Promoting Country as Tourist Destination to Chinese Tourists via Weibo: A Case Study of Switzerland Tourism Board

Abstract

This research aims to explore the content format, advertising strategy and execution style presented in the articles of Switzerland Tourism Weibo official account with quantitative content analysis. 238 articles were selected from Switzerland Tourism Weibo from May 2018 to April 2020 as samples of the study by random sampling method. Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) were used to analyze the data. The findings present that Switzerland Tourism Weibo plays an important role in communicating messages of destination to potential Chinese tourists and positively influence their decision-making. For content format, text with images are used the most to convey messages. In terms of the advertising appeals, tourist attractions, brand appeals, tourist attraction, brand appeal, musical appeal, nature, outdoor activity, promotion campaign, custom, trending topic, transportation, food and beverage, event, accommodation, social appeal, endorsement appeal, weather report, popularity appeal,adventure appeal, animal, romantic appeal are commonly used in Switzerland Tourism Weibo articles. As for the execution style, demonstration and slice-of-life are the most popular strategy. Implications are provided for marketers who are using social media such as Weibo to promote their products and services to audiences in China and scholars in follow-up research.