Wildlife Tourism Resources Development: A Case Study of Beijing Wildlife Park
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Abstract
In this era of mass tourism, and to produce social and economic benefits, the positive and negative aspects of animal tourism resources need to be explored. Following the principles of protecting the environment, public relations methods can maximise the potential of existing animal tourism resources from the perspective of tourists, working with official authorities to reinforce the scientific means of animal protection, help promote the scientific knowledge of environmental protection, and strengthen animal conservation education. This study investigates the development of wildlife tourism resources at the Beijing Wildlife Park (BWP), and aims to determine opportunities of sustainable development of the BWP. Utilising netnography to extract meaning from conversations on the internet, this study used qualitative methods to gather data from the online comments on two Chinese travel applications (apps) and conduct a thematic analysis to identify the main themes in the data. From this netnographic study, involving a thematic analysis of online comments, seven themes were identified. These were: “visitor experience,” “animal condition,” “facilities,” “management,” “environment,” “service,” and “other.” The seven themes, including positive and negative comments of BWP, showed the main attributes of BWP from different perspectives. Managers of BWP may make full use of the key attributes of the positive comments to formulate feasible and effective management plans or advertisements. The key attributes of negative comments may help address barriers to achieving a sustainable development of BWP.