While tourism is booming across Southeast Asia (SEA), the spread of COVID-19 is having a clear impact on touristy cities. This study aims to analyze the changes in the public’s information needs before and during the pandemic in different types of tourist cities through topic modeling. Using the city information provided by the community UGC to obtain a large amount of unstructured data, the topic is further divided into the clue characteristics of functional value and symbolic value so that the difference in community attention between the tourism cities with severe outbreaks and those under control in SEA can be understood. The results show that the pre-pandemic city information mostly provided unilateral store or community information, which did not meet the functional value nor the needs of the public because the distinctive urban value is lacking, it was impossible to attract the public to actively participate.