Analysing Changes in Cruise Safety Perceptions Before and After COVID-19 using Text Mining: Focusing on News Articles and Social Media Data

This study analyzes the transformation of safety discourse in the cruise tourism industry across three distinct periods: pre-pandemic (2017-2019), pandemic (2020-2022), and post-pandemic (2023-2024).Using topic modeling analysis of text data collected through web crawling with the keyword "cruise safety," we examined how safety priorities evolved over time.Results revealed that pre-pandemic discourse focused primarily on traditional safety aspects including vessel operation, emergency drills, and passenger guidance.During the pandemic, discourse dramatically shifted toward infection control, with COVID-19 protocols, testing requirements, and sailing restrictions dominating the conversation.In the post-pandemic period, safety discourse became more diversified and balanced, encompassing digital emergency training systems, crime prevention measures, management of traditional cruise-related infections, and detailed port excursion safety guidelines.The study observed a "dispersion-concentration-redistribution" pattern, where relatively dispersed safety themes became highly concentrated during the pandemic before redistributing with new priorities afterward.The analysis showed significant changes in keyword weights, with traditional safety terms like "tour" (0.00539) and "drill" (0.00498) dominant pre-pandemic, infection-related terms like "Covid" (0.0171) and "protocol" (0.0173) prominent during the pandemic, and a more balanced distribution emerging post-pandemic with terms like "safety" (0.0134), "secure" (0.0064), and "excursion" (0.0074).These findings suggest that cruise companies must develop comprehensive safety management systems addressing multiple dimensions of passenger safety, while regulatory bodies need to establish adaptive frameworks responding to emerging safety challenges for sustainable industry recovery.