Exploring tourists’ experiences when visiting Petra archaeological heritage site: voices from TripAdvisor

Purpose Archaeological heritage tourism has great potential for development in numerous destinations. However, literature on archaeological heritage tourism is scarce and empirical data are minimal. This paper aims to identify the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists, as well as identify factors known as satisfiers and dissatisfiers based on Herzberg’s two-factor theory among tourists who visited Petra UNESCO heritage site. Design/methodology/approach The research used content analyses to analyse 1,419 tourist’s online reviews on TripAdvisor. Leximancer software provided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis that pinpoint the dominant themes, after which further qualitative analysis found the main narratives associated with different satisfaction groups. Findings Successively, seven themes were revealed: entrance, trip, monastery, buildings, animal, carriage and safe. Furthermore, a four-dimensional model was postulated to help understand the components and flow of visitors’ experiences in an archaeological heritage site. In addition, the findings of the study revealed that tourists who scored their experience as 4 (very good) or 5 (excellent) (satisfiers) commonly shared perceptions about architecture, buildings, safe, temples, monasteries, tours, tombs and helpful. Contrarily, reviewers that rated their experience as 1 (terrible) or 2 (poor) (dissatisfiers) shared narratives around concepts such as expensive, animals, carriages, locals and shops. Originality/value The results offer valuable understandings of cultural heritage tourists’ overall experiences based on TripAdvisor reviews and facilitate the identification of the dominant themes associated with drivers of tourists’ satisfaction/dissatisfaction.