One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure: Negative Experiences of Tourists with Different Satisfaction Levels

Abstract

From a postmodernist perspective, tourist experience is a subjective construct related to numerous aspects. Tourists can generate either positive or negative emotions from their experiences, and negative experiences are not exclusive to satisfied tourists. This study analyzes the negative experiences of tourists with different satisfaction levels. Lijiang Old Town was chosen to conduct the case study. A computer-assisted content analysis method was used to identify and analyze the negative experience themes. The attitudes of tourists with different satisfaction levels towards these themes are discussed. The results indicate that people understand the meaning and value of a destination uniquely. The main negative experience themes of Lijiang Old Town include touristy aspects, commercialization, lack of authenticity, and the ease of getting lost. Tourists with different satisfaction levels share these negative comments, while their perceptions and attitudes of each theme are quite different. Tourists have a similar perception of “commercialization” and “lack of authenticity” in Lijiang. Tourists with low satisfaction complain about the experience brought by “touristy” and “easy to get lost”, while highly satisfied tourists appreciate the similar experiences. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is a common phenomenon in the tourism context. This study enhances the personalization attribute of tourist experience. The negative feedbacks of tourists should be dealt with according to the specific situation.

1. Introduction

With the prevalence of experience economy, “experience” has been investigated in a wide range of hospitality and tourism settings [1]. From a postmodernism point of view, tourist experience is more than the consequence of a single encounter: it is influenced by a series of moments of tourist’s interaction with the people and places they visit [2]. Tourist experience is not merely derived from accommodation, entertainment, and food and beverages, but also from other supporting facilities and interactions with local people [3]. The rich connotation of tourist experience is emphasized in conceptual research [1,3,4]. As a crucial element of enhancing their memories of places, tourists’ experiences from their interactions with the people and places they visit can generate positive or negative emotions [5]. Positive experiences can create positive emotions and result in attachment to people or places [6], while studies on negative experiences are limited. Related literature uses satisfaction as a proxy variable for quality of experience, equating negative experience with low satisfaction [7]. The reality is more complicated, especially given that travel experiences are not constant over time. Negative experiences are not exclusive to highly satisfied tourists. The relationship between negative experience and satisfaction is still unclear. This study takes Lijiang as an example and uses content analysis to identify the relationship between negative experiences and satisfaction. The complex connotation of tourist experience is discussed.

2. Literature Review

2.1. The Complex Connotation of Tourist Experience

Experience is the impressions and sensations left in the brain through personal experience or practice [8]. Authors emphasize that experience is “a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase journey” [4]. Tourism is an experiential activity. Experience has been investigated in a wide range of hospitality and tourism settings [1]. Experience comes from the environment tourists are in and the activities they participate [4]. Tourists can experience both positive and negative emotions from their experiences [9]. Tourist experience is thus a multidimensional construct. While dimensions of tourism experience commonly serve as outcome measures, many studies treat these variables as mediating variables when investigating other consumer behaviors, such as tourist engagement [10], satisfaction, recommendations, and intention to revisit [11]. They are also examined in the context of destination image, loyalty, and evaluation [1].

2.2. Negative Experience in Tourism Context

With the widespread nature of information technology, sharing tourism experience information through online platforms has become the norm [12] and even an integral part of the tourist experience. These reviews contain both positive and negative emotions, ranging from objective descriptions of travel experience activities to subjective reviews that provide recommendations to future travelers [13]. Content published by others is considered one of the most important sources of information for tourists to develop their travel plans [14]. The impact of negative comments on travel decisions and the tourism industry as a whole has become widely significant [15]. A series of studies have emerged that specifically focus on the negative comments of tourists. The topics include the content of the negative comments [16], the spread of negative word-of-mouth [17], the impact of negative comments on the image of a destination [18], etc. Most previous studies have fallen victim to the perspective of “experience universalism”, which assumes that different people will have the same experience when faced with the same object. The truth is that different people will have different experiences due to their daily travel experiences, even when facing the same object [19].

In summary, most research on negative tourist experience focuses only on the basic elements and their combinations of the experience, ignoring the different ways of seeing the destination by different tourists. User-Generated Content (UGC) data are widely used by tourists to make travel decisions, and by researchers to understand the market [15,16,17]. The large volume of data makes it easy to get negative review data. This study uses a computer-assisted content analysis method to analyze the comments on Lijiang Old Town, extracts the core themes of tourist’s negative experiences, and analyzes the differences in perception and evaluation of tourists with different satisfaction levels.

3. Methodology

3.1. Case Study

The present study adopts a case study methodology to address how tourists with different levels of satisfaction deal with negative experiences. A single-case study is considered acceptable for theory building [20], and it offers an opportunity to explore more complicated theories as researchers can fit the theory into many details of a particular case [21]. The purpose of this study was to identify dimensions of negative experiences and the differences between tourists with different levels of satisfaction. The research design follows the strategy of selecting an exemplary case [22].

Lijiang is located in southwest China, and it is a traditional settlement of Han and 22 ethnic minorities, including Naxi, Yi, Lisu, Pumi, Bai, Zang, and others. The old town of Lijiang flourished as a commercial center on the ancient “Tea and Horse Caravan Road”. Its architecture is noteworthy for the blending of elements from several cultures that have come together over many centuries. It possesses an ancient water-supply system of great complexity and ingenuity that still functions effectively today. In recent years, with the prosperity of bars, Lijiang has gained an image as “The Capital of Yanyu” in China [23]. Lijiang was listed as World Heritage in 1997; however, due to losing indigenous taste, profit-driven development, and violated protection plan, it was warned by UNESCO in 2007 (World Heritage Convention). In addition, many scholars have studied Lijiang’s tourism development model, destination image [23,24,25]. Therefore, Lijiang makes an ideal candidate for in-depth exploration of tourists’ negative experiences.

3.2. Data Collection

UGC is considered to be a way for people to express themselves online. This content is considered as people telling the “real” story since the process is free from external censorship [26]. The volume of the data is large, and this content can provide information about consumers’ actual attitudes to products [27]. Reviews of “the Old Town of Lijiang” from several websites (TravelBlog, Travel Leisure, Lonely Planet, and TripAdvisor) were compared. TripAdvisor was chosen as the data source regarding the review site’s superiority in terms of quantity and quality. Additionally, TripAdvisor is the most popular tourism website and is often used for UGC-based research [28]. The collected reviews were uploaded between 2009 and 2018, years that saw a burst of negative reviews. A total of 1092 English reviews with 512 complete attributes data (rating, account level, nationality, and gender) were collected.

3.3. Data Analysis

A computer-assisted content analysis method was used to analyze the obtained data [29]. Leximancer is a deep learning algorithm software used to analyze the collections of textual documents and visualize the extracted information. Underpinned by Bayesian theory, concepts frequency and co-occurrence are quantified to construct relations that enable researchers to be free from bias and uncover ignored latent content in manual coding [30,31]. The information is displayed by means of a conceptual map that provides a bird’s eye view of the material, representing the main concepts contained within the text and information about how they are interrelated. The software follows the principle of a complete data-driven process, and the critical role of scholars is to select the appropriate concept and reasonably interpret it [32]. The algorithmic-based encoding process reduces the expectation bias of traditional coding [33] and can help find new ideas that may otherwise be overlooked [30]. It was also proven through an automated content analysis approach that concept extraction and a thematic cluster are reproducible and reliable; it possesses stable validity and reliability [31,34]. It has been applied in language analysis, qualitative health research, bibliometrics, etc. [35,36]. In recent years, Leximancer has also been applied in tourism and hospitality research, such as Tseng’s research on the image of China as a tourist destination [37] and Wu’s research on foreign tourists’ shopping experience in Beijing Silk Market [38]. The Leximancer-assisted theme-generating process is as follows:

(1)

After reading all the reviews, two individuals familiar to the study preprocess the data with the assisted of Leximancer. Non-lexical and weak semantic information (such as “I’m”, “the”, “of”, and “on”) are removed [39]. The concept seeds are adjusted by merging similar concepts (e.g., the singular and plural forms of nouns) and defining new concepts not included in the thesaurus (e.g., Lijiang, Naxi).

(2)

Use Leximancer to calculate the data. Visual concept maps and statistical outputs are generated. A concept map (Topical map) to quantify the relationships between concepts is generated to help identifying the themes of tourist experience.

(3)

Classify the reviews into three categories (low satisfaction with the rating of 1 or 2, medium satisfaction with the rating of 3, and high satisfaction with the rating of 4 or 5). Recalculate the data of low satisfaction and high satisfaction reviews.

Leximancer processes with word frequency and co-occurrence, and it is not able to further explore each theme. Leximancer does not record the number of key incidents, and it does not provide accurate information about the number of reviews that mentioned the concepts. Therefore, the negative experience themes of tourists are identified using content analysis based on the concept maps generated by Leximancer software. Two individuals familiar to the study interpreted the concept maps of overall, high satisfaction and low satisfaction tourists. The core meaning of each theme was then generated. The negative experience themes were extracted from the concept maps based on the interpretation of each concept. All reviews containing concepts related to negative experience themes were extracted and classified according to their satisfaction differences. Tourists’ emotions for these themes are coded into three types: positive, neutral, and negative. Manual counting was used as a supplement to determine the frequency of such key incidents to accurate the results of this study.

3.4. Reliability and Validity Assessment

The reliability and validity largely determine the quality of the case study [20]. Given that the concept maps were automatically generated by Leximancer, we paid more attention to the reliability and validity of the coding stage. Reliability was established as the two researchers independently did the coding, and disagreements were resolved by involving the third researcher. Following Lombard et al. [40], two indices were chosen for the assessment of intercoder reliability. Holsti’s index was used to calculate the measure for intercoder reliability. Since Holsti’s method does not account for agreements that occur simply by chance, Cohen’s Kappa was also calculated, as it is generally seen as a more conservative index [41]. The inter-rater reliability was good (Holsti’s method coefficient = 0.944, Cohen’s Kappa coefficient = 0.896), indicating strong agreement between the two researchers on their interpretation of the data. Internal validity was established by building explanations from the available literature. The results of this study were compared with the existing literature to demonstrate consistency and contrast with the literature.

4. Results

4.1. Concept Map

4.1.1. Overall Experience of the Tourists

A total of 41 concepts were extracted to represent tourists’ experiences in Lijiang Old Town. The word frequencies of the concepts were calculated (

Table 1. The word frequencies of the concepts.

Rank	Concept	Freq.	Rank	Concept	Freq.	Rank	Concept	Freq.
1	towns	1487	15	people	287	29	worth	141
2	old	1439	16	beautiful	269	30	music	136
3	shops	881	17	Chinese	266	31	Naxi	133
4	Lijiang	677	18	nights	262	32	mountain	129
5	streets	510	19	restaurants	258	33	square	119
6	buildings	502	20	city	234	34	lost	116
7	visit	462	21	China	230	35	interesting	111
8	place	451	22	day	227	36	crowded	100
9	tourists	445	23	nice	216	37	authentic	93
10	time	319	24	bar	202	38	morning	89
11	walk	308	25	water	191	39	hours	86
12	local	298	26	ancient	187	40	tour	83
13	food	298	27	touristy	162	41	villages	75
14	night	293	28	commercial	150

).

Seven themes were generated (Figure 1). The connotations of each theme and the core concepts are as follows:

(1)

General impression of the town: This is the most mentioned theme. The included concepts are mainly related to the overall impression of Lijiang (China, Lijiang, town, city old, ancient, nice, interesting, and beautiful) and the most representative elements in the town (buildings and water).

(2)

Sites in the town—shops: This theme contains concepts related to the sites in the old town (shops, restaurants, bars, streets, and squares) and tourists’ experience of these sites (music in the shops, authenticity of the old town, Naxi culture, and activities at night).

(3)

Activities—place: This theme contains concepts related to tourist activities (places to visit, people to meet, local food to taste in the square, and getting lost in the old town). Additionally, these activities require tourists to interact with the external environment to a good experience.

(4)

Visiting the quiet old town—walk. Unlike the ordinary tourism activities covered by the previous theme, the concepts mainly include tourists’ efforts to become familiar with the authentic old town (take time and walk around the town in the morning hours, then you will find it is worth taking a tour (visit)).

(5)

Touristy aspects—tourists. This theme mainly focuses on comments about the touristy aspects of Lijiang Old Town. The most mentioned point is that there are a lot of Chinese tourists in the old town.

(6)

Commercialization—commercial. This theme contains negative concepts about Lijiang’s commercialization and crowding.

(7)

Nature landscape—mountains. This theme has only one concept (mountains), which refers to the natural landscape around the Old Town of Lijiang.

The concept map (Figure 1) also shows the inter-relationships among different themes. The gray dots represent these concepts. The size and color of the circles indicate the frequency with which the theme is mentioned. The distance between the circles reflects the degree of connection between the themes. General impression, as the most mentioned theme, has a relatively close relationship with all other themes. Sites in the town, activities, and touristy aspects are relatively closely related. The theme of visiting the quiet old town is closely related to the theme of natural landscape.

4.1.2. The Concept Map of Tourists with High and Low Satisfaction

Although the reputation of Lijiang is not good among tourists in the long-term, only 8.2% of the comments give a rating of 1 or 2, meaning that they are not satisfied with the destination. The concept map contains 27 concepts and 5 themes: “Old”, “Tourist”, “People”, “Authentic”, and “Commercial” (Figure 2a). Apart from the overall impression, the concept map mainly contains themes of tourists’ negative experiences, namely touristy aspects (tourist and people), the lack of authenticity (authentic), and commercialization (commercial).

More than half of the comments give a rating of 4 or 5, indicating that these tourists accept Lijiang as a good destination. Tourists with a high satisfaction have a richer semantic content. This has a high similarity with the overall concept map, except that two themes (visiting the quiet old town and natural landscape) are merged into one (lost). The concept map contains a total of 37 concepts and six themes: “Town”, “Shops”, “Place”, “Tourist” and “Commercial” (Figure 2b).

4.2. Themes of Negative Experiences

Four concepts (commercial, touristy, authentic, and lost) were identified from the concept maps as representing of tourists’ negative experience themes. Most themes of the two groups are the same, while the meanings expressed by these concepts are quite different. The connotations of each theme are as follows.

4.2.1. Commercialization and Touristy Aspects

The themes of commercialization and touristy aspects appeared in all three groups. According to the results of manual counting, 14.8% of all the reviews mentioned the touristy aspect of Lijiang and 13.7% of reviews mentioned commercialization. There is a general consensus that Lijiang is a deeply exploited town that caters to tourists’ need. Excessive tourism and commercial development are important themes of tourists’ negative experiences. Early studies indicated that Lijiang had become a tourism-oriented town, and its traditional culture is being threatened by tourism development. Nearly 70% of all building units in the main streets are used for commercial purposes catered to tourists [42]. As demonstrated in the following quotation, shops selling repetitive souvenirs and bars catered toward domestic tourists do not meet the expectations of international tourists for this historic city:

“All you can find in this place is chaos and tourists—thousands of generic bars or shops that have nothing ‘local’ in them.”

Although the theme of commercialization covers only one concept, the attitudes of the high and low satisfaction groups are quite different. Low satisfaction tourists find it unacceptable. Highly satisfied tourists also hold a negative attitude towards the over-commercialization of Lijiang, while they have a higher tolerance for this. They believe that although the old town is over-commercialized, it is still worth visiting. Some typical comments are as follows.

“Way too commercialized, crowded, dirty and loud with bars competing in noise to attract customers.” (Low satisfaction)

“Like what other reviewers said, it’s a bit over commercialized but I do find some little corners, the streams and the inns quite nicely designed and fun place to spend some time.” (High satisfaction)

The theme of touristy aspects expresses tourists’ attitudes toward their counterparts. For tourists with a low satisfaction, excessive tourism development and crowds have ruined the image of Lijiang as a beautiful ancient city. In their complaints, the noisy bars opening at night are the worst for destroying the tranquil atmosphere of the town. Tourists with high satisfaction show a completely different attitude towards touristy aspects. They believe that bars and other tourists add a leisurely atmosphere to the old town. They hold a positive attitude towards Lijiang’s bar culture and encourage latecomers to embrace this lively atmosphere. Representative quotes are as follows:

“The big problem is that it is becoming too touristy. It is full of identical shops and the main streets are packed in the evenings and full of loud bars.” (Low satisfaction)

“It also has the absolute noisiest bars and restaurants which attracts numerous youngsters—but don’t be put off by this as it really does add to its atmosphere.” (High satisfaction)

4.2.2. Lack of Authenticity

Lack of authenticity is one of the negative themes of low-satisfaction tourists. The concept “authentic” was mentioned 93 times in all reviews and 47.0% of the comments with the rating 1 or 2 regard Lijiang as “not authentic” or “nothing feels like old”. Exploring Chinese culture is the primary motivation for most international tourists to visit Lijiang. The Old Town of Lijiang is listed as a World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO for its housing, which blends elements of Han and Zang architecture. It is also the key selling point for international tourists. However, after a destructive fire in 2014, many ancient wooden buildings in Lijiang were renovated or rebuilt. The newly constructed buildings and modern commercial functions of the old buildings do not meet tourists’ expectations. As a result, tourists gave a low evaluation of the authenticity of Lijiang. Half of the low-satisfaction tourist reviews criticized the “old” town as a fake one, and even described the trip as a tourist trap. Authenticity is not the core theme of highly satisfied tourists; the comments indicate that the perception of authenticity is the same as that of tourists with low satisfaction. Most of the comments point out the lack of authenticity of Lijiang and suggest that future tourists should lower their expectations for the authenticity of Lijiang. Meanwhile, they are willing to explore the old town to pursue the authentic experience, such as overlooking the whole old town from a high place, visiting the leftover historic buildings, tasting authentic local food, experiencing local grocery markets, etc.

“Lijiang and other cities in the area are disappointing. It’s not anymore authentic China, it’s Chinese tourism.” (Low satisfaction)

“The local market is very authentic, with villagers selling all sorts of produce, including a seemingly endless array of dried herbs and mushrooms.” (High satisfaction)

The concept of “early” is mentioned in comments of tourists seeking authenticity. It is highly recommended to explore Lijiang in the early morning to experience the authentic “old town”. The well-preserved ethnic buildings and streets are free from the disturbance of crowds and commercial views in the early morning. The following comments describe the typical attitudes of both low- and high-satisfied tourists:

“I have to admit that it’s well preserved, the streets and buildings are nice to look at—but only very early in the morning when everyone is still asleep.” (Low satisfaction)

“Lijiang is a must see, but best if you can avoid the tourists, e.g., early mornings, when you can see more real life.” (High satisfaction)

4.2.3. Easy to Get Lost

The comments of tourists with high satisfaction include the unique theme of being lost; it is easy to get lost during the tour when walking around the town, and you can take time to experience local characters. Previous studies show that getting lost may cause anxiety and affect people’s exploration of a space, and it is considered a negative experience. The concept “lost” appeared 116 times in the comments. Most of the comments related to “lost” were contributed by high-satisfaction tourists, and they consider getting lost to be a positive experience; 57.5% of the comments showed obvious positive emotions towards the experience of getting lost in Lijiang, 27.5% of the tourists did not express emotion on getting lost, only 15% of the tourists expressed their concerns. The following comments indicate that different tourists have completely different perceptions on getting lost. Thus, they make entirely different strategies onsite, and give different advice to future tourists. Those who have negative comments about getting lost complain about the flawed identification system and poor English service support. The following are typical comments on their feelings about getting lost:

“Getting lost in the maze of streets and alleys of this town within a town is easy, and a most enjoyable process. There are, of course, a great number of tourists, but this need not detract one from the overall happy experience of wandering the streets and checking out its variety of shops and cafes…” (High satisfaction)

“Perhaps our favorite part of the old town was how it was possible to discover a new alleyway or tiny bridge with each turn. At times it was very confusing trying to find our way, but we were always rewarded with a pretty site whenever we got lost.” (High satisfaction)

Complex spaces are more likely to cause confusion in the wayfinding process, which may cause people to get lost [43]. Due to many similar crisscrossing streets, the disorderly extension of houses, and the lack of an effective navigation system, getting lost is inevitable in Lijiang Old Town. To address this issue, one suggestion is for tourists to bring a card with the Chinese name of their hotel written on it.

“It is suggested that tourists do not leave their hotel without taking their hotel card with them. Tourists can easily get lost and struggle to find anyone who speaks English to help them with directions back to their hotel.”

In the meantime, highly satisfied tourists immerse themselves in the experience of getting lost in Lijiang. They appreciate the leisurely atmosphere and unexpected discoveries of wandering around the old town. Cultural symbols are scattered in every corner of the old town (architecture, music, water, and stone roads), stimulating the visual, auditory, and tactile senses of tourists. Even when lost, tourists can still have a pleasant experience by simply wandering around. The novel experience brought by a chance encounter reduces the possible anxiety caused by getting lost. Finding one’s way after being lost is not a simple mental activity but a comprehensive activity that combines cognition and sociocultural interaction with one’s environment [44]. The navigation process of tourists in Lijiang involves the delightful interaction with the humanities and natural environment of the old town. Many tourists mentioned an innovative method, as suggested by local tour guides, to find their way in Lijiang. The following comment was a typical example of this:

“A useful tip I learnt from my driver was that one will never get lost in the city simply by remembering this golden rule. Follow the direction of the water flowing and it leads one into the city and against the flow of the water will lead one out of the city. I can testify it is true!”

Complex texture in the old town hides unexpected discoveries; tourists could get approach these new experiences as they explore lanes and streets. Getting lost provides the joy of exploration, and the diversified display of cultural elements is the key to the success of this kind of experience. “Lost” and “walk” are critical references to the managerial approach that an early morning walk is supposed to be a rewarded participation. For instance, an early morning walking tour is an essential activity for exploring the old town in a tranquil setting or organizing an adventure on its outskirts, stimulating both the senses and emotions due to the beauty of the old town.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Experiences are events that engage individuals in a personal way [45]. In the context of tourism, people understand the meaning and value of a destination uniquely. Previous research has underlined the subjective nature of tourist experience [1]. In terms of empirical studies, the research on this subjective attribute is still rather insufficient. Most studies equate positive experience with high satisfaction and draw the conclusion that a negative experience will lead to low satisfaction [46,47]. Although some researchers have pointed out that tourists can now interact with destinations through multiple channels and across the multiple stages of the journey [4], most studies ignore the inconsistency of tourism experiences. This study enriches our understanding of the complex connotations of tourism experiences by identifying the negative experiences of tourists with different satisfaction levels. The results of this study indicate that the negative experience of a destination is not exclusive to satisfied tourists, and those who are highly satisfied with the destinations also have “dissatisfied” moments. This study verified the multi-dimensional attributes of tourist experience [46]. The main negative experience themes of Lijiang Old Town include touristy aspects, commercialization, lack of authenticity, and the ease of getting lost. These themes are highly consistent with previous studies [46,48,49]. Regarding group differences in relation to negative experiences, this study draws some interesting conclusions. Studies indicate that tourists experience their destinations differently according to their motivations [50] and cultural background [51]. However, empirical research in this area remains insufficient. The results of this study show that tourists with different satisfaction levels share negative comments on their experiences, while they have significant differences in their perceptions and attitudes toward these experiences. Moreover, it can be said that, in some cases, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is a common phenomenon in the context of tourism.

The presence of vast number of tourists is the norm for most popular destinations, especially in the Chinese context. This is generally considered to cause crowding and negatively impact tourism experiences [52]. In contrast, in situations such as festivals, crowds contribute to participants’ enjoyment of the event [53]. The two groups hold diametrically opposite attitudes towards the touristy aspects of Lijiang. Tourists with low satisfaction believe that high-intensity tourism development and too many tourists destroy the atmosphere of Lijiang as a historic town, while tourists with high satisfaction believe that the presence of other tourists adds some leisure atmosphere to the old town. According to previous research results, the difference in attitudes towards touristy destinations is most likely due to differences in tourists’ motivations. Tourists with a high “people-related motivations” are more likely to enjoy being with a crowd [54].

Getting lost is considered an unpleasant experience in existing studies [43,55]. Passini [43] indicates that, in addition to unpleasant emotions, getting lost also affects an individual’s appreciation and understanding of the details of their environment. The existing research on navigation is mainly based on improving the efficiency of the navigation process and reducing people’s anxiety about getting lost [56]. Contrary to the results of these studies, this study found that being lost is not necessarily a negative experience. Many comments mentioned and complained that it is very easy to get lost while walking in Lijiang, but anxiety caused by getting lost was hardly mentioned. Tourists (especially those with high satisfaction) enjoy the novelty experience of getting lost. Tourists’ mobile strategies correspond to specific situations. When the objective is to reach a location as quickly as possible, traditional navigation strategies are effective. When the situation changes to improve tourists’ experience at the destination, keeping tourists aware of the location is the priority [57]. The exploration and perception of the environment are more important. Further research should be conducted on how to enhance the positive effects of becoming delightfully lost on tourist experience.

Regarding the themes of commercialization and a lack of authenticity, both groups expressed dissatisfaction, while the tolerance thresholds of different tourists varied significantly. The results indicate that negative experiences do not necessarily lead to low satisfaction. The differences in the perception and tolerance thresholds of tourists determine their ultimate satisfaction. This phenomenon can be explained by the employment of coping mechanisms. By employing coping mechanisms, tourists attempt to obtain their overall satisfaction despite any negative experiences [58]. When faced with a negative experience, tourists feel discomfort due to negative emotions and cognitive dissonance [59]. They will adjust their attitude or do something to reduce the discomfort [60]. Due to cultural differences, inbound tourists have a strong motivation to visit destinations representing Chinese culture, and that is why they choose to visit Lijiang. Cultural tourists have a high demand for authenticity. Since Lijiang Old Town is not as authentic as expected, tourists with low satisfaction feel extremely dissatisfied. In contrast, tourists with high satisfaction choose to have a deeper and broader experience of the old town to find the “real” old town that they expected. High-satisfaction tourists are more willing to adjust their expectations to reduce the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance. Highly involved tourists are more likely to have positive experiences, strengthening their attachment to the destination, which has a positive effect on satisfaction [61]. Moreover, tourists with high levels of satisfaction have a stronger desire to explore their destination, indicating that they have a higher level of involvement in it.

This study has several theoretical implications. First, a computer-assisted content analysis method was used to conduct the research. The research used a Leximancer deep learning algorithm to extract themes and concept maps and explore the critical factors of the negative experience of tourists with different levels of satisfaction accordingly. To some extent, it overcomes the subjectivity and endogenous problems of traditional qualitative research. Second, this study reconfirms the rich connotations of tourism experiences, and emphasizes the personal differences in tourist experiences. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is a common phenomenon regarding tourists’ attitudes toward their destinations. Third, the negative experiences of tourists with high levels of satisfaction represent a meaningful area that is worthy of exploration; however, to date, few studies have focused on this aspect of tourism research. This study also reveals the complex relationship between negative experiences and satisfaction. in other words, negative experiences do not necessary lead to low satisfaction, and the employment of coping mechanisms can explain this inconsistency.

From the perspective of practice, this study also has three implications. First, tourism destinations should recognize that the tourist experience is a complex multi-conception including all aspects of tourists’ journeys. As summarized by Kim [46], destination attributes may result in negative experiences, particularly in relation to safety, prices, quality of services, the environment, and so on. Tourist experience management should, therefore, not only focus on aspects related to core attractions. Second, the results of this study provide new ideas for improving tourist satisfaction. Early research attempted to improve tourists’ satisfaction by detecting and fixing elements that can lead to negative feelings, which has been successful in most cases [16]. The results of this study show that tourists may have completely different viewpoints on the same tourism situation. The negative feedback of tourists should be dealt with according to the specific situation. Cultural tourists prefer to experience the “real” Lijiang Old Town and expect to visit an authentic traditional Chinese old town. Therefore, they oppose the over-tourism development of the town. Tourists with leisure motivations appreciate the relaxed atmosphere provided by bars and boutiques developed for tourists. Accordingly, function zoning is optional to create different functional spaces to meet the needs of tourists with different motivations. Third, tourists’ attitudes towards getting lost provide us with a new perspective regarding the optimization of destination navigation systems. Methods to optimize the traffic of destinations, focusing on reducing the probability of getting lost, and improving the accessibility of facilities, are worth exploring. However, according to the results of this study, getting lost in Lijiang Old Town is a positive experience for many tourists, especially those with high satisfaction. These tourists enjoy wandering around the old town and appreciating its unexpected discoveries. Tourists may enjoy being delightfully lost in certain situations. Encouraging tourists to enjoy the process of getting lost, or creating scenarios in which they can become delightfully lost, may be effective ways in which to improve satisfaction.

Despite several valuable implications, there are a number of limitations to this study. First, as a form of self-learning software, the Leximancer algorithm is imperfect, and it cannot distinguish between different meanings expressed by words in the same form. The concept “lost” in this study represents at least two meanings in the comments. In most cases, “lost” means “getting lost” as mentioned above. It also appears in phrases such as “lost the originality/lost most of its charm/ lost much of its authenticity”, which has nothing to do with getting lost in a navigational sense. These two completely different meanings cannot be distinguished by the software, which may affect our results. Achieving more accurate semantic mining through algorithms is an issue worth exploring in the future. Second, through context mining, this study identifies the key themes of negative experiences in Lijiang Old Town. The differences in the perceptions and evaluations of tourists with different satisfaction levels on these negative themes are analyzed. The mechanism of how coping mechanisms effect the relationship between negative tourist experiences and satisfaction should be discussed in future research. Third, the creation of scenarios in which tourists can become delightfully lost may generate a more positive experience. However, the internal mechanisms of this phenomenon remain unclear. The value of having tourists become delightfully lost is clear, according to the results of this research, but further studies should be conducted on this topic.