Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Understanding and measuring tourist destination images

Understanding and measuring tourist destination images A destination image is ‘the expression of all objective knowledge, impressions, prejudice, imaginations, and emotional thoughts an individual or group might have of a particular place’ (Lawson and Baud Bovy, 1977). Destination images influence a tourist's travel decision‐making, cognition and behaviour at a destination as well as satisfaction levels and recollection of the experience. This paper looks at the concept of tourist destination images and how destination image research has been approached from different academic disciplines and by practitioners such as tourism marketers. In particular, different techniques for the measurement of a tourist's destination images are reviewed and the dominance of structured, word‐based approaches is highlighted. This paper adds to previous work that has listed the main attributes used in image studies by including recent studies, many of which are Australian. In the paper it is argued that to provide valid image research, a preliminary phase of qualitative research is important in order to distil the constructs relevant to the population being studied. Construct elicitation techniques, such as free‐elicitation, interactive interviews and focus group interviews, are discussed along with new techniques that include the visual aspect of image, such as photo‐elicitation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Tourism Research Wiley

Understanding and measuring tourist destination images

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/understanding-and-measuring-tourist-destination-images-yGK2wn0Mgk

References (75)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN
1099-2340
eISSN
1522-1970
DOI
10.1002/(SICI)1522-1970(199901/02)1:1<1::AID-JTR143>3.0.CO;2-L
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

A destination image is ‘the expression of all objective knowledge, impressions, prejudice, imaginations, and emotional thoughts an individual or group might have of a particular place’ (Lawson and Baud Bovy, 1977). Destination images influence a tourist's travel decision‐making, cognition and behaviour at a destination as well as satisfaction levels and recollection of the experience. This paper looks at the concept of tourist destination images and how destination image research has been approached from different academic disciplines and by practitioners such as tourism marketers. In particular, different techniques for the measurement of a tourist's destination images are reviewed and the dominance of structured, word‐based approaches is highlighted. This paper adds to previous work that has listed the main attributes used in image studies by including recent studies, many of which are Australian. In the paper it is argued that to provide valid image research, a preliminary phase of qualitative research is important in order to distil the constructs relevant to the population being studied. Construct elicitation techniques, such as free‐elicitation, interactive interviews and focus group interviews, are discussed along with new techniques that include the visual aspect of image, such as photo‐elicitation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal

International Journal of Tourism ResearchWiley

Published: Jan 1, 1999

There are no references for this article.