Destination image branding for world heritage sites: a methodology combining GIS with sentiment analysis

Purpose Against the background of the popularity of social media and heritage tourism, this study aims to focus on world heritage sites, proposing a method to examine and compare the digital spatial footprints left by tourists using geographic information systems. Methodology By analyzing user-generated content from social media, this research explores how digital data shapes the destination image of WHS and the spatial relationships between the components of this destination image. Drawing on the cognitive-affective model (CAM), it investigates through an analysis of integrated data with more than 20,000 reviews and 2,000 photos. Innovation The creativity of this research lies in the creation of a comprehensive method that combines text and image analytics with machine learning and GIS to examine spatial relationships within the CAM framework in a visual manner. Results The results reveal tourists' perceptions, emotions, and attitudes towards George Town and Malacca in Malaysia, highlighting several key cognitive impressions, such as history, museums, churches, sea, and food, as well as the primary emotions expressed. Their distributions and relationships are also illustrated on maps. Implications Tourism practitioners, government officials, and residents can gain valuable insights from this study. The proposed methodology provides a valuable reference for future tourism studies and help to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for other heritage destinations.