Numbers and Letters

The tourism website TripAdvisor is a version of a standard online evaluation system, based on the juxtaposition of ratings and reviews. This article focuses on the interaction between these two dimensions, based on a quantitative analysis of users’ contributions. The lexical analysis of comments reveals widely diverse writing practices and the use of categories of opinion that vary with the rating attributed, the trip’s context, the language, and the hotel category. Market and rating hierarchies also have their own textual expressions. Moreover, although individuals do not all use the system and metrics in the same way, recurrences can be brought to light. Thus, the higher a contributor rates a hotel, the more they tend to adopt a narrative approach to their consumption experience.