Keywords

CACTUS

CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ

CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics

2247-3297

ASE Publishing House

Bucharest, Romania

cactus-2026-18

Research Article

Z30 L83 M31 C83

Tourists' perceptions of smart tourism services in a Chinese theme park: an ipa-based study of ningbo fangte oriental dawn

Bao

Hongfei

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2569-3902

baohongfei@naver.com

College of Science & Technology Ningbo University

31 5 2026

8 1 59 72 2942026 2652026 2652026

2026

The Author(s)

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

<p>Smart tourism has become an important means of enhancing the competitiveness and service quality of theme parks. However, limited research has explored how visitors perceive the importance and performance of specific smart service components in Chinese theme parks. This study assesses tourists' perceptions of smart tourism services at Ningbo Fangte Oriental Dawn using a case study approach, a questionnaire survey, and the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) framework. A total of 387 valid responses from actual park visitors were analyzed. The results indicate that contactless payments, electronic map updates, ticketing convenience, social media publicity, and intelligent parking were perceived as both important and satisfactory. In contrast, mobile tourism services, online ticket discounts, and visitor-flow diversion were placed in the "Concentrate Here" quadrant, highlighting areas that require managerial attention. The findings provide clear decision-making references for theme park managers to optimize operations and allocate resources effectively, offering valuable practical implications for aligning smart tourism service investments with tourists' perceived value</p>

Keywords theme park smart tourism tourist satisfaction importance-performance analysis

Full text available in PDF format.

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