Tourist Experience Preference Study In Haikou Arcaded Old Streets Under The Perspective Of Cultural Symbolic Cognition

Tourism is a process by which visitors gain a variety of experiences through choices and interpretations of cultural symbols.With the development of China’s economy and society,together with the continuous improvement of people’s comprehensive quality and aesthetic level,the approach of in-depth tour focusing on experience and aesthetic taste is increasingly become popular among tourists.Therefore,to clarify the cultural connotation of historical districts,dig deeper and further expand its cultural experience function and historical value could help historical districts enhance their cultural taste.Moreover,it could also enhance tourists’ quality through cultivating cultural symbolic cognition in the tourism experience.As long-established cultural tourism resources,one city’s historical districts display rich cultural symbols and contain profound aesthetic values.When reviewing literature of researches about historical districts,they more likely to be regarded as simple tourist and sightseeing places in practice,and highly emphases on their political and economical values.The reasons might include the influence of long-time perceptual thinking and the influence of China’s economic and social development characteristics,which made external value been given more emphasis.Cultural connotation and symbolic value of the important intrinsic attributes of historical districts have been overlooked.Based on the situation,this research focuses on the tourist experience preferences of Haikou Arcaded Old Street from the perspective of cultural symbols,hoping to provide positive effects on further expanding the research scope of urban historical district tourism,deepening the cultural tourism connotation of symbolic cognition,and innovating cultural tourism development ideas.Under the guidance of tourism experience and tourism symbol theory,this paper analyzes the historical status and cultural symbols of Haikou Arcaded Old Street by focusing on the experience of development of Haikou Old Street and analyzing its cultural symbols from architectural culture,Nanyang culture,commercial culture,art culture,intangible culture and place name culture.Through questionnaire survey,the cultural symbolic cognition of tourists in Haikou is divided into nine kinds,including ancient and charm,leisure and elegant,downtown bustling,beautiful,romantic,food,local people,Nanyang style,poetic.According to the analysis of the survey results,tourists are further divided into four types:folk customs image focused,leisure and romantic image focused,historical and cultural image focused,food and beverage image focused.On this basis,the cultural symbolic elements of experience preferences and the differences of different experiencers types are analyzed.This paper also demostrates the existing problems in the cultural tourism development of Haikou Arcaded Old Street,including complicated property rights relationship,unreasonable layout of new and old business;limited tourism products and cultural services;small portion of cultural content in tourism products.With these problems,it is difficult for tourists to gain deep cultural experience.Combining cultural symbolic cognition and tourists’ travel experience preferences,this study puts forward the following constructive suggestions:first,promoting tourists’ willingness to experience by enhancing their sense of destination identity and improving supporting facilities;second,using cultural symbols as a carrier to strengthen publicity,and working together to protect history and create cultural brands;third,to handle ownership relationship properly and build Nanyang tourism city as a whole,strengthening the cultural symbol recognition among tourists;last but not least,to build a Nanyang cultural tourism chain and pay attention to international branding.