Analysis of the Image of Global Glacier Tourism Destinations from the Perspective of Tourists

Abstract

Glaciers are attracting increasing attention in the context of climate change, and glacier tourism has also become a popular tourist product. However, few studies have been conducted concerning the image of glacier tourism destinations. To address this gap in the literature, in this study, we extracted destination images from 138,709 visitor reviews of 107 glacier tourism destinations on TripAdvisor using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, identified destination image characteristics using salience−valence analysis (SVA), and analyzed the differences in glacier tourism destination image characteristics across seasons and regions. According to the findings, the image of a glacier tourism destination consists of 14 dimensions and 53 attributes, with landscapes and specific activities representing the core image and viewing location and necessity representing the unique image. We identified significant seasonal and regional differences in the image of glacier tourism destinations. Finally, we discussed the unique image of glacier tourism destinations, the reasons for differences in the images, and the characteristics of different glacier tourism regions. This research could assist in the scientific management of their core images by glacier tourism destinations, as well as in the rational selection of destinations and travel timing by glacier tourists.

Keywords

• glacier tourism
• perceived destination image
• destination image uniqueness
• user-generated content
• online reviews
• TripAdvisor