TOURIST VOICES ON TWITTER: SENTIMENT AND TOPIC ANALYSIS FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM IN PENANG

Abstract

This research aims to analyse the opinions expressed in tweets about a tourism destination in Malaysia and elucidate the dominant topics discussed on Twitter. This research examines tourist sentiment on a Malaysian destination from a sustainability perspective by analysing 18,018 tweets, collected from November 9, 2021, to January 9, 2022, using Lexicon-based sentiment analysis for polarity detection and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic modelling. Results revealed that 46% of sentiments were positive, 39% were neutral, and 15% were negative. Tourists primarily discussed food, tourist spots, events, hotels, traffic, and driver attitudes. Core tourism services received positive feedback, whereas additional fees were noted as less favourable. The integration of sentiment analysis and LDA enables a nuanced understanding of tourist experiences, providing actionable insights for policymakers and businesses to enhance sustainable tourism practices and optimize resource management in Penang.