semantic network analysis. . . . [It] identifies the most frequently occurring words in a text, ignoring standard and custom ‘stop words’, such as simple articles such as ‘a’, ‘the’, and ‘and’. Based on the co-occurrence of the frequently occurring words, the program conducts a cluster analysis to produce a dendogram, output that graphically shows the levels of co-occurrence” (Neuendorf 2002, p. 130). To ensure the reliability of their results, the researchers excluded “stop words” from the analysis, replaced plurals with singulars and past tense with present tense for consistency, corrected spelling issues, and grouped names composed of two or more words into one so that the software would not count it as separate words. The most frequently used words in travel blogs identified by CATPAC II were then coded and input into SPSS for correspondence analysis. Moreover, the visual information was also classified in 11 categories and transformed into quantitative data for further analysis.

To analyze the meanings and impressions of Charleston as a tourist destination, Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts (2007) first used which TextAnalyst to find out the most frequently used words or phrases, and to perform semantic network analysis which enabled the researchers to draw relationships between words and to formulate clusters representative of main types of travel experiences. NVivo, a qualitative tool used to create category trees to show relationships between categories, was also used to analyze the Charleston-related travel blogs. The content analysis of blogs was performed by two coders who coded the data independently, compared the results, and then developed a master coding scheme that was used for final coding. The coding was executed using a previously developed tourism amalgam model by Cooper (2005), attention being given to the positive and negative connotation of sentences. The finalized and standardized coding scheme was then applied to the text data, followed by another stage involving the coding of each sentence as one unit in order to increase reliability. The process resulted in a 96% agreement.

When using these programs, researchers need to be fully aware of the application and commands of the programs. For example, the exclusion of stop words (the, and, is, etc.) is essential in eliminating irrelevant word frequencies, allowing only for the data relevant to the research questions to be analyzed. A list of most frequently used words and phrases related to attractions, accommodations, dining, and transportation as well as words used to describe a destination are outputs provided by these computer programs. These tools, along with various correspondence analysis techniques, which group most frequent words in clusters based on their relative proximity, provide destination marketers with a glimpse into promotional gaps, but also with a general view of tourists’ perceptions of the destination. Based on the clusters formed, and on the frequency of words used to describe the destination, tourism marketers can readjust their marketing strategies to create a unified destination image and increase their competitiveness in the marketplace.

Babbie and Benaquisto (2002) believe that “probably the greatest advantage of content analysis is its economy in terms of both time and money” (p. 295). Large amounts of data can be processed quickly by computer software, decreasing work hours. Content analysis is advantageous to researchers because of its unobtrusive nature, insofar as it does not have any effect on the subject being studied. Quantitative content analysis provides destination marketers with the needed generalizable data used to target market segments. By being able to find common characteristics between tourists, destinations will likely increase tourists’ satisfaction and their intentions to revisit and recommend the attraction. However, the information gathered through content analysis can only be used in practical marketing strategies if it is valid and reliable. Kolbe and Burnett (1991) argue that in consumer research, the use of content analysis oftentimes brings up issues of reliability and objectivity. To address these, several rules and procedures are proposed to reduce subjectivity and allow replication: (1) analysis rules and procedures are reported; (2) the coder was trained; (3) measures were pretested to ensure validity; (4) the coder and author was not one and the same person; and (5) coders worked independently of one another. While the authors recognize that these are “idealistic benchmarks” for conducting content analysis, they recognize that research decisions are constrained by various factors.

Alternative Research Methods on Travel Blogs

The use of the Internet for personal expression has changed the meaning of personal diary. Today, people from around the world publish their feelings and beliefs, along with personal stories, on the Internet for millions of other Web users to access. The traditional form of a diary is widely presented today as an online blog, a vehicle for self-expression and for community building (Zuern 2003). The increase in online diaries influenced the adoption of digital ethnography, a research method focused on telling social stories (Murty 2008). Unlike traditional ethnography where researchers become physically engaged while in the field, digital ethnography offers the possibility to explore culture online. Murty (2008) argued, when doing research on blogs, researchers should take advantage of the interactive potential of blogs by utilizing blogs to probe dialogues that cannot be done in person. This approach produces a “collaborative ethnography” (Lassiter 2005 as cited in Murty 2008) whereby those under investigation become invested in the study through consultation and critique. Thus, blogs as online diaries allow social researchers to study culture and tourism in a new digital environment.

Kennedy (2003) used the term technobiography to refer to “a method for studying digital experiences in general, and the relationship between online and offline lives in particular” (p. 120). While noting that there is no strict technobiographical methodology, Kennedy argued the analysis would follow in the tradition of cultural studies where “multi-sited, mobile, adaptive methods” would be used (p. 135). By using technobiography, researchers can examine “online lives in offline contexts” (p. 121), therein providing a deeper understanding of not only virtual representations but also the societal production and consumption of information and communication technologies. In addition, Kennedy argued the use of technobiography enables researchers to learn the contexts in which online identities are created, maintained, and modified. A similar technique, called “netnography” or “netblography,” (Kozinets 2006), can be used to analyze first-person online stories consumer tell about product brands. Borrowed from marketing research on consumer product brand, netnography/netblography involves the collection of emic interpretive data of the meanings lived by tourists while at the destination and after their visits (Hsu, Dehuang, and Woodside 2009; Woodside, Cruickshank, and Dehuang 2007). Data analysis entails the creation of maps showing immediate and downstream positive and negative associations of concepts, events, and outcomes in visitors’ stories (Woodside, Cruickshank, and Dehuang 2007). This method is purely interpretive, aimed at understating consumers in their online environment in which they are embedded, rather than generalizing the findings to a wider population (Kozinets 2006).

Research on blogs seems so far to be divided and characterized either as qualitative or quantitative, yet doing so reduces these approaches to a data-level discussion. Pragmatically, research on blogs must evolve to incorporate a variety of research methods to harness the full potential travel blogs can offer to marketing research. Mark, Henry, and Julnes (2000, as cited in Greene and Caracelli 2003), when referring to program evaluation, argued that

qualitative methods are seen as an essential complement to quantitative methods because the factors that determine the program success or failure are often far from transparent, and these factors may be hidden or seriously distorted by the simplifying assumptions that are used in formal theories. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches need to recognize that the underlying mechanisms affecting the success or failure of a program may operate at multiple levels of analysis . . . and that both mechanisms and outcomes evolve over time as participants, administrators, and other adapt to changing realities. (p. 99)

The value of reconciling qualitative and quantitative methods lies in the ability to use different data collection procedures to gather both latent and manifest meanings in blogs content. Quantitative methods can be used to find out general information about bloggers such as the demographic or geographic profile, or make systematic comparisons between different blog samples. Alternatively, qualitative methods, such as an interpretivist approach to doing content analysis, can be used to extrapolate the latent meanings in the data, finding out the subjective reality of bloggers and the meanings they assign to their travel experiences. Through mixed methods, researchers can gather data that are “both meaningfully contextual and respectful of diversity and more broadly generalizable and descriptive of patterned regularities in social behavior” (Greene and Caracelli 2003, p. 92).

Future research on travel blogs should focus more on research methods that can easily transfer or adapt to a virtual environment. Virtual communities and the intensity of online communication have grown exponentially in the past few years as people engage in a wide variety of activities online. The characteristics of virtual lives have to be taken into consideration when doing research online. The ability to modify traditional research methods such as ethnography to an online environment can offer researchers and destination marketers with valuable data gathered using an established and recognized research method.

Conclusion and Implications

This article addressed the research methods most employed when analyzing the content of travel blogs. The discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using content analysis and narrative analysis presents both methodological and managerial implications related to the analysis of travel blogs. By recognizing the need to diversify research methodology on travel blogs to allow the thoughtful analysis of online stories, we hope this paper will inspire tourism researchers and marketers to consider travel blogs as a rich source of data related to tourists and their experiences.

Methodological Implications

With only a few studies to date, research on travel blogs has still not reached the stage of maturity in that researchers are still trying to make out the “what” and “how” of analyzing travel blogs. Questions related to what research methods are appropriate and how travel blogs should be analyzed are, and will be driven by, the researcher’s goals and objectives; current studies related to travel blogs; and a better understanding of the outcomes, benefits, and drawbacks of each research method.

Content analysis and narrative analysis are both established research methods in social sciences. Even so, their use in studying travel blogs transforms the way we look at these methodologies and the research designs applicable when examining online stories. The use of one method over the other really depends on the researcher’s epistemological stance. While content analysis is most of the times used quantitatively to make generalizations about travel bloggers and their travel characteristics, the samples are usually not randomly selected, which brings forward issues related to the representativeness. Moreover, the codes and categories derived from the analysis of blog content are often based on the research objectives and goals. Words and sentences are often taken out of context, resulting in misleading results not truly representative of the travel experience. However, the use of narrative analysis provides researchers with the tools needed to examine the deeper meanings related to the travel experience, and the travel identities created and shaped by the travel experience. Travel blogs are generally defined as online diaries, stories, and expressions of one’s self. The use of narrative analysis recognizes and respects the personal and subjective nature of travel blogs, capitalizing on the uniqueness of each travel experience within its spatial and temporal dimensions.

Both content analysis and narrative analysis provide research design opportunities, such as mixed methods and longitudinal studies on travel blogs. Karlsson (2006), in her research on travel blogs written by diasporic tourists, found that blogs were written almost daily for more than five years. She noted that “for years, these diarists have invited and constructed an ideal audience of capable life-story receivers, readers able to grasp particular jokes and hints” (p. 305). The repeated observation of a sample of travel blogs over an extended period of time provides the opportunity to assess the effect of time on tourists’ identities, perceptions, and impressions of the tourism products and experiences. This article contributes to the understanding of using either content analysis or narrative analysis when analyzing virtual travel diaries. Travel blog researchers should embrace the research opportunities offered by online stories to have a better understanding of the Internet-savvy traveler and his or her unique experiences.

Managerial Implications

While tourism researchers agree blogs are a potential mechanism for destination marketers to learn about the attitudes of their target markets (Carson, 2008; Pan, MacLaurin, and Crotts 2007; Wenger 2008), little has been done by DMOs to try to integrate travel blogs as a research marketing tool. It has become a trend within DMOs to establish travel blogs on their websites, inviting visitors to post stories about travel experiences. Stories are often grouped into specific experiences relevant to the DMOs’ target markets and product offerings. The content of these stories, however, is generally limited to promotional material enticing tourists to visit the destination.

This article provides managers with knowledge of how to analyze the content of travel blogs for marketing purposes. Gathering customer feedback online is becoming an important step for DMOs looking to stay competitive by learning about potential issues with products and services, such as gaps in destination image perceptions (e.g., Choi, Lehto, and Morrison 2007). Having access to up-to-date “real time” information can enable DMOs to respond faster to changes in the market and address these gaps. Moreover, knowledge of how to analyze the content of travel blogs can enable DMOs to gain access to constraint-free data that are freely available. Online stories offer destination marketers with low-cost, if not free, marketing data that contain rich descriptions of the travel experience. Such descriptions are often not included in traditional marketing research tools such as surveys and questionnaires. The uniqueness of the travel experience can offer DMOs the competitive advantage needed to differentiate themselves from other destinations. What differentiates one travel experience from another, and the meanings tourists assign to their experiences, are revealed in online travel stories.

Footnotes

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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