Inspiring tourists’ imagination: How and when human presence in photographs enhances travel mental simulation and destination attractiveness

Due to the intangible nature of tourism products, successful destination marketing depends on whether visual materials can evoke tourists' vivid fantasies of their future travel experiences. Our research sheds light on an effective visual cue (i.e. human presence) that can be easily manipulated in destination photographs to facilitate such mental simulation processes. Across three experimental studies with cross-cultural subjects, we found that the presence of a person in photos significantly prompted tourists to imagine their future travel experiences in the depicted travel scenes, thereby enhancing the perceived destination attractiveness. However, this favorable effect is mitigated when the photo features an urban (vs. natural) landscape and when the person's face is clearly shown. These findings provide new insights into the theoretical understanding of tourist mental simulation activation and human presence perception, with critical implications for effective destination photo marketing.