Tourists' Evaluation of a Romantic Themed Attraction: Expressive and Instrumental Issues

The present study uses accessible online and emic material as a window to approach the assessment of tourists' experiences at a small themed tourist attraction. The research adopts the approach of seeing experiences as an orchestrated model of interacting elements that are linked to expressive and instrumental components. The study then seeks to identify the dominant concepts and phrases used by tourists in reporting their attraction visit. Further aims include examining how tourists with different overall evaluations of their experiences and from different origins respond to the attraction. Using Leximancer analysis, the work explores the linkages among 167 tourists' reviews of the site in terms of reacting to the theme and reporting expressive and instrumental evaluations. The work confirms the value of the approach, establishes the power of the attraction's theme, and builds a pathway for experience evaluation studies linked to expressive and instrumental attributes.