Destination Image Is Not Enough: Proposing Experiential Tourism Image

Abstract

The present research note proposes the concept of the experiential tourism image, a concept thatadvances the extant destination image which focuses on the image formed about destination-ingrained attributes. The experiential tourism image advocates a tourist image formed about thetourist holistic experience. It is conceptualized by advancing extant literature on the destinationimage by additionally considering diverse types of geographic regions where the tourismexperience takes place and co-creating the tourism experience. The geographic scope of thewidely-used concept of destination image has been confined to the destination region. Further,some studies have arbitrarily included the image about some attributes of non-destination regionsto measure a destination image, thus causing an unclear conceptualization of the scope of adestination in using the term destination image. The destination image concept also has lackedconsideration of the co-creation of the tourism experience. The suggested concept thusgeographically incorporates the tourist-generating regions and the transit regions and additionallyconsiders multiple destination regions visited in a single tourism experience. This new conceptprovides implications for tourism management.