Examining messaging and stakeholders behind foreign and domestic tourism in Singapore amidst COVID-19

• Main Author: Gao, Joyce Wenjing
• Other Authors: Duffy Andrew Michael
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Communication::Communication theories and models; Social sciences::Communication::Cultural studies
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147195
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

As the COVID-19 pandemic restricts international travel, governments turn tourism promotion efforts inwards and rely on domestic markets. This may bring conflict between how a nation promotes itself to foreign visitors and how locals see their country. To bypass this conflict, national tourism offices create separate tourism messages to appeal to locals: the domestic market has a different perspective on its own home country; and the state may also want to advance a different agenda for its own people. This study therefore uses framing theory to investigate the way a country is presented to two markets – local and foreign – in state-directed tourism discourse in Singapore. Through thematic analysis of texts in the Visit Singapore campaign for foreign visitors and the SingapoRediscovers campaign for locals to examine how these frames manifest, it finds that agendas are emphasised and de-emphasised depending on the audience. For foreigners, the state frames the country as a place rich in authenticity, heritage and indulgence, to entice foreigner tourists to spend more. Locals, by contrast, are encouraged to indulge themselves and dive deeper into the country’s history in order to distract them from a perceived lack of authenticity and the state’s efforts in reinforcing state loyalty.