How can tourism advertising language make cultural heritage sites more popular?

Advertising language plays a crucial role in tourism marketing. However, scholars have overlooked the differentiated effects of various types of advertising language in cultural heritage tourism marketing. To fill this gap, our study examines the heterogeneous impact of different advertising languages on the popularity of cultural heritage sites using three scenario-based experiments. The results reveal that elegant (vs. colloquial) advertising language is more beneficial for the popularity of cultural heritage sites. Moreover, cultural appeal and experience expectations mediate this process. Additionally, the advertisement interestingness acts as an effective moderator. High advertisement interestingness can compensate for the shortcomings of colloquial advertising language through the “halo effect”. These findings innovate the research perspective in cultural heritage tourism marketing, enrich the understanding of factors affecting the popularity of cultural heritage sites, and provide practical insights for developing effective tourism advertising language strategies.