[LG U+] Sentiment analysis of SNS data on major tourist sites in Seoul

Overview

Part of the 2025 Seoul Tourism Data Development Project, carried out with LG Uplus. The project collects and refines Google Maps visitor reviews for major tourist sites and commercial districts in Seoul, in Korean and other languages including reviews by foreign visitors, in order to analyse visitors' experiences and changes in sentiment through data.

Scope of work

StellarCube collected and refined review data for 84 tourist sites and commercial districts in Seoul and ran sentiment analysis to develop an integrated Seoul tourism dataset. By combining sentiment analysis with keyword networks across major foreign-language reviews including English, Japanese and Chinese, it quantifies changes in visitor perception and sentiment responses to specific places.

Analysis case

During the cherry blossom season in April 2025, tourist behaviour was analysed at four of Seoul's main sites - Seoul Forest, Yeouido, Seokchon Lake and Namsan. The data confirmed that these sites are perceived by domestic and international visitors alike as iconic places in Seoul and as a spring festival, and that the festival raised positive sentiment among visitors while visit rates to nearby commercial districts rose alongside it. Positive keywords such as "night view" and "picnic" appeared together with "waiting time" and "congestion" as the main sources of dissatisfaction; the findings fed into policy improvements such as adjusting festival routes and dispersing crowds.

Data collection framework

Lawful collection through official APIs, pseudonymization and de-identification procedures and security certification frameworks ensure compliance with Korea's Personal Information Protection Act and related legislation. Statistical adjustment techniques were applied to secure the representativeness and reliability of the data.