Tourist Attraction Satisfaction Factors from Online Reviews. A Case Study of Tourist Attractions in Thailand

Abstract

In order to survive and gain competitive advantages in the post COVID-19 pandemic, tourism destinations should plan their business strategy by focusing on customer expectation. A number of research have studied tourist satisfaction, particularly, hotels and transports, however there is limited investigation with tourist attractions which have different prominence from other tourism service providers. The purpose of this study was to identify the tourists’ satisfaction components for tourist attractions by adopting an opinion mining technique and using the zero-shot text classification method. The total of 40,000 online tourists’ reviews from 40 tourist attractions in Thailand, that were posted up thought TripAdivisor.com between 2010 and 2021, were analyzed. The research findings reveal six components of tourist attraction satisfaction (TATSAT) model that includes 1) ambiance, 2) hospitality, 3) price, 4) accessibility, 5) cleanliness, and 6) security. All attributes of TATSAT model are generated from tourists’ point of view and was analyzed by the focus group discussion with five tourism experts from both academics and practitioners. This model expands the idea of HOLSAT and SERVQUAL by focusing on the tourist attraction business sector. The results can serve academics and practitioners in the research and improvement of tourist satisfaction to maximize competitive advantages for tourist attraction sector in the future.