ENTER2019

1. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THE IMPERIAL
TOPIC: CASE OF ST. PETERSBURG
Aleksei Gorgadze
PhD student
Department of Management
National Research University - Higher School of Economics
Laboratory of Economics for Culture
The 26th Annual eTourism Conference ENTER 2019
Nicosia, 2019

2. RESEARCH IDEAS
• Centenary of the last European empire collapse;
• The “historic city” as an important concept in city tourism (Kavaratzis et al., 2010 &
Ashworth et al., 2011);
• Studying how residents, tourists, and businesses are influenced and informed by
cities’ historical heritage? (Scaramanga, 2012 and Evans, 2015)
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3. RESEARCH IDEAS
• User-generated content (UGC), such as reviews on TripAdvisor, is an important
source of information about consumer preferences (Kaspruk et al., 2017).
• UGC as a part of P2P Economy
• The purpose of this study is to assess the extent to which representatives of the
city administration and tour operators call attention to the imperial past as a
competitive advantage for the city and compare it with the response that these
“imperial” - themed messages elicit in tourists.
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4. THE SUPPLY SIDE
descriptions of tourism products on the official city
web sites and the web sites of travel agencies*
METHODOLOGY
Data
The design of the study involves comparing two corpora of text data:
THE DEMAND SIDE
tourists' reviews on the TripAdvisor web site
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*Searching Top-20 google links
key-words: “vacation in St. Petersburg”, “St.
Petersburg visit tips”, “Travel St. Petersburg” ect.

5. METHODOLOGY
Description of the sub-corpora
Construct Number of
documents
Total word
count
Unique word
count
Supply side 64 139 115 11 802
Demand side 8 354 267 891 10 342
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6. METHODOLOGY
Examples of supply and demand sides
Example of travel agency web site
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Example of tourists' reviews on the TripAdvisor web site

7. METHODOLOGY
Most frequent words in both sub-corpora
Wordcloud of Supply side words
The size of each word indicates the term’s frequency.
Wordcloud of Demand side words
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8. RESULTS
Log-Likelihood Ratio
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Types of narratives:
• the emotional aspect of the visit;
• basic infrastructure & advice on
possible service improvements;
• the types and names of sights;
• the tour route.

9. RESULTS
Dictionary Method
Imperial Words
“imperial”
“emperor”
“empire”
“tzar”*
“czar”*
“tsar”*
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*“tsar” is a title that the Russian
monarchs often used in Russia

10. RESULTS
Log-Likelihood Ratio
Term Supply side Demand
side
G-squared Log Ratio
Imperial Words 599 692 109.96*** -0.8563
*** - p < 0.0001; critical value = 15.13
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Imperial words are more typical for the official city web sites and the
web sites of travel agencies.

11. RESULTS
Log-Likelihood Ratio
Term Supply side Demand
side
G-squared Log Ratio
imperial 185 100 126.42*** -1.9522
emperor 157 77 118.11*** -2.0925
empire 46 19 40.14*** -2.3403
tzar 7 56 15.61*** 1.9354
czar 36 116 5.51* 0.6234
tsar 168 324 0.72 -0.1171
imperial 185 100 126.42*** -1.9522
*** - p < 0.0001; critical value = 15.13
* - p < 0.05; critical value = 3.84
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12. RESULTS
Log-Likelihood Ratio
Term Supply side Demand
side
G-squared Log Ratio
imperial 185 100 126.42*** -1.9522
emperor 157 77 118.11*** -2.0925
empire 46 19 40.14*** -2.3403
tzar 7 56 15.61*** 1.9354
czar 36 116 5.51* 0.6234
tsar 168 324 0.72 -0.1171
imperial 185 100 126.42*** -1.9522
*** - p < 0.0001; critical value = 15.13
* - p < 0.05; critical value = 3.84
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13. FINDINGS AND RECOMENDATIONS
• The idea of the imperial past is not perceived by tourists as city
officials and travel agencies wanted.
• It is necessary to promote imperial themes more easily.
• Sample offset: we can assume that the youth audience is least
responsive to the Imperial topic.
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14. FUTURE PLANS
• To attach our results we want to compare other former imperial
capitals: Istanbul, Berlin, Vienna.
• We assume that in such countries as Russia and Turkey the
Imperial topic is more relevant and tied to the modern politics of
states than in Austria and Germany. Perhaps the youth of the first
two countries do not perceive this idea as a response to attempts
creating new empires.
• Using new text mining methods such as LDA and LSA.
• We invite you to cooperate in this project!
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15. 192171, St. Petersburg, Kantemirovskaya str., 3A, room 215https://cultecon.hse.ru/en/ Phone.: +7 (911) 834 8802
Aleksei Gorgadze
agorgadze@hse.ru

16. THE LABORATORY OF ECONOMICS FOR CULTURE PROJECTS
Post-event activity management in
the organizations of event industries
Museum management and
marketing
Atmosphere in the organizations of
creative industries as efficient tool
for event marketing
Business models of services in the
form of sharing economy
Digital footprints study in the sphere
of culture and tourism
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17. EXAMPLES OF LL И LOG RATIO CALCULATION
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