Italian Cultural Sites: Reviews and Visitor Satisfaction

In 2016, Travel Appeal began collaborating with the MiBAC to analyze the online brand reputation of 20 of the most prominent museums throughout Italy. Today, we continue our commitment to the cultural sector with the first report dedicated to the reputation of Italian cultural sites. Our founder and CEO, Mirko Lalli, presented the report at BTO 2019 during the panel “Italian Museums, between online reputation and digital transformation“.

“Museums and cultural sites are fundamental when describing the experience of a territory. For this reason, it’s very important to understand how these places are spoken about online in order to have a clear perception of traveler satisfaction to improve the cultural offer and related services”, says Mirko Lalli, founder of Travel Appeal.

 

How the Reputation of Cultural Sites Influences a Territory’s Reputation

It’s extremely difficult to profile and understand who visitors are and how they perceive their experience. It’s precisely in this context that the analysis of Travel Appeal is placed, created with the aim of providing effective support to operators who are involved in promoting and enhancing museums and other cultural sites.

“The improvement of the experience,” explains Mirko Lalli “will reflect positively on the entire destination.”

This study examined 6,610 cultural points of interest throughout Italy by analyzing the most common review sites, including TripAdvisor, Google, Viator, etc. We uncovered the overall visitor satisfaction in 2018 among museums, attractions, libraries, parks and archives surveyed by the MiBAC (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities).

How “Digital” are Italian Cultural Sites?

The journey of digital transformation for the cultural sector is already underway, but there are still shortcomings. This is confirmed by the data obtained by investigating the digital presence of Italian cultural sites. Of the analyzed places, only 2.853 (43% of the total) are present online. However, users are very inclined to review and describe their experiences. Of the 2.853 cultural sites present online, as many as 88% are active (receiving at least one review during the year), recording an 8% increase from the year prior. The total share of reviews left by users also increased, with almost 700,000 reviews in 2018, a 77% growth compared to 2017.

Are locals and tourists enthusiastic about Italian places of culture?

After employing our AI technology, we found the overall visitor satisfaction of Italian cultural places to be 91%, an extremely positive figure and an increase of 1.3 points compared to 2017. The satisfaction of Italian tourists (92%, + 1.8% compared to 2017) exceeds that of foreigners (88.6%, + 1.5%). The highest percentage of reviews in foreign languages is concentrated in Tuscany and Lazio, accounting for 60% of the total respectfully.

Uncover more curiosities including:

• What are the most reviewed places of culture?
• Which are the Italian regions with the highest visitor satisfaction?
• How does management affect satisfaction?
• … and more!

Download the complete report to discover all the insights!