Abstract

Destination managers are investing considerable efforts (i.e. time, resources and money) to market their destinations on the internet, often not considering the fact that unofficial information sources are gaining more and more popularity among internet users. Long tail players (such as blogs, wikis, reviews, etc.) are actually appearing in the ranking of search engines, spreading almost the same contents as the official sources, but with very different strategies, goals and styles. Starting from a log files analysis of a given Mediterranean destination, nine keywords have been used to perform search activities on two major search engines (Google and Yahoo!). A content analysis study has been performed on search results in order to examine topics and arguments of the retrieved results, which are shaping the web reputation of the destination. The paper shows that destinations need to manage their brand and online reputation holistically, by listening all players providing information about them, and trying to leverage on their contributions.

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