A Comparative Study of International Tourists’ Experiences at Hangzhou’s Three World Heritage Sites

As a renowned tourist destination in China, Hangzhou is home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the West Lake Cultural Landscape, the Grand Canal (Hangzhou Section), and the Liangzhu Archaeological Ruins. With the continuous development of international tourism, gaining a clear understanding of how foreign visitors perceive and evaluate these heritage sites has become increasingly critical for improving destination management and boosting cultural communication. This study explores the experiences of international tourists at Hangzhou's three World Heritage Sites, drawing on English-language online reviews collected from TripAdvisor and Google Reviews. It adopts a mixed-method approach that combines Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, an improved VADER sentiment analysis method, Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), and manual content analysis. Based on around 1200 collected online reviews, this research identifies core themes, emotional responses, and potential service problems related to each of these heritage sites. The results show that international visitors hold generally positive attitudes toward all three heritage sites, but their experiences vary in line with the distinct characteristics of each heritage type. West Lake is most commonly associated with natural scenery and cultural landscapes, yet overcrowding remains a key issue that drags down visitor satisfaction. The Grand Canal is strongly linked to historical culture and cruise experiences, though excessive commercialization may erode its cultural authenticity. Liangzhu is primarily recognized for its museum architecture and archaeological value, but insufficient multilingual support and interpretation services hinder international visitors from grasping its full cultural significance. Overall, this study highlights how heritage type shapes international tourists' perceptions and identifies site-specific management priorities for each site. The findings indicate that effective development of heritage tourism requires not only the preservation of cultural resources, but also targeted improvements to visitor management, multilingual services, and cultural interpretation. This research also illustrates the value of text mining methods for analyzing international tourist experiences and informing management decisions at heritage destinations.