Exploring the Formation and Representationof Destination Images in Travel Vlogs on Social Media

Sammanfattning: This paper is an exploratory study of how destination images are projected in online travel vlogs. Destination image plays a significant role in influencing tourists’ purchase decision, therefore building and maintaining a desired image is important for destination marketing organizations (DMO). However, with the prevalence of social media, tourists’ perceived destination image is largely affected by the user-generated contents (UGC) or e-word-of-mouth (eWOM). As one type of UGC particularly suitable for conveying tourism information and increasingly popular online, travel vlogs are currently overlooked in tourism researches. Therefore, this paper intends to investigate the relationship between destination image formation and travel vlogs. In an inductive manner, this qualitative paper employs content analysis as a major research method. Through analyzing ten vlog samples of one destination, Chongqing, 84 concepts in 20 categories are identified and seven themes are recognized. Among them, 18 categories constitute the cognitive destination image and two themes constitute the affective destination image. The overall destination image is presented by two other themes and is impacted by both cognitive and affective images. Six factors that influence destination image formation and representation in travel vlogs are also indicated: destination experiences, travel purposes, information sources, language and culture, vlog actors, and video format and social media features of the vlog. This paper innovatively regards travel vlog as a tourism information source and examines its projection of destination images, thus contributing to tourism studies and providing practical implications for DMOs.