Exploring the online destination image of an all-for-one tourism destination in China: a DMO perspective

Abstract

All-for-one tourism is a new tourism development concept proposed by the Chinese government to promote the transformation and upgrading of the tourism industry to meet tourists’ high-quality tourism demands. This concept has been rapidly put into practice throughout the country and greatly reshaped the destination images of existing tourism destinations. Although all-for-one tourism has gained great popularity among tourism practitioners and tourism academics, existing studies on all-for-one tourism are mainly conducted from a macro perspective, such as top-level policy design. Micro perspectives on all-for-one tourism are limited. Using online destination image and cognitive-affective-conative framework as the theoretical framework, this qualitative study explored the projected online destination image of an all-for-one tourism destination, ‘Meishan City’, in China. Data was collected from official news websites and social media accounts. A manual thematic analysis method was employed to analyze the data. The findings revealed the projected online destination image of Meishan City based on the cognitive-affective-conative framework. This study advances online destination image research by empirically investigating the projected online destination image of an all-for-one tourism destination. Furthermore, it offers a new perspective for DMOs to project an effective and dynamic online destination image in all-for-one tourism campaigns.

Keywords

• All-for-one tourism
• online destination image
• destination marketing
• China
• Meishan City
• Tourism Development/Impacts