Croatia as a virtual tourist destination: A linguistic and sentiment analysis

Purpose - Nowadays the virtual access to remote destinations through the use of different platforms has created a new profile of users: the virtual tourists. The question that arises by the emerging of such a new profile of tourist is whether the current structure of Web sites and the adopted communication strategies are adequate to meet the requirements of this type of users. The purpose of our research was to evaluate the effectiveness of the texts that are used to construct a particular image for Croatia as a tourist destination through the analysis of two websites: https://croatia.hr/en-GB, the official Croatian Tourism website, in its English version, and https://www.europeanbestdestinations.com/destinations/search#q=croatia, a website maintained by an European organisation aimed to promote culture and tourism in Europe which lists Croatia among the suggested best destinations.Methodology - In our study, two different approaches were combined in a multi-method analysis of the websites. A qualitative analysis within the framework of Discourse Analysis evaluated the linguistic resources used and communicative strategies adopted to promote Croatia. Text linguistic analysis provided data about the language of the selected websites, mostly on its morphology, syntax and lexis which is of great importance for a virtual tourist to situate a virtual text within a cognitive frame.A quantitative analysis (using AntConc tool) focused upon the frequency and distribution of words in the texts provided further insight and integrated the information value of the results produced by qualitative research. Finally, a sentiment analysis of the contents of the selected websites, and of the general feelings generated on the web by events, news and advertising, using open source tools was performed.Findings - Through our research several outputs concerning the qualitative linguistics, quantitative and sentiment analysis of the website texts (evaluative terms, positive, negative or neutral sentiments) were obtained. While in industry sentiment analysis is commonly used, in academia it represents an important and innovative aspect.Contribution - The preliminary results of our research will open up opportunities for future research and practical implications of the results gained that will be implemented in the creation of tourism websites evoking positive sentiments.