Analysis of Tourism Experience in Haizhu National Wetland Park Based on Web Text

Abstract

Most studies on wetland parks focus on resource surveys and evaluations, park planning and design, and the construction of hardware facilities. Only a few studies have covered tourism experiences. With the rapid development of online media, online text data have become a prominent research direction for tourism experiences. Based on the web text analysis method and importance-performance analysis, Rost Content Mining 6 software was used. This served to analyze word frequency, semantic web analysis, and sentiment analysis, and to explain the web text about Haizhu National Wetland Park. It also helped to find problems experienced by tourists and their underlying reasons and proposed improvement strategies. The results showed that the overall quality of the tourism experience in Haizhu National Wetland Park was relatively high. However, some of the negative comments mainly focused on the lack of humanistic landscape construction, lagging infrastructure, and poor management services. By combining research results, improvement strategies were proposed that addressed infrastructure, management services, scenic spot publicity, ecological environmental protection, and so on. These could help to enhance tourism experiences.

1. Introduction

Since the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Guiding Opinions on Establishing a System of Natural Protected Area with National Parks as the Main Body” in 2019 [1], the construction of natural protected areas has received great attention. China established the first batch of national parks last year, signaling the construction of a natural protected area system—with national parks as its main body, nature reserves as its foundation, and various natural parks as supplements—has entered a new stage. The construction of a reasonable and scientific natural protected area is an important issue, as is innovating their construction and development mechanisms [2].

The relationship between tourism and natural protected areas has been in a dynamic development process for a long time. Carrying out tourism activities in natural protected areas is an important manifestation of realizing the value of ecosystem services. It promotes the healthy development of human physical, psychological, spiritual, and social relations [3,4]. From the perspective of China’s policy evolution and the functional value of natural protected areas, recreational services are important [5]. With the continuous development of tourism activities in natural protected areas, requirements for positive tourism experiences have gradually increased [6]. Managers of natural protected areas needs to do more than consider the resource characteristics and current conditions of the region; managers must also measure the positive and negative experiences of tourists in those areas and optimize their management and development methods according to tourists’ needs [7].

There have been studies focusing on the sustainable development of natural protected areas, ecotourism evaluation of natural protected areas, community participation of natural protected areas, and so on. However, the research objects were mostly concentrated on nature reserves and forest parks. There have been few related studies on national parks and natural parks. In recent years, with China’s emphasis on wetland protection and utilization, China passed the “Wetland Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China” on 24 December 2021. Moreover, the number of national wetland parks in China has reached 899 as of 8 January 2022. Wetland parks are an important part of natural parks, and serve important functions. These involve conserving natural resources, protecting biodiversity, and providing people with high quality ecological products [1]. In addition, wetland parks, as the “kidneys of the city,” are important places for realizing the harmonious coexistence of human and nature. Therefore, we turned our research focus to wetland parks.

Current wetland park research has mainly focused on wetland park resource surveys and evaluation [8,9,10,11,12]. It has also focused on planning, design [13], and hardware facility construction [14]. However, research on tourism management, and especially on tourism experience, is still scarce. Simultaneously, the commonly used research methods largely consist of questionnaire surveys and interview methods [15,16].

In the era of the network economy, tourism experience is often communicated and disseminated. This takes the form of travel notes, reviews, strategies, and other media on the internet [17,18,19]. Recently, scholars have begun to make full use of social media data and emerging internet text analysis methods to conduct research on the perception value and quality of tourism experiences [20] as well as their elements, structure, and influencing factors.

Based on this background and on the theory of tourism experience, we took web text as a blueprint and used web text analysis to analyze the elements of the tourism experience at Guangzhou Haizhu National Wetland Park (Haizhu Wetland), mainly to solve the following three problems and provide references for the development of ecological tourism in domestic wetland parks and natural protected areas:

(1)

The evaluation index elements of wetland tourism experience in web text;

(2)

The emotional tendencies of tourists as they relate to the tourist experience elements of wetland parks;

(3)

The influencing factors of the tourism experience elements of wetland parks, based on IPA, and corresponding strategies and suggestions that could be put forward to promote the sustainable development of Haizhu Wetland.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Wetland Parks

The “Guiding Opinions on Establishing a System of Natural Protected Area with National Parks as the Main Body” proposed the following: “According to the natural attributes, ecological values and management objectives of protected areas, sorting, adjusting and classifying, and gradually forming a classification system of natural protected areas with national parks as the main body, nature reserves as the main body, and various natural parks as supplements.” [1] Wetland parks are an important type of natural park and play ecological [21], ornamental, cultural, and scientific roles [10], with the functions of public education, tourism, and leisure [16]. In addition, as the “kidneys of the city,” wetland parks are a place to achieve harmonious coexistence between human and nature, and have gradually become preferred tourist destinations [22].

However, with the rapid development of tourism, how to ensure sustainable development of wetland parks has become a hot-button issue [23]. As an important part of these parks’ development, tourists’ perceptions and attitudes could truly reflect the construction results of wetland parks. Evaluation of tourism experiences is an important measure that could be used to promote the management and sustainable development of wetland parks [16,24]. This could help to meet tourists’ needs and expectations for their tourism experience [25], serve society, and provide scientific research, education, experience, recreation, and other public services. It could also help to comprehensively promote the construction of natural protected areas. Therefore, we studied the tourism experience of wetland parks.

2.2. Tourism Experience

Tourism experience has always been an important topic in tourism research. It is the essence of tourism [26], and was investigated as early as the 1960s [27]. Numerous studies have described and defined the concept of tourism experience, with differing views [28,29]. Tourism experience has been defined as the subjective psychological state experienced by tourists in tourism services [30]. This is formed by tourists through a variety of activities. It is the result of mutual communication and interaction. This is among the factors that contribute to tourists’ personal perception, image of purpose, and products consumed [31,32] during their travels. Tung et al. [33] defined tourism experience as “the subjective evaluation and experience of an individual before, during, and after a trip to events related to their tourism activities, including emotion, cognition, and behavior.” Furthermore, tourism experience is temporally and spatially constrained and responds to external or staged visibility [34]. Although scholars have had different definitions of tourism experience, they have shared the notion that tourism experience reflects the inner and subjective feelings of tourists [34]. Many scholars have proved the importance of tourism experience [35]; it is a predictor of tourist satisfaction and loyalty [36] and affects tourists’ revisit recommendations and tourism behavior. Therefore, this research aimed to examine the tourism experience, to explore the factors that affect tourists’ perception of it, and to propose countermeasures and suggestions to improve the revisit recommendation rate and tourism experience perception of tourists.

Throughout the development of the domestic and foreign tourism experience, scholars have combined the characteristics of different disciplines to conduct multi-level and multi-faceted research on the tourism experience from different perspectives. Regarding tourism experience perception, Xiao and Du [37] used the data texts of highly influential review websites in China to construct six evaluation factors of urban park satisfaction. These included landscape quality, infrastructure, recreational environment, recreational projects, service quality, and convenience. They combined a questionnaire survey to explore the correlation between the satisfaction evaluation factors of Guangzhou’s city park and overall satisfaction, and tourists’ willingness to revisit. Based on online tourism reviews, Sun et al. [38] classified the evaluation factors affecting the effective management of wetlands into three categories: ecotourism experience, natural resources, and cultural resources through tourist satisfaction evaluation and sentiment analysis methods. Wei and Wang [39] carried out an evaluation study on the tourist experience value of tourists based on the analytic hierarchy process, including service, characteristics, education, ecology, trust, care, and cost. From the perspective of tourists’ tourism experience, Wang et al. [40] evaluated tourist satisfaction from the four index dimensions of emotional experience, knowledge experience, time experience, and concept conversion. Based on tourists’ values, Adongo et al. [41] explored their perspectives from two aspects: whether the tourism industry should improve the locals’ well-being, and (other) whether it should provide a high-quality tourism experience and protect the environment. Suo et al. [42] studied the image perception of Kaifeng tourist destinations from the perspective of tourism experience. This was conducted through inverse distance weight interpolation, kernel density analysis, and content analysis methods. These were based on public comment review data. Cui et al. [43] used the Rost Content Mining software and network text analysis method. This was used to analyze the satisfaction, spatial distribution, activity content, service facilities, and emotional tendencies. The study focused on public experience activities in Giant Panda National Park, based on measurements of tourism experience perception. Public experience perception is an important basis for building a public experience function.

Regarding research on the elements of tourism experience, some scholars have used current emerging network text analysis methods at home and abroad to study the content and structure of the experience elements of tourist destinations. Jing et al. [44] used the Locomotive collector as data on Ctrip’s visitor reviews. They used Ucinet’s network density, vector centrality, and cohesive subgroup analysis functions to deeply explore the basic structure of the tourism experience elements of Xixi Wetland Park. Using importance-performance analysis (IPA), they analyzed the importance and manifestation of each experience element. Cheng et al. [45] explored the motivational driving factors of travel video blog audiences’ word-of-mouth—both the cognitive and emotional aspects. They found that information source credibility was the only cognitive factor that significantly affected tourists’ behavior in participating in the tourism experience. They also found no direct influence relating to the credibility of the information source on travel intention. Based on interview data and tourist travel notes, Ma [26] used Disney theme parks as an example. They used grounded theory, involving open, spindle, and selective coding in three decoding stages. They discussed the emotional touchpoints and quality of the tourism experience in detail. From the overall psychological perspectives, the three dimensions (attraction, interest, and enjoyment) of the tourism experience quality were identified. To sum up, web texts can be used to promote the development of tourism experience perception and element research, and social media will continue to provide dynamic support for tourism experience research [46]. In addition, the evaluation indicators of tourism experience—constructed from the aspects of landscape resources, management services, knowledge education, tourism costs, and traffic conditions—were already very mature. However, in terms of characteristic experience, most studies started from activities, products, and facilities [47], or took historical and cultural characteristics as the evaluation dimension alone. Other authors rarely did research on the characteristics of landscape resources. Therefore, this paper focused on the relationship between humans and nature, and took the cultural landscape, the unique gully-semi-natural fruit forest mosaic wetland, and crowded perception as new statistical indicators of tourism experience.

2.3. Evaluation of the Tourism Experience in Wetland Park

Regarding the tourism experience evaluation, Chen [48] analyzed the satisfaction of urban wetland park visitors using questionnaire surveys and onsite interviews. They determined that the tourism experience elements of urban wetland parks should include five aspects: service, landscape, activity, facility, and emotional experience. Using three wetland parks in Zhejiang Province as the research object, Wang [49] divided the tourism experience into three dimensions: aesthetic, emotional, and behavioral experience. They discussed the causal relationship between the service quality of wetland parks, tourism experience, and revisiting willingness. Studies have shown that tourism experience plays an intermediary role between service quality and revisiting willingness. Service quality factors only affect post-travel behavior intentions through aesthetic and action experience. Sun et al. [38] used the IPA to determine the tourist satisfaction degree of wetland ecotourism in the Zhalong National Nature Reserve. They did this by analyzing online tourism reviews. In addition, Wang et al. [50] found that the entertainment value of wetland ecosystems was closely related to the environmental protection and development of wetland parks. They applied the structural equation model to identify the degree of tourist satisfaction from seven aspects: material quality, social quality, management quality, entertainment expectations, perceived value, tourist satisfaction, and auxiliary functions.

Research has also been conducted on the management measures of the tourism experience by exploring the interaction between the tourism experience and the behavioral relationships in wetland parks. Jiang [51] explored the relationships between tourists’ experience, involvement, and environmental responsibility behavior. This was in the Nansha Wetland Scenic Spot. They did this by constructing a measurement scale of tourism experience and tourist involvement and combining it with expert interviews. Xu et al. [52] used a questionnaire survey to analyze the tourism experience in Nansha Wetland Park in China by constructing a model that linked the tourists’ importance and interest to their participation, symbolic value, risk probability, consequences to their experience, and environmental responsibility behaviors. The contribution, management enlightenment, and future research directions of wetland parks were discussed. Lee et al. [53] used the questionnaire survey method, along with the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory and the Nudge theory, to explore the impact of the tourism experience on the pro-environmental behavior of the Upo Wetland Ecotourism Area in South Korea.

In the above studies, some scholars applied social media data and online text analysis to the study of tourism experience. However, most studies on the tourism experience of wetland parks have used traditional questionnaire surveys and interview methods. In the past year, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, new online evaluation data could be of help in efforts to obtain and understand many tourists’ genuine tourism experience perceptions. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to apply the web text analysis method to the tourism experience analysis of China’s National Wetland Park. We aimed to gain a better insight into tourists’ experiences and perceptions, and also to propose countermeasures that could contribute to the sustainable development of tourism in the future. Concurrently, most studies have applied IPA to the analysis of the tourism experience. The importance of the tourism experience elements and divisions of tourist satisfaction can be used to help us fully understand the current challenges and enable us to propose better targeted management countermeasures. Therefore, this study used IPA as the research method.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Overview of the Case

Haizhu Wetland is in the central urban area of Guangzhou, covering an area of 1100 ha. It is known as the “Southern Kidney” and “Green Heart” in Guangzhou. As the only national key construction wetland in Guangdong Province, it plays an extremely important role in regulating the climate. It also purifies the air and regulates water bodies. It thus improves the ecological environment and promotes biodiversity.

3.2. Data Collection

We collected travel reviews about Haizhu National Wetland Park from (www.ctrip.com, Dianping.com, and www.mafengwo.cn, accessed on 20 March 2021) from 1 January 2018 to 1 March 2021. A total of 2473 reviews were obtained. After manually screening and removing the repetitive, irrelevant, promotional, and other invalid comments, we had 2181 valid comments.

3.3. Research Methods

3.3.1. Web Text Analysis Method

We used the Rost Content Mining 6 software, developed by Shenyang of Wuhan University, to conduct objective, systematic, and quantitative analyses. Thereafter, we obtained the core elements that effectively reflected the tourism experience. The elements of tourism experience that are often mentioned in the relevant literature were selected. The Haizhu Wetland tourism experience element category list was established. Coding was based on the understanding of research, content, methods, and tourism experience theory. The text coders performed step-by-step coding on the network, word by word. When the degree coefficient and the classification consistency index were greater than 0.9, an in-depth analysis of the coding results was performed.

3.3.2. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)

IPA is an important performance analysis method. It divides the four-quadrant matrix. This is based on the importance of the evaluation indicators and the level of performance satisfaction [54]. It considers the relative importance of tourism experience elements and the satisfaction of tourists with their performance. A targeted strategy was proposed for each tourism experience element of the Haizhu Wetland [55,56].

4. Results

4.1. Word Frequency and High-Frequency Words

The word frequency reflected the content and degree of tourists’ attention to the Haizhu Wetland. The top 200 high-frequency words that appeared were extracted through the “word segmentation” and “word frequency statistics” functions of Rost CM 6. These were divided into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs according to their characteristics. Among them, nouns accounted for the highest proportion (59.5%). This mainly represented natural scenery, cultural scenery, ecological environment, tourist objects, transportation and basic wading in wetland parks. Adjectives and verbs accounted for 16% and 20%, respectively. Adjectives represented the tourists’ travel experience perception. Verbs represented the tourists’ main types of activities. Adverbs, such as “after,” “next time,” “usually,” and “before,” represented their visit frequency, time, and revisiting chance.

Through the high-frequency vocabulary list (

Table 1. High-frequency vocabulary of Haizhu Wetland web text analysis.

Ranking	High-Frequency Words	Frequency	Ranking	High-Frequency Words	Frequency	Ranking	High- Frequency Words	Frequency
1	park	2149	18	time	253	35	area	166
2	wetland	1683	19	child	248	36	free	165
3	place	725	20	beautiful	248	37	walk around	165
4	ticket	642	21	subway	245	38	comfortable	164
5	scenic spot	555	22	hour	243	39	gate	163
6	Guangzhou	510	23	plant	236	40	open	161
7	environment	511	24	view	228	41	tourist	144
8	nice	498	25	landscape	227	42	nearby	144
9	Haizhu Lake	463	26	weekend	223	43	Datang	141
10	suit	408	27	sea of flowers	220	44	Haizhu District	137
11	air	386	28	weather	219	45	like	137
12	north gate	358	29	play	211	46	reserve	136
13	convenient	331	30	recommend	208	47	deserve	135
14	photograph	321	31	attractions	200	48	parking	134
15	bus	321	32	car park	191	49	rape blossoms	133
16	traffic	320	33	fresh	186	50	charge	133
17	south gate	262	34	the second stage	182

Note: Due to limited space, only the top 50 high-frequency words were listed.

), we had a preliminary understanding of tourists’ concerns about the Haizhu Wetland. These were mainly summarized as tourism resources, comprehensive perception, location conditions, management services, and infrastructure. Comprehensive perception (38.4%) that attracted the most attention. Through this high-frequency vocabulary, we determined that tourists were mainly concerned about tourism costs. This vocabulary included “ticket,” “worth a visit,” “child,” “family,” “time,” and “comfortable.” Costs included the time and money spent in visiting the wetland park, and were followed by parent-child experience, climate perception, crowded perception, and other aspects. The proportion of tourist landscapes was second. It was preceded by their comprehensive perception. Positive words describing the tourist landscapes were “beautiful,” “fresh,” “ecological,” “good-looking,” and “Lingnan.” They were mostly concentrated in the top 100. This indicated that the tourists had a strong understanding of the natural and cultural landscapes in the park. The ecological environment was a greater concern. The satisfaction with the park’s ecological environment and landscape resources was relatively high. The location conditions and infrastructure accounted for 10.06% and 6.51%, respectively. Tourist attention was mainly focused on the convenience of the internal transportation. It was also concentrated on the rationality of the public service facilities’ layout. These included the sanitation facilities, rest facilities, and parking lots. In addition, the type of activity and tourists’ main activity forms were determined based on the high-frequency vocabulary. These included “walking” and “photographing.” Based upon the high-frequency vocabulary, the sanitary conditions in the park were well received by more tourists. These included it being “clean” and having “personnel” who reflected management services. The staff’s service attitude and service skills were important elements that affected the tourism experience.

4.2. Sentiment Analysis

The collected comment data contained the tourists’ comprehensive scores on scenic spots. The comments with scores “1” and “2” were classified as negative emotions. The ratings “4” and “5” were classified as positive emotions [55]. According to the statistics, positive emotions accounted for 87.35%. This indicated that most tourists had a higher overall appreciation of the park. However, 3.85% of the tourists still had negative attitudes.

4.3. Semantic Network Analysis

To further understand the tourism experience elements that affected the tourists’ positive and negative reviews, positive semantic network analysis was performed. This was conducted by extracting the reviews with scores of “4” and “5.” The reviews with scores of “1” and “2” were analyzed for a negative semantic network to generate negative semantic network diagrams. Nodes represented elements of high-frequency tourism experience. The density of the connections between the elements represented the frequency of the co-occurrence of the elements [57]. As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, a beautiful ecological environment, fresh air quality, rich scenery, reasonable ticket prices, and convenient external transportation were all important factors. These improved the satisfaction of the tourism experience. The factors leading to negative reviews were scattered. These were mainly focused on internal transportation facilities, management services, infrastructure, poor ticket prices, a lack of shade, and irregular construction in the park.

4.4. Analysis of the Composition of the Tourism Experience Elements

The secondary categories of tourism experience elements were numbered. The letters A–E were used to assign values to the web text. They meant, respectively: very good—5 points, relatively good—4 points, neutral—3 points, relatively poor—2 points, and very poor—1 point. Finally, the reliability of the coding results was evaluated. The number of consistent codes was 2132, the classification consistency index was 0.978, and the coding reliability coefficient was 0.946. These were both greater than 0.9. This established that the coding results were good. The coding results for the tourism experience elements are shown in

Table 2. Haizhu Wetland Tourism Experience Element System.

Main Category	Number	Subcategory	Connotation	Corresponding Review Text Example	Frequency	Points
Tourism Landscape	1	Natural landscape	Natural or artificial flora and fauna and wetland landscape.	many varieties of aquatic plants, diverse wetland landscapes, beautiful scenery, etc.	1197	5205
	2	Cultural landscape	A tourist attraction with a certain historical and cultural nature.	archway, small creek promenade, trestle bridge, winding corridor, bird watching platform, love lotus pavilion, etc.	157	658
	3	Natural ecological environment	The overall ecological environment, including air quality, water quality, etc.	Good environment, fresh air, urban green lungs, many negative ions, etc.	782	3581
	4	Landscape uniqueness	Landscape with characteristics of Lingnan culture, water village culture, fruit-based agricultural culture, and rich bird resources.	The unique urban lakes and river wetlands in the Pearl River Delta, the fragrance of wild fruits, crisscrossing rivers, bird paradise, etc.	393	1614
Infrastructure	5	Location conditions	Geographical accessibility.	Subway stations, buses, convenient transportation, etc.	398	1285
	6	Internal traffic	Transportation available inside.	Cruises, rental bicycles, battery cars, shared bicycles, etc.	218	704
	7	Sign system	The rationality and standardization of the number, form, and content of the identification system.	The scenic spot instructions are not very clear, signs, etc.	68	207
	8	Public service facility	Infrastructure and ancillary facilities provided according to the functional needs of tourists for rest and entertainment.	Parking lots, toilets, trash cans, kiosks, entertainment facilities, etc.	419	1041
Management Service	9	Management service	Manager’s service attitude and work skills; environmental sanitation status; completeness of publicity materials.	The management is not perfect, the staff takes care of it, the ticket is picked up quickly, and it is clean and hygienic, etc.	250	874
	10	Popular science education	The park conducts popular science education through popular science signs, popular science facilities, popular science activities, public accounts, etc.	Combination of play and education, suitable for bringing children to popular science, you can learn a lot of fruits, etc.	59	258
	11	Planning and layout	Road planning, spatial layout, etc.	Route planning, reasonable planning, etc.	110	388
Tourist Experience	12	Travel cost	Ticket cost and overall travel experience perception.	Good value for money, worth a visit, overall good, part of the space cannot be visited, etc.	756	2766
	13	Parent-child experience	Interactive experience between parents and children.	Good place for parent–child travel, children also like to play, etc.	324	1365
	14	Escape experience	Tourists realize their perception of escape and pursuit of unity.	Comfortable, laid-back, good place for leisure, etc.	454	2021
	15	Activity experience	Tourists’ perception of themed activities.	Dragon Boat Race, Eco Marathon, Nature School, World Wetland Day, Bird Love Week, etc.	47	183
	16	Crowded perception	Tourists’ Psychological Perception of Environmental Capacity.	There are many tourists, not many people, many people and many cars, clean, etc.	505	1668

.

4.5. IPA of Tourism Experience Elements

Based on the coding results, the IPA obtained the importance and performance of the park tourism experience elements (Figure 3). The x-axis represented importance, and the y-axis represented performance. The first quadrant was the continued maintenance area. This referred to the tourism experience elements to which tourists attached great importance and with which they were satisfied. The second quadrant was the supply transition area. This referred to the tourism experience elements that tourists found unimportant. However, they were satisfied with them. The third quadrant was the gradual improvement area. This referred to the tourism experience elements that tourists found unimportant and with which they were unsatisfied. The fourth quadrant was the key improvement area. This referred to the tourism experience elements to which tourists attached great importance but with which they were unsatisfied. The results showed that the elements in the continued maintenance area included the natural landscape, natural ecological environment, landscape uniqueness, and escape experience. This indicated that such elements were fully affirmed by tourists. The elements located in the supply transition area were cultural landscape, popular science education, parent–child experience, and activity experience. This indicated that the park attached great importance to the construction and development of such elements. However, it did not attract the tourists’ attention. The follow-up should strengthen the publicity work. The elements in the gradual improvement area included the internal traffic, sign systems, management services, and planning and layout. The elements located in the key improvement area included location conditions, public service facilities, travel costs, and crowded perception. This indicated that these two types of elements have become the factors affecting the quality of the park’s tourism experience.

4.5.1. Tourism Landscape of Wetland Park

The tourism landscape includes natural landscape, cultural attractions, the natural ecological environment, and landscape uniqueness. The natural landscape, including flora, fauna, and wetland landscapes, was the main part of the Haizhu Wetland. The analysis results showed that the vocabulary of the natural landscape was ranked first. The corresponding descriptions were “beautiful scenery,” “clear lake,” and “rappe flower” (Table 2). The phrases “exactly open” and “a wide variety of plants” indicated that tourists had a high overall satisfaction with the natural landscape in the park. Air quality, wetland water quality, and overall environmental satisfaction were complimented as well. In the tourism landscape, the frequency of mentioning the cultural landscape was low. The lack of cultural landscape resources in the park was attributed to the imperfect human resource supporting facilities.

4.5.2. Infrastructure of Wetland Park

According to the IPA results, the overall infrastructure of the Haizhu wetland still needs to be improved. There were comments to that effect, for instance, “there is no obvious sign on the road,” “instructions are not very clear,” and so on. These reflected that tourists had a poor overall experience with the sign system. This may be attributed to the mismatch between the sign content and location, unclear instructions, and having fewer signs. In addition, 20% of tourists thought that there were some problems with the park. These included fewer tourist cars, unreasonable cruise prices and opening hours, and a lack of shared bicycles and other transportation tools. Therefore, fewer tourists experienced internal transportation, and the overall satisfaction was poor.

With the continuous expansion of transportation routes in recent years, 45% of the tourists thought that the park had high accessibility. However, 29% of the tourists still thought that the traffic was inconvenient. Public service facilities were also a key element that affected tourists’ experiences, and 62% of the tourists expressed dissatisfaction with that aspect of their experience. Among them, most tourists reported that the parking lot in the park was far away, and there were few parking spaces. This affected their overall tourism experience. Therefore, challenges associated with parking represent a major. Most tourists reported that “there is only one canteen and there is no place to eat,” “it takes a long time to find trash cans and toilets,” “the trash cans and stools for resting purposes are also too few.” This indicated that the catering service facilities, rest facilities, and sanitation service facilities were not well equipped. Nearly 90% of the tourists reported that the sunlight was too strong. This reflected the lack of shade facilities. Haizhu Wetland did not provide tourists with paper maps, travel manuals, or other promotional materials. This caused inconveniences.

4.5.3. Management Service of Wetland Park

Management services include three elements: science education, planning and layout. The tourists generally reported that the park “can help children learn about a lot of fruits,” “suitable for letting children obtain popular scientific knowledge,” and “the science popularization commentary of the wetland column is good.” However, tourists paid little attention to popular science education. According to the investigation results, the interpretive facilities in the park were relatively complete. The lack of hardware facilities was not the reason for their low attention. However, the popular science and natural education activities need to be enriched.

Management service tourism experience satisfaction is closely related to the service personnel’s attitudes. The low satisfaction with this element was mainly due to two aspects: first, some staff had poor service attitudes and failed to provide tourists with warm and convenient guidance services. Second, the ticket purchase and collection process in the park was not convenient. The ticket inspection method should be improved. In general, the service level of the park still needs to be improved. Some tourists reported that there were many mosquitoes, and sanitary conditions needed to be improved. This indicated that sanitation management needs to be strengthened. In addition, “reasonable planning,” “good scenery layout,” and so on were all high-frequency characteristic vocabulary words in the evaluation of the tourism experience of the planning layout. The connectivity of the first and second stages was well received by some tourists. However, there were also a small number of tourists who reported that the routes in the park needed to be optimized. Parts of the space layout and landscape layout were not well planned.

4.5.4. Tourist Experience of Wetland Park

Tourist experience includes travel cost, escape experience, parent–child experience, activity experience, and the crowded perception [57]. As many as 99% of the visitors thought that Haizhu Wetland was a good place for leisure and relaxation. Tourists generally had a comfortable and relaxing escape experience. They had a high degree of satisfaction with the tourism experience. However, travel costs and the crowded perception were neither valued by tourists nor highly satisfactory.

As many as 68% of tourists thought that the Haizhu Wetland was “worth a visit” and “good value for money.” The higher ticket prices for catering services, tickets, and internal transportation led to poor tourism experiences for some tourists. There was a general convergence (as well as differences) in the tourists’ consumption demand. Tourist tourism experience was negatively correlated with the degree of congestion in the space [58,59]. In the crowded perception, half of the evaluations indicated that the park was comfortable and that the crowded perception experience was poor. Since the Haizhu Wetland has begun booking tickets at different times, the orderly flow restriction provides tourists with good travel experiences. The main reasons affecting the perception of crowded visitors in the park were the number of public service facilities and management methods. Poor perceptions were mainly concentrated during holidays.

Tourists spoke highly of the parent–child experience of the Haizhu Wetland. However, they paid less attention to it. A very small number of tourists reported that “although there are more beautiful and fun places, older parents cannot go on for too long” and “children feel bored.” Combined with the analysis of other factors, the main reason for the negative evaluation was the lack of entertainment and recreational facilities. In addition, tourists paid less attention to the activities in the park. They mainly focused on the thematic activities. This indicated that tourists were less aware of the natural education and public participation activities during their experience.

5. Discussion

Haizhu Wetland is composed of urban inner lake wetland, river wetland, and gully-semi-natural fruit forest mosaic composite wetland. It has the typical Lingnan water town culture and agricultural features of fruit forests and fish ponds. At the same time, it is the largest wetland park in the center of Guangzhou, a megacity in China. Haizhu Wetland is greatly affected by human activities in the city, which can typically reflect wetland conservation and utilization. Therefore, the theoretical value of this research lay in its examination of the relationship between human and nature, focusing on the cultural landscape, unique gully-semi-natural fruit forest mosaic wetland, and crowded perception as new statistical indicators of tourism experience. This study also explored how to protect and utilize wetland resources, enhance people’s tourism experience and realize the sustainable development of wetland parks under the rapid development of urbanization, which could provide reference for other rapidly urbanizing cities in China, especially megacities located in river basins with rich wetland resources. This study will thus have practical significance for the management of wetland parks. Based on the discussion of the tourism experience in Haizhu Wetland, the planning site highlighted the following possible suggestions for wetland management:

5.1. Improve Infrastructure Construction and Management Service Levels

To solve the problem of “difficult parking,” the park should consider the number of tourists in the off-peak and peak seasons. They should also rationally plan parking lots and add parking spaces to reduce the tourists’ waiting time in queues. Furthermore, they should effectively reduce the crowded perception. In response to the needs for catering, rest, and shade, the corresponding infrastructure should be added. In the construction of the facilities, the characteristics and psychological and physical needs of different age groups should be comprehensively considered. For example, for young people who are curious, active, and eager to explore, facilities for popular science education transfer should be increased. They should also have more interesting experiences and enough space for entertainment activities. Given the characteristics of slower-paced leisure for the elderly, the number and layout of leisure facilities should be reasonably set up.

To address the problem of insufficient transport within the park, the park should comprehensively consider the traffic demand. They should increase the frequency of tour buses and boats. Simultaneously, the use of shared bicycles could be opened during periods of low traffic. This would serve to alleviate the problem of tourists’ walking pressure.

A good service attitude is an important factor in improving tourists’ satisfaction with their tourism experience. Haizhu Wetland should strengthen the implementation of the service management system. They should also use reward and punishment mechanisms, conduct regular professional training and assessment, effectively rectify the service level of their staff, improve their tourism service awareness, create a good tourist atmosphere, and improve environmental sanitation management methods. This would serve to ensure that tourists have a good and comfortable recreational environment. In addition, the park’s layout should be gradually improved. The landscaping design should be optimized, and second-phase construction of the landscape and facilities should be strengthened. This could be achieved by adding characteristic trees, landscape trees, natural experience facilities, and so on.

5.2. Enhance the Publicity of Scenic Activities and Promote Public Participation

Haizhu Wetland established the Haizhu Wetland Nature School in 2015, forming the unique Haizhu Model of natural education. However, the public’s awareness of the Haizhu Wetland Natural Education activities remained low. The publicity and promotion of various activities should be strengthened through internet media. The activities include science education, parent–child experiences, and traditional folklore activities in the park. The media includes the Haizhu Wetland WeChat public and official accounts. This could help to attract more tourists to participate in special activities, natural education, and parent–child experiences.

5.3. Continue to Protect the Ecological Environment and Maintain the Image of the City’s Green Heart

As the “Southern Lung” of Guangzhou and the core of Haizhu Eco-city, Haizhu Wetland has been closed each Monday for ecological restoration. This has occurred since its opening. The ecological environment’s quality has steadily improved. The fine particulate matter of the park was approximately 20% lower than that of the city. The number of bird species increased from 72 to 180. This indicated an improved ecological environment. Therefore, the park should continue to promote the construction of ecological protection, following the principles of adapting the measures to local conditions and adhering to protection-oriented and moderate development methods for tourism. The park could actively promote natural education courses and improve popular science education and other supporting facilities. This, in turn, would serve to raise the public’s awareness of ecological protections and guide tourists to participate in the action of maintaining the “green heart.” Thus, tourists could fully implement the ecological civilization concept that is “green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains.”

6. Conclusions

This study constructed the tourism experience system structure of Haizhu Wetland through web texts and tourism experience-related documents. This was combined with the IPA analysis method to summarize the characteristics of the Haizhu Wetland tourism experience. This served to provide constructive planning for the future sustainable development of Haizhu Wetland, which will be of great significance to tourism experience research on wetland parks in different countries.

This study used web text to understand tourists’ tourism experiences, emotional attraction, and behavior. This has also been proposed in previous studies. These studies used social media to understand people’s travel hotspots, media-type activities, and other travel possibilities via their behavior and emotions [60,61,62]. In addition, COVID-19 remains a factor, and some activities are suspended. Owing to the safety considerations of the pandemic’s prevention and control, the scenic spot adopted flow restriction measures and restrictions on crowded spaces. This was done to reduce the number of tourists and the enthusiasm of accepting questionnaires. Therefore, web texts helped to reduce physical contact. To understand the tourists’ real experiences, data were obtained 2018–2021, a wide time span. It was, therefore, possible to fully understand the exploration of tourists’ tourism experience. However, the web text did not involve basic demographic information such as age and gender. In the future, it will be possible to combine exploration, to examine tourists’ experiences with different characteristics. Using uploaded pictures could further enhance the research value.