Travel companies are starting to evaluate sentiments expressed in all available text collections – identifying trends and creating graphical reports that describe the expressed feelings including those of consumers in real-time.

Published: 19 Nov 2010

Travel companies are starting to evaluate sentiments expressed in all available text collections – identifying trends and creating graphical reports that describe the expressed feelings including those of consumers in real-time.

For instance, it has emerged that Expedia Inc. is exploring the concept of sentiment analysis and starting to apply it, according to a report filed by it World Canada.

The online travel company gets around 80,000 reviews in a month. “We can diagram sentences, suck out sarcasm, and apply those same disciplines to what we see coming in on Twitter and our Facebook fan page,” reportedly said Joe Megibow, vice-president of global analytics and optimisation with Expedia. “So if someone has an issue and posts some nasty comment, that we are in fact founded by the devil, we will respond privately to every one of those [types of comments].”

A recent survey of 2100 companies, sponsored by SAS, revealed that 36 percent of companies surveyed plan to conduct customer sentiment analysis in the next 2-3 years. Some 33 percent are planning social monitoring solutions, 27 percent want predictive analytics and 26 percent will measure the impact of online conversations. Many hope to integrate social media monitoring with other marketing solutions, to understand not just what is being said, but who is saying it and its impact.

The amount of online data from social media, such as blogs and message boards, is growing at a rapid rate. Tools in this arena compute the sentiment of digital text and captures relevant information that enables brand managers to see what their end-users are writing about their products