TO THE TOPIC OF STUDYING THE IMAGE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST TOURIST URBAN DESTINATIONS IN THE RUSSIAN-SPEAKING SEGMENT OF THE INTERNET
The increasing turbulence of the global tourism market determines the development of the marketing aspect of a destination, the emerging image of which is an important factor in the behavior of a potential tourist. In the presence of a theoretical basis, the development of this direction requires the search for new approaches, modern sources of information and the definition of a research algorithm, which is of particular relevance for global cities that form a unique category of tourist destinations or urban destinations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perception of New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet (Runet) on the basis of a combination of various techniques and the use of social media analysis capabilities. The authors offer a conceptual scheme for the implementation of the study, the database of which consists of four blocks, including: the combination of statistical data and international ratings of urban destinations; the number of search queries from Runet users; the frequency and context of mentions of urban locations in different social media (VK, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.); the results of a sociological survey held by means of an Internet questionnaire in the regions of Russia and abroad. Based on the analysis, the effectiveness of various mechanisms of image formation of the world’s largest urban communities with a relatively modest role of the media is evaluated; the level of destinations’ attractiveness among the Runet audience is revealed. A generalizing scheme of the “supporting framework” of the image of urban destination is presented, reflecting the secondary importance of affective components and the dominance of urban realities with a special role of the categories of “metropolitan”, urban localities and architectural brands. At the same time, significant differences have been established in the field of formation, focus, the ratio of cognitive and affective components of the image, and in general a high degree of its individuality, which in practice involves the use of a range of fine-tuning marketing settings for the largest tourist urban destinations in the world.