Profiling Macau cultural tourists by using user-generated content from online social media

Abstract

The topic of constructing a typology of the cultural tourists visiting a particular destination has interested the professionals since early 1990s. A number of typologies, often quite similar to each other, have been proposed and occasionally evaluated at various destinations. While most of the literature is purely conceptual, some works use typological frameworks to empirically categorize cultural tourists at a particular destination sourcing from survey results, typically by administrating a questionnaire to inbound and outbound travelers. This work, to the contrary, constructs an empirical typology of international cultural tourists who have visited Macau based on their reviews on TripAdvisor. The aim of this work is to discover visitation patterns to the nucleus of Macau’s culture by analyzing user-generated content data using text analysis approaches. This model can automatically indicate the probability of a visitor being one particular culture tourist type. The results of this work will offer insights into local tourism authorities and industries for better resource allocation and cultural tourism promotion.