Negative word of mouth about foreign lands: Dimensions of the shared discomforts narrated in travel blogs

Abstract

This study seeks to report international tourists’ negative accounts of their visits to Sichuan, an emerging international tourist destination in the southwest of China and the hometown of Giant Pandas. Using the Interpretative Netnography Approach, the study employs the Atlas.ti and NVivo to analyze blog narratives collected from the TravelPod, one of the first website to offer free service to users to create travel blogs. The results indicate that unpleasant encounters with squat toilet became the targets of frequent complaints while the richest accounts were centered on tough and stuffy long bus ride threatened by potential risk of bad road, uncomfortable train tour, and unpleasant air travel experiences. This study recognizes that international travelers’ negative accounts on foreign lands as indicated in travel blogs have been produced in the context of cultural politics, filters and barriers, post-colonialism, and narrative turn, as well as personal point of reference and travelers’ bias. The findings will deepen the current understanding of negative word of mouth narrated in travel blogs so as to respond accordingly and prevent its undesirable consequences to destination image throughout postmodern consumer culture in the economic and cultural globalized world.