A NOVEL METHOD FOR DYNAMIC IMAGE LOCALIZATION

OF TOURISM DESTINATION BASED ON BUTLER LIFE CYCLE

THEORY

Changqiu Li

Tourism Management Department, Zhengzhou Tourism College, Zhengzhou, China

Keywords: Image localization, Dynamic, Life cycle theory.

Abstract: Nowadays, the competition of tourism industry is no longer the competition of quality, price and service, the

planning of image strategy for tourism destination has became the key point in this competition. The

establishment and spread of a well-known image for tourism destination can be a significant method to

exploit the tourism market as well as attract tourist. Meanwhile, the image for tourism destination is also a

huge fortune and intangible assets of the location and tourism enterprise. This thesis proposes the whole

formation process of tourism image based on life cycle theory for tourism destination, then discusses the

necessity of dynamic change of the image, finally we give a specific method as well as some instances to

build up the image for tourism destination.

1 INTRODUCTION

Currently, the tourism image is the most important

issue in completion of tourism. Most of the famous

cities (tourism destinations) have their own unique

and irreplaceable images, such as water city Venice,

beer city Munich, art city Paris, angel city Bangkok,

U. N. city New York, music city Vienna, Harem city

Baghdad and so on.

However, after several decades’ development,

the number of tourist and income of tourism do not

have a significant growth, even have a downward

trend. If there is not a new image of tourism for

these place, they will be eliminated from the tourism

market. So a well known image of tourism is

significant. This paper develop a novel method to

build up an image adapt to the changes of the out

environment.

2 LOCATION OF TOURISM

IMAGE

Tourism Image is integrated embodiment of

impression views, feelings and cognition people

perceived from various tourist destinations in a

certain period and certain circumstances. In short,

tourism image is people’s comprehensive cognition

and overall evaluation of tourist destinations.(Yang

Shenlin, 1999)

The most important marketing strategy is product

positioning. The key for effective market positioning

and marketing strategy is to establish a suitable

tourist destination image. To locate tourism image is

to launch attractive selling point to tourists. Tourism

Image comes from unique of tourism , is

comprehensive demonstration of natural

environment and human geography of the tourism, is

combination of three-dimensional space-time of

natural geography, history, cultural traditions and

social accumulation. It is generally a brilliant and

creative and appealing slogan to summary and show

it.

Image orientation is the premise of tourism

image design and give the direction for image

design.

Many countries and regions attaches great

importance to the tourism image orientation and

establish a strong image in the majority of the target

market. Spain, the Caribbean, Hawaii take sun,

beaches and folk as their whole image; Italy takes

Renaissance painting, sculpture, architectural

masterpieces as the overall image(Zhang Lingyun,

1993).

473

Li C..

A NOVEL METHOD FOR DYNAMIC IMAGE LOCALIZATION OF TOURISM DESTINATION BASED ON BUTLER LIFE CYCLE THEORY.

DOI: 10.5220/0003616804730476

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (SSTS-2011), pages 473-476

ISBN: 978-989-8425-53-9

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Image is to make the tourism into the hearts of

potential tourists, accounting for somewhere in the

mind, and make the tourists form a lively, clear

impression of strong sense. Tourism products or

business itself is not the focus of orientation, but to

promote tourism products into the minds of potential

consumers by orientation. The old image ladder has

been very solid, new image ladder is forming, which

is the most basic features of tourism image for

individual image orientation(Li Leilei, 1995).

3 TOURISM AREA LIFE CYCLE

THEORIES

It's generally believed that any tourist area cannot be

enduring. It has the process from the start to the end,

which is called the Tourism Area Life Cycle. The

most famous Tourism area life cycle theory is

Butler's six-stage model.

In 1980, Canadian scholar Butler used the

product life cycle model to describe the evolution of

Tourism in the essay "Tourism Area Life Cycle

Overview” (Butler R W, 1980). He proposed that the

evolution of tourism will go through six stages,

shown as figure 1: the exploratory stage, in phase,

development phase, solid phase, stagnation, decline

or recovery phase.

Figure 1: Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle Curve.

The figure shows that if it wants to turn into the

recovery stage from the stagnation stage, the

attraction of the tourist area must have some

fundamental changes. In order to achieve this goal,

there’re two ways: First, create a new series of

man-made landscape; the second is to play untapped

natural tourism resources, re-start the market. The

result is the decline or recovery? There are 5

possibilities:

(1) The depth development is effective. The

number of visitors continues to increase, and the

market expands. The tourism area goes into the

recovery phase.

(2) Focus on resource protection. Limited to

small-scale adjustment and transformation, tourists

can be slightly increased, and the pace of recovery is

slow;

(3) To focus on maintaining the existing volume,

containing the downward trend of tourists, so to

maintain a stable level;

(4) Excessive use of resources, do not pay

attention to environmental protection, resulting in

decreased competitiveness of the area. And tourists

decreased significantly;

(5) War, plague or other catastrophic events will

lead to sharp decline in the number of visitors; in

order to return to the original level is extremely

difficult.

Table 1: Tourism area life cycle model.

Stages Image

Characteristics

Direction of the

image Strategy

Discovery Less well known,

explorers paradise

Establish the

image

Start New Tourism Image promotion

Development High-profile tourist

destination which is

Weak image

strategy

Firm Long hot tourist

destination

Anti-promotion

Stagnate Reputation declines,

no longer

Identity crisis

management

Fading Reputation is low,

the declining

Design new image

Revival Re-developing

tourism

Re-positioning and

image transmission

Tourists have different understanding and

evaluation to different stages of tourist area

development. The relationship between image

characteristics, life cycle and the corresponding

image strategy of the tourism area is shown in table

1. Table 1 is the guidance to image of the design and

communication of the tourism area at different

stages of development.

4 RENEWING THE IMAGE

ORIENTATION OF TOURISM

DESTINATION

4.1 The Image Orientation of Tourism

Destination must be Periodically

Updated

Once the image orientation of tourism destination

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474

was defined, it will be certain stability, then, it will

be used as media dissemination image and the

repeated used slogan for marketing in a long period.

But, the image orientation of tourism destination is

not static, with the changes of the era, tourism

competitive environment, the tourism consumers’

psychology and needs, the development of tourism

destination also undergo the emerging, growth,

maturity and decline stages, the original image

orientation of tourism destination cannot meet the

changes of travel needs. Therefore, the image

orientation of tourism destination must also be

accordingly updated to the new image replaces the

old image based on tourism development trends and

competitive environment, the tourism consumers’

psychology and needs , and the development of the

tourism destinations’ own, so that the new image

occupies a favourable position in the minds of

travellers.

When the image of tourism destination is in the

stagnation phase of its life cycle, the reorientation

issues has to be considered, this is not only a cyclical

work, but also a strategic work.

After more than two decades of reform and

opening up in China, many old tourism destinations

have suffered stagnant growth or even declination in

the number phenomenon, these phenomenon

resulting from the lack of periodically updated the

image orientation of tourism destination. For

example, the famous tourism city Hangzhou which

was famous for “paradise” was also met the

challenge of declining attractiveness: In 1994 the

number of tourists decreased by 20% compared with

1993, and tourists’ resident time reduced to 1.65

days from 2(Li Leilei, 1999) the world. How to

update tourism products, and alter the static literati

travelling into the modern travelling which cater the

taste of modern people, have been becoming an

urgent need solve task to the local tourism

development. Luoyang and Xishuangbanna also

encountered the similar problem and Guilin is facing

competition and challenges.

4.2 Strategy of Tourism Image

Localization

(1) Update image localization by grasping the theme

of tourism

Determining the basis of the image localization

is the tourism resource and subject of product

features of tourism destination, of course, which the

orientation of image localization cannot be divorced

from.

Any tourism destination has its unique local

characteristics. Generally speaking, the study on the

local is a basis of designing image localization, that

is, through natural and geographical characteristics

of tourism destination, which can “read” and

“refined” the features of historical and cultural to

summarize the basic style of the place.

Next let’s take Hang Zhou as an example to

illustrate the idea. As we know, Hang Zhou has a

good reputation of “Just as there is paradise in

heaven, there are Su Zhou and Hang Zhou on earth”.

However, Hang Zhou has already prepared to take

“The city of Love” as new reputation to update

image localization.

Relatively speaking, the landscape of Guilin is

much more beautiful than that of Hang Zhou, and

Hang Zhou doesn’t possess the ancient capital of

Xi’an. To the nation and the whole world, the most

famous of the place of interest in Hang Zhou is the

West Lake; naturally Hang Zhou should take the

West Lake, which emphasis on Love, as her natural

core. Even though the slogan of “Just as there is

paradise in heaven, there are Su Zhou and Hang

Zhou on earth” has played a huge role to promote

the development of the city, it is inadequate to

continue to follow it in the new environment for not

good revealing the true distinction of Hang Zhou.

It is no exaggeration to say that historical and

cultural environment of Hang Zhou is the basis of

“The city of Love”. Hang Zhou’s beautiful, warm

atmosphere gave birth to one by one moving love

stories, which is born of seed of love.

In China, there are four famous love stories

which have moved most of Chinese generation by

generation, and two well-known legends of the four,

that is, "White Snake" and "Butterfly Lovers", were

born in Hang Zhou. Over time, the historical stories

are more compelling and moving love stories. Let us

take two examples to identify it. Firstly, Su Shi is a

poet who has high reputation in China, leaves eternal

farewell of “The West Lake looks like the fair lady

at her best, whether she is richly adorned or plainly

dressed” to show deep love to Qin Cao. Secondly,

Su Xiaoxiao, a famous courtesan in Southern Qi

dynasty, was the representative of the pursuit of

happiness of love. In conclusion, Hang Zhou has

been considered the birthplace of the ideal love story

since the ancient. Love is the new image localization

of Hang Zhou, so the city should try to mine

resources associated with affection, and refine the

market to establish the new image of “The City of

Love”.

(2) Update image localization based on market

research

A NOVEL METHOD FOR DYNAMIC IMAGE LOCALIZATION OF TOURISM DESTINATION BASED ON

BUTLER LIFE CYCLE THEORY

475

The main purpose of tourism image updating is

to promote tourism destination to potential tourists,

helping travellers clearer and easier to understand

the characteristics and specifics of tourist place, in

order to generate tourism motivation and make the

potential tourists turned into reality ones.

Conducting market research to understand the

psychological needs of tourists and their perception

of the Tourism Image can provide some realistic

basis to location updates. For example, Hong Kong's

original positioning image is "Charming Hong Kong,

The Vientiane capital". The main purpose of tourism

image updating is to promote tourism destination to

potential tourists, helping travellers clearer and

easier to understand the characteristics and specifics

of tourist place, in order to generate tourism

motivation and make the potential tourists turned

into reality ones. Conducting market research to

understand the psychological needs of tourists and

their perception of the Tourism Image can provide

some realistic basis to location updates. For example,

Hong Kong's original positioning image is

"Charming Hong Kong, The Vientiane capital". The

unique social development of Hong Kong brings the

combined East-West culture and varieties of cultural

shapes. Its rapid economic development and the

state of business center make commercial culture

flourish in Hong Kong. Urban economy and

appearance change with each passing day, while

urban culture together with life acts differently.

People spiriting, Hong Kong shows the power and

vitality, charm, exciting. Hong Kong sets the Eastern

mysterious and Western high lever civilization in

one, always attracting tourists through changing and

a variety of activities. After a market research, Hong

Kong was found as a colourful, full of fresh, creative

and energetic city in the hearts of respondents.

Therefore, a new image “Energetic capital Hong

Kong” is located and designed to replace the

original(Du Jang, 2000).

(3) Update image localization according to

Humanities, ecological environmental characteristics

of the Tourist spots

Tourism Image updates needs considering the

positioning of the image of tourism in the human

environment and ecological environment, the

characteristics of integrated development to meet

their own unique image.

California’s Location update is a successful case.

In tourists' heart, California's image has long been

concentrated and reduced to such concept as

swimming pool, beach, Golden Gate Bridge,

Hollywood, etc. These images continue be used by

other scenic spots, so California needs to be

redefined in order to set more distinctive images

among tourists. Closely around a new image of

"diversity" features in geography, climate, race and

culture, California uses a plural name "those

Californians" as the position image. Thus, even the

least curious people will ask the question ”How

many Californians in United States”(Li Leilei,1999).

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Yang Shenlin. The International Competitiveness of

Chinese Tourism Strategy [M]. Shanghai:Lixin

Accountant Press,1999.266

Zhang Lingyun. Several Problems Concerning the

Planning and Design of Tourism Exhibitions

[J].Tourism Tribune,1993,8(6):21-22

Li Leilei. A Discussion on the Positioning of Tourism

Resort Image [J].Tourism Tribune,1995,(3):29-31.

Butler R W. The Concept of A Tourist Area Cycle of

Evolution:Implications for Management of Resources

[J].Canadian Geographer,1980,24(1):5-12.

Li Leilei. Planning and Practicing the Image of Tourism

M].Guangzhou:Guangdong Tourism

Press,1999,123-124.

Wu Bihu. Regional Tourism Planning Management [M].

Beijing:China Travel Press,2001.206.

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