Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Posts about Tourist Attractions: Black Sea Region Sample

Abstract

Social media has become one of the essential advertising channels with the increase of users and potential customers. With the data obtained from social media, analyses on advertisements and customers are conducted in many areas. The tourism industry is one of the areas where social media has a significant impact. In this study, we used Twitter and sentiment analysis for ranking tourist attractions in terms of positive tweet rates. We collected tweets shared on Twitter regarding certain tourist attractions in the Black Sea Region of Turkey using social media analytics. We conducted sentiment analysis using RapidMiner data processing software and Operator Toolbox extension. They were used for collecting and processing the data and sentiment analysis of Twitter tweets. The touristic places selected within the scope of the research were determined as Abant, Amasra, Ayder Plateau, Hattusa, Kartalkaya, Persembe Plateau, Sumela Monastery, Uzungol and Yedigoller. Total of 1985 tweets were used for this study. After the sentiment analysis, we identified that the tourist attraction with the highest percentage of positive tweets was Abant (%76.70). After Abant, Ayder Plateau (%76.47) and Uzungöl (%75.68) were identified that the tourist attraction with the highest percentage of positive tweets, respectively.