Cultural Tourism Resource Perceptions: Analyses Based on Tourists’ Online Travel Notes

Abstract

Tourism culture is the key resource by which the tourism industry of a region survives. This study analyzed the cultural perception image of Wuxi among tourists by using content analysis techniques, such as word frequency analysis, semantic network analysis, and sentiment analysis based on the tourist reviews on major tourism websites. The results showed that tourists’ perceptions of local tourism culture in Wuxi are mainly focused on religious culture, landscape and garden culture, and historical culture. Further analysis revealed an obvious structural mismatch between the tourists’ perceptions and the supply of local cultural tourism resources. The findings suggest that the focus should be on the clustered development of tourism culture in Wuxi, the branding of Wu Culture, and the strengthening of the association between scenic spots in the future.

1. Introduction

Culture and tourism are mutually inseparable. Since the emergence of tourism culture as a professional concept in the 1980s, discourses on tourism culture have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and even some literary works. As for the interpretation of the relationship between culture and tourism, the concept of “culture is the soul of tourism” has long been recognized by many scholars and professionals [1,2]. Furthermore, tourism resources are the core content of tourists’ consumption of tourism products, and culture is the key component of the attraction of tourism resources [3,4]. In essence, tourists mainly consume culture, which is the starting point and destination of tourists [5,6]. The purpose of being a tourist is to get cultural enjoyment, so tourism itself is a kind of cultural activity [7]. When engaging in tourism, the specific projects that tourists participate in, such as appreciating cliff carvings, watching folk song and dance performances, are the main contents of tourism activities. Only tourism with cultural intervention and communication can become real tourism [8]; “what is of national is of international”. Tourists are more willing to see different local and ethnic characteristics of tourism facilities, and these facilities can enhance the satisfaction of the tourist experience. In the process of receiving tourism services, the cultural quality of tour guides will directly affect the tourists’ perceptions of cultural tourism products. For example, the tour guides should deeply understand the cultural factors of tourism resources, in order to better spread culture, enhance the attraction of cultural resources, and enrich the cultural experiences of tourists [9,10]. Community residents’ cooperative attitudes towards culture can effectively protect the local culture, so as to obtain the sustainable development of the tourism destination [11]. Tourism culture comes from the interactions between hosts and guests [12]; the interactive process between tourists and tourist destinations shapes the cultural tourism resources of tourist destinations, and also affects tourists’ tourism consumption decisions [13,14]. This paper realizes the important role of culture in the future development of tourism, based on the understanding that the cultural factors of tourists, community residents, and other subjects will have an important impact on the consumption decisions of other tourists, as well as on the future planning of local community residents and tourism resource suppliers.

Research on tourism culture originated in Europe and the United States with many achievements. American scholars Robert McIntosh and Shashikant Gupta published a book entitled Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies, in 1977, which was the first of its kind to propose the concept of tourism culture. This book compared tourism culture and tourism sociology, marking the separation of tourism culture research from tourism sociology research to become an independent branch of tourism science [15]. Since the 1990s, studies on the impact of socio-cultural tourism have increasingly been focused on the socio-cultural impact of tourists and tourism destinations. There are several representative works on tourist studies, such as Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation by Mary Campbell [16], The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism by Eric J. Leed, and The Tourist Gaze by John Urry [17]. Additionally, many studies have been conducted on the social impact of tourist culture on tourist destinations [18,19,20,21]. Most of the tourism research in Europe and America is conducted from a sociological and anthropological perspective, focusing on people. Therefore, tourists’ psychological and behavioral aspects have become hot topics in Western tourism research [22,23,24]. From the perspective of tourists, the analysis of tourists’ cultural perception preferences, on the one hand, can more clearly understand the important factors that affect tourists’ risk perceptions, such as tourism purpose, motivation, experience, and so on [25,26]. On the other hand, it can also provide more market-oriented strategies for the structural adjustment of cultural tourism resources in tourist destinations, so as to increase their attractiveness [27,28].

In recent years, an increasing number of institutions and organizations specializing in tourism culture research have been established in China, and tourism culture symposiums at a national or regional level are frequently held. Tourism culture has gradually become one of the most active fields in China’s tourism development practice. Meanwhile, the development of tourism culture research in China has been flourishing. In as early as the early 1980s, it was pointed out that culture and tourism have an inseparable relationship [29]. In 1984, tourism culture was proposed as a professional concept, but the current interpretation of this concept is not accurate enough. Since 1984, sporadic discourses on tourism culture have appeared frequently in newspapers, and some cultural works have involved tourism culture [30,31]. In general, the studies are still very fragmented, and attention paid to tourism theory and tourism research is far from adequate. In the late 1990s, tourism culture research in China began to change from a spontaneous and fragmented state to a conscious and organized one. In June and August 1990, the Beijing Institute of Tourism held two symposiums focusing on tourism culture, attended by more than 50 experts and scholars who provided useful advice. In October 1990, the Beijing Institute of Tourism, China Institute of Tourism, and Chinese Society of Tourism Culture jointly held the first symposium on Chinese Tourism Culture, wherein participants discussed the concept and characteristics of tourism culture, the improvement of tourism services, and the role of tourism culture in improving tourism appreciation and promoting tourism resource development, providing many insights. After the symposium, Huai Bai compiled and published Collected Papers on Tourism Culture, which played an important role in promoting tourism culture research in China, with tourism culture research having attracted widespread attention from both the theoretical and industrial communities [14,31].

To summarize the theoretical research results and practical experience of tourism culture, we can find that European and American countries are more mature in their research methods, and there has been a change from quantitative research to qualitative research [32,33]. Many scholars have begun to use grounded theory, field research, and other research methods to study and solve the problems in the tourism industry, based on the relevant sociological theories [34], but the data collection methods are still focused on offline collection [35]. The data processing program is still too complex, which is not conducive to ordinary researchers carrying out research work. In terms of Chinese research, more and more authors use sociological research methods to seek solutions to tourism problems, but more and more, the questionnaire method is used to collect tourists’ information. Due to the limitations of stylized, formatted, and pre-designed questionnaires, it is often impossible to collect tourists’ real feedback information. With the rapid development of information and communication technology, new media is constantly applied in the field of tourism, and has gained more discourse power [36]. Tourists can not only freely share and express their opinions, but also explore and publicize their destinations in a “localized” way [37]. Therefore, tourists’ cognition of a destination no longer depends on traditional destination marketing organizations (DMOs), but relies more on user-generated content (UGC), such as tourism virtual communities and tourism related to “We Media” [38,39,40].

In contrast, the content of “decentralized” UGC includes not only text, but also pictures, videos and other media forms, which is richer, more vivid, and more truly reflects the tourism image of the tourism destination [41,42]. Therefore, it has the most direct impact on potential tourism consumers and is easy to cause tourism interest. This is precisely because tourists’ comments on the Internet or online reviews are more credible and authentic than the information provided by marketing personnel, so people tend to sort out, analyze, and predict the content of existing online word-of-mouth or online text. At present, there are three effects online reviews have on tourists: one is a boost in sales of products and services; the other is an influence on consumer behavior decisions; the third is the ability to perceive network information [43]. Online reviews by other tourists often enable potential tourists to obtain more comprehensive and complete indirect tourism experience information, which can effectively reduce the risks of tourism decision-making [44]. The experience information or comments published by tourists on the Internet show their own experience feelings and preferences, which will produce a certain “water wave effect”, and the confluence of this effect will form a guiding effect on tourism flow [45]. This paper integrates the relevant theories of sociology and online sample information collection methods. From the perspective of tourists, this paper analyzes their perceptions of the tourism culture of tourism destinations by using the text content of blogs, comments, and strategies published on the Internet. This method can effectively avoid the disadvantages of information collection via questionnaires and collect more real ideas of tourists. The research sample information is concentrated on the online text, which simplifies the offline data processing procedures, reduces the research threshold of researchers, and the qualitative research tools used can also ensure the validity of the study. Therefore, understanding tourists’ impressions and cultural needs of Wuxi tourism culture by studying their perceptions of the Wuxi tourism culture will help the government better understand the spatial mechanism of tourism development and help the tourism industry better understand the cultural tourism resources of Wuxi city.

2. Theories, Methods, and Research Design

2.1. Tourist Gaze and Tourism Destination Image Theory

“Tourist gaze” is a concept first proposed by John Urry in his book of the same name in 1990, by borrowing Foucault’s concept of “medical gaze”. Since then, it has rapidly become an important theoretical analysis tool in tourism anthropology. Urry thinks that tourists are full of voyeurism-like impulses to see novelty lacking in daily life experiences, and this “gaze impulse” can be satisfied by collecting and consuming various landscapes in different cultures. For example, tourists rely on the “gaze” results of previous tourists to make tourism expectations and decisions, while the former viewers gaze and create content and expect to be recognized by others. The “tourist gaze” theory integrates and abstracts tourism desire, tourism motivation, and tourism behavior, and represents a force of tourists to “place”. It can provide insight and explain the operation logic of modern tourism and various preferences and behaviors of modern tourists. It is a timely reflection of tourists’ social consciousness under the background of the great development of global tourism, and it is also a successful reference for Foucault’s “medical gaze” theory.

At present, there is no unified definition of tourism destination image, but most scholars define tourism destination image from the perspective of tourists’ psychological activities [46]. Tourism destination image is a concept expressing the individual attitudes of tourists. It refers to the individual’s cognition, perception, and impression of the tourist destination [47,48]. Although most of the studies do not directly involve the interpretation of the concept of tourism destination image, they all take the “perceived image” of tourists as the research objective [49]. If we distinguish tourists’ perception images by time, we can divide them into two stages: the naive image and the re-evaluated image. The naive image indicates the impression and knowledge of the potential tourists before visiting the tourist destinations; the re-evaluated image is the tourists’ destination image after visiting the tourist destinations. The original image is composed of an organic image and an induced image. The former comes from popular culture, media, literature, education, and other channels that are not directly related to tourism, while the latter comes from tourism commercial channels, such as guide manuals and advertisements [50,51]. At different stages of tourism decision-making, tourists’ cognition of the destination image will be influenced by the organic image, the induced image, and the re-evaluated image in turn [52,53].

2.2. Methods

This paper analyzes the formation and structure of the cultural image of a tourist destination based on the analyses of the text content of tourists’ travel notes, which will also help marketing organizations deeply understand the complex impression of tourists on the cultural resources of the destination, so as to effectively adjust marketing strategies. It will also provide potential tourists with the materials to recognize and deepen the impression of the destination, so as to promote their transformation into real tourists.

Content analysis is a research method to objectively, systematically, and quantitatively describe the content of communication. Through the analysis of the quantity and quality of mass communication, it can recognize and judge the key points of communication in a certain period, as well as the tendencies, attitudes, and standpoints of some problems, and the changing rules of communication contents in a certain period [54,55]. This paper will take the massive network travel notes data released by tourists as the analysis object, and through the text analysis, make the text and non-quantitative network text into quantitative data, mining the valuable information behind the network public opinion, providing references for the travel decisions of potential tourists, and providing decision-making references for tourism destination management and marketing. Although there are still many scholars using multivariable technology to quantitatively study the image of tourism destination, the use of qualitative analysis methods, such as content analysis, is also increasing. Its advantage lies in that it can maximize the tourists’ complete perception of the tourism destination image through specific technical tools, such as word frequency, semantic network, emotion, and so forth, which is difficult to achieve by general quantitative methods.

2.3. Cultural Tourism Resources in the Study Areas

Wuxi is located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Delta. It has jurisdiction over five administrative regions, namely Binhu, Huishan, Xishan, Liangxi, and Xinwu, and two county-level cities, Jiangyin and Yixing. Wuxi is the cradle of China’s national industry and commerce. Wuxi also has a profound cultural heritage, with more than 3000 years of written history. It is one of the birthplaces of Wu culture, which is the source of the ancient civilization in the south of the Yangtze River.

Cultural tourism resources mainly refer to historical sites, scenic areas, religious and ethnic facilities, relevant customs, and folk rituals. Wuxi is home to a wealth of cultural tourism resources, which are the basis for the development of the cultural tourism industry in Wuxi. These are mainly classified into five categories (see

Table 1. Categories and structures of the cultural resources in Wuxi tourism.

Cultural Categories	Cultural Content	Representative Scenic Spots or Activities
Historical cultural resources	Wu Culture	Taibo Temple, Taibo Tomb, Wu Culture Expo Park
	Canal Culture	The Wuxi section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, Bodu Port, Qingming Bridge, Water Alley
	National industrial and commercial culture	Rong Alley, Maoxin Flour Mill, industrial and commercial cultural relics along the ancient canal
	Celebrity culture	Former residence of Xu Xiake, former residence of Qian Zhongshu, former residence of Qin Bangxian
	Characteristic historical blocks	Qingming Bridge, Huishan Ancient Town, Rong Alley, Xiaolou Alley
Modern cultural resources	Modern townscape	Zhongshan Road Commercial Street, Chong’an Temple Pedestrian Street, Nanchan Temple Cultural Mall
	Entertainment and cultural facilities	Theme parks, such as Wuxi Film and Television Base and Lingshan Grand Buddha Scenic Area
Folk cultural resources	Folk performance	Performance of Three Kingdoms stories in Three Kingdoms City, performance of Water Margin stories in Water Margin City, palace performance in Tang City, performance on Taihu Wonderland Island
	Local culture	Jiangnan traditional stringed and woodwind instruments Music and Taoist Music, Xi Opera, Wu Ballad, Painting, Huishan Clay Figurines, embroidery, Purple Pottery Culture
	Modern festivals	Yangshan Peach Culture Festival and Yangshan Market Day, Taihu Art Festival, Wu Cultural and Art Festival
	Characteristic food and drinks	Wuxi Fried Spareribs, Zhenzheng Laolu Gaojian of urban Wuxi, Wang Xingji Wonton Shop
Landscape cultural resources	Landscape scenery	Xishan Hill, Huishan Hill, Taihu Lake, Lihu Lake
	Landscape literature	“Visit to Huishan Temple”, “Crossing Taihu Lake”, “Singing and Answer in Li Garden”, “Hushan Song”
	Garden scenery	Jichang Garden, Plum Garden, Tortoise Head Garden
	Leisure and entertainment	Water leisure and entertainment activities in Taihu Lake, Lihu Lake, and the ancient canal
Religious cultural resources	Buddhist culture	Huishan Temple, Nanchan Temple, Cuiwei Temple, Buddhist festivals and events
	Taoist culture	Jade Emperor Temple, Baiyun Cave, Dongling Temple, Zhanggong Cave, Taoist Music

Source: According to the relevant content of the Overall Plan of Wuxi Tourism Development (2003–2020) [56].

). In view of the comprehensiveness of tourism behavior, human interest regarding the interestingness of landscape and scenery, the extension of tourism time and space, diversity of tourism content, and the objective necessity to satisfy the diverse cultural needs of tourists, a suitable form of culture is needed for the development of the tourism industry, referred to as tourism culture. Tourism culture focuses on drawing tourism information from the tourists’ perspective to effectively reorganize and construct cultural tourism resources.

2.4. Research Procedures

First, we acquired a sample selection. Tourists’ perceptions and impressions of local conditions were extracted from tourist travelogues and other information. The Chinese keyword “无锡旅游” (Wuxi Tourism) was entered in the search bar of travelogues on China’s large-scale tourism e-commerce websites, such as Mafengwo, Tongcheng, Lotour, and Ctrip to retrieve travelogues about Wuxi. The tourists’ experiences and impressions of Wuxi were derived from these, and various cultural tourism elements perceived in Wuxi were extracted. According to the list of China’s travel and tourism applications published by AskCI (www.askci.com), Ctrip was ranked first, with 56,433,700 monthly active users and a year-over-year growth rate of 12.77%, followed by Where to Travel. Moreover, according to the top-30 list of China’s tourism websites ranked by reach per million users published by Jinlü Consulting, Ctrip and Qunar were ranked first and second, respectively. Therefore, we compared Wuxi travelogues between Ctrip and Qunar. We found that Ctrip had more Wuxi travelogues, tourist visits, and tourist responses than Where to Go. Therefore, the travelogue texts on Ctrip were chosen as the data source for the present study. By 1 March 2019, there were 3328 Wuxi travelogues on Ctrip. The tourism industry in Wuxi has been developing rapidly in recent years. Considering the time-sensitive nature of travelogues, the present study selected Wuxi travelogues from 1 March 2018 to 1 March 2019. Moreover, travelogues consisting of only photographs or too many photographs with a small body of text, or only containing a description of scenic spots, were excluded. Travelogues with text referring to the tourists’ tour arrangements and experiences were included. A total of 3328 Wuxi travelogues were screened against the criteria mentioned above, leading to the final inclusion of 300 travelogues. These texts were used as the study object for content analysis.

Secondly, a thesaurus database was established. After sorting out and generating the analysis text, on this basis, we carefully read the text, combined Wuxi local place names (such as Helv, Yangchun lane, coastal city, etc.), unique scenic spot names (such as Tortoise Head Garden, Lihu park, Jichang Garden, etc.), and modern network language (such as explosive table, mischievous, etc.), and a thesaurus for subsequent text analysis was established.

Finally, we completed the data analysis and processing. All the data were segmented with the software of ROSTCM6 to form the text to be analyzed. Then, the content and structure of tourists’ cultural perceptions were obtained through word frequency analysis, semantic network analysis, and emotional analysis.

3. Results

3.1. High-Frequency Feature Words

The top 50 (see

Table 2. Summary of the top 50 high-frequency feature words.

High-Frequency Feature Words	Frequency	Rank	High-Frequency Feature Words	Frequency	Rank
Nianhua Bay	2065	1	Plum garden	277	26
Tortoise Head Garden	1815	2	Water Margin	268	27
Taihu Lake	1296	3	Vacation	267	28
Huishan Hill	1116	4	Buddhism	264	29
Ancient town	1114	5	Taste	261	30
Deep meditation	920	6	Free	250	31
Yixing	850	7	Train station	240	32
Jiangnan	752	8	Museum	233	33
Cherry Blossoms	737	9	Gourmet	232	34
Culture	666	10	Service	202	35
Scenery	544	11	Qingming Bridge	201	36
Canal	495	12	Jichang Garden	182	37
Lingshan Grand Buddha	484	13	Convenience	170	38
Scenic spot	438	14	Longchi Mountain	161	39
Li Garden	434	15	Pier	157	40
History	429	16	Yangxian	156	41
Tickets	426	17	Beautiful	155	42
Bamboo sea	368	18	Wonton	138	43
Xihui	348	19	Taihu Wonderland Island	137	44
Nanchang Street	346	20	Huishan Temple	130	45
Nature	334	21	Clay figurine	130	46
Lihu Lake	306	22	Snack	121	47
Nanchan Temple	295	23	Chong’an Temple	118	48
Experience	294	24	Three Kingdoms City	114	49
Bus	292	25	View	105	50

) high-frequency feature words about Wuxi tourism culture were extracted through statistical analysis of the travelogue texts. The highest word frequency “Nianhua Bay” reflects the tourists’ strong perceptions of the Wuxi tourism landmarks. Meanwhile, Taihu Lake and Tortoise Head Garden have also become the most representative landmark landscapes in Wuxi. For tourists to Wuxi, the most strongly perceived tourism culture was the religious culture, followed by the landscape and garden culture, and the historical culture.

Tourists’ perceptions of the religious culture mainly focused on the Lingshan Great Buddha, Nianhua Bay, Xishan Temple of Xihuili, Nanchan Temple, and Huishan Temple. Their evaluations and impressions of these scenic areas were “It’s worth recommending”, “Wuxi’s iconic scenic spot”, “Zen Flowers”, “Quite shocking”, “Excellent”, “The No. 1 Jiangnan Buddhist shrine”, “Expensive entrance fee”, “Purifying the soul”, “Beautiful scenery”, “Gourmet street”, “Boisterous”, and “Buddhist temple”.

Perceptions of the Wuxi landscape and garden culture mainly focused on three scenic spots: the Tortoise Head Garden, Xi Hui Park, and Taihu. Among them, Tortoise Head Garden had the highest frequency of occurrence, and tourists also had the highest evaluation of it, such as “Tortoise Head Garden’s cherry blossom is comparable to that of Japan and Wuhan University”, and “Taihu Fairy Island has Jiangnan characteristics”; followed by Xihui Park, with “beautiful scenery”, “Jiangnan garden”, “large and exquisite”, “combination of nature and historic sites”, and so forth; thirdly, came Taihu Lake with “Taihu Lake is broad, magnificent waves”, “as wide as the sea”, “Jiangnan scenery”, “quiet and elegant lake” and other comments. However, at the same time, it was found that the words “water quality is too poor” appear in tourists’ comments on the three scenic spots.

Perceptions of the Wuxi historical culture mainly focused on the Huishan Ancient Town, Qingming Bridge, and Donglin Academy, with comments such as “the second spring in the world in Huishan Ancient Town”, “Chrysanthemum Exhibition held every year in Huishan Ancient Town”, “night view and bar street of Qingming Bridge”, “historical flavor of Donglin Academy”, and so forth. Among them, Huishan Ancient Town had the highest frequency and the highest evaluation: “delicate and exquisite”, “Wuxi characteristic ancient town”, “ancient scenery”, “peach garden in the city”. The second was Qingming Bridge, which included “different customs in the day and night”, “long history”, “quiet in motion, leisure and small scenery”, and “ancient street style”; the third was Donglin Academy, with “one of China’s famous academies”, “cultural resort, quiet scenery”, “quiet in the downtown”.

3.2. Semantic Networks and Emotional Attitudes

3.2.1. Semantic Networks

Through the statistical analysis of participle and word frequency, we can know the main cultural resources that tourists pay attention to, but we do not know the relationship between the participles in meaning and the deep semantic structure. A semantic network is a kind of network graph that expresses knowledge through concepts and semantic relations. It is composed of nodes and connections between the nodes. The nodes represent things, concepts, attributes, actions, States, and so forth, while lines represent the semantic connections between connected nodes [57]. This paper constructs the semantic network of the text based on the frequency of co-occurrence words (Figure 1). The frequency of co-occurrence words represents the number of co-occurrence of high-frequency words before and after the formation of the text. It can accurately show and reflect the structure of the tourist attraction system, and provide the basis for the construction of tourism terrain image structure.

As shown in Figure 1, in terms of location and traffic accessibility, Wuxi has a high frequency of co-occurrence with Jiangnan, Shanghai, Suzhou, Taihu Lake, East, hour circle, railway station, accommodation convenience, and so forth, which indicates that the unique geographical location and fast traffic accessibility of the city have been generally recognized by tourists. In terms of the perception of tourism cultural resources, tourists’ perceptions of Wuxi’s natural resources are mainly focused on plum blossoms, Taihu Lake, cherry blossoms, and so forth, while their cognition of human resources is mainly focused on old town, history, culture, Lingshan, small town, ancient canal, Nianhua Bay, and so forth. On the whole, tourists’ cognition of tourism cultural resources shows an obvious core-periphery structure. The core level includes nianhuawan, Tortoise Head Garden, Taihu Lake; the middle level is the Lingshan Giant Buddha, Huishan Ancient Town, ancient canal, and other cultural tourist attractions in recent years; the marginal level is mainly the cultural scenic spots such as Nanchan Temple, Qingming Bridge, and Nanchang Street.

3.2.2. Emotional Attitudes

Emotional attitude analysis mainly refers to the analysis of emotional nouns and adjectives used by tourists in their travelogues to derive their impressions and cognitive attitudes towards tourist destinations or scenic spots. As a comment text, emotional tendency is one of the main tasks of opinion mining, because tourist emotion reflects the attitudes of tourists towards a destination, which has an important impact on tourist satisfaction and subsequent loyalty. Positive emotional reactions are often associated with higher tourist satisfaction and loyalty. Emotions can be divided into positive and negative, as well as strong and weak. The principle of sentiment analysis is to select two groups of words with obvious positive and negative polarity as seed words, and then calculate the similarity between the words to be analyzed and the two groups of seed words.

As shown in

Table 3. Segmented statistical results of different emotions.

Emotional Tendency and Its Segmentation	Number of Evaluations	Proportion of Quantity
Positive emotion	279	49.56%
Neutral emotion	237	42.10%
Negative emotion	46	8.34%
Positive emotion segmentation is as follows:
General (0–10):	123	21.85%
Moderate (10–20):	89	15.81%
High (greater than 20):	67	11.90%
Negative emotion segmentation is as follows:
General (−10–0):	32	5.68%
Moderate (−20–−10):	12	2.13%
High (less than −20):	2	0.36%

, tourists had a high degree of recognition of Wuxi tourism culture in general; 91.66% of them held a positive or neutral attitude. Among them, most tourists (49.56%) had a positive overall impression, which mainly manifested in the following comments: “A Jiangnan water town”, “antique beauty”, and “it is worth recommending”. However, there were also some negative emotional perceptions and evaluations accounting for 8.34% in comments, such as “Taihu Lake is too smelly”, and “the scenic area is not clean enough”. Additionally, 42.10% of the tourists held a neutral attitude reflected in comments, such as “that’s it”, “it is okay”, “so-so”, “no special features”.

4. Discussion

4.1. Focus of Tourists’ Perceptions of the Wuxi Tourism Culture

Statistical analysis of the top 50 high-frequency words showed that tourists’ perceptions of Wuxi tourism culture mainly focused on three aspects: religious culture, landscape and garden culture, and historical culture. The tourists’ perceptions of Wuxi’s religious culture mainly focused on the Buddhist culture, with the degree of perception decreasing in the order of the Lingshan scenic area, Nanchan Temple, and Huishan Temple, while little mention was made of other religious cultures, such as Taoism. Tourists’ perceptions of Wuxi’s landscape culture mainly focused on Turtle Head Isle, Huishan Hill, and Lake Tai. Perceptions of the historical culture of Wuxi mainly focused on three scenic spots: Huishan Ancient Town, Qingming Bridge, and Donglin Academy.

Evident from the focus of tourists’ perceptions of the Wuxi tourism culture, there was an obvious mismatch between their preferences for Wuxi tourism culture and the provisions of Wuxi tourism culture. The tourists lacked a strong perception of other local cultural tourism resources, such as modern cultural and folk cultural resources in Wuxi. This phenomenon is closely attributed to the currently limited attractiveness and publicity of the tourism culture of scenic spots. To direct tourists’ attention towards other types of tourism culture in Wuxi, the management departments of scenic areas need to explore, develop, and promote the local tourism culture. Further, the travel route planning by travel agencies and governmental support is of pivotal importance to drawing tourists’ attention to other types of tourism culture.

4.2. Semantic Networks

Semantic network analysis showed that when mentioning “Wuxi”, tourists thought of words, such as “Lake Tai”, “Jiangnan”, and “ancient canal” instead of “Wu culture”, which implies that the history and culture of Wuxi are not well known to tourists. When mentioning “Lake Tai”, tourists immediately thought of Turtle Head Isle. Lake Li was rarely mentioned, implying that no sufficient official efforts have been made towards the publicity of Lake Li’s scenic area, failing to invoke enough interest regarding Lake Li among tourists. When it comes to “ancient town”, Huishan Ancient Town was always most frequently mentioned, while Dangkou Ancient Town in Wuxi was mentioned much less frequently. When mentioning “small town”, tourists first thought of Nianhua Town and Oriental Rural Town, rarely mentioning Xuelang Town. When mentioning “ancient canal”, tourists had the deepest impression of Qingming Bridge, knowing little about Wu Bridge. The six-kilometer-long section of the ancient canal that runs through the city of Wuxi, from Wu Bridge through Xishuidun and South Gate to Qingming Bridge, has the most typical Jiangnan-style scene. In other words, Wu Bridge can also present the unique beauty of the ancient canal like Qingming Bridge does, allowing tourists to learn more about the tourism culture of the ancient canal in Wuxi.

To summarize, each scenic area was independently promoted, and there was no effective interaction between the publicity campaigns of different scenic areas. It is recommended that similar cultural tourist attractions be jointly promoted, as is the case with Lingshan Grand Buddha and Nianhua Bay to effectively facilitate the development of other tourist attractions. Moreover, this strategy will help divert a certain number of tourists during the peak tourism season, thereby protecting the tourism environment.

The joint publicity may be conducted using the following approaches. First, high-quality tourist attractions may be promoted through clustered development [58]. Cultural relics that are spatially adjacent to one another may also be developed in a clustered manner to form exquisite and appealing tourist attractions. Second, tourist attractions may be jointly developed to form tourist routes with local characteristics. To attract tourists interested in a particular culture and to successfully form a tourist route with local characteristics, cultural relics should be developed in a complementary manner. Third, it is desirable to select a suitable geographical location to design mass tourist routes, which are useful for cultural relics located near scenic spots or large tourist attractions.

4.3. Emotional Attitudes

Our analysis of tourists’ emotional attitudes showed that 8.35% of tourists had negative comments, such as “poor water quality” and “the scenic area is not clean enough”, and 42.1% of tourists had neutral comments, such as “no local characteristics”, “so-so”, and “that’s it”. These negative and neutral comments established the necessity of strengthening the construction of the Wuxi tourism environment by adopting corresponding protection and development measures for both the natural and human environments.

For the natural environment, the government and relevant departments should strengthen publicity on the protection of Lake Tai’s water resources, enhance public awareness regarding the protection of resources, environment, and ecology, and restore Lake Tai to its original natural beauty. For the human environment, special attention was paid to the scenery of Lake Tai, artificial landscapes, and Jiangnan gardens when developing tourism resources. However, the mainstream orientation of historical culture is not clear enough, and the characteristics of Wu Culture are not obvious. Although Wuxi is one of the birthplaces of China’s industry and commerce, its industrial and commercial culture has not yet been fully explored, failing to fully highlight the advantages of traditional culture. Currently, many scenic areas have been restored only to the original architectural level, while “soft” content, such as culture and legends, remains unexplored. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research and an exploration of the content and historical evolution of celebrity tourism.

Wuxi, as the birthplace of Wu culture and China’s industry and commerce, features the Jiangnan culture and Taihu culture. The construction of Wuxi tourism culture must reflect the cultural characteristics of Wuxi. Due to the dispersion of cultural tourist attractions, such as Taibo Tomb, Taibo Temple, and Wu Culture Park, it is difficult for tourists to achieve a deep understanding of the Wu culture, which is not beneficial for the integration of the resources and image construction of the Wu culture. On the one hand, there are basically no participatory activities in scenic areas, and a single form of tourism cannot fully demonstrate the rich content of the Wu culture. On the other hand, the tourism resource development of Wu culture lacks creativity and popularity, making it difficult for ordinary tourists to gain more knowledge and experience from tourism. Additionally, no sufficient investment has been made in the construction and protection of scenic areas of the Wu culture. Tourism facilities and supporting services are yet to be improved.

5. Conclusions and Limitations

Tourists’ perceptions directly reflect their satisfaction, which in turn is the focus and driver of the management of scenic spots. Understanding tourists’ perceptions of local tourism culture is of great significance to the further exploration, interpretation, and dissemination of local cultural tourism resources. Based on travelers’ online travel notes, this study used content analysis to discuss the elements and structure of tourists’ perceptions of Wuxi’s cultural tourism resources. We also found some interesting conclusions through analysis.

The results indicate that tourists’ needs in the present study were mainly concentrated in three scenic areas, namely the Lingshan scenic area, Turtle Head Isle, and Huishan Ancient Town, and could be considered as public needs. In contrast, personalized and scattered niche needs were distributed in the tail, where the needs were marginal and often neglected, such as the tourists’ needs for Qingming Bridge, museums, and other cultural relics, as well as the tourists’ needs for Jichang Garden, Lake Li, and other cultural gardens. However, the sum of all niche markets is bigger than the mass market, and therefore an increasing number of traditional industries focus on the broad long-tail market. Some studies have confirmed that niche words following a long-tail distribution and appearance on websites usually indicate a stronger willingness to travel.

In the 1930s, American linguist Zipf found that the frequency of a particular word in a text would have a long-tail distribution in the Cartesian coordinate system if the frequency of its occurrence in the texts was taken as the abscissa, and the ranking of the particular word as the ordinate (Figure 2) [59]. Subsequently, some empirical studies on China as a tourist destination uncovered that the words used by tourists to describe the image of a tourist destination follow a long-tail (power law) distribution, that is, a few words are used very frequently (at the head of the long-tail curve) and most words are used very rarely (at the tail of the long-tail curve). Analysis of the long-tail distribution of high-frequency words showed that tourists’ needs were mainly related to the Lingshan scenic area, Turtle Head Isle, and Huishan Ancient Town, which could be considered as public needs, namely the needs of a mass market. Individualized needs and scattered niche needs are distributed in the tail, which are marginal needs and prone to be overlooked. For example, Qingming Bridge and museums as cultural relics, as well as Jichang Garden and Lake Li as cultural gardens, are niche markets.

Wuxi is a city rich in cultural tourism resources, but it has always been based on sightseeing tourism, people’s stay times are short, tourism consumption is small, and the development performance of tourism in recent years has not been ideal. Our research work was based on the perspectives of tourists, and used a content analysis method, which can obtain tourists’ more real views on the development of cultural tourism resources in a destination. This study followed the logic of “internet word-of-mouth to image perception to policy adjustment”. Our contribution has two aspects. In practice, it can help cultural tourism resource planners understand the tourist market, and help urban tourism managers understand the key points and potential opportunities of tourism publicity. In theory, it provides an explanation for further understanding of the internal process and logic of the impact of internet word-of-mouth on destination image, and it provides theoretical support for policymakers.

There are also some limitations in this study: first, the respondents did not take into account the tourists who do not use the Internet, such as some rural elderly. Future studies should expand the sample size or carry out some comparative research to increase the general applicability of the results. Secondly, the weblog materials used in this study are mainly in text form, but in reality, many tourists will express their emotions in the form of pictures or videos; we will enrich the sources of information in the follow-up research. Thirdly, taking Wuxi as a case, although the city is rich in cultural tourism resources and is in the transition stage from sightseeing tourism to advanced tourism products, it has certain representativeness, but its universality can be further enhanced.