Description
The purpose of this study is to identify Western travelers’ image of Zhangjiajie, China as a
tourist destination, drawing on data from contents of web travel blogs.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
International tourists' image of Zhangjiajie, China: content analysis of travel blogs
Aram Son
Article information:
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Aram Son, (2011),"International tourists' image of Zhangjiajie, China: content analysis of travel blogs", International J ournal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 306 - 315
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Hee Youn Kim, J i-Hwan Yoon, (2013),"Examining national tourism brand image: content analysis of Lonely Planet Korea", Tourism Review,
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International tourists’ image of Zhangjiajie,
China: content analysis of travel blogs
Aram Son
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify Western travelers’ image of Zhangjiajie, China as a
tourist destination, drawing on data from contents of web travel blogs.
Design/methodology/approach – The study taps the rich content of travel blogs as an alternative
research instrument to measure and understand negative and positive images of destinations formed by
travelers. Analysis of content drawn from travel blog data followed qualitative methodology techniques
and utilized NVivo software.
Findings – The study shows that travel blogs can form a good basis for measuring Western travelers’
image of destination. This was the case for Zhangjiajie, where analysis of travelers’ blogs indicated that
they were impressed overall by the destination’s beautiful natural scenery and were highly satis?ed with
nature-based tourismattractions. The study also expounds on certain aspects of the destination that can
be improved to satisfy Western travelers.
Originality/value – The majority of destination image studies rely on structured surveys developed from
the researchers’ point of view. This study attempts to explore tourists’ own perspectives on the nature of
a tourist destination by using travel blogs.
Keywords Blogs, Travel, Destination image, Content analysis, Zhangjiajie, China, Tourism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The city of Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province is one of the most popular tourist destinations in China
due to the unique natural scenery of narrow sandstone pillars and peaks. Zhangjiajie is also
known as China’s ?rst national forest park and a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site,
more formally known as the Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area (WSHIA). As the
number of visitors to the area increases, tourism has become the main source of tax revenue
and the key industry for economic development. In 2007, Zhangjiajie had over 18 million tourist
arrivals, nearly three times greater than the ?gure recorded in 2000, with total revenue fromthe
tourism industry reaching USD13 billion (Zhangjiajie Statistical Yearbook, 2008).
Zhangjiajie was not a popular tourismdestination until 1980 when the Hunan Daily published
an essay on ‘‘The unique scenery of Zhangjiajie: an undiscovered scenic jewel’’ by Wu
Guangzhong, a famous Chinese painter (Gu and Zhong, 2005). As a result, Zhangjiajie
started to attract painters, journalists and photographers, becoming more publicized
through their publications and photographic exhibitions (Zhong et al., 2008). The increasing
number of visitors helped of?cially establish Zhangjiajie as a national forest park in 1982.
Tourism in Zhangjiajie has been growing ever since. The increase of visitors led to the rapid
development of Wulingyuan County, where major tourism attractions are located.
Improvements in various means of transportation have made Zhangjiajie more accessible
than before. In 1984, a railway was constructed to connect the city of Zhangjiajie to other
parts of the country and a major paved road was also built to connect the Zhangjiajie national
forest park with its nearest town. As a result of the opening of an airport in 1994, the number
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VOL. 5 NO. 3 2011, pp. 306-315, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181111156998
Aram Son is a Lecturer at
the Sun Yat-Sen University
Zhuhai, China.
Received: April 2010
Revised: May 2010
Accepted: June 2010
The author would like to thank
Professor Honggang Xu for
reading and correcting the
manuscript and Dr Ice Kim for
helpful suggestions and
encouragement.
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of international visitors, especially Korean package group tourists has increased every year
alongside numbers for domestic visitors.
Compared to the rise in the numbers of Asian tourists visiting, growth from the Western
visitor’s segment is relatively slow. Korean tourists mainly comprise the foreign visitor
segment of Zhangjiajie. Approximately 1.1 million foreign tourists visited the city of
Zhangjiajie in 2007 with nine out of ten foreign visitors coming from South Korea (Zhangjiajie
Statistical Yearbook, 2008). A problem recognized by the county’s authorities and tourism
stakeholders is that the Korean market will likely be saturated since it is primarily made up of
elderly visitors and the country’s (Korea) total population is not large (Zhong et al., 2008).
Local government of?cials recognize Western countries as a potential source market for
inbound tourism and are keen to attract visitors from them.
Destination image plays an important role in in?uencing tourist decision choice and decision
making. The literature on destination image underscores that word-of mouth or advice from
friends and relatives often ranks as the most in?uential source of pre-purchase information
(Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Crotts, 1999). As a fundamental part of tourism marketing
strategy and destination brand development, it is important for marketers to understand
Western tourists’ images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination.
Literature review
Destination image is an important concept in understanding the destination selection
process of tourists and in the determination of destination positioning strategy. Hence, the
concept of image receives substantial attention from tourism researchers, industry
practitioners and destination marketers (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999). Several studies on
the relationship between destination image and visitation intentions ?nd that there is a
positive correlation between image and behavior intention. Destinations with strong and
positive images are more likely considered and chosen in the travel decision process
(Milman and Pizam, 1995). Many research conclude that images form a crucial basis for
destination choice and travel decision making (Woodside and Lysonski, 1989).
Due to the importance of destination image in tourism marketing research, numerous
destination image studies have been conducted in the last two decades. There has been a
strong preference for structured methods in researching destination image (Jenkins, 1999).
Researchers using structured methods typically ask an individual to rate a set of the attribute
components of destination image. The relevant scales usually include cultural and natural
attractions, climate, accommodation and personal safety using standardized rating scales
designed with Likert and semantic differential response formats. Structured methodologies
are easy to administer and well suited for sophisticated statistical techniques. Nevertheless,
such methods pose risks for researchers. Attributes not appropriately derived or elicited
fromvisitors themselves reveal or record an incomplete and partial viewof destination image
(Pearce, 1988). In addition, different tourists may value the same destination attributes for
different reasons. Dann (1996) also argues that the neo-positivist approaches, in which a
checklist of items in a visitor survey generated by researchers, might not suf?ciently capture
the full dynamics and richness of travelers’ destination images.
Some scholars criticize structured surveys developed from researchers’ viewpoints and
attempt to explore tourists’ own perspectives on the nature of the tourist destination. An
example is the development of the visual simulation approach. Boterill and Crompton (1987)
apply photo-elicitation for investigating tourist experiences directly from individual tourists’
perspective. The technique invites tourists to explore their thinking about their vacation
using six snapshots they had personally photographed and prompted to identify how two of
the photographs are similar and yet different froma third, and so on. The resulting constructs
from the technique reveal tourists’ unique perception about the destination visited based on
an elaboration of their personal experiences.
Markwell (1997) also emphasizes the importance of photographs in the travel experience
and conducts an empirical study of a nature-based tour experience by analyzing
photographs taken by the participants. The method involved asking 20 Australian university
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students who joined a tour to East Malaysia to participate in the study and asked to provide
the researcher with their photographs. Based on a data set of 2,680 photographs, the
participants’ travel activities and major tourist attractions visited were analyzed. The study
found that tourists’ photographs could be interpreted as re?ecting, at least in part, their
travel motivations as well as travel behaviors while in the tourist destination. In a similar vein,
it would be interesting to explore tourists’ destination images based on multi-faceted image
components by analyzing personal photographs that were taken by the tourists.
Another qualitative measurement that could potentially be a highly effective method to measure
destination image from tourists’ point of view is the use of tourists’ travel journals. Markwell and
Basche (1998) argue that one of the most signi?cant methodological issues for tourism
research is the potential problem of reactivity in the research setting. Tourists may be reluctant
to participate in studies since they may not want to be disturbed while on holiday. The
researchers suggest the use of travel journal to overcome the problem and they argued the
value of using personal diaries for an effective method to gain a more complete understanding
of the dynamics of tourist experience. Tourists’ travel journals can capture rich tourists’ images
of a destination fromtheir perspective since the impressions and feelings about places, people
they met and experiences which had some special meaning to the tourists can be recorded.
Due to the wide availability and visibility of Internet travel blogs, online travel journals are
becoming more and more popular. Travel blogs play an important role as many web sites offer
free or inexpensive travel blog formats. From a traveler’s point of view, online blogs provide a
new way to learn about tourist destinations as well as a useful tool with which travelers can
communicate with other travelers. From the viewpoint of tourism destination marketers,
exploiting data contained in travel blogs could be a cost-effective method in understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of a destination as they contain visitors’ perceptions of the tourist
destination (Pan et al., 2007). Therefore, this research, as an initial study, attempts to identify the
Western tourists’ image of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination by using travel blogs.
Methodology
Popular travel blog sites were identi?ed through the Google search engine using relevant
keywords during March 2008. A total of twenty-two blogs were collected. Seven blogs that
did not contain a speci?c travel experience in Zhangjiajie or were not written by Western
travelers were excluded fromanalysis. The remaining 15 travel blogs were placed in a ?le for
qualitative data analysis. Table I provides the complete list of the 15 web site addresses of
the travel blogs used in the study.
The text contained in the blogs was collected and content analyzed to identity bloggers’
positive and negative images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination. Two individuals familiar
to the study coded the content of the travel blogs containing either positive or negative
sentences related to the blogger’s travel experience while in Zhangjiajie. To analyze word
frequency, the full text of all 15 blogs was aggregated. Certain words commonly used in
constructing sentences, stop words, such as ‘‘after’’ ‘‘the’’ and ‘‘I’’ and those words that
would not contribute to a meaningful interpretation of the results including ‘‘hour,’’ ‘‘day,’’ or
‘‘time’’ were eliminated. Plural and singular words were also merged. NVivo, a software for
qualitative data analysis, was used to perform content analysis of the blog data.
Findings
The gender distribution was skewed with 60 per cent of the sample comprising male
bloggers. The average length of stay in Zhangjiajie was three days. The majority of bloggers
were likely to be traveling either alone or with one companion. In terms of month and year of
visiting Zhangjiajie, nine bloggers visited in 2008. Western travelers visited throughout the
year but there were generally fewer visitors during the winter. The popular months for visiting
Zhangjiajie were July and August.
The text of the travel blogs was analyzed by word frequency. Table II displays the most
frequently used words in the travel blogs. Not surprisingly the image of Zhangjiajie projected
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by the Western travelers’ blogs portrayed it as a nature-based tourism destination having
mountains, rivers, and caves. ‘‘Zhangjiajie,’’ ‘‘park,’’ ‘‘mountain,’’ and ‘‘walk’’ were prominent
words in the travel blogs. The result indicated that visiting the Zhangjiajie National Forest
Park and mountain walking are the most popular travel activities while staying in Zhangjiajie.
Frequently used keywords also re?ected the main aspects of bloggers’ travel experience
including accommodations (e.g. hotel and hostel), dining (e.g. restaurant, dinner, lunch,
food and noodle), and transportation (e.g. car, train, airport and bus).
Analysis of blog data suggests that Western travelers are not quite interested in visiting
cultural/historical attractions while in Zhangjiajie. Very few words associated with
cultural/historical attractions such as folk, museum, minority and art were mentioned. None
of bloggers mentioned having visited either Tujia folk village or Zhangjiajie museum. Tujia was
mentioned only twice to describe a local tour guide. Further studies are needed to investigate
travel activity preference of Western travelers and their degree of awareness of cultural tourist
attractions, especially if a better marketing strategy to attract the western visitors is a priority.
Positive and negative images of zhangjiajie as a holiday destination
To identify Western travelers’ positive image of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination, good
comments in the Western traveler’s blogs were thematically coded. Results of the content
analysis indicated that they had a great impression on Zhangjiajie in terms of offering
beautiful nature-based tourism attractions. A few bloggers described how much they
appreciated its unique natural scenery:
The area is renown for its magni?cent karst landscape, and as you can see from the pictures, it is
a truly amazing sight. Some of the solo sandstone peaks dotting the landscape look like they will
tumble any second, and especially when viewing them from above the views are very dramatic
(Blogger 3).
Table I Travel blogs analyzed in the study
Blog 1 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/broony79/1/1214919305/tpod.html Date: Jul 01,
2008 Story title: Wuling mountain range, only blonde in this town
Blog 2 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fwoggieuk/china-2007/1195028160/tpod.html
Date: Nov 14, 2007 Story title: Disaster at the airport, ‘‘plane no ?y!’’
Blog 3 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-295545.html Date: Jul 08, 2008
Story title: Monkey king commanding troops (Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, China)
Blog 4http://blog.joint-visions.de/?p ¼ 295&language ¼ de Date: unknown Story title: Part one:
Hunan province
Blog 5 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-130676.html Date: Feb 17, 2007
Story title: To tell you the truth, I don’t know
Blog 6 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/joandcraig/1/1218902400/tpod.html Date: Aug 16,
2008 Story title: National park
Blog 7 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/iyavor/1/1205422680/tpod.html Date: Mar 13, 2008
Story title: Natural wonders at Zhangjiajie
Blog 8 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/teklife23/asia-2007/1211259840/tpod.html Date:
May 20, 2008 Story title: With no further delay: Parents among pillars
Blog 9http://realtravel.com/e-241830-zhangjiajie_entry-the_screaming_tourists Date: Jul 1, 2006
Story title: The screaming tourists
Blog 10 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-277504.html Date: May 18, 2008
Blog 11 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/helenpretious/china_2007/1188006120/tpod.html
Date: Aug 24, 2007 Story title: Zhangjiajie
Blog 12 www.offexploring.com/jojojo/blog/china/zhangjiajie Date: Oct 4, 2008 Story title:
Zhangjiajie, China
Blog 13 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/qingon/1/1211369340/tpod.html Date: May 21,
2008 Story title: China travel, Zhangjiajie travel
Blog 14 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cantreadchinese/1/1212457860/tpod.html Date:
Jun 2, 2008 Story title: Going to Zhangjiajie
Blog 15 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/twittg/rtw/1125504660/tpod.html Date: Aug 31,
2005 Story title: The dragon awakening
Note: All accessed 17 March 2008
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Zhangjiajie is located in west of Hunan province China, the natural sceneries are the most
beautiful I had ever seen, the serene valleys, steep sandstone peaks, pure stream, dark green
lake, magical cave, wonderful waterfall, hot spring, all these make me crazy (Blogger 13).
Table II Most frequently used words identi?ed from travel blogs mentioning Zhangjiajie
Word Frequency
Bus(es) 99
Hotel(s)/hostel 97
Walk/walking 74
Chinese 73
Park(s) 72
Zhangjiajie 64
Down 58
Mountain(s) 68
Train 52
Way 52
Town/village 49
City 45
Guide 40
Tourist(s) 39
Room 36
English 35
Good 35
Lift/elevator 31
Small 30
Tour 30
Fog/haze 29
Steps/stairs 29
Long 28
Bad 27
Station 24
Taxi 24
Cave(s) 26
Picture(s) 26
River(s) 26
Top/peak(s) 23
Ride 22
Group(s) 21
Hike/hiking 21
Food 21
National 21
Place 21
View(s) 19
Amazing/ 18
Water 18
Monkeys 18
World 18
Breakfast 17
Car 17
Restaurant 17
Travel 17
Hot 16
Rice 16
Road 16
Ticket(s) 15
Map 15
Natural 15
Beautiful 14
Forest 14
New 14
Climbing 15
Price 14
Entrance 13
Rest 13
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Content analysis of the travel blogs also reveals that Western travelers were likely to be
interested in experiencing and learning wild nature within natural settings and not too
touristic. They tended to travel off the beaten track to get away fromthe crowds. Since one of
the primary reasons people visit a national park is to escape the noise and stresses of urban
lifestyle, noise pollution in the natural environments can be an environmental stressor. Some
bloggers recommended walking off the beaten path to enjoy the beautiful scenery within a
quiet and serene setting:
The only peaceful time we had was after 1700h when the groups had left the mountain and we
had the peaks all for ourselves. There were no tourists at all on the whole mountain after the
groups had departed, and we cherished these two nights, enjoying the beautiful sunsets with
nobody . . .. Having said that, we did manage to get away from the crowds (who all do a one day
hectic tour of all the main sights) by walking in areas that were not marked on our map at all. So if
you go to the area, don’t be afraid to walk off the beaten path, it is well worth it (Blogger 3).
Bloggers’ negative images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination also emerged from the
analysis. While they had a positive image about the unique natural scenery and various
nature-based attractions, it seems that Western travelers also perceive Zhangjiajie as an
unfriendly holiday destination to individual visitors in terms of de?ciencies in English
speaking tour guides, communication dif?culties, low quality standards of accommodation
and being over-crowded with many Asian group tourists. Bloggers’ positive and negative
images of Zhangjiajie are summarized in Figure 1.
The content of blogs mention several accounts of negative experiences on various travel
occasions. The most common theme commented on was about episodes related to
communication problems and dif?culties. Dif?culties mentioned in the blogs included
communication problems about taking a local bus and ordering dishes at a local restaurant.
Several of the blogs also mentioned the lack of good English signposts at tourist attractions:
The guide changed his mind on the hotel, so it would be a different one each night, but didn’t tell
us. He was meant to be able to speak English but didn’t at all. . . .We called the people we booked
the tour with and once we convinced them our guide didn’t speak English and wasn’t bothering
with us we were promised a new guide in the afternoon. After lunch a man approached us and
said hello. I said ‘‘ah...you are our new guide?’’ He looked confused. Guide number one said he
was. We now had two guides that didn’t speak English! (Blogger 6).
Figure 1 Image elements of Zhangjiajie, determined from an analysis of travel blogs
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Another oft-mentioned unpleasant experience were crowdedness and noise pollution in
popular tourist areas. Large numbers of people and con?icts between visitor groups in a
natural setting have been found to degrade users’ perceptions of the natural beauty of an
environment (Daniel, 1990; Ormsby and Shafer, 2000). The national park of Zhangjiajie faces
the same problem of over-crowdedness during peak holiday season. Half of the bloggers
complained that noise from crowds of package group tourists detracted from the quality of
their travel experience and some of them even showed antipathy toward Asian group
tourists:
On the bad side, the whole place was swarming with Chinese tour groups. In all the time we spent
in the area, we saw only about a handful of ‘‘private’’ tourist not in a group. We got very crossed
with them, as their main enjoyment in the park seemed to consist of making as much noise as
possible. On top of that, their tour guides all carried megaphones, of which they made constant
use. It was really impossible to enjoy this beautiful landscape with all this noise - have a look at the
videos I took to get an impression of the level of noise (Blogger 3).
This ?nding could be explained by cross-cultural studies of tourist-tourist contact arguing
that the level of tolerance of high-density differs across culture. According to Ward et al.
(2001), unlike Western groups, Asian groups such as Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans
prefer, or at least tolerate, group-based and high-density natural settings. Yagi and Pearce’s
(2002) study also argue that while Western tourists tend to prefer smaller numbers of people
in natural environment settings, Japanese travelers prefer moderate to larger numbers.
Based on various cross-cultural studies of tourist-tourist contact, Pearce (2005) concludes
that to travelers from more group-oriented cultures such as Asian travelers, being with other
travelers is preferred even in natural environment settings, highlighting the difference in
tourist-tourist encounter reactions between Western groups and Asian travelers.
Another possible explanation is that travel motivations between Western and Asian travelers
are different. Previous research focusing on motivations of visitors to national parks in
Western countries indicates that primary motivational factors include mainly ‘‘learning about
nature,’’ ‘‘stress release/relaxation’’ and ‘‘challenge/adventure’’ (Loker-Murphy, 1996; Uysal
et al., 1994). On the other hand, visitors to national parks in Korea are likely to consider the
parks as recreational resources that provide important opportunities to spend quality time
with family members as well as appreciate natural resources (Kim et al., 2002). Therefore,
compared to Asian tourists, Western travelers who seek relaxation as a principal travel
motivation are less tolerant of crowdedness and noise pollution in natural environment
settings.
Another negative comment frequently mentioned in the blogs was related to the low quality
of accommodation. Majority of the bloggers described unpleasant experiences due to
problems related to accommodation while staying in Zhangjiajie. They perceived that the
price of hotels was somewhat expensive for the quality of hotel facility. They mention not
being satis?ed with cleanliness of room, availability of hot water and the poor service quality
of staff. In addition, mention of intrusive touts selling products or tour-related services at the
train station and overcharging taxi drivers formed a negative impression to travel bloggers.
Analysis of the travel blogs showed that the service quality of people engaged in the tourism
industry need more room for improvement in order to meet the service quality standard of
Western travelers.
Conclusion
The main purpose of the study is to identify Western travelers’ perception of Zhangjiajie as a
tourist destination, using content obtained from travel blogs as a research instrument toward
understand negative and positive images from travelers’ point of view. Generally, Western
travelers were impressed by the beautiful natural scenery and express satisfaction with
nature-based tourism attractions. However, the results also indicated that certain factors
could be improved to satisfy Western travelers. The major issues outlined by bloggers are:
B poor hotel facilities;
B lack of English speaking tour guides;
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B lack of English menus at local restaurants;
B lack of adequate directional and interpretive signs in English at major tourist attractions;
B being overcharged; and
B over-crowdedness in major tourist attractions.
Most Western travelers visit Zhangjiajie individually. Thus, more tourist-friendly English signs
for orientation, direction and information about tourist facilities can be provided so that
individual travelers are able to ?nd their way with no trouble and to enjoy tourist sites more
fully. Another major concern is over-crowdedness in summer, the peak holiday season since
a large number of tourists and noise pollution at a nature-based tourist site can detract from
the quality of travel experience. To minimize the con?ict between tour groups and to
maximize the enjoyment of visiting Zhangjiajie, destination management strategies should
pay more attention to visitor management in order to in?uence the number and type of
visitors, the timing of visitation, geographic distribution and behavior of tourists.
The study found that Western tourists’ activities and the number of places they normally
visited were very limited. Majority visited major tourist attractions only in Wulingyuan County
primarily for mountain hiking. They were not likely to participate in other types of tourist
activities such as hot spring bath, river rafting and visiting the folk museum. Although the
local government has actively promoted the culture of various minority groups such as the
Tujias, the Bais and the Miaos in brochures and web sites, analysis of the travel blog indicate
very few Western tourists were interested in visiting cultural attractions. To enhance
marketing strategies aimed at attracting Western tourists, further studies on the travel
activity preference of Western travelers’ and their awareness of cultural tourist attractions are
needed.
Although the result of the study indicates that travel blogs could be a useful means to
understand destination images from tourists’ point of view, limitations exist in using blog
material. One problem is that it is dif?cult to determine how well each travel story represents
the bloggers’ travel experience. In other words, travel blogs might not fully re?ect individual
travel experiences. Some travel blogs contain both negative and positive impressions and
feelings about places and people they met as well as experiences which had some special
meaning to the tourist in detail. Others simply describe travel information about the
destination they visited and their travel itinerary. It should be also considered that since a
large number of travel blogs are written by younger travelers, elderly travelers’ destination
image are not well represented. Despite these limitations, travel blogs can be a useful tool
providing data regarding tourists’ feedback. Analysis of travel blogs could be one alternative
method to gain a more complete and deeper understanding of the dynamics of tourist
experience. Doing so allows research to overcome the particular challenge of constructing a
research design that maximizes naturalness (Pearce, 1988).
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visitors to the Lower Rio Grande Valley’’, Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 10-16.
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pp. 191-216.
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of Travel Research, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 47-52.
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of Texas, Austin, TX.
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pp. 145-64.
Corresponding author
Aram Son can be contacted at: [email protected]
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doc_631195775.pdf
The purpose of this study is to identify Western travelers’ image of Zhangjiajie, China as a
tourist destination, drawing on data from contents of web travel blogs.
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
International tourists' image of Zhangjiajie, China: content analysis of travel blogs
Aram Son
Article information:
To cite this document:
Aram Son, (2011),"International tourists' image of Zhangjiajie, China: content analysis of travel blogs", International J ournal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 306 - 315
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International tourists’ image of Zhangjiajie,
China: content analysis of travel blogs
Aram Son
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify Western travelers’ image of Zhangjiajie, China as a
tourist destination, drawing on data from contents of web travel blogs.
Design/methodology/approach – The study taps the rich content of travel blogs as an alternative
research instrument to measure and understand negative and positive images of destinations formed by
travelers. Analysis of content drawn from travel blog data followed qualitative methodology techniques
and utilized NVivo software.
Findings – The study shows that travel blogs can form a good basis for measuring Western travelers’
image of destination. This was the case for Zhangjiajie, where analysis of travelers’ blogs indicated that
they were impressed overall by the destination’s beautiful natural scenery and were highly satis?ed with
nature-based tourismattractions. The study also expounds on certain aspects of the destination that can
be improved to satisfy Western travelers.
Originality/value – The majority of destination image studies rely on structured surveys developed from
the researchers’ point of view. This study attempts to explore tourists’ own perspectives on the nature of
a tourist destination by using travel blogs.
Keywords Blogs, Travel, Destination image, Content analysis, Zhangjiajie, China, Tourism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The city of Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province is one of the most popular tourist destinations in China
due to the unique natural scenery of narrow sandstone pillars and peaks. Zhangjiajie is also
known as China’s ?rst national forest park and a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site,
more formally known as the Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area (WSHIA). As the
number of visitors to the area increases, tourism has become the main source of tax revenue
and the key industry for economic development. In 2007, Zhangjiajie had over 18 million tourist
arrivals, nearly three times greater than the ?gure recorded in 2000, with total revenue fromthe
tourism industry reaching USD13 billion (Zhangjiajie Statistical Yearbook, 2008).
Zhangjiajie was not a popular tourismdestination until 1980 when the Hunan Daily published
an essay on ‘‘The unique scenery of Zhangjiajie: an undiscovered scenic jewel’’ by Wu
Guangzhong, a famous Chinese painter (Gu and Zhong, 2005). As a result, Zhangjiajie
started to attract painters, journalists and photographers, becoming more publicized
through their publications and photographic exhibitions (Zhong et al., 2008). The increasing
number of visitors helped of?cially establish Zhangjiajie as a national forest park in 1982.
Tourism in Zhangjiajie has been growing ever since. The increase of visitors led to the rapid
development of Wulingyuan County, where major tourism attractions are located.
Improvements in various means of transportation have made Zhangjiajie more accessible
than before. In 1984, a railway was constructed to connect the city of Zhangjiajie to other
parts of the country and a major paved road was also built to connect the Zhangjiajie national
forest park with its nearest town. As a result of the opening of an airport in 1994, the number
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VOL. 5 NO. 3 2011, pp. 306-315, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181111156998
Aram Son is a Lecturer at
the Sun Yat-Sen University
Zhuhai, China.
Received: April 2010
Revised: May 2010
Accepted: June 2010
The author would like to thank
Professor Honggang Xu for
reading and correcting the
manuscript and Dr Ice Kim for
helpful suggestions and
encouragement.
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of international visitors, especially Korean package group tourists has increased every year
alongside numbers for domestic visitors.
Compared to the rise in the numbers of Asian tourists visiting, growth from the Western
visitor’s segment is relatively slow. Korean tourists mainly comprise the foreign visitor
segment of Zhangjiajie. Approximately 1.1 million foreign tourists visited the city of
Zhangjiajie in 2007 with nine out of ten foreign visitors coming from South Korea (Zhangjiajie
Statistical Yearbook, 2008). A problem recognized by the county’s authorities and tourism
stakeholders is that the Korean market will likely be saturated since it is primarily made up of
elderly visitors and the country’s (Korea) total population is not large (Zhong et al., 2008).
Local government of?cials recognize Western countries as a potential source market for
inbound tourism and are keen to attract visitors from them.
Destination image plays an important role in in?uencing tourist decision choice and decision
making. The literature on destination image underscores that word-of mouth or advice from
friends and relatives often ranks as the most in?uential source of pre-purchase information
(Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Crotts, 1999). As a fundamental part of tourism marketing
strategy and destination brand development, it is important for marketers to understand
Western tourists’ images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination.
Literature review
Destination image is an important concept in understanding the destination selection
process of tourists and in the determination of destination positioning strategy. Hence, the
concept of image receives substantial attention from tourism researchers, industry
practitioners and destination marketers (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999). Several studies on
the relationship between destination image and visitation intentions ?nd that there is a
positive correlation between image and behavior intention. Destinations with strong and
positive images are more likely considered and chosen in the travel decision process
(Milman and Pizam, 1995). Many research conclude that images form a crucial basis for
destination choice and travel decision making (Woodside and Lysonski, 1989).
Due to the importance of destination image in tourism marketing research, numerous
destination image studies have been conducted in the last two decades. There has been a
strong preference for structured methods in researching destination image (Jenkins, 1999).
Researchers using structured methods typically ask an individual to rate a set of the attribute
components of destination image. The relevant scales usually include cultural and natural
attractions, climate, accommodation and personal safety using standardized rating scales
designed with Likert and semantic differential response formats. Structured methodologies
are easy to administer and well suited for sophisticated statistical techniques. Nevertheless,
such methods pose risks for researchers. Attributes not appropriately derived or elicited
fromvisitors themselves reveal or record an incomplete and partial viewof destination image
(Pearce, 1988). In addition, different tourists may value the same destination attributes for
different reasons. Dann (1996) also argues that the neo-positivist approaches, in which a
checklist of items in a visitor survey generated by researchers, might not suf?ciently capture
the full dynamics and richness of travelers’ destination images.
Some scholars criticize structured surveys developed from researchers’ viewpoints and
attempt to explore tourists’ own perspectives on the nature of the tourist destination. An
example is the development of the visual simulation approach. Boterill and Crompton (1987)
apply photo-elicitation for investigating tourist experiences directly from individual tourists’
perspective. The technique invites tourists to explore their thinking about their vacation
using six snapshots they had personally photographed and prompted to identify how two of
the photographs are similar and yet different froma third, and so on. The resulting constructs
from the technique reveal tourists’ unique perception about the destination visited based on
an elaboration of their personal experiences.
Markwell (1997) also emphasizes the importance of photographs in the travel experience
and conducts an empirical study of a nature-based tour experience by analyzing
photographs taken by the participants. The method involved asking 20 Australian university
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students who joined a tour to East Malaysia to participate in the study and asked to provide
the researcher with their photographs. Based on a data set of 2,680 photographs, the
participants’ travel activities and major tourist attractions visited were analyzed. The study
found that tourists’ photographs could be interpreted as re?ecting, at least in part, their
travel motivations as well as travel behaviors while in the tourist destination. In a similar vein,
it would be interesting to explore tourists’ destination images based on multi-faceted image
components by analyzing personal photographs that were taken by the tourists.
Another qualitative measurement that could potentially be a highly effective method to measure
destination image from tourists’ point of view is the use of tourists’ travel journals. Markwell and
Basche (1998) argue that one of the most signi?cant methodological issues for tourism
research is the potential problem of reactivity in the research setting. Tourists may be reluctant
to participate in studies since they may not want to be disturbed while on holiday. The
researchers suggest the use of travel journal to overcome the problem and they argued the
value of using personal diaries for an effective method to gain a more complete understanding
of the dynamics of tourist experience. Tourists’ travel journals can capture rich tourists’ images
of a destination fromtheir perspective since the impressions and feelings about places, people
they met and experiences which had some special meaning to the tourists can be recorded.
Due to the wide availability and visibility of Internet travel blogs, online travel journals are
becoming more and more popular. Travel blogs play an important role as many web sites offer
free or inexpensive travel blog formats. From a traveler’s point of view, online blogs provide a
new way to learn about tourist destinations as well as a useful tool with which travelers can
communicate with other travelers. From the viewpoint of tourism destination marketers,
exploiting data contained in travel blogs could be a cost-effective method in understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of a destination as they contain visitors’ perceptions of the tourist
destination (Pan et al., 2007). Therefore, this research, as an initial study, attempts to identify the
Western tourists’ image of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination by using travel blogs.
Methodology
Popular travel blog sites were identi?ed through the Google search engine using relevant
keywords during March 2008. A total of twenty-two blogs were collected. Seven blogs that
did not contain a speci?c travel experience in Zhangjiajie or were not written by Western
travelers were excluded fromanalysis. The remaining 15 travel blogs were placed in a ?le for
qualitative data analysis. Table I provides the complete list of the 15 web site addresses of
the travel blogs used in the study.
The text contained in the blogs was collected and content analyzed to identity bloggers’
positive and negative images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination. Two individuals familiar
to the study coded the content of the travel blogs containing either positive or negative
sentences related to the blogger’s travel experience while in Zhangjiajie. To analyze word
frequency, the full text of all 15 blogs was aggregated. Certain words commonly used in
constructing sentences, stop words, such as ‘‘after’’ ‘‘the’’ and ‘‘I’’ and those words that
would not contribute to a meaningful interpretation of the results including ‘‘hour,’’ ‘‘day,’’ or
‘‘time’’ were eliminated. Plural and singular words were also merged. NVivo, a software for
qualitative data analysis, was used to perform content analysis of the blog data.
Findings
The gender distribution was skewed with 60 per cent of the sample comprising male
bloggers. The average length of stay in Zhangjiajie was three days. The majority of bloggers
were likely to be traveling either alone or with one companion. In terms of month and year of
visiting Zhangjiajie, nine bloggers visited in 2008. Western travelers visited throughout the
year but there were generally fewer visitors during the winter. The popular months for visiting
Zhangjiajie were July and August.
The text of the travel blogs was analyzed by word frequency. Table II displays the most
frequently used words in the travel blogs. Not surprisingly the image of Zhangjiajie projected
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by the Western travelers’ blogs portrayed it as a nature-based tourism destination having
mountains, rivers, and caves. ‘‘Zhangjiajie,’’ ‘‘park,’’ ‘‘mountain,’’ and ‘‘walk’’ were prominent
words in the travel blogs. The result indicated that visiting the Zhangjiajie National Forest
Park and mountain walking are the most popular travel activities while staying in Zhangjiajie.
Frequently used keywords also re?ected the main aspects of bloggers’ travel experience
including accommodations (e.g. hotel and hostel), dining (e.g. restaurant, dinner, lunch,
food and noodle), and transportation (e.g. car, train, airport and bus).
Analysis of blog data suggests that Western travelers are not quite interested in visiting
cultural/historical attractions while in Zhangjiajie. Very few words associated with
cultural/historical attractions such as folk, museum, minority and art were mentioned. None
of bloggers mentioned having visited either Tujia folk village or Zhangjiajie museum. Tujia was
mentioned only twice to describe a local tour guide. Further studies are needed to investigate
travel activity preference of Western travelers and their degree of awareness of cultural tourist
attractions, especially if a better marketing strategy to attract the western visitors is a priority.
Positive and negative images of zhangjiajie as a holiday destination
To identify Western travelers’ positive image of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination, good
comments in the Western traveler’s blogs were thematically coded. Results of the content
analysis indicated that they had a great impression on Zhangjiajie in terms of offering
beautiful nature-based tourism attractions. A few bloggers described how much they
appreciated its unique natural scenery:
The area is renown for its magni?cent karst landscape, and as you can see from the pictures, it is
a truly amazing sight. Some of the solo sandstone peaks dotting the landscape look like they will
tumble any second, and especially when viewing them from above the views are very dramatic
(Blogger 3).
Table I Travel blogs analyzed in the study
Blog 1 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/broony79/1/1214919305/tpod.html Date: Jul 01,
2008 Story title: Wuling mountain range, only blonde in this town
Blog 2 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/fwoggieuk/china-2007/1195028160/tpod.html
Date: Nov 14, 2007 Story title: Disaster at the airport, ‘‘plane no ?y!’’
Blog 3 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-295545.html Date: Jul 08, 2008
Story title: Monkey king commanding troops (Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, China)
Blog 4http://blog.joint-visions.de/?p ¼ 295&language ¼ de Date: unknown Story title: Part one:
Hunan province
Blog 5 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-130676.html Date: Feb 17, 2007
Story title: To tell you the truth, I don’t know
Blog 6 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/joandcraig/1/1218902400/tpod.html Date: Aug 16,
2008 Story title: National park
Blog 7 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/iyavor/1/1205422680/tpod.html Date: Mar 13, 2008
Story title: Natural wonders at Zhangjiajie
Blog 8 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/teklife23/asia-2007/1211259840/tpod.html Date:
May 20, 2008 Story title: With no further delay: Parents among pillars
Blog 9http://realtravel.com/e-241830-zhangjiajie_entry-the_screaming_tourists Date: Jul 1, 2006
Story title: The screaming tourists
Blog 10 www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hunan/Zhangjiajie/blog-277504.html Date: May 18, 2008
Blog 11 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/helenpretious/china_2007/1188006120/tpod.html
Date: Aug 24, 2007 Story title: Zhangjiajie
Blog 12 www.offexploring.com/jojojo/blog/china/zhangjiajie Date: Oct 4, 2008 Story title:
Zhangjiajie, China
Blog 13 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/qingon/1/1211369340/tpod.html Date: May 21,
2008 Story title: China travel, Zhangjiajie travel
Blog 14 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cantreadchinese/1/1212457860/tpod.html Date:
Jun 2, 2008 Story title: Going to Zhangjiajie
Blog 15 www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/twittg/rtw/1125504660/tpod.html Date: Aug 31,
2005 Story title: The dragon awakening
Note: All accessed 17 March 2008
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Zhangjiajie is located in west of Hunan province China, the natural sceneries are the most
beautiful I had ever seen, the serene valleys, steep sandstone peaks, pure stream, dark green
lake, magical cave, wonderful waterfall, hot spring, all these make me crazy (Blogger 13).
Table II Most frequently used words identi?ed from travel blogs mentioning Zhangjiajie
Word Frequency
Bus(es) 99
Hotel(s)/hostel 97
Walk/walking 74
Chinese 73
Park(s) 72
Zhangjiajie 64
Down 58
Mountain(s) 68
Train 52
Way 52
Town/village 49
City 45
Guide 40
Tourist(s) 39
Room 36
English 35
Good 35
Lift/elevator 31
Small 30
Tour 30
Fog/haze 29
Steps/stairs 29
Long 28
Bad 27
Station 24
Taxi 24
Cave(s) 26
Picture(s) 26
River(s) 26
Top/peak(s) 23
Ride 22
Group(s) 21
Hike/hiking 21
Food 21
National 21
Place 21
View(s) 19
Amazing/ 18
Water 18
Monkeys 18
World 18
Breakfast 17
Car 17
Restaurant 17
Travel 17
Hot 16
Rice 16
Road 16
Ticket(s) 15
Map 15
Natural 15
Beautiful 14
Forest 14
New 14
Climbing 15
Price 14
Entrance 13
Rest 13
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Content analysis of the travel blogs also reveals that Western travelers were likely to be
interested in experiencing and learning wild nature within natural settings and not too
touristic. They tended to travel off the beaten track to get away fromthe crowds. Since one of
the primary reasons people visit a national park is to escape the noise and stresses of urban
lifestyle, noise pollution in the natural environments can be an environmental stressor. Some
bloggers recommended walking off the beaten path to enjoy the beautiful scenery within a
quiet and serene setting:
The only peaceful time we had was after 1700h when the groups had left the mountain and we
had the peaks all for ourselves. There were no tourists at all on the whole mountain after the
groups had departed, and we cherished these two nights, enjoying the beautiful sunsets with
nobody . . .. Having said that, we did manage to get away from the crowds (who all do a one day
hectic tour of all the main sights) by walking in areas that were not marked on our map at all. So if
you go to the area, don’t be afraid to walk off the beaten path, it is well worth it (Blogger 3).
Bloggers’ negative images of Zhangjiajie as a holiday destination also emerged from the
analysis. While they had a positive image about the unique natural scenery and various
nature-based attractions, it seems that Western travelers also perceive Zhangjiajie as an
unfriendly holiday destination to individual visitors in terms of de?ciencies in English
speaking tour guides, communication dif?culties, low quality standards of accommodation
and being over-crowded with many Asian group tourists. Bloggers’ positive and negative
images of Zhangjiajie are summarized in Figure 1.
The content of blogs mention several accounts of negative experiences on various travel
occasions. The most common theme commented on was about episodes related to
communication problems and dif?culties. Dif?culties mentioned in the blogs included
communication problems about taking a local bus and ordering dishes at a local restaurant.
Several of the blogs also mentioned the lack of good English signposts at tourist attractions:
The guide changed his mind on the hotel, so it would be a different one each night, but didn’t tell
us. He was meant to be able to speak English but didn’t at all. . . .We called the people we booked
the tour with and once we convinced them our guide didn’t speak English and wasn’t bothering
with us we were promised a new guide in the afternoon. After lunch a man approached us and
said hello. I said ‘‘ah...you are our new guide?’’ He looked confused. Guide number one said he
was. We now had two guides that didn’t speak English! (Blogger 6).
Figure 1 Image elements of Zhangjiajie, determined from an analysis of travel blogs
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Another oft-mentioned unpleasant experience were crowdedness and noise pollution in
popular tourist areas. Large numbers of people and con?icts between visitor groups in a
natural setting have been found to degrade users’ perceptions of the natural beauty of an
environment (Daniel, 1990; Ormsby and Shafer, 2000). The national park of Zhangjiajie faces
the same problem of over-crowdedness during peak holiday season. Half of the bloggers
complained that noise from crowds of package group tourists detracted from the quality of
their travel experience and some of them even showed antipathy toward Asian group
tourists:
On the bad side, the whole place was swarming with Chinese tour groups. In all the time we spent
in the area, we saw only about a handful of ‘‘private’’ tourist not in a group. We got very crossed
with them, as their main enjoyment in the park seemed to consist of making as much noise as
possible. On top of that, their tour guides all carried megaphones, of which they made constant
use. It was really impossible to enjoy this beautiful landscape with all this noise - have a look at the
videos I took to get an impression of the level of noise (Blogger 3).
This ?nding could be explained by cross-cultural studies of tourist-tourist contact arguing
that the level of tolerance of high-density differs across culture. According to Ward et al.
(2001), unlike Western groups, Asian groups such as Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans
prefer, or at least tolerate, group-based and high-density natural settings. Yagi and Pearce’s
(2002) study also argue that while Western tourists tend to prefer smaller numbers of people
in natural environment settings, Japanese travelers prefer moderate to larger numbers.
Based on various cross-cultural studies of tourist-tourist contact, Pearce (2005) concludes
that to travelers from more group-oriented cultures such as Asian travelers, being with other
travelers is preferred even in natural environment settings, highlighting the difference in
tourist-tourist encounter reactions between Western groups and Asian travelers.
Another possible explanation is that travel motivations between Western and Asian travelers
are different. Previous research focusing on motivations of visitors to national parks in
Western countries indicates that primary motivational factors include mainly ‘‘learning about
nature,’’ ‘‘stress release/relaxation’’ and ‘‘challenge/adventure’’ (Loker-Murphy, 1996; Uysal
et al., 1994). On the other hand, visitors to national parks in Korea are likely to consider the
parks as recreational resources that provide important opportunities to spend quality time
with family members as well as appreciate natural resources (Kim et al., 2002). Therefore,
compared to Asian tourists, Western travelers who seek relaxation as a principal travel
motivation are less tolerant of crowdedness and noise pollution in natural environment
settings.
Another negative comment frequently mentioned in the blogs was related to the low quality
of accommodation. Majority of the bloggers described unpleasant experiences due to
problems related to accommodation while staying in Zhangjiajie. They perceived that the
price of hotels was somewhat expensive for the quality of hotel facility. They mention not
being satis?ed with cleanliness of room, availability of hot water and the poor service quality
of staff. In addition, mention of intrusive touts selling products or tour-related services at the
train station and overcharging taxi drivers formed a negative impression to travel bloggers.
Analysis of the travel blogs showed that the service quality of people engaged in the tourism
industry need more room for improvement in order to meet the service quality standard of
Western travelers.
Conclusion
The main purpose of the study is to identify Western travelers’ perception of Zhangjiajie as a
tourist destination, using content obtained from travel blogs as a research instrument toward
understand negative and positive images from travelers’ point of view. Generally, Western
travelers were impressed by the beautiful natural scenery and express satisfaction with
nature-based tourism attractions. However, the results also indicated that certain factors
could be improved to satisfy Western travelers. The major issues outlined by bloggers are:
B poor hotel facilities;
B lack of English speaking tour guides;
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B lack of English menus at local restaurants;
B lack of adequate directional and interpretive signs in English at major tourist attractions;
B being overcharged; and
B over-crowdedness in major tourist attractions.
Most Western travelers visit Zhangjiajie individually. Thus, more tourist-friendly English signs
for orientation, direction and information about tourist facilities can be provided so that
individual travelers are able to ?nd their way with no trouble and to enjoy tourist sites more
fully. Another major concern is over-crowdedness in summer, the peak holiday season since
a large number of tourists and noise pollution at a nature-based tourist site can detract from
the quality of travel experience. To minimize the con?ict between tour groups and to
maximize the enjoyment of visiting Zhangjiajie, destination management strategies should
pay more attention to visitor management in order to in?uence the number and type of
visitors, the timing of visitation, geographic distribution and behavior of tourists.
The study found that Western tourists’ activities and the number of places they normally
visited were very limited. Majority visited major tourist attractions only in Wulingyuan County
primarily for mountain hiking. They were not likely to participate in other types of tourist
activities such as hot spring bath, river rafting and visiting the folk museum. Although the
local government has actively promoted the culture of various minority groups such as the
Tujias, the Bais and the Miaos in brochures and web sites, analysis of the travel blog indicate
very few Western tourists were interested in visiting cultural attractions. To enhance
marketing strategies aimed at attracting Western tourists, further studies on the travel
activity preference of Western travelers’ and their awareness of cultural tourist attractions are
needed.
Although the result of the study indicates that travel blogs could be a useful means to
understand destination images from tourists’ point of view, limitations exist in using blog
material. One problem is that it is dif?cult to determine how well each travel story represents
the bloggers’ travel experience. In other words, travel blogs might not fully re?ect individual
travel experiences. Some travel blogs contain both negative and positive impressions and
feelings about places and people they met as well as experiences which had some special
meaning to the tourist in detail. Others simply describe travel information about the
destination they visited and their travel itinerary. It should be also considered that since a
large number of travel blogs are written by younger travelers, elderly travelers’ destination
image are not well represented. Despite these limitations, travel blogs can be a useful tool
providing data regarding tourists’ feedback. Analysis of travel blogs could be one alternative
method to gain a more complete and deeper understanding of the dynamics of tourist
experience. Doing so allows research to overcome the particular challenge of constructing a
research design that maximizes naturalness (Pearce, 1988).
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Corresponding author
Aram Son can be contacted at: [email protected]
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