Deconstructing Destination Image in the Information Age

Impacts on travel and holiday accommodation online booking in selected South-East European countries: a multivariate analysis approach

“…Moreover, according to the above research, an effective online communication strategy is the key factor for achieving a competitive advantage on the market for satisfying actual and potential tourist information needs. Considerable increases in the volume of available tourist information have resulted from rapid technological changes, globalization and competition, meaning that both consumers and tourist destinations face complex choices [9]. Without having experience of an actual destination, tourists find if difficult to form a clear image of the destination.…”

“…Without having experience of an actual destination, tourists find if difficult to form a clear image of the destination. This is where the multimedia interactive nature of the Web comes into play opening up a whole new dimension to destination marketing [9]. Moreover, mass tourism destinations are usually subject to a substantial degree of control by tour operators, but the Internet provides an alternative distribution channel when used as a marketing tool [17].…”

Image as the elements of attractiveness of the destinations of the nature-oriented tourism

“…The image is usually understood as "the eff ect of a location" or "the perception of an area" (Echtner and Ritchie, 2003, p. 41). It is commonly studied ex-situ, be means of the structured questionnaires using the semantic diff erential or the Likert scaling (compare overviews in Govers and Go, 2003;Hosany et al, 2007) and with regard to the two components forming the image -cognitive and emotional (Crompton, 1979). Part of researches tends, however, step by step to the belief, that in the time of the fast developing information technologies and the increasing degree of accessibility and speed of the dissemination of information the standardized and structured scales are no more applicable, but the unstructured questions with the free possibility to answer should be preferred (Govers and Go, 2003).…”

“…The image has also a tendency to stay unchanged when the experience right in the location was pleasant for the visitor or it fulfi lled the visitor's expectations (Gunn, 1988). Therefore, the key element for marketers is the management of information as it fl ows to the potential client (Molina, Gómez and Martín-Consuegra, 2010), what is, however, still more diffi cult in the conditions of the development of the global on-line virtual image of the world (Govers and Go, 2003) -particularly because of the changing conditions for building up and strengthening of the territorial brand (Govers and Go, 2009).…”

Innovation in function of creating image of the city as a tourist destination

“…Destinacioni imidž može se posmatrati i kao sredstvo ili orijentir na osnovu koga potencijalni turisti utvrđuju potencijale destinacije za ostvarenje svoje satisfakcije (Govers, 2003). Imidž destinacije, sazdan od predstava o destinaciji, rezidentima, trgovcima, ostalim turistima i zaposlenima (Gallarza, Saura & García, 2002), snažno utiče na očekivanja turista od destinacije, na ukupnu evaluaciju destinacije i na buduće namere turista da ponovo posete destinaciju ili da je usmeno promovišu (Gartner, 1989;Goodall, 1988).…”