THE BRAND PERSONALITY OF WORLD HERITAGE SITES: TEXT MINING THE PERCEPTIONS OF UNESCO EXPERTS AND VISITORS

Abstract

World Heritage (WH) is acknowledged as a prominent tourism brand. However, research on the intangible relationship between World Heritage sites (WHSs) and outstanding universal values (OUVs) is lacking. This study employed advances in text-mining, using digital textual data, and Brand Personality (BP) lexical methods to explore descriptions of WHSs. Although existing BP dictionaries are useful for measuring the personalities of destinations and attractions, they need further development. This is due to the perception that the current BP dictionary is limited to capturing distinct brand cultural meanings from large digital texts. Additionally, a BP dictionary construction technique is still necessary to enable BP analysis using substantial online text. The necessity to specifically identify the WHSs personality categorization dictionary as microelements of destination that may have significance for affecting visitor preference is still needed. Using 13,741 post-experience visitor-generated TripAdvisor reviews, and 1,121 WH centre website descriptions, a natural and cultural WHSs personality dictionary was developed. Significant differences in the way UNESCO experts and visitors perceive WHSs were explored and practical and managerial implications were discussed.