Competitiveness Analysis of Indonesia’s Super-Priority Tourism Destinations: a Big Data Approach to International Tourist Perceptions

Indonesia, as an archipelagic nation with diverse natural and cultural attractions, continues to exhibit structural disparities in the competitiveness of its tourism destinations. Bali remains the primary entry point for international visitors, while other super-priority destinations such as Borobudur, Lake Toba, Mandalika, Labuan Bajo, and Likupang struggle to attain comparable visibility and performance. This imbalance undermines the resilience of Indonesia's tourism sector and highlights the urgency of diversification. This study adopts Dwyer and Kim’s destination competitiveness model, which includes five key dimensions: core resources, supporting factors, destination management, demand conditions, and situational conditions. Using an exploratory quantitative approach, the study analyzes 12,843 user-generated reviews from TripAdvisor between 2020 and 2025. Data were extracted via web scraping and analyzed using sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and decision tree classification. Results show that tourist perceptions are primarily shaped by the quality of natural landscapes, cultural heritage, and recreational uniqueness under the core resources dimension, as well as perceived comfort, accessibility, and emotional value under demand conditions. In contrast, negative sentiment is most frequently associated with supporting and situational factors, including infrastructural shortcomings and inconsistent service delivery. The study concludes that enhancing competitiveness requires integrated, data-driven strategies that combine destination-specific development with cross-sectoral improvements in infrastructure, management, and experience design. These efforts are critical to reducing dependence on Bali and promoting a more balanced and sustainable tourism ecosystem nationwide.