Unleashing the Power of User Reviews: Exploring Airline Choices at Catania Airport, Italy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how social influence mechanisms and sentiment analysis of user reviews from platforms like Trustpilot, Google, and Twitter can reveal factors affecting airline choices at Catania Airport, Italy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining web scraping and a refined BERT model to analyze sentiment in airline reviews, providing insights into consumer preferences and airline reputation dynamics.

Findings

Negative sentiment is prevalent across airlines.

Awards do not significantly influence user perception.

Sentiment analysis reveals key factors affecting airline choices.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the possible relationship between the mechanisms of social influence and the choice of airline, through the use of new tools, with the aim of understanding whether they can contribute to a better understanding of the factors influencing the decisions of consumers in the aviation sector. We have chosen to extract user reviews from well-known platforms: Trustpilot, Google, and Twitter. By combining web scraping techniques, we have been able to collect a comprehensive dataset comprising a wide range of user opinions, feedback, and ratings. We then refined the BERT model to focus on insightful sentiment in the context of airline reviews. Through our analysis, we observed an intriguing trend of average negative sentiment scores across various airlines, giving us deeper insight into the dynamics between airlines and helping us identify key partnerships, popular routes, and airlines that play a central role in the aeronautical ecosystem of Catania airport during the specified period. Our investigation led us to find that, despite an airline having received prestigious awards as a low-cost leader in Europe for two consecutive years 2021 and 2022, the "Catanese" user tends to suffer the dominant position of other companies. Understanding the impact of positive reviews and leveraging sentiment analysis can help airlines improve their reputation, attract more customers, and ultimately gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.