Exploring Tourists’ Points of Interest through Social Media Reviews: A Study Based on “Datang Furong” Park in Xi’an

Background and objective: Currently, urban parks are important green leisure spaces that play crucial roles in enhancing citizen satisfaction and improving urban living environments. Therefore, this study utilized web crawler technology to collect and analyze user comments from online media platforms to assess visitor satisfaction and points of interest of "Datang Furong Garden" in Xi'an, China.Methods: Through lexical analysis and sentiment classification, we identified tourists' preferences and focal points in terms of time, sentiment categories, and geographic regions and compared the experiential differences between local and non-local visitors.Results: The results showed that tourists were most interested in night scenery. Night scenery elicited positive emotions, whereas ticket prices led to negative emotions. In recent years, tourist interest in night scenery and historical and cultural elements of this site has significantly increased, Local tourists showed a stronger interest in the park's historical and cultural elements, whereas non-local tourists were more attracted to children's facilities and parent-child activities. Additionally, there was no significant difference in the emotional experiences of local and non-local visitors when visiting the park (p = 0.223 > 0.05). Therefore night scenery was the core factor attracting visitors.Conclusion: Night scenery has consistently been the core factor attracting visitors to the park. In the future, further development in historical and cultural aspects is needed. Local tourists are more interested in history, while non-local tourists are more interested in the development of children's facilities. Additionally, the cost-effectiveness of tickets should be improved to enhance visitor satisfaction. There is currently no evidence to suggest that the park discriminates against non-local visitors or engages in any exclusionary practices.