Exploring Tourists’ Behavioral Patterns in Bali’s Top-Rated Destinations: Perception and Mobility

The tourism sector plays a crucial role in the global economy, encompassing both physical infrastructure and cultural engagement. Indonesia has a wide range of attractions and has experienced remarkable growth, with Bali as a notable example of this. With the rapid advancements in technology, travelers now have the freedom to explore independently, while online travel agencies (OTAs) serve as important resources. Reviews from tourists significantly impact the service quality and perception of destinations, and text mining is a valuable tool for extracting insights from unstructured review data. This research integrates multiclass text classification and a network analysis to uncover tourists’ behavioral patterns through their perceptions and movement. This study innovates beyond conventional sentiment and cognitive image analysis to the tourists’ perceptions of cognitive dimensions and explores the sentiment correlation between different cognitive dimensions. We find that destinations generally receive positive feedback, with 80.36% positive reviews, with natural attractions being the most positive aspect while infrastructure is the least positive aspect. We highlight that qualitative experiences do not always align with quantitative cost-effectiveness evaluations. Through a network analysis, we identify patterns in tourist mobility, highlighting three clusters of attractions that cater to diverse preferences. This research underscores the need for tourism destinations to strategically adapt to tourists’ varied expectations, enhancing their appeal and aligning their services with preferences to elevate destination competitiveness and increase tourist satisfaction.