Enhancing Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis in Visitor Review using Semantic Similarity

Abstract

The global economy greatly depends on the tourism industry, which fosters job opportunities and stimulates economic development. With the growing reliance of tourists on online platforms for guidance, evaluations of tourist destinations have gained heightened significance. These assessments, frequently expressed through user-generated content, offer valuable perspectives on customer experiences, viewpoints, and levels of satisfaction. Nevertheless, analyzing and interpreting these reviews can pose difficulties because of the unstructured or semi-structured nature of user-generated content. Conventional sentiment analysis methods might not adequately grasp the intricacies and particular aspects of tourism encounters that users convey in their reviews. The efficacy of sentiment analysis can be augmented by integrating semantic similarity. This study explores methods to enhance aspect-based sentiment analysis within tourism reviews by utilizing semantic similarity approaches. Five aspects have been curated, representing keywords frequently reviewed by visitors to the tourist attraction. These aspects encompass scenery, dusk, surf, amenities, and sanitation. Based on the data analysis, F-Measure values with Semantic Similarity tend to increase for the scenery and dusk aspects. This is because in the sample data used, visitor reviews for the scenery and dusk categories may use other words that are semantically similar. The sample data used for these categories is also quite extensive, resulting in a better classification model for both categories. While it is valuable to analyze user-generated content data from visitor reviews, it's important to consider the limitations and potential biases associated with this data. The classification results per aspect need to be further reviewed in more depth. What aspects lead visitors to give positive reviews will certainly be maintained and even improved by stakeholders. Similarly, for negative review outcomes, it is necessary to investigate more deeply the factors contributing to visitor dissatisfaction so that they can be addressed by stakeholders.