Cultural Capital and Destination Image of Metropolitans: A Comparative Study of New York and Tokyo Official Tourism Websites in Chinese

Abstract

A metropolitan official tourism website is an important medium to promote and communicate the metropolitan’s tourist image due to its marketing role and the reliability of its information. This paper is based on the theories of cultural capital and destination image. Through content analysis of New York and Tokyo’s official tourism websites in Chinese, this paper suggests an innovative conceptual framework of cultural capital in relation to destination image, recognizing the various types of cultural capital in building destination image. Compared with the natural resources, the quantity of cultural capital has overwhelming advantage on both websites; static and dynamic cultural capital constitute the designative image, as well as induce an appraisive image and overall image. Embodied cultural capital represents the overall image. The inheritance of culture determines the unique cultural personality of each metropolis, making a contribution to the establishment of the individual tourist image. Recommendations to destination marketing are also made.