Strategy For Propagation Of Tourism Destination Image In Picture-Sharing Networks

The tourism destination image is always received much attention from theinstitutes who take charge of the tourism destination, because it has a strong impact onthe tourism behavior of people. The pattern and skills of traditional ways, such asadvertisements, propagation of official websites, promotion of tourism agents etc, havebecome fully-fledged in enhancing the tourism destination image. And, it is also moredifficult to achieve significantly improvement via the traditional ways. Hence finding anew way to promote tourism destination image is quit expected.The rapid development of online social networks provides a great opportunity topropagate tourism destinations, and currently some tourism agents and institutes havetaken advantage of online social networks such as Twitter and Flickr to promote thetourism destinations. In terms of the content of information, online picture-sharingsocial networks (picture-sharing networks) such as picture-sharing communities,tourism photography forums and picture blogs are receiving increasing amount ofattention when searching tourism destination, because they aggregate a great deal ofpictures, information and reviews about tourism destinations. Based on these facts, it isfeasible to promote tourism destination image via picture-sharing networks.In this paper, we aim to promote the tourism destination image via picture-sharingnetworks by taking the world’s largest photo-sharing network, Flickr, for example.Based on the data downloaded by Flickr APIs and obtained from questionnaires, weanalyze the information propagation of tourism destination image in picture-sharingnetworks from four basic elements: disseminators, audience, content, and channel, andour findings are as below:i). The users in picture-sharing networks are usually acted as both disseminatorsand audience when propagating the tourism destination image. All these users includingnot only individual, but also local governments and commercial institutes willparticipate in the propagation of the tourism destination image. Although these userscome from all the world, majority of them come from economy developed regions andfavorite tourism regions, which determines that the promotion of tourism destination image via picture-sharing networks have more targeted areas. While, the anonymity andprivacy protection of users, to a large extent, make the tourism destination image realityof the informationii). Both pictures and texts information in picture-sharing networks are thedissemination symbols of tourism destination image. All the materials including pictures,their descriptions, blogs, reviews and so on form the image of tourism destination, andare spread in the networks. While the quality of pictures and content of texts have animpact on the propagation effect of tourism destination image.iii). There are a lot of advantages for picture-sharing networks to be the channels ofpropagating tourism destination image. Firstly, the characters of picture-sharingnetworks determine that the propagation of tourism destination image have the featuresof focus spread and interaction, which result in better effect. Secondly, inpicture-sharing networks the long lifespan of information, more than two years, and thehigh global level of information propagation also enhance the spread of tourismdestination image. Finally, the geo-locations and tags provided by picture-sharingnetworks also facilitate the spread and searching of tourism destination image.Based on these analyses, we propose the suggestions and opinions about how topromote the tourist destinations via picture-sharing networks. The local governmentsshould take advantage of current picture-sharing networks, and promote institutes oftourism management, tourism marketing organization, local residences to participate inactivities of information propagation. On the other hand they also should develop localpicture-sharing networks to be highly influential in the international markets. Besides,they can collect the information of tourism destinations and improve the destinationimage, ensuring the sound development of tourism destinations.