Destination image analysis and marketing strategies in emerging panda tourism: a cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

The burgeoning panda tourism market in China is attracting an increasing number of domestic and international tourists. This study focuses on the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding as a case study and utilizes Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) modeling and topic-based sentiment analysis to conduct text mining on online travel reviews in both English and Chinese languages. LDA modeling was employed to identify topics within online reviews, with a subsequent evaluation of the importance of each topic. Furthermore, topic-based sentiment analysis was conducted to assess the performance of different topics. Through importance-performance analysis, this study interprets the destination image disparities between English and Chinese reviews from a cross-cultural perspective. The research findings validate the effectiveness of destination image analysis methods, providing valuable insights for tailoring distinct destination marketing strategies that target tourists from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Keywords:

• Destination image
• marketing strategy
• cross-cultural
• LDA model
• sentiment analysis

Reviewing Editor:

• Len Tiu Wright, De Montfort University Faculty of Business and Law, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Subjects:

• Tourism
• Tourism Management
• Tourism Marketing
• Destination Management
• Destination Marketing
• Internet/Digital Marketing/e-Marketing
• Marketing Management

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Graduate School and International College of Digital Innovation at Chiang Mai University.

Author contribution statement

Zuo Wang and Piyachat Udomwong contributed to the conception and design of this study. Zuo Wang conducted the analysis, interpreted the data, and drafted the paper. Jing Fu and Pintusorn Onpium provided critical revisions for intellectual content. Piyachat Udomwong gave final approval for the version to be published. All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data is available on request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zuo Wang

Ms. Zuo Wang, currently pursuing a PhD in Digital Innovation and Financial Technology at Chiang Mai University, concurrently holds a position as an associate professor at the School of Tourism and Culture Industry at Chengdu University. Her expertise lies in the domains of digital media innovation, as well as tourism destination marketing and management.

Piyachat Udomwong

Dr. Piyachat Udomwong is a lecturer at the International College of Digital Innovation at Chiang Mai University. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology (Bioinformatics) from the University of York, UK, with a background in mathematics, thriving in multidisciplinary settings. Her research interests include discovering insights from a massive amount of data coming from different fields by using data analytics, machine learning, and statistical learning techniques.

Jing Fu

Dr. Jing Fu is an associate professor in the School of Tourism and Culture Industry at Chengdu University, specializing in smart tourism and hospitality, as well as knowledge management in the field of tourism and hospitality. She earned her Ph. D. in Knowledge Management from Chiang Mai University in 2012. Subsequently, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Lyon 2, France, and undertook an executive development program at the University of New Hampshire, USA. She conducted post-doc research at the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, School of Business Administration, International Hellenic University, Greece, between 2013 and 2014. During her sabbatical year in 2018–2019, she served as program manager at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management.

Pintusorn Onpium

Dr. Pintusorn Onpium, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University’s International College of Digital Innovation, conducts research in cultural tourism management, as well as tourism planning and development. She earned her Ph.D. in Integrated Tourism Management from the National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand. She actively collaborates with the local community, fostering their growth by generating revenue and creating jobs through Community-Based Tourism (CBT) and cultural capital initiatives.