Is Xenios Zeus Still Alive? Destination Image of Athens in the Years of Recession

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of the city of Athens’ destination image from 2005 to 2015, in order to exploit the impact of the recent economic recession on individual perceptions. It uses advanced web content mining to analyze Tripadvisor messages that were posted in Athens Travel Forum. The findings show that the image of Athens has remained positive, facing a significant, but short-term, shift during the first years of the crisis. The findings also reveal that the destination image of Athens is only partially shared by people residing inside and outside Greece, and that non-Greek residents have more favorable perceptions towards the destination. The study expands understanding on destination image literature by demonstrating the normative nature of destination images, which - once established - can be particularly resistant to change, even during long term crises

Destination Image Analytics Through Traveller-Generated Content

“…According to a recent study [100], Attica stands out for its attractions classified as ancient ruins. Overall, the image of Attica is very positive (Table 6), coinciding with a previous study on the TDI of Athens during the recession years [21].…”

“…A study focused on exploring similarities between attractions through 1,695,333 OTRs that highlighted Athens, Cairo and Rome in the category of ancient ruins deserves special attention [100]. As subsequent research has shown, people who use reviews of various tourism products have particular objectives, including opinion mining [101], especially for information about tourist satisfaction [102] and affective image [21]. Recent research based on 25,220 TripAdvisor reviews on things to do in an Italian province [103] is not focused on TDI, but it measures visitor satisfaction through its evaluation that uses between one and five bubbles and implements a content analysis using the commercial application Leximancer.…”

“…In travel, hospitality and tourism, experiences shared through social media have been increasing [20] as well as consultation (before and during the trip) and consideration of content generated by other travellers. Within traveller-generated content (TGC), some authors have used travel-related forums [21,22], tweets [23], Facebook posts [24], multiple social media [25] and online photographs [26][27][28] to deduce TDI aspects, but most have focused on travel blogs [29] and online travel reviews (OTR) [30]. It is worth highlighting the transition from travel blogs to OTRs.…”

Rural Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals. A Study of the Variables That Most Influence the Behavior of the Tourist

“…After the vacation and the tourist's personal experience, a final image is generated. For Um and Crompton (1990) and Ugarte (2007), the perceived image of a place will be formed by the interaction of the projected image (the destination image the promotional information projects) and the individual's needs, motivations, experience, preferences and personal characteristics, and this image is very resistant to change, even in times of economic crisis (Gkritzali et al, 2018). Thus, we propose the following hypotheses: Overall satisfaction with the vacation is a very interesting variable, because, depending on the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, the degree of tourist loyalty to both the geographical area and the accommodation can be calculated.…”

Characteristics of destination image: visitors and non-visitors’ images of London

“…It has further been recognized that destinations which invest in a wrong image are likely to "lose" their competitive position in the future (Avraham, 2004). A plethora of studies have explored the content of destination image by assessing visitors' and/or potential visitors' perceptions of place-specific attributes, such as scenery, attractions, climate and friendliness of the locals (Iordanova and Stylidis, 2017;Gkritzali et al, 2017;Stepchenkova and Li, 2014). However, very few studies have focused on understanding the characteristics (i.e.…”