Socio-demographic Tourist Profile and Destination Image in Online Environment

Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of tourist's sociodemographic characteristics on destination image formation process in the online environment specifically on the web. The goal is to analyse the influence of personal factors of tourists in different destination image components by inducing stimuli such as multimedia and information mediated by the web. Literature review on destination image in digital age has been done to examine the existing measurements on image formation and the advances in online environments. A three-dimensional destination model including cognitive affective and overall image was performed. The study evaluates the relationship between the dependent variables gender, age, marital status, education level, employment status and incomes, involving the destination image formation using several statistical tests appropriate to the type of data and sample distribution. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses were used to identify the perceived image measurement scales in a virtual environment. The results indicate that some sociodemographic characteristics influence the perception of destination image in virtual environment. Hence, the destination marketing organization (DMOs) has to pay attention of market segmentation in its marketing strategies. 

What Shapes Activity Preferences? The Role of Tourist Personality, Destination Personality and Destination Image: Evidence from Serbia

“…Many authors have so far demonstrated the influence of sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, education, social status, marital status, occupation, income) on image perceptions [30,54,55,[70][71][72][73][74]. Therefore, it is also believed that certain sociodemographic characteristics of tourists determine their destination image perception: Hypothesis 3b (H3b).…”

Online travel agencies: factors influencing tourist purchase decision

“…The travel photos allow to transfer affective feelings to the tourists, and the study of the extent to which the images published in the websites influence the tourists is of extreme importance (Gao & Bai, 2014). Images influence the purchase decision of the tourist, both at the destination level and the final decision level (Rafael & Almeida, 2017) and photographic content, in general, can be more effective to transmit emotional attributes (Mak, 2017).…”

Socio-demographic dimension of tourism development in Ukraine

“…Many scientists and practitioners have been studying the factors that influence the development of both the domestic and global tourism industry. Recent publications are: (Nemets, Sehida, and Moshtakova, 2009;Maklashina, 2012;Rafael, and Almeida, 2017;Sirik, 2016;Slabbert and Du Plessis, 2011) and others. Each of the above have their own view concerning the problem of analysing the factors for the development of the tourism industry: SWOT analysis of the activity in the tourism industry in Ukraine (Sirik, 2016, p. 158); diagnostics of factors influencing the process of promoting tourist destination in the virtual environment (Rafael and Almeida, 2017, pp.…”