Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate tourist destinations’ image based on the attributes obtained from the extant literature using correspondence analysis. Design/methodology/approach – This study is aimed at measuring and illustrating destination image of tourism destinations perceived by domestic tourists. Five tourism destinations – Ooty, Shimla, Manali, Mussoorie and Mount Abu were selected as the subject of the study. Based on a representative sample of 800 respondents from the surveys across destinations, correspondence analysis was employed to illustrate an attribute based comparative analysis of the destination image of the tourist destinations. Findings – Findings reveal that the attribute natural attraction was positively perceived by respondents across all destinations and the attribute infrastructure emerged as an area in need of dire attention. Further, the most dominant attributes which marked destinations’ positioning were – local cuisine and food outlets, hotels and restaurants, famous handicraft and parking facilities. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this study need to be integrated with qualitative studies to explore the underlying reasons for the perceived destination image. Practical implications – These results provide direction to policy makers and practitioners to visualize their destinations’ competitive standing relative to their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This tourist-derived intelligence presents an opportunity to take advantage of its current position, or if necessary, optimally reposition itself. Originality/value – This paper documents research that was the first to systematically capture and comparatively illustrate the destination image of Indian tourist destinations.

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Despite increased attention and relevance drawn by 'destination image' as a key aspect of destination marketing, it has been an underresearched area in Indian tourism literature. Consequently, no previous Indian research exists which provides a pragmatic and explicit approach to capture the destination image of tourism destinations in India. This research surveyed 853 respondents and assessed the psychometric properties of the destination image scale across five tourism destinations in India by using the framework on destination image scale from the extant literature. Structural equation modelling was employed as the main method of analysis in this study. The scale demonstrated appropriate reliability and validity. Next, a multigroup analysis of invariance was performed on the five samples. The results show that configural invariance and metric invariance were fully supported while scalar invariance was partially supported with model improvement processes, suggesting that the modified 25-item measure of the destination image scale may be robust across destinations and can be employed in Indian research settings.

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