Links between communication and tourist destination perception: a heterogeneity analysis during the early pandemic reopening stage in China

The reality brought about by the pandemic has impacted both tourists’ behavior and destination imagery around the world. In the current post-pandemic process of tourism recovery, understanding the full range of travelers’ perceptions is essential for better management of cities as tourist destinations. This paper develops a latent class segmentation approach for a sample of tourists visiting Shanghai over the 2021 Chinese New Year. Data suggest that tourists with predominantly higher perceptions of communication will have better perceptions of the destination. In addition, we identify a number of clusters (i.e. involved travelers, challenging travelers, and uninterested travelers) based on respondents’ heterogeneity characteristics, both general and travel-specific. In the final section, we discuss the theoretical implications of our study and propose a set of recommendations for practice.