Exploring success factors of tourism performing arts by analyses of online reviews

Purpose This study aims to explore the success factors of tourism performing arts (TPA) programs by analyzing a large data set of online reviews. Design/methodology/approach A total of 195,230 reviews from Ctrip.com were collected and preprocessed. A deep learning method was leveraged to estimate the similarity between words. Then, regression analysis was conducted to determine success factors. Findings This study extracted four positive and two negative factors affecting tourist satisfaction with tourism performance arts. The results demonstrate that the tourists paid the most attention to the traditional Chinese cultural aspects, audiovisual effects and the actors’ performing enthusiasm. Research limitations/implications Despite this study’s large data set, the focused was only on Chinese reviews. It would be useful and interesting to compare the success factors of tourism performance arts programs offered in different countries. Practical implications The study findings can contribute to the development of TPA programs to attract tourists to travel destinations. Originality/value This study demonstrates that analyzing online reviews of TPA through text mining technology is an effective method of understanding tourist satisfaction.