As part of the nation’s promising sector, the retail industry almost plays a vital role as the hotel industry in Thai tourism sector as 24% of tourist daily expenditure was disseminated to the nation’s economy through international tourist’s shopping expenses. This paper employed Big Data analytical and statistical techniques to analyze the tourist’s shopping experiences between department stores and street markets in Phuket through same user-generated reviews on TripAdvisor site. We found that only 18 out of 35 machine learning identified features of both shopping destinations yield significant differences in tourist’s shopping experience in department stores and their experience in street markets. From this study, we also can provide several concrete recommendations which include the upgrade of Thainess feature in street markets was among the key characteristics to enhance tourist’s shopping experience in Phuket.

Keywords: Shopping, Department stores, Street markets, Online reviews, TripAdvisor, Phuket, Thailand