Chinese Tourists in Malaysia: An Analysis of Spatio–Temporal Behavior Based on Tourism Digital Footprints

Travel digital footprints can be used to analyze tourists’ spatio-temporal behavior to customize travel plans and recommendations. This study focuses on Chinese tourists in Malaysia as the research subject and uses the tourism digital footprint of Chinese tourists’ travel texts on Qunar.com as the primary data source. It connects traditional quantitative analysis with complex network analysis to study tourists’ behavior, time pattern, and complex network effects. The research results were as follows: (1) there was an uneven distribution of core tourism nodes with structural holes in Malaysia, which form a network pattern of imbalanced power and fierce internal competition; (2) the digital footprints of Chinese tourists were mainly concentrated in traditional tourist hot spots in Malaysia; (3) besides the competition between domestic islands, Thailand and Singapore are Malaysia’s main competitors for Chinese tourists. These results provide helpful information for the tourism management departments of Malaysia to improve their marketing and development efforts directed for Chinese tourists.