The Relationships of Destination Image,Satisfaction, and Behavioral Intentions: An Integrated Model

Built upon the tourism and marketing literature, a conceptual model depicting the relationship among tourism destination image components, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions was proposed. A conceptual model consisting of six hypotheses was empirically tested using survey data from 550 Chinese tourists who visited Zhang-Jia-Jie, a major Chinese tourism destination shown on the list of the World Natural Heritage. The empirical findings reveal that: (a) overall tourism destination is reflected by both cognitive image and affective image, and (b) overall tourism destination image has an indirect impact on behavioral intentions through satisfaction. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed before the article concludes with limitations and directions for future research.     

Traveller-Generated Contents for Destination Image Formation: Mainland China Travellers to Taiwan as a Case Study

This study examines destination image (DI) formation through user-generated web contents. Recently, web contents developed by peers have become one of the most popular information sources for travel planning purposes. After conducting a content analysis and text mining of a sample of 1033 blog articles (2009–2013), this study found that attraction to images of activities and positive/negative impressions with five categories (attraction, shopping, food and beverage, accommodation and transportation) form travellers’ DI. The study results suggest that traveller-generated web contents can be especially useful for DI analyses in marketing and management. This study also highlights the importance of understanding DI formation from traveller-generated contents and the challenges for those in tourism marketing to narrow the gap.