Factors influencing tourists’ nightlife experience in Belgrade

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to understand the impact that the experience environment has on the nightlife experience, as well as to identify the factors from the nightlifescape that most influence the tourists’ experience in Belgrade. Additionally, this study seeks to discover whether these factors changed after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve the study’s objectives, 679 tourist reviews were collected from one of the most popular travel platforms, TripAdvisor, and analyzed using RapidMiner, the popular software for data/text mining. Findings: The perception of the physical aspects of the experience environment, the presence of other tourists and the feeling of acceptance are identified as the key factors that influence tourists’ nightlife experience. This study also found that certain factors from the social and sensory environment, such as staff, the presence of other people, the atmosphere and music, had a positive impact on the tourist experience and their intention to recommend the nightlife experience in Belgrade. Moreover, it was discovered that the COVID-19 pandemic did not provoke changes in the main factors influencing tourists’ nightlife experience. Originality/value: The perception of tourists about Belgrade during the night contributes to the growing body of tourism literature on destination image. Focusing solely on the perception of tourists about Belgrade during the night, this study adds a temporal determinant to the destination image, which can be considered as a valuable add on to the current knowledge in the field.