Links between communication and tourist destination perception: a heterogeneity analysis during the early pandemic reopening stage in China

ABSTRACT

The reality brought about by the pandemic has impacted both tourists’ behavior and destination imagery around the world. In the current post-pandemic process of tourism recovery, understanding the full range of travelers’ perceptions is essential for better management of cities as tourist destinations. This paper develops a latent class segmentation approach for a sample of tourists visiting Shanghai over the 2021 Chinese New Year. Data suggest that tourists with predominantly higher perceptions of communication will have better perceptions of the destination. In addition, we identify a number of clusters (i.e. involved travelers, challenging travelers, and uninterested travelers) based on respondents’ heterogeneity characteristics, both general and travel-specific. In the final section, we discuss the theoretical implications of our study and propose a set of recommendations for practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism destination recovery
• pandemic
• communication
• perceived safety
• destination imagery
• Asia Pacific

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 From 0:00 on September 28, 2020, foreigners who hold valid Chinese residence permits for work, personal affairs, and reunion will be allowed to enter (https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/cgvan//chn/zyxw/t1821067.htm).

Additional information

Funding

The authors from the University of Zaragoza are members of the research group Generés (http://generes.unizar.es/en/), and they appreciate the financial support received from the projects PID2020-114874GB-I00 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation), SS54_20R (Gobierno de Aragón and Fondo Social Europeo), Fundación Ibercaja (IUZ-2021-SOC-08), and Fundación Universitaria Antonio Gargallo.