Elsevier

Tourism Management

Volume 93, December 2022, 104565
Tourism Management

Semiotic fieldwork on chaordic tourism destination image management in Seoul during COVID-19

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104565Get rights and content

Abstract

Tourism destination image management has been impacted by COVID-19 in Seoul, and a chaordic response to social distancing policies are visually evident in its built and inhabited landscape. The purpose of this study is to explore chaordic changes in the urban tourism destination as an effect of social distance, using a structural-social semiotics methodology. Online sampling was combined with naturalistic fieldwork to identify signs where these effects are visually evident. Online research was performed in early 2020 and onsite research was conducted in early 2021. Findings show how signs of the disease changed over time, from idealized representations of prevention, to hastily implemented acts of mitigation. The implications suggest that semiotic methodologies can enable decision makers to visualize the chaordic effects of policy during crisis and to make better structural planning decisions for their unique urban tourism destination to mitigate the conspicuous disappearance of the tourist during times of crisis.

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

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  • 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]

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