Journal of Destination Marketing & Management最新文献

Tourists play an important role in shaping the destination image by posting their experiences on visual and audio-visual channels. Thus, it is increasingly important for a successful destination marketing strategy that destination managers know how their destination is perceived and whether this is aligned with the image they project. This comparative content analysis evaluates the potential gap between the projected and perceived destination image for the Lake Lucerne Region in Switzerland on Instagram.

From a database of over 10,000 posts, this study takes a closer look at 300 randomly selected user-generated picture posts and a corresponding number of picture posts from four destination management organisations using a classification system of 27 attribute categories to analyse the content. The results show that tourists and tourism organisations use similar attributes to depict the destination image. The results shed light on the coexistence of categories in visual representations and highlight the importance of understanding both projected and perceived destination images and how they align.

Most studies on residents' pro-tourism behaviour have mainly focused on the influence of economic and non-economic factors as individuals in the role of residents, resulting in the oversight of potential mutual influence amongst other roles that residents may assume, including that of tourists. Therefore, this study employs role transition and emotional contagion theories to construct a research model, aiming to delve into the influence of positive emotion and emotional solidarity when an individual alternates between the roles of tourist and resident. A survey instrument was administered to gather data from 360 residents of Huangshan, a small inland city in southeastern China. Utilizing partial least squares-structural equation modelling, the study hypotheses were empirically tested. The findings reveal that an individual's positive emotion and emotional solidarity as a tourist significantly and positively impact their corresponding emotion and emotional solidarity when acting as a resident. Furthermore, the latter exerts a significant influence on their pro-tourism behaviour. Additionally, this research reveals that susceptibility to emotional contagion positively amplifies the impact of individuals' positive emotion as tourists on their emotional solidarity when assuming the role of a resident. The paper discusses theoretical and managerial implications derived from these findings. Lastly, the study acknowledges limitations in variable selection, emotional contagion processes, and destination types, suggesting future research directions.

Photos are an important tool for understanding the minds of travelers and characterizing the tourism destination image, and they play a unique role in the construction of tourism images. The wide application of deep learning techniques has brought new opportunities for the visual content analysis of images. This paper proposes a framework for comprehensively analyzing the image of tourist destinations and for targeted tourism planning. Firstly, this paper utilizes deep learning techniques to perceive images from three perspectives: image scene, visual aesthetics and emotional experience, based on photos of inbound tourists in Beijing on the Flickr website. Secondly, spatial visualization analysis of the perceived image is carried out with the help of tourism resource distribution to provide suggestions for tourism planning. The results show that: (1) Beijing's inbound tourism cognitive images can be categorized as food, culture, people, architecture, recreation, natural scenery, city life, animals and infrastructure. (2) The categories of architecture, culture and natural scenery have a higher quality of visual aesthetics and more positive emotional arousal. (3) Spatially, Beijing's inbound tourism image shows the structural characteristics of multi-core aggregation. The findings provide relevant theoretical and practical guidance for destination planning and management.

The goal of this research was to develop and validate an integrative model for memorable wildlife tourism experience. The study examined how escapism, experience co-creation, existential authenticity, and experiential satisfaction serve as drivers of memorable wildlife experience. It further explored the connection between memorable wildlife tourism experience and hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, place attachment and pro-environmental behaviour. The sample consists of 361 international tourists aged 18 years or more who visited the Mole National Park in Ghana between October 2022 and September 2023 for a wildlife safari. Results reveals that as experience co-creation, experiential authenticity, and experiential satisfaction increase, the more memorable wildlife tourism experience becomes. Enhanced experiential satisfaction and memorable experiences are associated with heightened hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, place attachment, and pro-environmental behaviour. The theoretical and managerial implications as well as recommendations for future studies are presented.

Vicarious experiences in tourism possess significant marketing implications. While numerous studies have explored how various forms of vicarious experiences can impact an individual, the role of different time spans as a key factor determining the extent of said impact has been neglected in prior research. To address this gap, the present study thus bridges environmental psychology with the context of tourism and applies the theory of mental representations. An experiment (n = 359) was designed to examine differences in select mental representation dimensions (cognitive, affective, conative, and sensorial) among male and female Chinese college students who have zero/medium/maximum durations of constant vicarious experiences related to European destinations in their home environment. The results indicate that the medium duration of constant vicarious experiences leads to the most positive changes in cognitive and conative dimensions, while the longest constant vicarious experiences produce desirable affective dimension outcomes. Moreover, male college students seem to be more susceptible to the influences of such constant vicarious experiences.

Health tourism involves the promotion of healthy and sustainable lifestyles, and is becoming an increasingly popular segment with high potential for further growth. This study focuses on the relationship between health destinations and tourists' perceived quality of life and examines the motivations and behaviors of health tourists in China. The research is built on therapeutic landscape and attention restoration theories. The study analyzed 506 valid questionnaires collected in Sanya, China, and found: 1) the social aspects of therapeutic landscapes had a direct positive effect on tourists' perceived quality of life; 2) the perceived restorative qualities of destinations mediated the positive effect of the identified dimensions of therapeutic landscapes on tourists' perceived quality of life; and 3) psychological recovery mediated the positive effects of the physical and symbolic aspects of therapeutic landscapes on tourists' perceived quality of life. The study enriches the therapeutic landscape theory, encourages its application in tourism research, and provides actionable insights for health destinations to improve tourists’ well-being.

This article employs the multi-period difference-in-differences model to investigate the causal impact of innovative city construction on tourist destination competitiveness and its various dimensions based on panel data for 272 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2019. The findings indicate that innovative city construction significantly and positively impacts tourist destination competitiveness, with this effect growing over time. In particular, the impact on tourism industrial competitiveness is negative, whereas the effects on the competitiveness of tourism resources, ecological environment, and socio-economic support are positive and significant. The impact of innovative city construction on tourist destination competitiveness varies significantly across regions and administrative levels, with no variation found between the central and western regions. The possible mediating mechanisms include industrial structure, science and technology innovation, and environmental regulation. This article significantly contributes to the theoretical expansion of tourist destination competitiveness and its change mechanisms under innovative city construction.

Self-administered surveys are a widespread data collection method in tourism research. However, survey-based data are prone to what is widely referred to as common method variance (CMV). Common method variance represents systematic error variance which can potentially have a substantial confounding influence on empirical findings, since it can lead to incorrect assessments of construct validity and reliability as well as biased parameter estimates. Surprisingly, addressing common method variance issues is still an exception in tourism research.

This study advocates the use of two approaches and it demonstrates the practical implementation of these approaches by drawing on a seven-country online survey of tourists’ perceptions of and intentions to visit Italy conducted on a sample of 4550 respondents intercepted in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey.

Findings clearly reveal that common method variance is not a trivial issue that can be safely ignored when estimating models aimed at assessing country and destination images and at explaining tourists’ intentions to visit and/or positive word of mouth. Therefore, the study provides concrete insights and directions to tourism researchers seeking to address this issue in their empirical endeavors.

As urbanization rapidly progresses, rural areas are being increasingly recognized as havens for individuals seeking a slower pace of life. Despite the growing interest in slow tourism as a travel modality, there is a lack of rural destinations that have successfully established slow tourism as their primary image. This research focuses on Gaochun International Cittàslow in China, including a mixed-method approach to investigate how rural areas can cultivate a slow tourism image to attract visitors. This paper introduces a new conceptual framework for rural China's slow tourism image, termed the bullseye framework. This framework divides the image of slow tourism into three concentric layers: experiential foundation, interactive framework, and value resonance. Compositional analysis reveals a certain mismatch between the promotion of the image of slow tourism by the government and tourism companies and the perception of tourists. This mismatch is particularly evident in promoting an eco-original lifestyle, preserving folk culture, and creating a slow-paced living atmosphere. Therefore, the government and tourism companies must more accurately understand the needs of tourists to formulate more effective promotion strategies.

Strategic planning of sport events should promote the maximisation of local communities' benefits. Among other dimensions of interest to the host destination's stakeholders, given the aim of sustainable development, sport events leveraging must integrate economic, social and environmental perspectives, justifying its multidimensional extensiveness. The general objective of this study was to stimulate and understand the process of planning and implementing strategic multi-leverage of international open water swimming events hosted in Portugal, in 2022, addressing the economic, social, environmental, partners and sport dimensions.

This study employed a case study approach within an action-research methodology. The research design covered three action-research stages: planning, implementation and analysis. The data collection combined nominal group sessions, field observation, document analysis and interviews. The qualitative analysis used the triangulation of the data collected, and the content analysis was performed using the NVivo software.

Actions were strategically planned targeting economic, social, environmental, partners, and sport dimensions, albeit with a prominent focus on economic and sport leverage. Excluding sport, the implementation of strategic actions ensured all dimensions' operationalisation. Six constraints (e.g. little adherence from local partners) and three drivers (e.g. commitment and authority of the leverage coordinating team) conditioned the strategic leverage implementation. The strategic planning of future sport events should outline actions that intensify the destination’s image, focusing the attention of stakeholders on valuing the natural attributes. This study strengthened knowledge about the multi-leverage approach applied to two sport events, reinforcing the need to implement cross-leveraging among the aforementioned dimensions to enhance the success of strategic leverage.