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Selling cities as tourism destinations using humanized language

crowd at waterfalls with a bird flying overhead in the sky

In 2004, the city council for Amsterdam installed a sign, “I Amsterdam”. People refer to their home countries using terms such as “Mother Bulgaria” or “motherland”. And, in Australia, the Ballarat Wildlife Park used a “wombassador” to promote tourism. In all these examples, destination marketers convey or promote destinations using human-like features or language, even though countries, cities, and attractions are non-human objects.

Does anthropomorphizing tourism destinations “work”? Do they appeal to potential tourists? In our research, we show that they do – but only for potential tourists who are low on power. Unfortunately, in today’s world, there are people (citizens, potential tourists) who struggle to advance the socioeconomic ladder. These individuals are what researchers call low on “power”. Our studies reveal that potential tourists low on power find anthropomorphized destinations appealing because such destinations give them a sense of psychological power and control back.

For example, in one of our studies, we asked people to recall a time when they felt low or high on power. Then, we showed them an ad for Hong Kong that we created that sold the city using humanized language or not. We found that anthropomorphizing “Asia’s world city” only increased travel intentions among participants who we primed with low (but not high) power. We replicated our findings with other destinations such as Bali in Indonesia and Uluru in Australia.

Our work broadly reveals the importance of segmenting potential tourists when tourism agencies are trying to sell and promote their cities. Indeed, one traveler can have very distinct tastes and preferences compared to another. There have been segmentations of the market for lodging, cultural tourism, and sustainable tourism. But, to our knowledge, there has been little examination of market segmentation as it relates to destination anthropomorphism, motivating our current effort. To learn more, see the full article:

Chan, E., & Gohary, A. (2023). To Whom Does Destination Anthropomorphism Appeal? Power and Perceived Control. Journal of Travel Research, 62(4), 859–877. DOI: 10.1177/00472875221095215 (external link)