Tourism identity in social media

Abstract

In the context of tourism planning and promotion, there is wide acknowledgement that conceptualisations of tourism identity cannot be grounded merely in physical place, but should also encompass a wide range of factors including, for instance, cultural relations, tourist activities, and social networking. There are opportunities in late modern society for relating the identity of a city's tourism with digitally-presented tourists' perceptions and activities through social media studies. This research explores multiple research approaches to delineate the digital identity of Suzhou's tourist destinations, as presented in online user-generated contents. It is hoped that this social media study can provide supplementary information for tourism bureaus and agencies to make informed judgements on effecting pertinent improvements to optimise existing tourism resources and create more enticing environments for tourists. The research follows a case study approach and conducts an empirical study on Suzhou, a Chinese historic city. The analysis of the results show that the social media study is potentially useful in identifying the key characteristics of particular tourist destinations from visitors' perspectives that may also be helpful for the evaluation of tourists' experiences.

Embracing integrated watershed revitalization in Suzhou, China: learning from global case studies

“…It is one of the most famous historic water towns in China, with the city's canals, stone bridges, and traditional gardens listed as the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1997 and again in 2000. Suzhou was built on the region's interlocking network of waterways, with an inner city canal network connecting to the Grand Canal and major waterworks in the region (Kim and Wang 2018). The city is characterized by a system of canals, rivers, and bridges that resemble the characteristics of the water towns in the Yangtze River Delta, and often referred to as the 'Venice of the East' or 'Venice of China' (Zhang 2018).…”

“…Suzhou has strong potential for tourism with many tourist destinations across the city. However, it is also recognized that Suzhou's most popular tourist attractions are located in the historic center, the old town (Kim and Wang 2018). There are 863 statutorily protected heritage properties in Suzhou, but 45% of them are located within Suzhou's old town.…”

“…There are 863 statutorily protected heritage properties in Suzhou, but 45% of them are located within Suzhou's old town. Similarly, 39 properties are designated as national heritage, but 24 of these are in the old town (Kim and Wang 2018).…”

Mapping the exposure of tourism to weather extremes: the need for a spatially-explicit gridded dataset for disaster risk reduction

“…In this context, recent advancements in tourismrelated data availability and big data analytics can support a better geographical localization of touristic destinations by allowing for incorporating spatiallyrelevant information (Gössling 2020). Notably, social media platforms such as TripAdvisor play a crucial role in characterizing attractiveness, identifying density of attractions, and assessing tourism experiences, including individual service roles (Kim and Wang 2018, Minkwitz 2018, Van der Zee and Bertocchi 2018. Recently, scientific research has highlighted the benefits in combining social media data with statistical and spatial tourism data in the tourism industry.…”

Well-Being of Recent Migrants: The Role of Place-Based and Social Connections

“…Place Identity and Social Connections. Place identity is further comprised of three interrelated elements (Kim & Wang, 2018;Relph, 1976). First, the physical setting consists of natural and human-made forms such as the topography, vegetation, climate, hydrography, landmarks, buildings, furniture, etc.…”