Virtual and Physical Tourism Destinations: How to Measure Consumers' Evaluations.

It is widely recognised that for hedonic products like tourism, consumers are engaged in an ongoing search for information to form a 'mental prototype' of the product or, in the case of tourism, a destination image. This must be one of the reasons why tourism and travel related content is so popular on the Internet and e-commerce in tourism is the most successful online industry. As it is difficult for tourists to form a clear destination image without the actual experience, the multimedia interactive nature of the Web can add whole new dimensions to destination marketing, for instance through 'virtual tours'. As such virtual tours can potentially drastically enhance destination image and therefore influence destination choice behaviour, it is important to make sure that such efforts are effectively addressing consumer preferences. The question that arises is how to measure the image attributes that are most relevant for a particular destination. This paper shows how traditional multi-attribute destination image research is inadequate in predicting destination choice behaviour. Instead of the existence of a fixed set of common attributes that can explain differences across destinations, it is argued that each destination has unique features and holistic images that exist only in the minds of consumers. As tourism is experiential in nature it is likely that consumers organise such images in story format. The authors therefore see great potential in narrative psychology as a route for future research into destination image, particularly as the Internet as a research medium can overcome past limitations in quantifying such qualitative research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]