The Long Tail of Destination Image and Online Marketing

This study examines the linguistic structure of destination image using China as an example. The phrases the tourists use to describe China’s image follow the power-law distribution and exhibit the long tail pattern. The destination image is dominated by a few very popular phrases, but contains a large amount of phrases in small niches. Analysis on Google keyword search volumes shows that those phrases are likely to be the queries tourists use when searching destination information online. In addition, the tourists who use those niche phrases are more likely to travel to China. Thus, Destination Marketing Organizations should adopt the niche images as well as the commonly held images in their online marketing effort.