Service quality determinants in historic centers: analysis of user generated content from the perspective of the TOURQUAL protocol

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to explore the service quality determinants in historic centers (HC) by applying a user-generated content analysis with indicators of the TOURQUAL protocol for evaluating the quality of tourist services as the theoretical basis. We analyze 7,849 reviews from 9 HC (5 Brazilians and 4 Portuguese), from January 2019 to September 2020, available on TripAdvisor and Google Maps platforms. The findings demonstrate that the dimensions of technical quality, experience, and environment are the most identified among the reviews. Additionally, we noticed a lack of use of Unesco titles as marketing strategy. The research proposes a model of importance for dimensions of quality of service in historic centers that enables managers to improve the quality of tourist services.

KEYWORDS:

• User-generated content
• TOURQUAL protocol
• TripAdvisor
• historic centers
• service quality

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to a bibliometric study developed by Chiang (2020), “customer engagement behaviors” is the second hotspot in emarketing literature on tourism, only behind “tourism essence”, that comprises words as “Tourism”. In this sense, we understand as the as the second hotspot as the most related to technology.

2. Six of the HC are World Heritage or they are based on a World Heritage territory, with exception of three of them (Albufeira [PT], Cascais [PT] and Porto Seguro [BR]). We retain them due to online relevance (the three HC have more than 1,000 reviews).

3. Due to the fact that the data collection process was developed in September (2020), we achieved a 21 months period, but the sample was compensated by the law of large numbers (Manes & Tchetchik, 2018).

4. Fort more detailes: https://harmo.me/.

5. The lower the stress value (e.g., <0.10), the greater the fit or relationship between words.

6. The Sammon Mapping generates the map with raw data, hence, the words are in Portuguese, but we present the most relevants in Table 3.

7. In a close translation it can be defined the junction “vale a pena” as “worth it”.

8. In a literal translation, the word “Bem” would better translate to “Well”. Often, these words are used interchangeably in Portuguese, we prefer to adopt the two terms together in the analysis.

9. This categorization is in accordance with the terms presented in our analysis.

10. The Sammon Mapping generates the map with raw data, hence, the words are in Portuguese, but we present the most relevants in Table 3.

11. For synthesis purpose we are going present this indicator as Attention hereinafter.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001