This study investigates how the destination image (DI) of Macau changed during the period of 2014 to 2018 from foreign tourists’ perspective based on user-generated content on a mainstream travel website. Web crawlers developed by Python were employed to collect foreign tourists’ reviews from TripAdvisor regarding the theme of ‘Macau attraction’. A total of 9,839 reviews (including 46,172 keywords) from TripAdvisor were collected and analysed using the text-mining technique. The results reveal that “tourist leisure and recreation”, “culture, history and art” and “natural environment” are top three most frequently mentioned factors by foreign tourists. The frequency about casino-related words decreased in reviews among foreign tourists; frequency about “shopping” and “food and beverage” increased. Moreover, the frequency percentage of “natural environment” increased gradually year by year. It seems foreign tourists pay more attention to some items like “beautiful”, “crowded”, “scene”, and “small city”. The study also shows that there are differences between the government-projected DI and the tourist-perceived DI. Only the ‘City of Culture’ and ‘A World Centre of Tourism and Leisure’ have built recognition with foreign tourists.