From Virtual to Real - Analysis of the Mercado dos Lavradores (Farmer’s Market)

Abstract

The Mercado dos Lavradores (Funchal’s farmer’s market) is a historic building and one of Funchal's main tourist attractions, occupying a prominent location in the city's center. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no study carried out on the tourist satisfaction levels and experience at the Mercado dos Lavradores. This has led to an absence of strategic approaches for developing the market and regional progress. Accordingly, this study aims to understand the satisfaction of tourists visiting the Mercado dos Lavradores and whether these levels vary according to nationality and time of year. This study analyzed 3,228 visitors’ reviews retrieved from TripAdvisor from tourists who visited Mercado dos Lavradores. The analysis employed text mining techniques: sentiment analysis and topic modeling. The findings illustrated how satisfaction levels are influenced by several factors and identified the most prominent topics of interest for visitors. Most visitors showed significant positive levels of satisfaction, with nationality emerging as an important influencing factor for each tourist. In addition, the levels of satisfaction across different seasons were similar, revealing that the time of year does not influence tourist satisfaction. This study enhances the understanding of tourist satisfaction levels and their perceptions at the Mercado dos Lavradores, and also puts forward theoretical contributions, particularly in terms of local and international tourism marketing.