Content area
Full Text
Destination branding and marketing
Edited by Leonardo Dioko and Rich Harrill
Introduction
The city of Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province is one of the most popular tourist destinations in China due to the unique natural scenery of narrow sandstone pillars and peaks. Zhangjiajie is also known as China's first national forest park and a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site, more formally known as the Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area (WSHIA). As the number of visitors to the area increases, tourism has become the main source of tax revenue and the key industry for economic development. In 2007, Zhangjiajie had over 18 million tourist arrivals, nearly three times greater than the figure recorded in 2000, with total revenue from the tourism industry reaching USD13 billion ([32] Zhangjiajie Statistical Yearbook , 2008).
Zhangjiajie was not a popular tourism destination until 1980 when the Hunan Daily published an essay on "The unique scenery of Zhangjiajie: an undiscovered scenic jewel" by Wu Guangzhong, a famous Chinese painter ([13] Gu and Zhong, 2005). As a result, Zhangjiajie started to attract painters, journalists and photographers, becoming more publicized through their publications and photographic exhibitions ([33] Zhong et al. , 2008). The increasing number of visitors helped officially establish Zhangjiajie as a national forest park in 1982. Tourism in Zhangjiajie has been growing ever since. The increase of visitors led to the rapid development of Wulingyuan County, where major tourism attractions are located. Improvements in various means of transportation have made Zhangjiajie more accessible than before. In 1984, a railway was constructed to connect the city of Zhangjiajie to other parts of the country and a major paved road was also built to connect the Zhangjiajie national forest park with its nearest town. As a result of the opening of an airport in 1994, the number of international visitors, especially Korean package group tourists has increased every year alongside numbers for domestic visitors.
Compared to the rise in the numbers of Asian tourists visiting, growth from the Western visitor's segment is relatively slow. Korean tourists mainly comprise the foreign visitor segment of Zhangjiajie. Approximately 1.1 million foreign tourists visited the city of Zhangjiajie in 2007 with nine out of ten foreign visitors coming from South Korea ([32] Zhangjiajie Statistical Yearbook , 2008)....