Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Tourism Management Perspectives

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tmp

Tracking the evolution of a destination's image by text-mining online

reviews - the case of Macau
Cora Un In Wong, Shanshan Qi
Institute for Tourism Studies, Macau, Colina de Mong Ha, Macau

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: It has during the last decade become a common practice for tourists to post an account of their travel experience
Received 21 February 2016 online. This article uses text-mining techniques to investigate the evolution of the content of TripAdvisor online
Received in revised form 24 March 2017 reviews about Macau between 2005 and 2013. In the course of this period, the number of such reviews exploded,
Accepted 26 March 2017
starting from almost nothing, at the same time as Macau as a tourist destination metamorphosed itself from a
Available online xxxx
quaint footnote to Hong Kong into the Las Vegas of the East. Moreover, over the period, a number of new
Keywords:
non-gambling attractions became also available to visitors. The article then compares the evolution of the
Destination image user-generated online content to the one of the image of Macau as projected by the ofcial destination promoter
User-generated content over the period. This comparison reveals that while the latter projects essentially the same image over time, the
Text-mining TripAdvisor reviews exhibit some clear trends.
Macau 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Tourist information search and destination image are topics that have
received considerable attention in the tourism literature (Crotts, 1999;
Fodness & Murray, 1997; Gunn, 1979; Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006). To un-
derstand how prospective tourists acquire information is particularly im-
portant to destination marketing organizations (Morgan, Pritchard, &
Pride, 2004; Pike & Ryan, 2004; Usaki & Baloglu, 2011). Moreover, in-
sights into the process of information acquisition help such organizations
develop appropriate strategies toward specic market segments (Carson,
2008; Jacobsen, 1997). The sources of information about a destination are
both ofcially and privately produced destination markers. The former
convey the ofcial view which of course tends to project a positive
image of the destination (Long & Reeves, 2009; Wong, 2013). Private
markers can be divided into commercial and non-commercial ones
(McKercher & Wong, 2013; Wong & McKercher, 2012). Even though of-
cial marker providers have little or no control over the producers of
commercial markers, such as travel agencies, tour operators and hotels,
those often promote a destination in accord with the content of the of-
cial markers because the interests of the two kinds of information pro-
viders are to a large extent aligned (Palmer, 1994). In contrast, non-
commercial private information such as provided by the press, other
media or travel websites may deliver an altogether different message
and not be consistent with each other (Patil, 2011; Pretes, 2003).
It has during the last years become a global trend that tourists post and
share their travel experiences on line, often on online social media that
Corresponding author at: Institute for Tourism Studies, Colina de Mong Ha, Macau.
E-mail addresses: cora@ift.edu.mo (C.U.I. Wong), shanshan@ift.edu.mo (S. Qi).
are well known to the public and easy to nd and consult. The reach of
this medium is thus enormous. Such data are often called user-generated
data (Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006). They not only shape the overall image of a
destination, but may also create awareness by prospective tourists who
may receive such information incidentally by browsing social media
websites, thereby stimulating their motivation for travelling to a particu-
lar destination (Volo, 2010). Spontaneous accounts of actual-consump-
tion experiences are obviously valuable and are being shared on the
internet through what amounts to a global electronic word-of-mouth
communication network (Ayeh, Au, & Law, 2013; Litvin, Goldsmith, &
Pan, 2007). The user-generated content of the online reviews is accord-
ingly today recognized as an important component in the construction
of a destination's image (Yeoh, Othman, & Ahmad, 2013). Those online re-
views have become signicant markers of destinations online, where
they complement - and compete with - information supplied by commer-
cial entities and ofcial destination promoters. Though research on this
theme is growing, the literature mostly reports on tourists' travel experi-
ences, on the different images of a destination that are projected by re-
viewers of different cultural backgrounds, as well as on managerial
implications (Carson, 2008; Choi, Lehto, & Morrison, 2007; Leung, Rob,
& Lee, 2011; Pan & Li, 2011; Sun, Ryan, & Pan, 2014). While those studies
provide important insights, they all present accounts of a destination's
image at a particular point in time.
Advances in technology have lately stimulated the popularity of
searching for non-commercial travel information on the internet and
there is a growing literature on the subject (Gursoy & McCleary, 2003;
Law, Qi, & Buhalis, 2010). Unlike the commercial and ofcial markers,
that typically present only the positive aspects of a destination, user-gen-
erated content such as the one of online reviews is free to disseminate

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.03.009
2211-9736/ 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
20 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929
alternative information and assessments that may not be congruent with
the ones offered by commercial or ofcial markers (Sharda & Ponnada,
2006). User-generated content is based on tourists' individual perspec-
tives and personal experiences. Today it represents the bulk of the private
non-commercial markers of a destination (Johnson & Kayne, 2003; Litvin
et al., 2007, p. 461). There are some concerns about the credibility of user-
generated content as well as the trustworthiness of online media
(Ibrahim, 2008; Litvin et al., 2007; Dickinger, 2011). Nevertheless, user-
generated content is reported to be inuential in shaping prospective
tourists' perception of destinations' images and affecting their vacation
planning. As Ayeh et al. (2013) argue, credibility is not a characteristic in-
herent in the source of information but a judgment made by the inquirers.
Filieri (2015) provides an up-to-date survey of the issue. There are credi-
bility issues as well regarding information found in magazines, television
programs, ofcial media, guidebooks, etc. The fact that the recipient of in-
formation has to be critical does not change the analysis of what is pre-
sented to him/her, such as the one done here.
If one were to initiate a study of the evolution of a destination's image
over a particular period of time, through interviews for example, one
will have to perform a survey in each one of a number of years before
being able to reach a conclusion; this would require a multi-year pro-
ject. To undertake on the other hand a retrospective study of how a
destination's image has evolved in the past is practically impossible
without having a repository of comparable evidence about this image
as it was in the past. It is here that online social media such as
TripAdvisor are invaluable because they are such rich repositories: the
reviews posted in the past are still available today in full and the
modus operandi of collecting and publishing those reviews has not
changed over time, making them comparable. For any practical purpose,
text-mining the many online reviews found on sites such as TripAdvisor
is the only practical way to study the evolution of a destination's image.
Text-mining tools suitable for such a purpose are now widely available.
The approach is somewhat akin to comparing the successive past edi-
tions of a guidebook or the articles of the successive past issues of a trav-
el magazine, but it has the advantage that it is past visitors themselves
who have written the web reviews. Surprisingly, this approach does
not seem to have attracted much attention from the tourism re-
searchers. Knowing the recent evolution of a destination's image is ob-
viously useful for the management of a destination, for example to
evaluate the degree of success of past promotional efforts.
This article uses specic text-mining technique to investigate the evo-
lution of the content of TripAdvisor reviews about Macau between 2005
and 2013. The period is particularly signicant in the history of both
TripAdvisor and Macau. In the course of this period, the number of
Macau reviews on TripAdvisor exploded, starting from almost nothing,
and Macau as a tourist destination metamorphosed itself from a quaint
footnote to Hong Kong into the Las Vegas of the East. A signicant num-
ber of new gambling and non-gambling attractions became available to
the visitors during this period, which saw an enormous increase in their
number. About some 29 million people visited Macau in 2013, with
some 26 million coming from Greater China (Mainland China 64%, Hong
Kong 23.1% and Taiwan 3.4%). About 14.3 million visitors (49%) stayed
overnight and the average length of stay is a modest 1.9 days (MGTO,
20052014). Macau today includes the Macau peninsula, the Taipa and
Coloane islands, and Cotai. The Cotai strip is located on the newly
reclaimed land where local and international gaming corporate giants
have built the bulk of the new integrated casino/hotel/entertainment/
shopping complexes of the territory. The city's two major economic pillars
are gaming and tourism, with its gaming revenues already overtaking the
ones of Las Vegas by 2009. By the end of 2013, they were seven times larg-
er. The actual casinos, i.e. the gaming rooms where gambling take place,
are found mostly inside the spectacular resort hotels of the Cotai strip,
of which the Venetian - for now - is the most impressive. Those resort ho-
tels offer all kinds of shopping, dining and entertainment opportunities
and a visitor need not be interested in gambling to spend time in their
cavernous and lavish spaces.
Macau also has a famous UNESCO-sanctioned historic center that tes-
ties of its long colonial history under Portuguese rule. This historic center
is located in the Macau peninsula, quite apart from the Cotai strip. Thus, a
tourist motivated exclusively by heritage and culture need not see any ca-
sino at all during his visit. Likewise, a tourist motivated by either gambling
and/or spending time indulging in the non-gambling activities offered by
the resort complexes can ignore the part of the city where the heritage at-
tractions are located. In effect, Macau offers to visitors three kinds of at-
tractions: 1) Gambling proper, 2) Non-gambling leisure activities in
both the city and the resort complexes offering shopping malls, restau-
rants, shows (some free, some not) and visual stimulation, and 3) Heri-
tage attractions. A visitor to Macau can consume any combination of
those he or she cares for. In that respect, Macau is unique in offering - in
addition to gambling - a blend of authenticity for the modern tourist
and simulacra for the post-modern one in a very compact space. In addi-
tion, a number of short duration events periodically attract special-inter-
est visitors to the territory, the most famous one being the Macau Grand
Prix in November. A number of questions about the effect that the recent
changes that have taken place in Macau could have on its image as a des-
tination come to mind. One might wonder for example whether the
widely disseminated Las Vegas the East new label of Macau could not ac-
tually be detrimental to its aura as a destination for cultural or heritage
tourism. It suggests not only fun and glitz but also vulgarity, sleaze and
tackiness. It is likely for that reason that, as documented below, the
image of Macau that the ofcial tourism promoter presents eschews
any reference to gambling. Another question is whether the new attrac-
tions are successful in getting the attention of the international visitors,
the extent of which could be gauged by consulting the online reviews
posted over the relevant period of time, as done here.
The next section gives a review of the relevant literature on tourism
information search, online user-generated content as well as destination
image formation. The methodology adopted in this study is then present-
ed, followed by the content analysis that constitutes the main research re-
sults. This section is followed by a short comparative presentation of the
ofcial tourism promotion message that the Macau Government Tourism
Ofce (MGTO) delivered over the same period. The last section provides a
concluding discussion of the results, draws some managerial implications
and suggests directions for future research.
2. Literature review: destination image
The literature reports that to reduce the uncertainties associated with
travelling to an unfamiliar destination, to allow a better use of resources
and to enhance trip quality, tourists seek information that helps them
identify and evaluate options before making travel and holiday decisions
(Fodness & Murray, 1997; McIntosh & Goeldner, 1990; Moutinho, 1987).
Baloglu and McCleary (1999) note that different types of tourism infor-
mation have various degrees of inuence on prospective tourist's percep-
tion of a destination. To Leiper (1990) such markers play an important
role in the information brokering process as well as in the creation of a
destination's image. The ofcial markers promote only the State-endorsed
account of what is the best in a destination and disseminate information
that is considered to be desirable and appropriate (Wong, 2013). For ex-
ample, Patil (2011) reports that the ofcial master narrative endorsed by
the Indian authorities privileges the Hindu/Aryan/Vedic identity and that
the ofcial tourism promotion material and websites avoid references to
the unpalatable and contested history of conicts between different
groups and conne themselves to descriptions of a timeless culture.
Many other examples could be given. Commercial providers of markers,
such as travel agencies, airlines and hotels tend to promote a destination
in accord with the State-endorsed view (Palmer, 1994; Quiroga, 1990).
McKercher and Wong (2013) examine the type and content of website
markers, including both the ofcial and private commercial ones, used
in 91 different Hong Kong tour products that cover four different styles
of tours. Though disparities exist across different markers, commercial
markers in general promote Hong Kong in accord with the State-
 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929
endorsed view that Hong Kong is not only a dynamic cosmopolitan city,
and that it also has resources in culture and ecology as evidenced in the
many special interest tours available.
Destination image is a well-established topic in the tourism literature
(Pike, 2002). A favorable overall representation of a destination appears
to have a positive effect on the public' motivation to visit it, in particular
on potential rst-time visitors (Crompton, 1979; Dann, 1996; Gallarza,
Saura, & Garcia, 2002; Gunn, 1979; Pike & Ryan, 2004). Crompton
(1979, p.18) denes destination image as the sum of beliefs, ideas, and
impressions that a person has of a destination. The research on this
topic often adopts a structured and quantitative approach to examine
pre-designated attributes of destination image formation (Baloglu &
McCleary, 1999; Gallarza et al., 2002). There is, though, increasing interest
in adopting qualitative approaches to capture the psychological and cog-
nitive impressions made by a destination on visitors. User-generated con-
tent disseminates unstructured information and covers a variety of topics
that are of interest to prospective tourists. Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier
(2008) undertook a thorough analysis of online reviews and they echo
the view that tourists' travel stories and experiences provide rst-hand
travel information useful for marketing the attractions of a destination.
Leung et al. (2011) for example conducted a qualitative content analysis
of online reviews (in Chinese) found on Ctrip.com, reporting that the
image of Hong Kong perceived by Chinese tourists is positive and that
Hong Kong is seen as a superior shopping and sightseeing destination
with a good infrastructure for tourists.
The literature on Macau's destination image reports that the image of
Macau is associated with both gambling, casinos and entertainment on
the one hand and its colonial heritage on the other (Choi et al., 2007;
McCartney, 2005). Choi et al. (2007), using text-mining tools different
from the ones used in this paper, examine all the online tourism informa-
tion available (including blogs, but also other material) for the year 2005
while Tang, Choi, Morrison, and Lehto (2009) using similar data for the
same year compare English and Chinese tourism websites and they report
that differences in tourists' cultures and preferences result in dissimilar-
ities in destination image projected by Chinese- and English-speaking vis-
itors. Gambling is at the core of the image of Macau on the Chinese
websites as the inherent adventuresome characteristics of gambling
ts the Chinese culture well (Tang et al., 2009, p. 90) while the English
websites reecting the views of international tourist project a more eclec-
tic destination image in which heritage and cultural resources are com-
bined with entertainment, and gambling is not referred to explicitly.
The 2005 inscription of the Historic Center of Macau into the UNESCO
list was seen by the local authorities as a valuable asset that would help
not only to diversify the tourism market, but also to reinforce the brand
Macau as a the one of a cultural and historic city. Wong and Kuan
(2014) report that MGTO continues to give strong support to the promo-
tion and development of cultural tourism. Hsu and Song (2013) report
that history, heritage, places and attractions, gambling, cuisine, and hotels
were the most common components of the destination image of Macau
that appeared in Chinese travel magazines. Although they cover three
years (20068), they provide little insight into evolution over time. Choi
et al. (2007) report that the image of Macau in 2005 varied among differ-
ent English-language travel information sources. There were various
levels of emphasis being placed on the different types of attractions of
Macau in governmental (MGTO) and in non-governmental travel
websites. The word casino for example was much more frequent than
museum on travel websites while the opposite was the case on the
MGTO website. Museum was the second most frequent word on the
MGTO website while gaming and gambling were meticulously avoided
and casino was the 47th most frequent word (Choi et al., 2007, p. 123).
All those works report on Macau's image at a particular point in time. The
focus of the present article is different. It tracks the destination image of
Macau over the last nine years, using - for the sake of consistency - exclu-
sively TripAdvisor's archives of past online reviews and is concerned with
how the image of Macau has evolved over a period of time, namely 2005
2013, in the eyes of international tourists. During this period, Macau has
21
considerably changed and the number of visitors has enormously in-
creased. This raises the question of whether the destination image of
Macau as it appears on online reviews has changed as well, and, if so, in
what direction. Another question of interest is whether MGTO's message
is congruent with the one of the international online reviewers over time.
Both issues are addressed in this article.
3. Methodology
This paper thus relies mostly on the textual representations of Macau
found in a leading medium for user-generated data about tourism, name-
ly TripAdvisor. It is well-recognized as an international online information
exchange platform where tourists from all over the world give and re-
ceive comments on a particular subject related to travel and tourism
(Filieri & McLeay, 2013). In 2013, the trafc on TripAdvisor reached 60
million monthly visitors (www.tripadvisor.com, 2013). In other words,
TripAdvisor provides an enormous international exposure to accounts of
travel experiences. It also offers the possibility of feedbacks to inquiries.
Importantly for the present work, the archives of all the reviews ever
posted on the site can be retrieved. While some popular online media,
such as Sina blog, 163 blog or Ctrip.com tend to be used only by certain
linguistic groups of online users (Leung et al., 2011; Sun et al., 2014),
TripAdvisor, where reviews are mostly written in English, has users
from all over the world. It is thus reasonable to assume that it is the inter-
national tourists (i.e. not from Greater China) who post and consult the
reviews found on the site.
Previous research has noted that a merit of using unstructured meth-
odologies to analyze destination image is that it can generate a more ho-
listic picture of a destination's image (Echtner & Ritchie, 1993). Sun et al.
(2014) used Chinese travel blogs to examine the perceived destination
image of New Zealand and they concurred that the narratives contained
in unstructured data on blogs have allowed their authors to describe free-
ly their impressions. Such a non-iterative collection procedure makes
those data independent of the researchers. Tourists' comments found in
online reviews are volunteers free texts that contain a variety of informa-
tion related to the destination, spontaneously provided by people who
has experienced it (Volo, 2010). The informants are not asked to rate a
destination according to prescribed attributes selected by the researcher,
that may mean little or nothing to them (Dann, 1996, Holliday, 2007). The
online reviews were retrieved from TripAdvisor in February 2014.
Within TripAdvisor, pages are organized according to a number of cat-
egories of subjects and to the date at which the online reviews were
posted. While TripAdvisor contains many reviews of hotels and commer-
cial attractions, it also contains reviews that report on the tourism attri-
butes of the destination and those were the ones that were for the
present work consistently selected and text-mined for the nine years cov-
ered. All the Macau entries on TripAdvisor related to the tourism attri-
butes categories between 2005 and 2013 were collected, in total 8007
reviews. Over that period, the number of reviews increased from a hand-
ful to N3000 a year. Using text-mining techniques, the large amount of
textual material from such entries during the period was subjected to the-
matic content analysis. Photographs and other media les were not taken
into account, although they clearly constitute important content and
could be included in future research. As the submission of personal infor-
mation is not mandatory on TripAdvisor as long as a valid email address is
provided, the reviewers may volunteer very little information about
themselves and proling the reviewers' demographic data is not feasible.
The reviewers wrote their comments in various languages, mostly English
but also Japanese, Korean, Thai, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and
Russian. Apart from the English comments, all the other foreign language
blog entries were translated into English using GoogleTranslate. The pro-
cess of data collection and analysis is shown in Fig. 1.
There now exists a variety of text-mining tools. After some experi-
mentation, a combination of two such tools was selected for their useful-
ness and the way they complement each other. They are Nvivo 10 and
IBM_ManyEyes. The rst text-mining program, Nvivo 10, was used to
22 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929
Fig. 1. Data collection and analysis.
calculate the relative frequency of the terms that appear most fre-
quently and these entries were categorized according to a number
of themes. The content analysis of the data focused on a number of
themes that emerged, namely: the overall destination image of
Macau, attractions visited, tourist facilities used, experiences en-
countered in the journey, and the descriptive perspective associated
with Macau as a destination. It appeared in the results that, in addi-
tion to descriptive text, a lot of emotional or judgmental comments
are provided by tourists evaluating the places they visited or activi-
ties they participated to, and those constitute a further theme.
Beerli and Martin (2004) summarized the factors inuencing desti-
nation image along nine dimensions or themes: General Infrastruc-
ture; Tourism Infrastructure; Tourism Leisure and Recreation;
Culture History and Art; Political and Economic Factors; Nature and
Environment; Social Environment; Atmosphere of the Place. This ar-
ticle adopted this list of themes to classify and present the user-gen-
erated content collected; see Table 1.
As regards the present application of the IBM_ManyEyes analyti-
cal software, the phrase net function was adopted to provide a picture
of the way terms used by reviewers are associated with each other.
Phrase net is a function that analyzes a large amount of text by
looking for pairs of words that recur and are identied and struc-
tured automatically according to the links between them. During
the analytical process, the relation * * which links words if they
come in immediate succession was used. The software then auto-
matically creates a network diagram which shows how the terms
used in the reviews are connected to each other. Two words are con-
nected if they occur in the same phrase. Some repetitive common
words were removed from the list, such as: I, you, we, he, she, it,
my, us, ours, his, hers, here, there, a, an, the, and, of, for, etc. The
size of a word as it appears in the network diagram is proportional
to the extent of its recurrence in the patterns; the thickness of an
arrow between two words represents how frequently those two
words occur in the same phrase. The darker color of a word means
that it is the rst word of the pattern and the lighter color indicates
that the word comes second. See the gures in Appendix A.
4. Findings from the user-generated content
The term frequencies obtained through the application of Nvivo
10 and the networks identied by the one of IBM_ManyEyes are
now presented and discussed. Because of the paucity of data for the
period 20052008, they have been aggregated. This gives six periods.
The frequency results have been grouped according to the nine
themes of Beerli and Martin (2004) given above and are shown in
Table 1. The percentage numbers in the table represent the ratio of
the number of occurrences of a term over the number of occurrences
of all collected terms. When the percentage was very low (b0.4%),
the term was not included in the table. The networks linking those
terms, as identied by IBM_ManyEyes, are given in the six gures
of Appendix A.
4.1. Reviews from 2005 to 2008
There were only 28 online reviews of Macau posted from 2005 to
2008; as a result the data for the three years are merged. As showed
in Table 1, in the rst category General Infrastructure, among the
retained terms, Macau is the one most mentioned with 53 refer-
ences. The term typically arises\ in accounts of visitors' travel experi-
ences in Macau, such as Me and my wife visited Macau in March
2008. During our short stay in Macau we visited the Macau tower
and spent a few hours there. The term Macau tower is catego-
rized under the Tourism Leisure and Recreation theme. Terms relat-
ed to Culture History and Art include Portuguese territory and
famous attractions of Macau such as A-Ma Temple; World Heritage
also appear.
The term casino is the second most frequent term. Macau is quite
often compared to Las Vegas. The majority of reviewers commented pos-
itively on their visit to casinos. The giant casino complexes of the interna-
tional gaming corporations are particularly mentioned, such as the
Venetian, the Sands and the Wynn. William comment, Macau has re-
ally changed for the better, the casinos now are super the Venetian Ca-
sino is mind-blowing The public transport is excellent, you can jump
 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929 23

Table 1
Categorized key terms.

20052008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Natural Resource N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

General Infrastructure Macau (30.5%) Macau (19.2%) Macau (16.6%) Macau (15.9%) Macau (16.7%) Macau (15.3%)
Portuguese territory (4.6%) Hong Kong (2.0%) Chinese (2.0%) Chinese (1.9%) Chinese (2.5%) Chinese (2.2%)
Hong Kong (6.9%) Las Vegas (1.6%) Hong Kong (3.0%) Hong Kong (2.1%) Tourist (1.4%) Tourist (1.1%)
Las Vegas (4.6%) Building (3.8%) Las Vegas (1.2%) Tourist (1.1%) Building (2.4%) Portuguese (2.6%)
Tourist (4.6%) Tourist (1.8%) Portuguese (1.3%) City (3.5%) City (2.9%)
Portuguese (2.0%) Portuguese (2.0%) Hong Kong (2.3%)
Tour (2.1%)
Tourism Infrastructure Restaurants (4.0%) Free shuttle (0.4%) Ferry (1.8%) Hotel (3.0%) Hotel (2.5%) Hotel (0.6%)
Ferry terminal (7.5%) Bus (2.0%) Bus (4.9%) Shuttle (3.1%) Bus (1.7%) Bus (1.6%)
Hotel/hotels (3.7%) Bus (1.6%) Street (1.9%)
Street (2.2%) Ferry (1.0%)
City (2.3%) Building/buildings
(1.7%)
Tourism Leisure and Macau tower (2.9%) Macau Tower (3.6%) Macau tower (2.2%) Shop/shops Shop/shops Shops/shopping
Recreation Casino (10.9%) Shopping (1.2%) Casino (6.2%) /shopping (6.1%) /shopping (5.1%) (4.2%)
Entertainment district (2.3%) Casino (8.1%) Shopping (1.6%) Macau tower Macau tower Macau tower
Bungee jumping (4.0%) Venetian (2.5%) Wine (1.8%) (0.7%) (0.6%) (0.5%)
Grand-Lisboa/Lisboa Shop (2.6%) Egg-tarts (0.4%) Food (1.6%) Food (1.4%)
(2.5%) Sky (1.8%) Food (1.4%) Attractions (1.8%) Egg-tarts (0.5%)
Bungee jumping/jump Walk (3.4%) Casino (6.3%) Garden (1.3%) Venetian (1.8%)
(3.8%) Venetian (3.1%) Venetian (3.8%) Casino (4.9%) Casino (4.0%)
Sky (1.8%) Grand-Prix (0.8%) Grand-Canal Water-show Food (1.4%)
Walk (4.1%) Bungee jumping/jump (2.6%) (0.3%) Water-show (2.4%)
Observation deck (1.7%) (4.2%) Water-show Show (7.6%) Show (6.9%)
(1.0%) Bungee
Grand-Lisboa jumping/jump
(0.4%) (1.1%)
Show (3.6%)
Culture History and Art Senado-square (3.4%) Senado-square (4.3%) Senado-square (2.2%) Senado-square Senado-square Senado-square
A-Ma temple (2.3%) China temple (3.5%) World-heritage/heritage (1.5%) (2.3%) (1.3%)
World-heritage/heritage (5.2%) World-heritage/heritage (2.4%) World-heritage World-heritage World-heritage
Dennis Fire Fighting-services (3.2%) Temple (1.8%) (1.0%) (1.7%) (1.2%)
(1.1%) Museum (2.3%) Museum (3.1%) Church (2.5%) Museum (3.3%) Museum (2.9%)
Style (1.0%) Building (4.6%) Museum (2.8%) Temple (2.2%) Temple (2.6%)
Style (2.1%) Church (3.6%) Church (3.5%)
Political and Economic N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Factors
Nature and Environment N/A View (1.2%) N/A Blue sky (0.8%) N/A View (2.0%)
Social Environment N/A People (6.5%) Free (3.1%) People (5.6%) People (4.1%) People (4.3%)
Chinese (1.6%) Free (2.4%) Free (2.9%) Free (2.5%)
Historic (1.3%) Historic/historical
(2.4%)
Local (1.1%)
Style (1.2%)
Atmosphere of the Place Great (2.3%) Atmosphere (3.4%) Atmosphere (1.6%) Nice (2.2%) Amazing (1.7%) Amazing (1.8%)
Big (2.9%) Beautiful (2.9%) Beautiful (2.3%) Great (2.2%) Great (3.6%) Great (3.5%)
Great (1.6%) Great (1.3%) Good (6.1%) Good (6.1%) Good (5.0%)
Good (5.8%) Good (6.0%) Beautiful (3.6%) Beautiful (2.2%) Beautiful (2.5%)
Small (2.5%) Small (2.6%) Famous (1.3%) Nice (3.1%) Nice (2.6%)
Feel (3.2%) Small (2.5%) Small (3.3%)
Small (2.7%)

on a courtesy bus [free shuttle that connects all the casinos in Cotai] to go
from one casino to the other. The shopping is pretty good too. As there
were 20 casinos in Macau at the time, it is not surprising to see casino
appearing in Appendix Fig. A-1 and Macau being described as the Las
Vegas of the East. Because of the small number of reviews, the appearance
of a term in the diagram is rather haphazard and might reect the special
interest of a very small number of reviewers. For example, Dennis refers
to the make of a re truck on exhibit in the reghting museum, a very
minor attraction that does not even appear as a frequent term for later
years. In short, the analysis of reviews posted between 2005 and 2008
suggests that the casinos are important elements of the destination
image of Macau.
The third most popular term is ferry terminal in the Tourism Infra-
structure category, and it is closely related to Hong Kong in the network
diagram, which reects the fact that a good number of tourists enter
Macau from Hong Kong via the ferry terminal. As Appendix Fig. A-1
shows, Macau is directly linked to city tower and Senado square.
The former refers to the Macau Tower which provides thrilling bungee
jumping and a skywalk while the latter is the famous square at the center
of Macau where major heritage attractions and shops are located.
4.2. Reviews from 2009
For the year 2009, 171 reviews were found. In Table 1, the General In-
frastructure theme receives more comments than any other one. Macau
and casino are the most frequent terms, as they were in 20052008. Yet
the theme Culture History and Art and the theme Tourism Leisure and
Recreation have relatively more entries than before. This suggests that
the 2009 reviewers came to Macau not only to visit casinos and that
they were interested in cultural and history as well.
Appendix Fig. A-2 shows that a more visible set of links appear be-
tween the terms. The term Macau is the central word which connects di-
rectly to museum, tower, Grand and people. The rst two terms refer
to two main nuclei of Macau. The rst one is the Macau Museum which is
the National Museum of the territory and is located next to one of its
landmarks, the Ruins of St. Paul. The second one is the Macau Tower.
24 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929
The third term Grand which directly links with Macau refers to Grand
Lisboa, a casino/hotel complex that was inaugurated in 2009. People in
fact belongs to descriptive comments; many quotes are of the type
there are many people, referring to the crowds at iconic heritage sites
of Macau. These terms linked three most popular themes General Infra-
structure, Tourist Leisure & Recreation, and Culture History & Art. This
suggests that the 2009 reviewers came to Macau not only to visit casinos
and that they were interested in culture and history as well.
Macau is indirectly linked to other terms such as world heritage,
Senado square, casino and shopping. The destination image of Macau
in 2009 already appears to be more diversied, with reports of new at-
tractions and activities being undertaken. For instance, although most of
the time the term Grand refers to Grand Lisboa, it sometimes refers to
Macau Grand Prix. Jenny's quote reveals that she enjoyed the wonderful
bird's eye view of Macau from the observation deck of the tower. Beau-
tiful and stone typically refer to Macau's pedestrian zones and streets in
its historic center. The stone pavements and streets are not only
commended from the aesthetic point of view; many reviewers make
comments to the effect that those pavements are so similar to the ones
of Lisbon in Portugal, memories of [Macau] once being a Portuguese
territory, evidence of colonial heritage.
4.3. Reviews from 2010
In the year 2010, 309 Macau reviews were posted. Table 1 shows the
32 most popular terms for the year. Macau is the most mentioned one,
followed by casino, good, bus, and building. The theme Tourist Leisure
and Recreation receives relatively more comments compared to the pre-
vious years, particularly as concerns shopping. This is probably because
new complexes with shopping malls opened in Macau in 2010. Event
is a new sub-theme that emerged in 2010, in particular Grand Prix
stood out as a frequent term and received a high number of quotations
for the rst time. Culture, History and Art becomes the second most pop-
ular theme. It is of interest to note that good is a judgmental term that is
mostly used to describe free services provided by casinos.
This is further validated by Appendix Fig. A-3 in the Appendix A,
which shows the network for the 47 most popular terms among the
1389 terms. Unlike in 2009 where Macau had only indirect linkages
with some terms, such as world heritage and Senado square, Macau,
as the central word, now connects directly with most of the other
terms. Apart from the fact that the reviewers report, as before, on the pop-
ular places they had visited in Macau, they tend to provide more practical
details and personal evaluations of their travel experience than was the
case in previous years. For instance, there are many comments about
the free services that one should take advantage of when visiting the ca-
sinos, in particular, the free shuttles that collect the tourists at the points
of entry and bring them to the main hotel/casinos, and also connect the
casino resorts to each other. It is also reported that one can also enjoy
free shows and free drinks and food in the casinos.
4.4. Reviews from 2011
There were 1489 comments collected in 2011. Table 1 shows that
apart from Macau (15.9%) which is the term with the highest frequency,
one has casino (6.3%), good (6.1%), Venetian (3.8%), show (3.6%),
beautiful (3.6%), museum (2.8%), shopping (2.8%), Grand-Canal
(2.6%), church (2.5%) [The Grand Canal is a mock indoor Venetian
canal found in the casino complex of the same name]. Such frequencies
suggest that tourists in Macau have discovered new activities to partici-
pate in, such as shopping, visiting museums and attending shows. The
theme Culture History and Art also appears to have increased in popular-
ity. For instance, it is the rst time that museum has such a high frequen-
cy. Show is also included in the high frequency list for the rst time. In
particular, a show called The House of Dancing Water received many pos-
itive comments. Appendix Fig. A-4 in the Appendix A shows the network
connecting the 48 most popular among the 3839 terms. It is obvious that
apart from Hong Kong which has no direct relationship with the central
word Macau, all the other terms are involved in a very complex network
of direct relationships with the city's name. Moreover, in addition to
Macau being perceived as a gambling resort, its image is more diverse
than it was before. As the Appendix Fig. A-4 shows, it is not only casino
and Venetian that are in large emboldened letters with strong links to
Macau but so are also other terms such as museum, church and
shopping.
4.5. Reviews from 2012
There were 2700 online reviews collected in 2012. Table 1 shows the
term frequencies and one can see that the three highest frequency terms
are Macau (16.7%), show (7.6%) and good (6.1%). It is actually the rst
time that the term casino (4.9%) is not among the three most popular
terms. Moreover, a new term garden (1.3%) appears in the list of high fre-
quency terms. It refers to a variety of gardens, big and small, located out-
side of the conventional tourism nodes, such as the Floral Garden that
tourists can reach by taking a short cable car ride. Other gardens are locat-
ed in churchyards or even cemeteries. This seems to reect the fact that
the reviewers have expanded the scope of their visit to Macau. Note
that those gardens are not new. The visitors discovered new places to
see and new activities to partake in while in Macau, to the extent that
even the niche and scantly visited cultural sites that are far from the con-
ventional tourist nodes are mentioned in their reviews. Appendix Fig. A-5
in the Appendix A shows the linkages between the 50 most frequent
terms. It is the rst time that Hong Kong is not included in this list. It is
possibly due to Macau being increasingly seen as a stand-alone destina-
tion rather than a footnote to Hong Kong. Additionally, casino is no lon-
ger the only dominant term which is large, emboldened and has a strong
linkage with Macau. Terms such as show, world heritage, museum,
Senado Square also appear emboldened and large with even stronger
links to Macau than casino does.
4.6. Reviews from 2013
The number of collected reviews on Macau was 3309 in 2013. As
shown in Table 1, the three most popular terms are Macau (15.3%),
show (6.9%) and good (5.0%). The latter term is mostly found in com-
ments reporting on the reviewer's travel experience in Macau. In particu-
lar, they felt good about their visit to many cultural buildings, such as the
A-Ma Temple and about walking through some squares and streets. Many
tourists complimented also the shows. They reported that there are many
free shows offered by casino complexes and comment that they are
pretty good. The analysis of the reviews also indicate that show appears
to gain more importance. It suggests that tourists did purposefully come
to Macau to watch shows. Many reviewers refer to having walked around
in the shopping galleries of the casino complexes. Another point worthy
of notice is that the theme Culture History & Art keeps increasing in pop-
ularity; for example, the difference of frequency between church (3.5%)
and casino (4.0%) is getting quite small. The ndings are consistent
with the ones for 2011 and 2012, to the effect that the destination
image of Macau as projected on TripAdvisor is increasingly the one of a
well-diversied destination. The network for the 50 strongest links is
shown in Appendix Fig. A-6 in the Appendix A. It suggests an image of
Macau quite similar to the one it had in 2012 and 2011. The linkages be-
tween Senado Square, Macau and World Heritage have become even
stronger.
4.7. Summary of the evolution of Macau's image on TripAdvisor
There are denite trends in the way the online reviewers comment on
Macau over the years. First, as a result of the constant increase in the num-
ber of reviews, the comments becomes increasingly rich and informative
over time. Second, the links between Macau and terms representing
both the heritage sites and the non-gambling attraction in the new casino
 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929 25

complexes become stronger and more direct over time while the opposite Table 2
happens to the links between Macau and the term casino. This suggests The destination image of Macau; MGTO vs TripAdvisor.

that the new casino complexes did not negatively affect the visitors' Year Macau's ofcial destination image Macau's destination image from
image of Macau as a quality cultural destination, and that the internation- (MGTO) online reviews
al tourists interested in heritage and culture have embraced the new non- 2005 Macau is a City of Culture Tourists often mention the casinos of
gambling resources of the new complexes as well, as they appear to com- 2006 Macau is a City of Culture and Macau and often compare it to Las
bine traditional heritage tourism with the consumption of those new lei- Entertainment Vegas.
2007 Macau is a Quality Destination
sure attractions. As Table 1 shows, the reviewers had little to say on the
for Culture, Leisure,
themes Political and Economic Factors and Nature and Environment. Entertainment and MICE
While casino is a relatively frequent term, its frequency decreases 2008 Macau is a Multi-faced
over time in spite of the increase in the number of such establishments Destination for Event, Culture
in Macau. No term being specic to gambling per se (blackjack, baccarat, and Heritage
2009 Experience our Heritage and Tourists start paying more attention to
table, etc.) appear in any of the years, and this suggests very little interest Other Multiple Attractions Macau's heritage sites and leisure and
in gambling on the part of the reviewers. Las Vegas decreases in frequen- shopping activities than to the casinos.
cy between 2005/2008 and 2010 and later on does not appear at all 2010 Macau is A World Center of Although casino is still the second most
among the most frequent terms. It seems that the clich of Macau being Tourism and Leisure frequent term, cultural heritage sites
become popular and tourists start to
the Las Vegas of the East has run its course with international tourists.
participate in multiple activities such as
It is also apparent that older leisure attractions are losing ground to shopping and special events.
newer ones. For example, bungee (bungee jumping from the Macau 2011 Same as 2010 Tourists' comments become more
tower) loses ground over time, while shows are increasingly often men- complex, which suggests that tourists in
tioned. The new free bus service between casino complexes and points of Macau have discovered new activities to
participate in, such as shopping, or
entry, and between casino complexes attracts a surprisingly high level of
visiting museums and attending shows.
attention on the part of the reviewers. Bus is one of the three highest 2012 Form World Center of Tourism The term casino is no longer popular.
scoring terms in 2010. This suggests that improving tourist mobility is ap- and Leisure to City of Events The visitors discovered new places to
preciated by the international visitors to Macau, a point that deserves at- see and new activities to partake in
while in Macau.
tention from a managerial perspective. The heritage attractions hold their
2013 Same as 2012 The image of Macau in 2013 is quite
ground very well. Terms like museum and church increase in relative similar to the one it had in 2012 and
frequency over time. There is no evidence that the increasing visibility 2011. The linkages between Senado
of the Cotai casino complexes, both on site and in the media, has been det- Square, Macau and World Heritage
rimental to the image of Macau as a heritage and culture destination. have become even stronger.

5. Macau's destination image as ofcially promoted
The ofcial destination image of Macau over the years has been cap-
tured by consulting MGTO's annual press release for every year between
2005 and 2013. The gist of each one of them is given in Table 2, in chrono-
logical order, for the purpose of identifying any potential evolution in the
image that MGTO tries to communicate, over a period during which the
tourism infrastructure of Macau has been considerably changing. This ac-
count is, in the same chronological order, followed by a short summary of
the reviews found on TripAdvisor discussed in Section 4 for the sake of
comparison.
In the year 2005, Macau was branded by MGTO as a City of Culture
and the message is that Macau will capitalize on the World Heritage
brand effect of the Historic Centre of Macau. In year 2006, instead of pro-
moting Macau as merely a City of Culture, MGTO promotes it as a City
of Culture and Entertainment. In particular, the new message empha-
sizes the new leisure activities available. Entertainment in the press re-
lease appears to refer mostly to sports (such as Grand Prix), food and
festive events. The words gaming or gambling are not used at all (and
this holds for all years) even if they would refer to a form of entertainment
for which the territory is famous. In the years 2007 and 2008, MGTO con-
tinues to brand Macau as a cultural city, with a new element added. MICE
activities receive a lot of emphasis. It is apparent that the local authorities
tried to attract diverse kinds of visitors. Since 2008, a special emphasis on
the mega-events that take place in Macau is noticeable. Those include the
Macau Grand Prix, the Macau International Fireworks Display Contest, the
Macau International Music Festival and the Macau Food Festival.
In 2009, MGTO's promotion maintains its focus on promoting the His-
toric Center of Macau. It also tries to project the image of Macau as the one
of a multi-purposes destination suitable for different kinds of tourists by
hosting family tours, world heritage tours, student tours, silver hair
tours, gala dinners and travel marts. MGTO proposes to showcase
Macau to the world through the ve senses See, Taste, Touch, Feel and
Hear. In 2010 and 2011, MGTO concentrates on leisure tourism; Macau
is now branded A World Center of Tourism and Leisure. In the
promotional clip, shopping, food, events and entertainment, including
bungee jumping and shows, are highlighted, in addition to the traditional
heritage sites, such as churches and architecture of the colonial period. In
2012 and 2013, MGTO uses promotional slogan of the same spirit as the
ones of the previous years, such as Touching Moments - Experience
Macau. In 2013, Macau is ofcially positioned as a City of Events. To
prole Macau as a city of events, local authorities organized and promoted
a number of events and festivals, including the 25th Macau International
Fireworks Display Contest, the 60th Macau Grand Prix and the Chinese
Lunar New Year Parade.
While MGTO has over time adjusted the particulars of how it pro-
motes Macau, it has, in spite of the multiplicity of successive slogans, con-
sistently projected the image of a Macau of heritage, leisure and events,
sanitized by overlooking its gaming industry. In effect, one might say
that, while in 2005 the image of Macau projected by MGTO was more as-
pirational than descriptive, over time it became closer and closer to the
changing reality of Macau and to the way it appears to international visi-
tors, as reected by the TripAdvisor reviews.
6. Discussion and conclusion
Both private and ofcial actors can derive useful managerial lessons
from looking at how the consumer-constructed image of a destination
has changed over the previous years. The above results can be used to il-
lustrate the point and draw some managerial implications. That Macau
has considerably changed over the last 10 years makes it a perfect candi-
date for such an exercise. The present investigation of Macau as seen by
international tourists shows in that respect a number of things of interest.
It shows for example that international tourists have stopped comparing
Macau to Las Vegas in 2010 and this suggests that the Las Vegas of the
East is not how the international tourists see Macau today and thus not
how it should be advertised to them. MGTO has been both prescient
and consistent in this respect. The international tourists' interest in heri-
tage has not abated and their interest for some cultural sites has increased
26 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929

over time. The new leisure activities now available in the Cotai complexes
are clearly crowding out the older such activities. Bungee jumping from
the Macau Tower is for example declining as an activity of interest. Even
more striking is the fact that old leisure attractions that used to receive
a lot of attention before the development of Cotai do not appear at all as
frequent terms in any of the years covered. Prominent among those are
Taipa village and a cluster of attractions located close to the main ferry ter-
minal comprising the Fisherman Wharf, the Cultural Center, the Macau
Science Center and a museum. The availability of shuttle busses between
points of entry and hotels and between casino complexes is unreservedly
appreciated in the reviews. This suggests that easing tourist mobility to
the neglected attractions might help bring them back into the loop,
which would further increase the variety of attractions actually patron-
ized by international tourists and motivate them to longer stays in the ter-
ritory than is the case today. In conclusion, as projected by the TripAdvisor
reviews of the last 9 years, the destination image of Macau has evolved
into the one of an increasingly diversied destination, in spite of the
huge increase in casino complex infrastructure. In effect, the TripAdvisor
image of Macau has over time converged to the promotional (aspirational
rather than factual) image that MGTO has consistently projected over
time.
The approach used in this paper is novel in that it characterizes
the evolution of a changing destination over a signicant number
of years through text-mining the online reviews stored on a popular
tourism social platform. While text-mining of such sources has been
used to investigate a number of destinations' - including Macau's -
image at a particular point in time, it has, as far as the authors
know, never been used to trace the evolution of a destination's
image. The facts that a website like TripAdvisor meticulously keeps
a record of all past reviews and that those are in digital form make
it convenient for the application of text-mining tools. The increasing
inventory of available text-mining programs is also a development
favorable to such exercises. It is only now that both a multiple-year
repository of reviews of destinations on sites such as TripAdvisor
(born in 2000), and an arsenal of text-mining tools are available.
One would naturally expect that studies such as the present one
would become more common in the future. As regards Macau itself,
it would for example be of interest to repeat the exercise using Man-
darin reviews on Chinese social media and nd out whether Chinese
tourists' perceptions are different from the ones of international
tourists. More generally, natural avenues for future research would
be to apply the approach to other destinations, experiment with
other text-mining tools than the ones used here, and investigate spe-
cial aspects of a destination's image rather than its image as a whole.
Acknowledgment
Funding for this study was provided by a research grant from the
Macau Science and Technology Development Fund (grant number
081/2014/A).

Appendix A

Appendix Fig. A-1. The network diagram for 20052008.

Appendix Fig. A-2. The network diagram for 2009.

C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929 27

Appendix Fig. A-3. The network diagram for 2010.

Appendix Fig. A-4. The network diagram for 2011.

Appendix Fig. A-5. The network diagram for 2012.

28 C.U.I. Wong, S. Qi/Tourism Management Perspectives 23 (2017) 1929
Appendix Fig. A-6. The network diagram for 2013.
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Cora Un In Wong is assistant professor at the Institute for

Tourism Studies, Macau. Cora has a broad range of research
interests and currently her research centers on pilgrimages
and religious tourism, cultural heritage interpretation, post-
colonialism, tourist travel experience, tourism impacts and
visitor management.