Tourism safety on train systems: A case study on electronic word-of-mouth in Spain, Italy and Greece

The risks that tourists perceive during their travels are relevant for their travel experience. Thus, safety has become one of the most important issues not only for travellers, but also for the tourism industry and all its related stakeholders. The reason for safety being prioritised is that tourists share their experiences online, thus forming tourism electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), which has a definite impact on the tourism destination image (TDI) and influencing future tourists. Therefore, it is relevant to analyse travel reviews to explore, identify and tackle the problems of tourism destination. This paper focuses on analysing the online travel reviews related to the safety issues within the rail systems of three specific destinations. For many visitors, the train network is the first point of contact for tourists with the destinations and have a significant impact on their experience. The content analysis of online travel reviews aims to reveal the factors that influence tourism safety perception, allowing some specific recommendations for destination management organisations to improve tourists’ experience and the projected image of destination in terms of safety.