COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN TOURISTS’ UNIQUE EXPERIENCES FROM LINCOLN MEMORIAL IN PRE-COVID AND POST-COVID YEARS

Abstract

The unique tourist experience is one of the main components of tourism activity. However, it is not studied in Russian and Western science. This determined the purpose of the study, that is to identify the characteristics of unique American tourists’ experiences in online reviews about the Lincoln Memorial on the travel site TripAdvisor in the pre-COVID and post-COVID periods. The methodology is based on the idea that unique tourist experiences are expressed in single words. The quantitative methods – frequency analysis, vectorization, and sentiment analysis – were used to identify single words in online reviews written I English, analyse their semantic proximity and group experiences into positive and negative. The qualitative methods – morphological, definitional analyses, semantic modelling, content-analysis, and comparative analysis were employed to identify parts of speech and the main constituents of single words meanings, categorize them, identify common and different themes in experiences, and compare them.   Analysis of the unique tourism experiences about the Lincoln Memorial shared by American tourists online showed that positive experiences prevailed over negative ones before and after the pandemic. In both periods positive experiences are explained by the importance of Abraham Lincoln’s figure as a person and president to tourists. Shared negative experiences show visitors’ negative attitudes toward tourists and the weather. Before the pandemic, recreational facilities were of great value to tourists, whereas after the pandemic, opportunity to use transportation and experience various feelings about the attraction were of significance to tourists. This shows that there was a shift in American tourists’ individual views from perception of the attraction to reflection on it.  The results obtained in the study are can be useful for geographers, culturologists, linguists, and sociologists.