Semiotic fieldwork on chaordic tourism destination image management in Seoul during COVID-19
Introduction
Public reactions to COVID-19 are visibly evident in Seoul's tourism destination image management. The implementation of public social distancing policies has evolved from early prevention measures to crisis mitigation against the coronavirus. Residents' lifestyles are changed, businesses experience unequal levels of success or failure, and travel bans have all but obliterated the tourism economy. The unpredictable and comprehensive reach of the coronavirus seems to have exceeded purposive destination management actions, opening a chaordic or self-organizing public response (Pappas, 2019). Social distancing, the essential talking point in the public discourse, ostensibly refers simply to the maintaining of a physical distance between individuals. But the theoretical effects are more complex, implicating deeper intergroup dynamics and differences in social identity. Social distancing cannot be universally or symmetrically managed because it affects the dynamics of mobility based on class difference, not just a physical distance (Rogers, 2006). Privilege, occupation, and national identity work to determine who is populating certain spaces and who might be conspicuously absent. Visible signs of social distance in both literal and theoretical terms, and in its purposive and increasingly chaordic destination management are increasingly evident in how changes are emerging in Seoul's built urban environment and in how it is populated.
The social and physical gaps between residents and tourists have widened in Seoul, because of travel bans or by choice. Consequently, their effects on susceptible designated tourist areas that were already practically segregated from the larger destination economy are evident (Ahn & McKercher, 2015). The illusion of permanence surrounding tourist shopping areas, attractions, accommodations, and transportation systems has been visually disrupted. These structural changes in social distancing and their effects on the physical destination are as chaordic as they are purposeful – the results of emergency measures such as mandatory masks, placement of public notices and checkpoints that differentially restrict access to public venues – leading to self-organizing adaptation to the new social norms under COVID-19 (Fitzgerald & Van-Eijnatten, 2002). The intensity of chaordic social change is exacerbated by the tone of the public discourse concerning the severity of the virus and its social impacts (Chew & Jahari, 2014). The outbreak has intensely affected tourism mobility and the destination image of the hospitality and tourism industries (Pennington & Thomsen, 2010). COVID-19 will have long term lasting impacts on social norms, economies, and the international community, evident in their reflection in the physical landscape, as stop-gap prevention measures become permanent institutions.
The purpose of this research is to explore chaordic tourism destination image management during COVID-19, using a hybrid structural-social semiotics methodology. The study, situated in Seoul, can be readily applied to any other comparable urban tourism destination. This study seeks to contribute to the tourism research literature by bridging the theoretical gap between chaordic tourism dimensions of social distance theory and destination image management. It aims to use semiotics to address the research question of how the deeper symptoms of crisis on tourism destinations during COVID-19, can be systematically visualized and identified for tourism planners and managers, and to recommend how the effects of this event can be mitigated. Symptoms of crisis include the unintended, unequal, and haphazard displacement of individuals and businesses due to social distancing (Dreidger & Peters, 2008). This study is driven by online and onsite sampling techniques to explore the self-reinforcing cycle of discourse and its visible social effects using semiotics (Krase & Shortell, 2011). The effects of social distancing on the destination might reveal deeper core social group identities of privilege versus lack or resident versus visitor, acting as a catalyst for clarifying preexisting social attitudes that drive sociodemographic segregation and how they manifest structurally in the built landscape. To interpret the visual signs of social distancing driven by reactions against COVID-19, and to identify their implications for tourism management, the following goals have been made:
- •
To address the research question of how the chaordic symptoms of crisis in tourism destinations can be visualized for tourism planners and managers.
- •
To bridge a theoretical gap between ‘social distance’ and ‘destination image perception’ in the context of a chaordic perspective.
- •
To re-design a theoretical view on semiotics that combines its structural and social perspectives especially for tourism management research.
- •
To employ the structural-social semiotic fieldwork as a methodology to identify the representations and naturalistic (mimetic) signs of social distancing and their effects on destination image perception in Seoul.
- •
To present the theoretical and practical implications of chaordic destination image management and recommendations based on the visual findings derived from the semiotic method for Seoul, to be applicable to any other comparable urban tourism destination.
Section snippets
Theoretical context
In 2020, COVID-19 drastically changed how people interacted with each other in public spaces. It also altered the very landscape within which those interactions took place. The effects of COVID-19 have been pronounced in their effects on travel, tourist behavior and on the perception of international destinations, including Seoul. This city has been a successful urban tourism destination, especially in catering to the Japanese, Chinese and Southeast Asia travel markets as well as to the United
Methods
Semiotics consists of two fundamental approaches, including structural and social semiotics. In structural semiotics, the focus is on the structures and rules of sign systems (Vannini, 2007) regardless of the role or viewpoint of the interpretant. Signs are highly material (Keane, 2003) representations of events that happen in space and time and exist outside the intentions or experience of the individual (Zerubavel, 2016). This approach usually emphasizes the theoretical identification and
Conclusion
In this paper, research on the chaordic effects of COVID-19 on Seoul tourism destination image management was performed using a structural-social semiotics methodology. The research focused on chaordic destination image management in Seoul, within the context of social distance theory and the social construction of the physical destination landscape. In this view, it was suggested that in Seoul, as well as any other comparable urban tourism destination, social group attachments may shift when
Impact statement
This research was conducted in Seoul, South Korea, during early prevention and late mitigation stages of the COVID-19 crisis. The study is designed to be of interest to management and research-oriented readers of Tourism Management. For destination managers and policy makers, the paper shows how the impacts of a major social crisis can be visualized in terms of changes in the urban built environment and how it is inhabited. Findings indicate that policy cannot completely predict or prevent the
Acknowledgements
This paper was supported in part by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2098438).
William Cannon Hunter, Ph.D., Professor, Professor in Department of Convention Management at the College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul (since 2009). Ph.D. from Texas A&M (1999), studying sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies disciplines with a focus on the field of tourism studies. Major research interests include tourism destination imagery, cultural representation and subjectivity using semiotic, Q-method, and other interpretive methods. He has been
References (87)
- et al.
Destination image as a mediator between perceived risks and revisit intention: A case of post-disaster Japan
Tourism Management
(2014) Triangulation in qualitative research
Tourism Management
(1999)The semiotic paradigm: Implications for tourism research
Tourism Management
(1999)- et al.
Destination image: Towards a conceptual framework
Annals of Tourism Research
(2002) Community perceptions of environmental and social change and tourism development on the island of Koh Samui, Thailand
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2005)- et al.
Viking heritage tourism: Authenticity and commodification
Annals of Tourism Research
(2001) China's chairman mao: A visual analysis of hunan province online destination image
Tourism Management
(2013)- et al.
Residents' attitude towards domestic tourists explained by contact, emotional solidarity and social distance
Tourism Management
(2018) Semiotics and the social analysis of material things
Language & Communication
(2003)The viability of cultural districts in Seoul
City, Culture and Society
(2011)
Cultural entrepreneurs and urban regeneration in Itaewon, Seoul
Cities
Sociological impressionism in a hospitality context
Annals of Tourism Research
Dynamic texts and tourist gaze
Annals of Tourism Research
Quantitative characterization of chaordic tourist destination
Tourism Management
Hotel decision-making during multiple crises: A chaordic perspective
Tourism Management
UK outbound travel and Brexit complexity
Tourism Management
Exploring tourists' images of a distant destination
Tourism Management
The state of qualitative research
Annals of Tourism Research
Tourism and cultural proximity: Examples from New Zealand
Annals of Tourism Research
Organizations as complex adaptive systems: Implications of complexity theory for leadership research
The Leadership Quarterly
Applying social distance to voluntourism research
Annals of Tourism Research
The effect of cultural distance on tourism: A study of international visitors to Hong Kong
Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research
Religious attitudes of college students
American Journal of Sociology
Mythologies
The virtual illusion: Or the automatic writing of the world
Theory, Culture & Society
First lecture. Social space and symbolic space: Introduction to a Japanese reading of Distinction
Poetics Today
Archetypes of destination governance: A comparison of international destinations
Tourism Review
#COVID-19: The first public Coronavirus Twitter dataset
Visual social semiotics: Understanding how still images make meaning
Technical Communication
Countries test tactics in ‘war’ against COVID-19
Science
Visual anthropology
Semiotics of tourism
The American Journal of Semiotics
Content/semiotic analysis: Applications for tourism research
Identity and social distance: Towards understanding Simmel's ‘The Stranger
Canadian Review of Sociology
Covid-19: Trump Stokes protests against social distancing measures
Reflections: Chaos in organizational change
Journal of Organizational Change Management
Tourism as an ordering: Towards a new ontology of tourism
Tourist Studies
Engaging ethnography in tourist research: An introduction
Tourist Studies
Educational research: An introduction
The ecological approach to visual perception
Re-conceptualizing generalization: Old issues in a new frame
Disneyland: A utopian urban space
Urban Life
Cited by (9)
COVID-19, destination image, and destination visit intention: unpacking the impacts of familiarity, generation, and gender amidst COVID-19
2024, Consumer Behavior in Tourism and HospitalityElucidating International Travelers’ Tourism Image of Taiwan: A Qualitative Approach
2023, Sustainability (Switzerland)COVID-19's fear-uncertainty effects on destination image and travelers’ environmental behavior post-coronavirus pandemic in Egypt: a multi-level moderation approach
2023, Environment, Development and SustainabilityTHE SEMIOTIC PARADIGM FOR DECONSTRUCTING EVENT DESIGN AND MEANING
2023, Event ManagementReading the Identity of Dark Heritage Sites: A Peircean Semiotic Methodology
2023, Journal of Travel ResearchThe influence of destination image within the territorial brand on regional development
2023, Cogent Social Sciences
William Cannon Hunter, Ph.D., Professor, Professor in Department of Convention Management at the College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul (since 2009). Ph.D. from Texas A&M (1999), studying sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies disciplines with a focus on the field of tourism studies. Major research interests include tourism destination imagery, cultural representation and subjectivity using semiotic, Q-method, and other interpretive methods. He has been involved in indigenous issues projects and other community-based and UN-ICLEI projects related to tourism and sustainability in Taiwan, Korea, and the wider Asia region. Contact: [email protected]