The Cultural Characteristics in China's Official Online Tourism Advertisements

Abstract: Tourism advertising is an important approach in providing information about tourism destinations and in attracting potential customers, and in this process, particular cultural factors are usually conveyed. In this thesis, the main intention was to describe the cultural factors reflected in advertising and discover the role that Chinese cultural identity plays in China’s official Internet tourism advertisements to overseas markets using a theoretical framework of diverse cultural issues. The objects of this study are the official tourism advertisements from China National Tourist Office’s (CNTO) websites. The author researched Chinese cultural characteristics and tried to connect them with the expressional tendencies in tourism advertisements. Using a quantitative content analysis method, the most frequent cultural symbol in advertising was discovered as the basis and general image of the online tourism advertisements. Then the author discussed the external manifestations of cultural factors in tourism advertising in detail and analysed the internal cultural values behind them using the qualitative discourse analysis method. The main conclusions of this study indicated that the most representative cultural characteristic of Chinese culture in tourism advertising is a high-context cultural feature; in addition, at present traditional ideology in Chinese society, such as Confucianism and Taoism, was still being conveyed in tourism advertising. In general, Chinese cultural traditions influenced tourism advertising expressions, both in external manifestations and internal connotations.