Experiencing the Story

The importance of destination image in film tourism has been recognized by scholars and practitioners. However, despite a large number of research papers related to the destination image within the field of film tourism, several issues remain unclear. This chapter provides insights into how movies influence the featured destination's image by focusing on specific film tourists' perceptions, their motivations, and emotional relation to the movies. The chapter begins by offering a film tourism definition followed by film tourist typology with the context of film fans. Then, factors influencing film tourism destination image are examined, in particular destination marketing activities, film-specific factors, and destination attributes. Two case studies will also be provided to better showcase the findings from the literature review. Theoretical and practical implications are also presented.

Beyond Influencer Credibility: The Power of Content and Parasocial Relationship on Processing Social Media Influencer Destination Marketing Campaigns

The power of social media influencers (SMIs) as effective endorsers for destinations and tourism products have been widely acknowledged. Despite being characterised as content generators by prior research, little has been done to examine how consumers perceive content produced by SMI, a key component of destination marketing campaigns. Moreover, parasocial relationship between SMI and the follower has been proven to enhance the persuasive impact of SMIs. Hence, this study aims to shed light on how consumers would assess the SMI and the content the SMI produced, as well as the effect of parasocial relationship on processing SMI destination marketing campaigns. Findings (N = 501) have highlighted that argument quality of SMI content has a stronger direct impact on campaign attitude, destination image and travel intention, as compared to source credibility. With the application of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a framework, this study illuminates consumers’ interaction with the SMI destination marketing campaign and extends prior studies in understanding the importance of SMI content and parasocial relationship as a significant tool for future destination marketing.

Do DMOs Promote the Right Aspects of the Destination? A Study of Instagram Photography with a Visual Classifier

As global travel emerges from the pandemic, pent up interest in travel will lead to consumers making their choice between global destinations. Instagram is a key source of destination inspiration. DMO marketing success on this channel relies on projecting a destination image that resonates with this target group. However, usual text-based marketing intelligence on this channel does not work as content is consumed first and foremost as a visual projection. The author has built a deep learning based visual classifier for destination image measurement from photos. In this paper, we compare projected and perceived destination images in Instagram photography for four of the most Instagrammed destinations worldwide. We find that whereas the projected destination image aligns well to the perceived image, there are specific aspects of the destinations that are of more interest to Instagrammers than reflected in the current destination marketing.

Destinations and Data State-of-the-Art in Switzerland and Liechtenstein

This research investigates the state of the art among Switzerland (CH)’s and Liechtenstein (FL)’s destinations, intended here as Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), when it comes to their relationship with data: what data are collected, how they are stored, analyzed and what impact they have on the destination. This study aims at bringing insights into smart tourism studies as a key aspect of the debate is how DMOs deal with data. Based on a survey performed with CH’s and FL’s DMOs and related stakeholders, results suggested that there are common conceptual nodes shared by practitioners when it comes to defining smart destinations. However, when it comes to data-related practices (data collection, storage, analysis and sharing) DMOs have very different processes in place. There are organizations that collect but do not extensively analyze data, while others are still not so keen on sharing their data with the whole destination ecosystem. Furthermore, organizations’ decision-making processes appear to be based to some extent on data, especially when it comes to (digital) marketing initiatives and campaigns, although behaviors are quite different also in this area. Destination managers might benefit from this paper as the study shows how to investigate data-related practices of an organization. This type of analysis could allow an assessment of the situation and an understanding of the direction in which the organization might move forward.

Study on the marketing of rural tourism destination based on the internet perspective

With the rapid development of the rural tourism in China, how to innovate and optimize the marketing mode and successfully achieve the marketing purpose is an urgent problem for the marketing of the rural tourism destination. The rapid development of Internet technology has provided new ideas for rural tourism destination marketing. Based on the analysis of the questionnaire results of rural tourists, this paper has proposed the optimization suggestions of rural tourism destination marketing from the Internet perspective. That is, building the information communication channel between rural tourism destinations and tourists based on the Internet, designing tourism products of the rural tourism destination on the basis of tourist characteristics of tourists and realizing the marketing optimization of rural tourism destinations with the help of Internet technology.