Perceptions of Taipei as Revealed in Travel Blogs: A Tale from Two Sides

This paper analyzed 200 travel blog entries posted by 100 Mainland Chinese visitors and 100 local Taiwanese visitors to Taipei, the capital city of The Republic of China. The paper is unique in three ways. First, it provides external and internal perceptions toward a destination; secondly, it combines a Chinese coding system to segment texts and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software to count keywords frequency; and finally, it visually presents the differences between two groups of bloggers in terms of the importance and affections visitors attached to Taipei in six image dimensions. Managerial implication is further enhanced when visitors' perception is compared with those messages promoted by destination marketing organizations. Overall, both groups of bloggers expressed more positive perceptions toward frequently mentioned image dimensions such as meals, sightseeing, and transportation. Mainland Chinese bloggers mainly saw Taipei through certain frames of reference that were manifested in promotional messages, thus creating a “circle” of representation in blogosphere.