From the projected to the transmitted image: The 2.0 construction of tourist destination image and identity in Catalonia (original) (raw)
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Revista de Turism: Studii si Cercetari in Turism, 2012
Given the global economic crisis that affected the entire network information society, the image is an asset that contributes to a distinct and favorable positioning of tourist destinations in the tourism macro-network. This is why being aware of Romania's image as a tourist destination is important. To identify its representation on travel blog photography I undertook a quantitative analysis on a sample of 518 photos on French travelers' blogs. The results show that the best represented tourist attractions are of local specificity (64, 10%), followed by cultural attractions (25, 77%) while tourist destination attributes such as sports and spa activities were found amiss. The representation of the national network of tourist destinations is incomplete and disproportionate.
Image creation for destinations is undergoing a revolution based on the consolidation of Internet’s spaces and its capacity to empower new actors (or stakeholders) and discourses. Literature emphasizes the role of websites and travel blogs as key spaces in generating this image, strengthening the actions of official entities, service providers and travel bloggers in its projection and highlighting the lack of communication between them. Using the case of the Turisme de Barcelona website and Tripadvisor forum, the present article goes a step further, analyzing the increasing role of social media in this process, as it gives both past and future travelers and residents the ability to generate destination images in a dialogue-based discourse that gives a deeper and clearer vision of diverse resources, particular tourism products, and urban spaces. This user-generated content can be useful for DMOs (Destination Management Organizations) in adapting resources and infrastructures to tourists as well as residents.
Island Studies Journal, 2021
The understanding of destination image is a key point for tourism enterprises, local authorities, and policy makers. This study explores the case of Capraia, a small island located in Tuscany, to analyze how tourists (tourism demand) and local operators (tourism supply) create and communicate the island’s online image. This research quantitatively examines online communication on the two sides of the tourism market to monitor the online destination image of the island of Capraia. To build on previous research in this area, this study adopts a web content mining approach to assess the characteristics of content published online. The main dimensions of destination image (as developed in the literature) are used as a basis to create a dictionary for automated content analysis. A total of 24 tourism promotion websites and 9,180 tourist Instagram posts were analyzed. Findings reveal discrepancies between the image proposed by local operators and that perceived by tourists. Local operator...
Tourist image and mass media, a social construction
2012
This article reviews image destination considering Niklas Luhmann social system theory. Particularly the construction of reality made by the mass media system is analyzed as the space where social imaginaries takes place for tourists based on the information featured in the media. In order to explain this construction every program of the mass media system was consider: advertising, entertainment, news and in-depth reporting which contribute in a different way to create tourism image destination, even though common operation for each program selection and information production was considered, besides actualization in the system and its function accelerating the speed of society. Therefore tourism image destination is a dynamic and complex social construction based on self-actualizations because of the information coming from the social system.
The blogosphere is an increasingly expanding communication space and the bloggers usually enjoy large credibility among the internet consumers. The tourism blogs represent both a reliable source of information for the potential visitors and an evaluation tool in terms of touristic destination image for the marketers. This research sought to establish what contributions were brought about by the touristic attractions in defining Romanian's image from the French bloggers' perspective. The content analysis applied on 30 personal touristic blogs revealed mostly a positive touristic image, dominated, though, by vagueness; historical monuments and natural assets are less present than local specificity and the item "other" within the French bloggers posts. By the item "other" we understand several aspects that do not refer to touristic attractions, but which have the capacity to influence the tourists' perception, while, at a larger level, they articulate Romania's image as touristic destination.
Assessing destination image: An online marketing approach and the case of TripAdvisor
Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 2015
Destination image is a popular research domain in the tourism literature. Yet, limited studies focus on destination image as reflected through actual tourists' evaluations and reviews on social media. Taken the significance of social media and the relationship between country and destination image, the study embarks upon to assess the three image components (i.e. cognitive, affective, conative) in the case of Istanbul. The study presents the destination image concept from the tourists' point of view, as they review Istanbul on TripAdvisor throughout the summer in 2013. This study, although limited in scope, will be of interest to academic researchers and industry practitioners who are seeking to better understand the behavior of travelers using the Internet.
Tourism Management, 2018
Tourist destination image (TDI) is considered crucial when planning a trip. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to analyse and measure the (in)congruity or gap between the two sides of the TDI (supply-side projected vs. demand-side perceived) based on the difference between proportions of appearance. This method is applied to an outstanding Mediterranean destination, Catalonia, based on three different information sources: induced (Catalan Tourist Board dossier), autonomous (Lonely Planet travel guide), and organic (UGC: user-generated content). UGC consists of a random sample of 80,000 online travel reviews written in English by tourists who visited Catalonia during 2015. Our findings emphasize discrepancies in three aspects of the TDI, namely spatial, cognitive and affective image. The measurement of the gap between these TDI components shows that organic images (perceived) are significantly different from autonomous and induced images (projected), and that, the last two resemble one another much more.