Constructing online tourist destination images: a visual discourse analysis of the official Beijing Tourism website

4.1.1 Percentage distribution of images across five types of tourism resources

The number of images belonging to five types of tourism is calculated respectively, and the percentage for each type of tourism is distributed as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3:

Distribution of images for five types of tourism resources on the Beijing Tourism website.

An overwhelming percentage (46.8%) of images has been used to introduce various aspects of Beijing’s local culture, from World Cultural Heritage to food culture, from folk art and local products to local life, which constitutes the major part of cultural tourism in Beijing. And 63 pictures (22.7%, almost half of the number of images for cultural tourism) have been taken to depict natural landscapes for recreational tourism in Beijing. There are ten five-star natural scenic destinations in Beijing and many more attractions of four-star and lower levels which provide a wide range of choices for recreational tourism-oriented tourists. This study collects data from the ten five-star destinations and an additional eleven destinations of four-star level for a relatively large sample size.

Historical tourism takes up 12.9% of the images, which cover two five-star museums and eight four-star museums. Beijing is a capital city with a long history. Naturally significant parts of the city’s history has been recorded by museums of various themes, such as the Palace Museum, the China Science and Technology Museum, the Red Sandalwood Museum, the Chinese People’s Anti-Japanese War Museum, the Peking Man Museum, the Chinese Aviation Museum, and so on.

A sum of 29 pictures (10.4%) were extracted to showcase two representative architectural styles, that is, traditional classic architectures (palace, Hutong, Siheyuan, temple, etc.) and modern architecture (skyscrapers in the central business district, international brand hotels, etc.). Religious tourism represents only 7.2%. These pictures include places of different religious worship, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Catholicism, as well as many other folk religions.

This website puts more emphasis on cultural tourism to produce a cultural image of Beijing with diverse Chinese cultural attributes. Beijing’s image as a cultural destination is well received by inbound tourists, as discovered in relevant studies which identify Beijing’s destination image from the tourists’ perspective in an analysis of user-generated content. It is discovered that Beijing’s traditional and cultural attractions make up a large proportion of the user-generated photographic content (Deng et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2019). Moreover, one of Deng et al.’s (2018) findings, i.e. that natural scenes contribute significantly to the formation of Beijing’s destination image, could be evidenced by the second highest percentage of recreational tourism in the above figure. Altogether five major types of tourism resources, covering all aspects of Beijing, constitute the content for marketing and destination image promotion. They help the viewers form an impression of Beijing as a city with abundant tourist attractions of all sorts. And the theme of multiplicity in tourism resources stands out clearly.

4.1.2 Representational meaning of images across five types of tourism resources

The images are put into categories of processes of representational meanings according to the grammar of visual semiotic analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) (see Table 1).

Firstly, cultural tourism has the largest number of pictures (130 pictures), among which pictures of the conceptual process occupy more than half (60%) and those of the narrative process hold only 13.85%. Within the conceptual process, pictures of the analytical process take up the largest proportion of 43.85%, followed by those of the classification process (15.38%) and the symbolic process (0.77%).

Compared with other types of tourism, cultural tourism has a greater percentage of pictures which belong to action process for the reason that more participants who are preoccupied with the process of handcrafting local products, performing folk art, cooking specialty food, and shopping on the international plaza, appear in pictures related to Beijing local culture. It echoes with the nature of cultural tourism, which is highly people-involved.

As for the conceptual process, pictures that depict individual parts of places of World Cultural Heritage have been labeled as an analytical process. And this also applies to pictures of Beijing’s time-honored brands and shopping plazas as well. In all, they constitute up to 43.85% to form a perspective into the modern fashion life of Beijingers. Pictures of the classification process are the second most under the category of the conceptual process (15.38%). It mainly includes pictures of Beijing local products, representing unique Chinese traditional art and craftsmanship, such as Lord Rabbit, gold inlaid lacquer, cloisonne, Zi Sha pot, Chinese clay figurines, Qi Pao, jade ware, embroidered shoes, dough figurines, and so on. Pictures of the symbolic process (0.77%) are those that show the specific facial makeup of the Peking Opera or a series of such images.

Secondly, recreational tourism adopts a large percentage of images of the analytical process (92.06%), displaying natural and scenic landscapes of theme parks with no participants at all most of the time. Images for recreational tourism include pictures taken of three subcategories on the website (spring outing, theme parks, and landscape). It is dedicated to showcasing the natural beauties of scenic spots in vivid detail, such as various parts of destinations without much of the trace of tourists. For images with participants, there are more pictures of groups of tourists (15.87%) than those of individual tourists (4.76%).

Group participants are shown impersonally, as strangers with whom the viewers do not need to become acquainted, as “trees in a landscape” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). They are at a public distance where the viewers can see the torsos of a few tourists. Represented participants are supposed to be nameless and be blending in the landscape as general tourists, and viewers look at them as strangers/others. The role a general crowd of people plays is to complete the image of a destination. Usually, it is a picture taken from a distance or at a high angle, and the tourists appear quite blurry from the front, or sometimes the image merely shows the backs of tourists visiting the destination. Therefore, it is natural that the analytical process in recreational tourism is applied more extensively. As for individual participants in the images, most of the time, they remain at a far social distance, where viewers see the whole figure “with space around it” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). They don’t even look directly at the camera. If they sometimes do, they do so from such a distance that it barely affects the viewers. Indeed, their facial features can be hardly distinguished from a long distance. Cartoonic images account for the smallest percentage of only 3.17% in recreational tourism, and this is mostly designed to attract tourists (especially young children) and excite them for more authentic natural tourism afterwards.

Thirdly, historical tourism includes pictures of ten museums with such different themes as royal palace, city planning exhibition, science and technology, red sandalwood, anti-Japanese war, ancient Peking primitive man, aviation in China, and auto museum. Due to the introductory and descriptive characteristics of museum exhibitions, all the images fall into the analytical process type (100%), which is captured in the conceptual process. As for the participants in images, most of the participants (16.67%) are groups of general tourists without any specific demographic information about them. All of the participants are photographic participants (19.44%) with no cartoonic participants appearing in these images.

Fourthly, all the images for architectural tourism can similarly be categorized as analytical process (100%), under the conceptual processes type. The representational meaning is evident in the images of Siheyuan and Hutong, as both are typical representatives of architectural features in Beijing. Accordingly, images in this category are designed to be descriptive in terms of the structure of architecture rather than as actions. The descriptive images demonstrate traditional historical streets (Huhong) and residential architecture (Siheyuan) of a Beijing character (Su et al. 2019). As for the participants, 31.03% of them form generic groups of tourists (or local residents) embedded in the image as a background. And 10.34% are generic individual tourists (or local residents), among which 6.9% of them are cartoonic participants.

Lastly, images of religious tourism are pictures taken of five widely known temples among many others in Beijing. All of them are of the analytical process (100%). As shown in the above table, a relatively smooth proportion is uncovered across different types of participants. Generic participants, either in groups (20%) or individual (10%), are general tourists or pilgrims paying respects in temples. And the specific participants (15%) in the images are the Buddha, a folk God or Goddess, or people coming to worship. Both types of participants occupy the same percentage (15%), from which can be concluded that a variety of images of religious tourism resources are provided to attract readers and build their interest in religious tourism in Beijing.

4.2.1 Multiplicity of cultural tourism resources

The Beijing Opera actress in Figure 4 is helping her friend (whose reflection in the mirror is blocked) put on makeup for the show. It is an image reflecting “action process,” categorized under the “narrative process,” representing “doing and happening” by an “individual human participant.”

In visual discourse, any semiotic mode has to be able to project the relations between the producer of a sign and the receiver of that sign (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). The actress is not addressing viewers directly but looking away from the camera. This conveys the absence of a sense of interaction between the depicted actress and the viewer. However, the choice of distance can suggest different relations between the represented participants and the viewers, and sometimes it could be an imaginary relation. In this relation, a close scrutinization of this actress is offered as though she were a specimen in a display case (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). And this close-up shot of the actress exhibits a close personal distance with viewers. The mirror of the camera and that in the picture somehow provides a whole representation of the actress from her front to her back, from her made-up appearance to her opera costume. In this way, viewers can experience a close-to-authentic taste of what Beijing Opera, as the most dominant form of Chinese operas, looks like. And more importantly, the actress, as a hostess, manages to attract viewers with mystery and excitement to embark on a journey of exotic oriental Chinese cultural shows. Therefore, as a cover image, it is placed as a prelude to theatrical activities to demonstrate the multiplicity of Beijing culture, from folk music, performance, and handicraft products to local cuisine and urban life.

Visual practices construct cultural embodiments and symbols that identify a certain culture and people and thereby structure a body of representational social discourse (Aiello and Parry 2019; Tzanelli 2006). The actress brings Beijing Opera to the viewers and, more importantly, extends an inviting welcome to experience the colorful local culture through her interaction with viewers.

The above figure, extracted from the Beijing Travel Feature Volume 7: The Memoir of Old Beijing posted on the website, illustrates the local food culture of old Beijing with six instances of time-honored brand restaurants. It is a set of images with a “classificational process,” which is one type of “conceptual process” representing “being a kind of/kinds of” cultural tourism resource.

The content falls on two pages of this volume (pages 14 and 15) with a symmetrical layout. Page 14 consists of two columns: the column of writing and the column of images. The column of writing on the left side consists of three “blocks,” each with a heading (the name of the time-honored brand), a brief introduction to the brand and its specialty food, and the address of the restaurant at the bottom. The column of images, which is on the right side of the same page, consists of three pictures of the same square size, depicting either the authentic cuisines or the brand sign of the restaurant. The layout on this page mirrors that on the next page, and altogether, they form a complete overview with six images in the middle and writing on both sides in a balanced aesthetic way. It could be inferred that this description identifies the entities in a proper and sufficient arrangement to introduce time-honored brands of old Beijing. Therefore, the layout, as a mode, has fulfilled the function of orienting viewers toward a selection of specialty food and time-honored brands in Beijing representing the gastronomic variety of the local cuisine.

4.2.2 Multiplicity of recreational tourism resources

Figure 6 is a tourist map demonstrating several representative landmarks in Beijing. It is an image involving a “classificational process,” representing “being a kind of/kinds of” recreational tourism resources. The multiple kinds of recreational tourism resources can be seen not only from the number of attractions depicted in the image but also from the layout.

Space and the relation of the simultaneously present elements in that space provide the underlying semiotic logics which offer distinct potentials for making meanings by the arrangement of entities in the framed space (Kress 2006). In analyzing the vertical composition design in the above image, the focus should be on such phenomenon as the up-to-down placement of items as well as on the salient positioning of one item compared to other items within the same visual space (Hallett and Kaplan-Weinger 2010).

In specific, the attraction of the Summer Palace occupies the upper and larger space. In comparison, the lower and smaller space is packed with the landmarks of several attractions, including Beijing World Towers, LG Twin Towers, Wangfujing Department Store, Water Cube, CCTV Headquarters, and National Center for the Performing Arts of China. The Summer Palace, as a theme park, is an aggregation of tourism resources, including cultural tourism, recreational tourism, historical tourism, architectural tourism, and religious tourism. The multiple types of tourism resources within the Summer Palace justify the salient position it takes on this image.

Meanwhile, the juxtaposition of eight destinations in the lower space serves to offer a series of tourism options, ranging from business tourism, shopping tourism, and sports tourism to leisure tourism and art tourism. On the whole, it is not hard to conclude that all the elements are designed to encode a message whose interpretation is central to understanding the visual text. That is, the semiotic modes help to uncover the content of varieties in recreational tourism resources and how they are presented in the image.

4.2.3 Multiplicity of historical tourism resources

Figure 7 is designed as the publicity image for 2019 Beijing Tourism promotion activities. It can be segmented into two sections: top and bottom. Both of the two sections represent a “symbolic process,” which is one type of “conceptual process.” And they are thematically similar, showcasing the ancient history and contemporary urbanization of Beijing city. The top is a panoramic view of the royal Imperial Palace, while the bottom is an overview of a metropolis city featured with high buildings and skyscrapers.

As metaphor can also be constructed and interpreted through elements of visual semiotic design (Feng 2019; Hallett and Kaplan-Weinger 2010; Kadry 2016), this image metaphorically depicts the sharply contrasting juxtaposition of the ancient and the contemporary. The overall image provides a discursive space to map out the binary relationship between tradition and modernity (Wang and Zhang 2019; Yan and Santos 2009). And rich connotations can be drawn in interpreting Beijing as a hybrid city of long history and huge potential for the future.

Interestingly, both the top and bottom sections are marked with repetition – the top of the building (both Palace and Skyscraper) repeatedly appear in the image. Repetition, according to Tannen (2007), is a technique used to reinforce a message. Here, the reinforced meaning portrays the ancient as traditional, mysterious, stable, and mature and the contemporary as modern, evolving, dynamic and youthful. As a whole, the image connotes the ties to the past and the future with an implication of multiplicity in historical tourism resources.