The international journal of tourism research tập 12, số 06, 2010 11 + 12

We conducted a questionnaire survey of travel agencies to create a tourist database of visitor characteristics, frequency of visits and travel objectives for the Kansai area, which inclu

This study investigates the differences in

travel objectives between fi rst-time and

repeat tourists We conduct a questionnaire

survey of travel agencies, which asked

about specifi c tour plan for target tourists,

their experiences and travel objectives in

the Kansai area in Japan We estimate a

logit model for the relationship between

travel objectives and visiting experiences

The results indicate that the fi rst-time

tourists’ main objective is to enjoy looking

around sightseeing spots, while the repeat

tourists’ objective is simply to enjoy the

stay, including the hotel visit and

participating in events Copyright © 2010

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 19 September 2009; Revised 16 February 2010;

Accepted 1 March 2010

Keywords: fi rst-time tourists; repeat tourists;

visiting experiences; logit model

1 INTRODUCTION

Butler (1999, 2004) pointed out that to

pre-serve sightseeing spots, it is important

not to increase the number of tourists but

rather to encourage previous tourists to visit

an area again This paper examines how repeat

tourists differ from fi rst-time tourists in terms

of their travel objectives This analysis vides an important clue to understanding why

pro-a fi rst-time visitor becomes pro-a repepro-at visitor or what type of fi rst-time visitor becomes a repeat visitor We also distinguish between the sight-seeing spot’s attractiveness for fi rst-time tour-ists and for repeat tourists by investigating the changes in each type of visitor’s objectives This research is also useful when promoting a sightseeing spot that corresponds to a particu-lar visit frequency

We conducted a questionnaire survey of travel agencies to create a tourist database of visitor characteristics, frequency of visits and travel objectives for the Kansai area, which includes Kyoto, the most popular sightseeing spot in Japan (see Figure 1) Our approach, which conducts questionnaire survey to travel agencies, is an unique approach in this type researches But travel agencies are always facing travel demand market and analyzing tourists’ tastes We consider that they know the tourists’ tastes exactly, so to conduct a questionnaire survey to the travel agencies is more comprehensive than to conduct a ques-tionnaire survey to tourists themselves The latter is also expensive because we have to collect a large number of answer sheets to cover most of the sightseeing spots in Kansai area Exactly speaking, our research is to analyse the travel agencies’ viewpoint for the differences between fi rst-time visitors and repeat visitors However, to conduct a ques-tionnaire survey for tourists’ characteristics or objectives in a wide area like Kansai, this type survey is inexpensive and useful for the purpose of our research The results of our paper will also make clear the advantages of our approach in the rest of the paper

Int J Tourism Res 12, 647–664 (2010)

Published online 27 April 2010 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.780

Differences in Travel Objectives between

First-time and Repeat Tourists: An Empirical Analysis for the Kansai Area in Japan

Kaoru Okamura1 and Mototsugu Fukushige2,*

1 Competition Policy Research Center, Japan Fair Trade Commission, Tokyo, Japan

2 Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

*Correspondence to: Mototsugu Fukushige, Professor,

Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University

1-7, Machikaneyama-cho, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043,

Japan.

E-mail: mfuku@econ.osaka-u.ac.jp

We estimate a logit model to analyse the

relationship between the objectives of the

tour-ists and their visit frequency The results

indi-cate that there are two types of tourists: one

whose main objective is sightseeing and

another whose objective is to enjoy the stay

The former is characteristic of fi rst-time

tour-ists and the latter is observed in repeat tourtour-ists

This fi nding is supported by three results

First, fi rst-time tourists are likely to have the travel objective of visiting sightseeing spots such as ‘historical buildings or streets’ Second,

a visitor who has visited four times or more chooses with a high probability ‘accommoda-tion facilities (including spas)’ In this paper,

we call this type of tourists ‘repeat tourist’ Third, a visitor who has visited two or three times lies in the middle of the fi rst and repeat

Figure 1 Kansai area

tourists, displaying a mixture of characteristics

of both fi rst-time and repeat tourists In this

paper, we call this type of tourists, who has

visited two or three times, ‘second time tourist’

for convenience sake Of course, we can

clas-sify tourists who has visited once or more into

second time, third time, forth time and so on,

but such a classifi cation seems complicated

and troublesome, so we categorise the tourists

into three categories for simplicity: fi rst-time,

second-time and repeat tourists

The remainder of the paper is organised as

follows Section 2 surveys the existing

litera-ture Section 3 describes the questionnaire and

target of the survey, and provides a summary

of the survey results Section 4 conducts an

empirical study of the choice probabilities of

travel objectives Section 5 analyses the

rela-tionships between visit frequency and travel

objectives Section 6 provides conclusions and

discusses the remaining problems

2 LITERATURE SURVEY

Before going into the analysis, we conduct a

literature survey to place this paper in context

Our analysis relates the co-called destination

loyalty Several papers analyse the

characteris-tics of the destination from this point of view,

e.g Clottey and Lennon (2003) analysed the

relationships between frequency of visits and

types of information received for German

tour-ists to Lithuania However, in this paper, we

focus on the relationships between the tourists’

objectives and frequencies with controlling

tourists’ characteristics for segmenting tourists

into fi rst-time tourists and repeat tourists To

understand what encourages a tourist to visit

a place again, some previous studies

investi-gated the types of sightseeing spots likely to be

visited or the types of tourists that are likely to

visit a place again Some researchers focused

on the characteristics of fi rst-time tourists and

repeat tourists For example, Kozak (2001)

found the importance of the experience of

pre-vious visit and the satisfaction at the prepre-vious

visit for revisit; Ledesma et al (2005) also found

that the information obtained from previous

visit and/or relatives and friends is important;

Truong and King (2009) showed that tourists

who are highly satisfi ed with their previous

visit tend to visit again Correia et al (2007),

using the random parameter logit model, found that the upkeep is important for golf-playing repeaters These researches imply that the satisfaction, including costs, is important to revisit However, our analysis focuses on the changes of objectives when the tourist becomes

a repeat tourist In other words, we focus on what kind of properties in sightseeing spots satisfi es the repeat tourists

Light (1996) and Law (2002) reported that a sightseeing spot could easily attract a visitor who has visited previously by introducing a new event McWilliams and Crompton (1997) also found that tour promotions, such as adver-tising or direct mail, which introduce a sight-seeing spot, also show that these are more effective for tourists who have been there pre-viously than for those who have not These previous studies mainly analysed tourism marketing to reveal what encourages tourists who have already visited to visit again; however, these studies also did not investigate tourists’ objectives when visiting or whether they change their objectives according to their visiting experience Stewart and Vogt (1999), in

an analysis of the city of Branson, Missouri, pointed out that repeat tourists tend to reduce their time spent on sightseeing activities; however, they did not analyse why travel objectives changed Lam and Hsu (2006) also examined repeat tourists’ behaviour by break-ing down the frequency of visits; however, they did not analyse the relationship between the frequency of visits and travel objectives

As for the analyses about the differences between fi rst time and repeat visitors, there exist several researches For example, Litvin (2007) focused on the fact that the attendance

on the visitor attraction activity is important for making repeat visitors Vassiliadis (2008), using CHAID and CRT model, analyse the repeat visiting and recommendation behav-

iours Additionally, Tiefenbacher et al (2000), Correia et al (2008) and Fallon and Schofi eld

(2004) analysed the differences between fi time tourists’ and repeat tourists’ images of a destination or perceptions of its attractive attri-butes; Hughes and Allen (2008) compared the images of resorts held by visitors and non-

rst-visitors; Beaman et al (2001) estimated a

Markov matrix for visitors moving from fi time tourists to repeat tourists; and Darnell

rst-and Johnson (2001) analysed repeat visits to

attractions However, these researches seem to

assumed that the taste of the tourists do not

change with their experience, implicitly In the

present paper, we consider that tourists’ taste

change with their visiting experience or

fre-quencies From this point of view, Wang et al

(2006) might be closely related to our

investi-gation They analysed the changes in

consum-ers’ expenditure patterns The changes in

objectives between fi rst-time tourists and

repeat tourists and these changes might be

revealed in changes in consumption patterns

3 METHODOLOGY

We needed a specifi c data set indicating

tour-ists’ frequency of visits to sightseeing spots

and travel objectives to investigate whether

travel objectives change according to visit

experience The Japan Tourism Association

(JTA) and the Japan National Tourist

Organi-zation (JNTO) have conducted and published

surveys of visitor behaviour in Japan JNTO

(2006) conducted questionnaire survey only

for the foreign tourists who visit Japan, but

reported the tourists’ objectives by countries

JTA (2006) reported the frequencies, objectives

and other characteristics of the tourists, but

most of them are reported in a simple

aggre-gated data or cross tabulated We cannot obtain

any information about the repeater for specifi c

sightseeing spot from neither of them

There-fore, using these data, we cannot examine the

relationship between visit frequency and travel

objectives for a specifi c sightseeing spot

In conducting an original questionnaire

survey, it is necessary to consider its cost and

method Past studies have used several survey

methods for examining visitor behaviour One

is to directly ask tourists questions relating to

a specifi c sightseeing spot and another is to

send a questionnaire to households

(Tiefen-bacher et al., 2000) The former possibly has

seasonal or site bias depending on the survey

site and period, and the latter involves signifi

-cant cost because of the need to distribute an

enormous number of surveys to assemble

responses To avoid these problems, we elected

to use a survey asking tour operators and

tourism authorities about visitor behaviour at

sightseeing spots Because travel agencies have

the most extensive information, this enabled

us to investigate visitors’ behaviour with no seasonal bias and at a much lower cost In evaluating the appropriateness of the ques-tionnaire asking travel agencies or municipal tourism authorities their observations of the behaviour of tourists, the questionnaire con-ducted by the JTA (2006) provided helpful information According to the results of this survey, a visitor may use information sent by travel agencies or tourism authorities exten-sively when he or she travels, which shows there is little difference between what the travel agency thinks and what the actual visitor wants In this paper, we use a questionnaire survey for four categories of businesses: domestic travel agencies (registered travel agencies approved by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport), land operators, national government (or municipal) tourism offi ces and hotels affi liated with the Japan Hotel Association This survey was designed

by Fukushige and conducted through the Kansai Institute of Social and Economic Research (KISER) We are grateful to the KISER for their kind permission to use and analyse the survey As this questionnaire was sent to all registered travel agencies and tourism authorities in the Kansai area, this is not a ran-domly gathered sample

This paper investigates the relationship between visit frequency and travel objectives for Japanese tourists because very few foreign tourists frequently visit Japanese sightseeing spots and they may have different perceptions

of sightseeing spots in Japan compared with the Japanese In the questionnaire, we asked the respondents to develop a tour plan for Japanese tourists and for foreign tourists However, this paper focuses on the analysis of Japanese visitor behaviour; therefore, we do not discuss tour plans for foreigners

We provide an English translation of the questionnaire in the appendix Here, we sum-marise the questionnaire and explain its objec-tives The main question was: ‘If you were to plan and market travel or tours to the Kansai area in Japan targeting Japanese customers, what would they be? Please provide two dif-ferent plans’ In response to this question, the respondent provides answers to three parts

of the questionnaire: A details of the tour; B

destination; and C objective of the tour Each

part contained essential details for developing

a tour plan, and the respondent created his or

her ideal tour plan by selecting the appropriate

answers from the choices provided

Part A of the survey contains detailed

char-acteristics of the plans, the length of tour,

season, numbers of tourists and visitor

charac-teristics (age, sex, visit frequency and

resi-dence) In this part, the respondent may

develop a suitable tour by choosing one aspect

of the travel plan to attract customers In part

B, the respondent selects between two and 10

visitor destinations from 77 listed sightseeing

spots and events In part C, the respondent

chooses his or her travel objective depending

on the answers in parts A and B The response

sheet provides 15 options for travel objectives

and the respondent may choose multiple items

as long as they match his or her tour plan

The target area of this analysis is an area

called Kansai, which contains Kyoto, one of the

most popular cities in Japan Kyoto was the

capital of Japan from 794 to 1868 A.D., and is

famous both in Japan and worldwide for its

historical buildings or streets and beautiful

natural scenery throughout the year Nara,

located south of Kyoto, which was the capital

of Japan before it moved to Kyoto, is also

famous for the historical buildings or streets in

the old town Tourists to the area can not only

visit the historical buildings or streets but also

participate in traditional cultural events such

as festivals

As for urban tourism in the Kansai area, the

cities of Osaka and Kobe have modern

build-ings or streets There is also a range of other

sightseeing spots, such as Lake Biwa, the

largest lake in Japan; Wakasa Bay, on the Rias

coast; Kumano-Kodou, a sacred site and

pil-grimage routes in the Kii Mountain Range,

also listed as a World Heritage site; and

Uni-versal Studios Japan, a theme park opened in

2001 As this list shows, the Kansai area

con-tains almost every kind of sightseeing spot that

may interest tourists, including natural scenery,

historical buildings or streets, modern

build-ings or streets, and cultural events The

diver-sity of resources for sightseeing in the Kansai

area is confi rmed by the survey conducted by

the JTA called ‘A questionnaire survey for

individual tourists’ This survey lists travel

objectives, almost all of which are met in this area Furthermore, these sightseeing resources are located within a 200-km radius of Osaka, which is the central transportation terminal

As tourists can therefore easily move between individual sightseeing locations by car or train,

we can consider the Kansai area one big seeing spot We assume that we can observe whether tourists change their travel objectives according to their visiting experience

sight-We mailed the questionnaires to domestic travel agencies on 19 December 2004, and asked them to return their responses within two weeks Of the 953 surveys sent out, 140 were returned (response rate of 14.7%); the total number of travel plans completed on the answer sheet was 231 because some agencies responded with only one plan in spite of asking two plans

Tables 1 and 2 show the results of naire part A and part C, which are used for our econometric analysis in the next section Each item selected by a respondent from the ques-tionnaire is assigned a value of 1; items not chosen are assigned a value of 0 The aggre-gated results are shown in Table 1 The most common answers are: ‘2 or 3 days’ for the length of the tour; ‘autumn’ for the season of travel; ‘group travelers’ for the type of traveler; and ‘sixties’, ‘both sexes’, a ‘Kanto’ resident and someone who has been to Kansai ‘2 or 3 times’ for visitor characteristics In part C, as

question-in part A, we aggregate the answers if a dent chooses travel objectives from the 15 listed objectives Each objective chosen is assigned a value of 1, and 0 otherwise We show the results in Table 2 The most popular travel objective according to travel agencies is

respon-‘to see the historical buildings or streets’ This result contrasts with that of the questionnaire survey of the JTA (2006), in which ‘natural scenery’ is the most popular The result of our survey seems to refl ect the fact that the Kansai area has many historical buildings or streets as sightseeing spots Other objectives such as

‘natural scenery’, ‘cuisine’, ‘theme parks’ and

‘festivals or special events’ follow these two major objectives: ‘to see the historical buildings

or streets’ and ‘natural scenery’ These results are similar to the results of the JTA (2006) survey except for the reversal of the fi rst and second objectives

4 EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

To investigate the relationships between visit

frequency and travel objective, using the

results from our questionnaire, a multinomial

choice model should be suitable However, as

there are 15 objects in a binary form, it is very

hard to estimate a multinomial choice model

and obtain stable estimates In the present

paper, for simplicity and effi ciency, we adopt

a binary choice model where a visitor chooses

a specifi c objective or not This model explains choice behaviour with a latent index For example, when a tourist visits a sightseeing spot with his or her travel objective ‘being seeing the natural scenery’, his or her latent index y* of ‘seeing the natural scenery’ has a positive number Additionally, we set y* to be

Table 1 Summary statistics of part A

a single index, written as y* = x′β + ε (note that

x is a vector of non-stochastic independent

variables, β is a vector of unknown parameters

and ε is an error term) We cannot estimate this

model directly, because y* is an unobserved

variable However, we can observe a stochastic

variable (y) If y* > 0, the visitor chooses ‘seeing

the natural scenery’ as a travel objective

(y = 1) If y* ≤ 0, he or she does not choose

it (y = 0) The observed stochastic variable y is

written as follows:

Pr[y=1x]=Pr[y*>0],

This equation means that the event to choose

‘seeing the natural scenery’ coincides with the

event that y* is positive, so both the

probabili-ties for these events are mutually equal Then,

Replacing the probability function of error

term (−ε) Pr[*] with the cumulative

distribu-tion funcdistribu-tion F(•), the above equadistribu-tion becomes:

Pr[y=1x]=F(x′β) (1)

If we assume the cumulative distribution

func-tion F(•) of the error term −ε to be a logistic

distribution function, then F(•) can be written

β β β

1 .

Therefore, we can construct a simultaneous probability density function for all the observa-tions with assuming mutual independence of each observation We can consider this density function to be a likelihood function for unknown parameters, so that we can obtain the maximum likelihood estimator to maximise it

We apply a logit model for each of the 15 tives in the questionnaire We adopt visitor attri-butes as the independent variables These variables are obtained from the answers in part

objec-A of the questionnaire objec-As additional dent variables, we also adopt some cross prod-ucts of independent variables relating to the visit frequency, such as age, residence, length of stay and visitor type, but we omit cross products with all the observations taking the values of 0 or 1 because most of the independent variables are dummy variables As a result, the number of candidates for the independent variables includ-ing cross products of the attributes of tourists and tour plans is 40 The summary statistics of the cross products are given in Table 3

indepen-We select a model by minimizing Akaike (1973)’s information criteria because, in the estimation results with all independent vari-ables, many variables with insignifi cant

Table 2 Summary statistics of part C

houses in temples and shrines)

coeffi cients are included, which may cause

ineffi cient estimation The estimation results

are given in Table 4 As shown in Table 4, there

are some cases where the dummy variables

representing visiting experience to Kansai are

not chosen as independent variables However,

if the cross products are considered, the visit

frequency affects the choice probability of the

travel objectives in all cases The cross

prod-ucts selected in each model are different, and

include frequency of traveling, age or type of

travel These results make the effects of the

frequency on the choice probability complex

We compared the choice ratios of the surveys with the estimated choice probability model, and calculated the ‘hit or lose ratio’ as a good-ness of fi t measure of the selected model in Table 5 According to the results, the predic-tion accuracies of the models are low in the model that sets travel objectives such as

‘modern buildings or streets’, ‘parks or dering’, ‘concerts or performances at music halls or theaters’, ‘night views’ and ‘industrial facilities’ We should pay attention to these low explanatory power when we interpret the estimation results in the next section

wan-Table 4 Results of estimation

Art galleries and museums: Observations = 208, Log-likelihood = −72.822, AIC = 83.722

* C1, C15 represent dependent variables.

** t-values are in parentheses.

Table 4 Continued

5 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VISIT

FREQUENCY AND OBJECTIVES

In this section, we analyse how the choice

probabilities of the travel objectives change

according to visit experience, using the

esti-mated coeffi cients of the logit model and stituting mean values for other independent variables Here, we explain the estimation of the effect of frequency, using an estimated model for ‘to see natural scenery’ as an example In this estimation, we make clear the

sub-to obtain an estimated choice probability According to this procedure, the probability of

a fi rst-time visitor choosing the objective ‘to see natural scenery’ is 0.691 In a similar manner, the probabilities of a second-time visitor, who has made two or three visits, and

a repeat visitor, who has made four or more visits, are estimated

Figure 2 shows the choice ratios according

to visit frequency calculated by averaging the answers in the questionnaire Figure 3 shows the results of the estimated choice probabili-ties The results in the two fi gures are similar First, the probabilities of ‘natural scenery’ and

‘historical buildings or streets’ are higher than the other probabilities Second, the next most common objectives are ‘cuisine’, ‘shopping’,

‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’,

‘festivals or special events’ and ‘theme parks’ These results are also approximately the same

as the results of the JTA (2006)

However, when comparing Figure 3 with Figure 2, the effects of visit frequency on travel objectives become clear For example, in Figure

2, the probability of choosing ‘cuisine’ as a travel objective seems to increase in accordance with visit frequency, but Figure 3 shows that visit frequency is not a necessary factor for increasing the probability of choosing ‘cuisine’

as a travel objective In Figure 2, the ity of choosing ‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’ also seems to increase rapidly for repeat tourists, but in Figure 3, it turns out

probabil-effect of the visit frequency on the choice

prob-abilities First, we describe the estimated result

for the objective of ‘to see natural scenery’

+ ∗(first-time Kyusyuor times other style× )

Using this equation, we estimate the choice

probability of ‘to see natural scenery’ of a fi

rst-time visitor as follows First, we set the value

of the independent variable for ‘fi rst-time’ to

1 and those for ‘2 or 3 times’ and ‘4 times or

more’ to 0 We set the value of the other

inde-pendent variables equal to their mean values,

which are obtained from the survey results

(Table 1) However, in the case of the cross

products such as ‘fi rst time’ and ‘forties’, e.g

we set the term ‘fi rst time’ equal to 1 and

multiply the ‘fi rst time’ by the average of

‘forties’ After estimating the value of y*, we

substitute it into the logistic distribution

Hit or lose ratio

in temples and shrines)

Night views Theme parks

music halls or theaters Festivals or special events

Night views Theme parks

Figure 2 The average choice ratio of travel objectives according to visit frequency

Figure 3 The estimated choice probabilities of travel objectives according to visit frequency

that the probability increases gradually as visit

frequency increases As for ‘festivals and

special events’, the estimated probability is

reversed in Figure 3 and Figure 2: its

probabil-ity for repeat tourists is the lowest in Figure 2,

but is the highest in Figure 3 It should also be

noted that the choice probability of ‘theme

parks’ for the repeat visitor declines drastically

in Figure 3 while it does not decline drastically

in Figure 2 The probability of the fi rst-time

visitor choosing ‘natural scenery’ is lower than

that of choosing ‘historical buildings or streets’

in Figure 2, but this relation is reversed in

Figure 3 These differences indicate that the

estimated probabilities in Figure 3 are

impor-tant to the analysis In other words, the effect

of visit frequency on the choice probabilities of

travel objectives is observed only in Figure 3

Next, we focus on the changes in choice

prob-abilities through fi rst-time, second-time and

repeat tourists Comparing the probabilities of

second-time and repeat tourists, we fi nd that

not only do ‘historical buildings or streets’,

‘cuisine’ and ‘theme parks’ decline sharply but

so do ‘shopping’ and ‘festivals or special events’

On the other hand, the probabilities of ‘natural

scenery’ and ‘accommodation facilities

(includ-ing spas)’ increase with visit frequency The

results are summarised as follows The main

objective of fi rst-time and second-time tourists

is to visit sightseeing spots such as ‘natural

scenery’, ‘historical buildings or streets’ or

‘theme parks’, followed by secondary objectives

such as ‘cuisine’ or ‘shopping’ in urban areas

By contrast, the objectives of repeat tourists shift

from visiting sightseeing spots around the

Kansai area to staying and experiencing

‘accom-modation facilities (including spas)’ These

con-clusions are confi rmed by Table 6 In this table,

we aggregate the choice ratios of the sightseeing

spots located in Kyoto and Shiga, which is to

the east of Kyoto, in accordance with visit

fre-quency by using the answers from part B of the

questionnaire All of the choice ratios of the

sightseeing spots in the central part of Kyoto

city, which are enclosed by a rectangle in Table

6, decrease; however, the choice ratios of the

sightseeing spots in Shiga increase when we

compare the choice ratios of second-time and

repeat tourists This indicates that visitors’

sightseeing objectives shift to the sightseeing

spots around Kansai

However, it is too hasty to conclude that most tourists go to sightseeing spots in periph-eral areas because the probability of choosing

‘historical building or streets’ exceeds 80% in Figure 3 for the repeat tourists Table 7 shows the correlation coeffi cients between the choices

of ‘natural scenery’, ‘historical buildings or streets’, ‘cuisine’, ‘shopping’, ‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’, ‘festivals or special events’ and ‘theme parks’ by visit frequency From this table, we can see the following For

fi rst-time tourists, the correlation of ‘natural scenery’ and ‘accommodation facilities (includ-ing spas)’ is high and that of ‘historical build-ings or streets’ and ‘accommodation facilities’

is almost zero By contrast, for repeat tourists, the correlation between ‘natural scenery’ and

‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’ is lower and that of ‘historical buildings or streets’ and ‘accommodation facilities (includ-ing spas)’ increases to 0.277

If we interpret these two changes in a prehensive manner, we can draw the follow-ing conclusions While fi rst-time or second-time tourists are characterised as location-based tourists who mainly visit sightseeing spots such as ‘natural scenery’ and ‘historical build-ings or streets’, repeat tourists are divided into two types: one that aims to visit sightsee-ing spots in peripheral areas and another that aims to experience ‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’ in urban areas Table 1 indi-cates that while about half of the tourists come from the Kanto area, which includes Tokyo, to visit sightseeing spots in peripheral areas, they cannot complete the sightseeing in one day, so they need to stay overnight somewhere in the Kansai region; ‘cuisine’ may therefore become important for them This is indicated by the fact that the correlation between ‘natural scenery’ and ‘cuisine’ for repeat tourists is 0.159 Therefore, we can conclude that repeat tourists are the staying type, regardless of whether their objectives include experiencing

com-‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’

6 CONCLUSION

In this paper, we investigated the differences

in travel objectives between fi rst-time and repeat tourists using a questionnaire survey of travel agencies that asked about specifi c tour

Table 6 Relationship between visit frequency and objectives

Destination

Two or three times

Four times

or more

Difference of choice ratio

<Shiga Prefecture>

Northern Lake Biwa and Lake Yogo and their vicinities,

Nagahama

<Kyoto prefecture>

Sanjusangendo, Nijo Castle, Kyoto Imperial Palace, Ginkakuji

Temple and its vicinity, Kiyomizudera Temple and its

Kinkakuji, Ryoanji and Ninnaji Temples; Arashiyama and

Sagano (Tenryuji Temple); Uji (Byodoin Temple); Daigoji

Temple; Nanzenji Temple and Biwako Canal; and Katsura

and Shugakuin Detached Palaces

Aoi, Jidai and Gion festivals and Gozan Okuribi (Five

Mountain Bonfi res)

Amanohashidate, Ine Town and Tango (silk crepe production

region)

Places inside the frame are located in the central part of Kyoto city.

plans for target tourists, and their experiences

and travel objectives in the Kansai area in

Japan We applied a logit model for the

rela-tionship between travel objectives and visiting

experiences From the empirical results, we

found that tourists can be divided into

spot-based types or staying types by analysing the

relation between visit frequency and travel

objectives Although the main objectives of

travel for both types are ‘natural scenery’ and

‘historical buildings or streets’, tourists of the

staying type shift their preferences towards

visiting sightseeing spots in peripheral areas or

experiencing ‘accommodation facilities

(including spas)’, while spot-based tourists

tend to visit relatively convenient spots in

urban areas

We did not mention a specifi c promotion plan or method, or how to change spot-based tourists into staying tourists, which is the most important objective for agencies and other tourism-related organisations A relatively high correlation between ‘natural scenery’ and

‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’ for

fi rst-time tourists in Table 7 implies that ists who visit to see ‘natural scenery’ are likely

tour-to be repeat tour-tourists who prefer tion facilities (including spas)’ It seems impor-tant for the tourism industry to change

‘accommoda-fi rst-time tourists who are interested in ‘natural scenery’ to repeat tourists who are interested

in ‘accommodation facilities (including spas)’

In other words, fi nding ways to promote the attractiveness of accommodation facilities in

the Kansai area to fi rst-time tourists is

impor-tant Such promotion should include

provid-ing travel plans or information about events,

when promoting sightseeing in the Kansai

area, to make fi rst-time tourists aware of the

attractiveness of accommodation

Finally, we should mention a remaining

problem Our research is based on a

question-naire for travel agencies and tourism

authori-ties, which was designed to save costs In such

a survey, there might be misunderstandings

between travel agencies and the actual tourists

over the travel objectives To avoid this type of

problem, we need to conduct a large-scale

survey of actual tourists, although this will

involve signifi cant costs in terms of both money

and time This will be the subject of future

research

APPENDIX: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR USE

Questionnaire about Attractiveness of Kansai

Tourism Spots

<Face Sheet>

Question 1: What is the company or

organiza-tion you work for?

Please choose your answer and circle the

cor-responding letter (A to F)

A Travel agency (only for domestic travel)

B Travel agency (for both domestic and

over-seas travel)

C Travel agency (only for overseas travel)

D Travel agency (land operator: specializing

in foreign customers)

E National government (or municipal)

tourism offi ce

F Hotel

Question 2: If you were to plan and market

travel or tours to the Kansai region in Japan

targeting Japanese customers, what would

they be? Please show two different plans

Please fi ll out the following sheet ‘Domestic

Tour Plan 1’ and ‘Domestic Tour Plan 2’ in

pages 4 to 5 Furthermore, there is no matter

what travel modes you have chosen to Kansai

<Returning method and our address are

omitted.>

<Questions about Domestic Plan>

A What type of travelers do you target and what kind of travel or tours do you plan? Please choose your answer and circle the number(s) that apply

(1) For how long?

1 one day 2 2–3 days 3.4–6 days 4 more than one week

(2) Which season? (Multiple choices are possible.)

1 spring 2 summer 3 autumn 4 winter 5 throughout the year

(3) What is the purpose of the travel? ple choices are possible.)

(Multi-1 for tourism 2 for leisure or sports 3 for conferences or seminars 4 for incentive tours 5 for visiting acquaintances 6 for school trips

(4) What type of travelers do you market to? (Multiple choices are possible.)

1 traveling alone 2 traveling as a couple 3 traveling in a family 4 traveling in a group

5 other (please be specifi c.)(5) What age groups do you market to? (Mul-tiple choices are possible.)

1 teens 2 twenties 3 thirties 4 forties

5 fi fties 6 sixties 7 seventies 8 all age groups

(6) What is the sex of the travelers you market to?

1 female 2 male 3.both(7) Have the travelers been in Kansai before?

1 never 2 two or three times 3 four times

or more(8) Where is the residential area of travelers whom are targeting

1 Hokkaido 2 Tohoku 3 Kanto 4 Hokuriku

5 Chubu 6 Kinki 7 Chugoku 8 Shikoku 9 Kyushu 10 Okinawa 11 any area

B Specifi c DestinationsPlease choose destinations you are interested

in from the enclosed ‘List of Destinations’ and put the corresponding numbers in Choose two or more and 10 or less

Example: If ‘1 Eiheiji, Tojinbo, Awara Onsen’,

‘16 Gion, Shimabara’, ‘50 Kinosaki Onsen,

Yumura Onsen’ are chosen, then the following

numbers should be fi lled out

*When you have chosen some numbers from

above, you may attach a sightseeing brochure

that your company has issued

C Why did you choose the numbers in B?

Please choose your reasons from the following

choices 1 to 15 and circle number(s) that apply

(Multiple choices are possible.)

Because we want our customers to experience/

enjoy:

1 natural landscapes

2 historical buildings or streets

3 modern buildings or streets

4 cuisine

5 shopping

6 parks or wandering

7 accommodation facilities(including spas)

8 art galleries and museums (including

trea-sure houses in temples and shrines)

9 concerts or performances at music halls or

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This study seeks to explore attributes

affecting the level of tourist satisfaction

with and loyalty towards theatrical

performance in China Based on four focus

group discussions with 31 participants, the

study identifi es 34 attributes that affect the

level of tourist satisfaction with theatrical

performance, and groups them into fi ve

categories: stage, performance, venue,

service and tourist-related attributes The

fi ndings on tourist loyalty reveal that 21 of

the 31 respondents would not watch the

same theatrical performance alone in the

future; however, they would recommend it

to others The study concludes with a

discussion of the rich and insightful

fi ndings and their implications for tourism

industry practitioners Copyright © 2010

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 October 2009; Revised 2 March 2010; Accepted 9

March 2010

Keywords: theatrical performance; tourist

satisfaction; tourist loyalty; qualitative

method; China

INTRODUCTION

China’s tourism industry has developed

rapidly in the three decades since the implementation of the open-door policy

in 1978, as refl ected in the increasing number

of domestic and international tourist arrivals (WTTC, 2004) In the early stage of the tourism industry in China, there were only a few kinds

of tourism activities and entertainment A Chinese saying sums up the itinerary —

‘daytime activity for tourists is visiting temples, nighttime activity is sleeping.’ However, with the enormous growth in the tourism industry, the number and types of tourism activities have increased dramatically, especially in tourism entertainment Tourism entertainment can not only enhance the tourist experience but also improve destination competitiveness (Xin Jing News, 2008)

There are many types of tourism ment in the tourism industry Pearce (2008) defi ned tourism entertainment as structured and managed situations designed for a pre-dominantly visitor audience, which include cultural shows, dance performances, theme park presentations, fun guided tours and fi lm and video presentations tailored exclusively for visitors In China, theatrical performance, a type of tourism entertainment, can be divided into many types based on various criteria It can showcase the local culture, the culture of ethnic minorities, or traditional Chinese culture Small live performances feature one

entertain-or two perfentertain-ormers, whereas large-scale live

Int J Tourism Res 12, 665–679 (2010)

Published online 14 April 2010 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.782

Attributes Affecting the Level of Tourist Satisfaction with and Loyalty towards

Theatrical Performance in China:

Evidence from a Qualitative Study

Hanqun Song and Catherine Cheung*

School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

*Correspondence to: Catherine Cheung, PhD, School of

Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic

University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

E-mail: hmcat@polyu.edu.hk

performances involve from one hundred to

more than 300 performers The former may be

short 15-minute shows, whereas the latter

nor-mally last from 1 to 2 hours Some live shows

are performed outdoors near hills, rivers or

lakes Examples include The Impression of

Liu-sanjie, The Impression of Lijiang, The Impression

of West Lake, The Song of Eternal Sorrow and Zen

Music Shaolin Grand Ceremony Indoor

perfor-mances of well-known productions that are

staged in a theater include The Romance of the

Song Dynasty, The Night of West Lake and The

Legend of Kung Fu.

In 2008, 300 large-scale theatrical

perfor-mances in China generated more than RMB3

billion in tourism income (Xin Jing News,

2008) Theatrical performance has become a

major tourist attraction in China (Xu, 1998),

and more and more cities are presenting

theat-rical performances to visitors Almost every

major city in China now stages theatrical

pro-ductions following the success of The

Impres-sion of Liusanjie at Guilin in 2004 (Zhuge and

Cui, 2005) Nevertheless, only a small number

of tourism studies have investigated theatrical

performance in China Li et al (2005) studied

the production system of tourist-directed

per-forming arts using a theme park in Shenzhen

Overseas Chinese Town as a case study Tian

and Bao (2005) did an authenticity study of

cultural performances of the Dai minority in

Xishuangbanna

In China, theatrical performance is a product

of the culture and tourism industries China’s

Ministry of Culture and National Tourism

Administration highly encourage the entrance

of the performing arts into the tourism

indus-try, and promote the development of theatrical

performance (Central People’s Government of

the People’s Republic of China, 2009)

Theatri-cal performance combines the performing arts

with high-technology facilities, and in some

cases, beautiful natural surroundings

(Shang-hai Daily, 2006) It is developing at a fast pace

In 2007 alone, around RMB179 million was

invested in theatrical productions that involved

17.6 thousand professional and amateur

per-formers and 167 million audience members

(Wei, 2007b) The investment in theatrical

per-formance is huge For instance, in 1998, the

production cost of The Romance of the Song

Dynasty was RMB60 million (Jiang, 2006), in

2004, The Impression of Liusanjie cost RMB70 million (Wei, 2007a) and in 2006, The Impression

of Lijiang had a budget of US$31 million, while Zen Music Shaolin Grand Ceremony cost US$12.5

million (Shanghai Daily, 2006) Theatrical formance also has an economic impact on the

per-local tourism industry The Impression of

Liusan-jie, for example, increased the gross domestic

product of Yangshuo County in Guilin by more than 10%, and increased the length of stay of tourists in the County by 8 hours per person (Wang, 2008)

The goal of theatrical performance of a tination is to boost the local tourism industry, whereas that of stakeholders is profi tability In previous studies, consumer satisfaction has been linked to higher business profi ts through

des-loyalty (Alegre and Juaneda, 2006; Gupta et al.,

2007) Hence, there is an urgent need to study tourist satisfaction with and loyalty towards theatrical performance in China However, such studies are scarce To fi ll this research gap, the study aims to explore the attributes affecting the level of tourist satisfaction with, and to determine whether there is tourist loyalty towards, theatrical performance in China

LITERATURE REVIEW

Tourism entertainment

The literature related to theatrical performance

is rooted in the tourism entertainment research According to Hughes (2000), entertainment includes live performances of music, dance, shows, and plays, going to the cinemas, clubs, discos and sport matches, watching television, playing computer games, and listening to CDs Hughes and Allen (2008) defi ned entertain-ment as live performances of plays, music, dance and the like that are different from the

fi ne arts as experienced in developed, established tourist destinations Pearce (2008) identifi ed common and noteworthy character-istics of tourism entertainment from a range of micro-cases, and defi ned tourism entertain-ment as structured and managed situations designed for a predominantly visitor audience Ryan and Collins (2008) were the fi rst to analyse the construction of theater entertain-ment with their examination of An Eastern

long-Odyssey in Japan They stated that within a

trilogy of fantasies, production, the nature of

Huis Ten Bosch (a theme park in Nagasaki

Prefecture that recreates the Netherlands),

and a fi nancial fantasy, An Eastern Odyssey

becomes itself a metaphor for much

post-modern tourism (Ryan and Collins, 2008)

Most studies of tourism entertainment

con-sider one instance of the phenomenon, and

approach that setting with one guiding set of

ideas (Prentice, 2003; Harris, 2005)

Theatrical performance

One defi nition of theatrical performance is ‘a

performance of a play.’1 In the present study,

theatrical performance refers to large-scale live

performances staged indoors or outdoors, that

are predominantly designed for tourists Chen

et al (2008) analysed inbound tourist

satisfac-tion and future revisit intensatisfac-tion regarding a

theatrical production, Zen Music Shaolin

Grand Ceremony, a traditional cultural

product, based on three intangible factors:

tra-ditional, education and fascination They found

a signifi cant relationship between the three

factors and tourist satisfaction and revisit

intention, respectively However, little is found

about the attributes of theatrical performances

in the tourism research Some useful studies

are found in the hospitality fi eld For instance,

Hede et al (2004) measured eight attributes of

a theater event, ‘storyline’, ‘stage work’,

‘cos-tumes’, ‘acting and singing’, ‘ambience of the

theater’, ‘service at the theater’, ‘value for

money’ and ‘vision from the seats’, to test a

conceptual framework that included personal

values, satisfaction and post-consumption

behavioural intentions They found that with

the exception of ‘vision from the seats,’ these

attributes were signifi cantly related with

tourist satisfaction

Tourist satisfaction

Tourist satisfaction is defi ned as

post-con-sumption evaluation concerning a specifi c

product or service (Westbrook and Oliver,

1991), and proposed to be one of the key

judg-ments that tourists make regarding a tourism service Hence, it is a well-established, long-standing focus marketer attention (Yuksel and Yuksel, 2002)

There are many tourism and hospitality studies of the factors affecting the level of tourist satisfaction In the tourism research investigating destination, Chi and Qu (2008) chose 33 destination items to measure tourist satisfaction, and distinguished seven key factors: lodging, dining, shopping, attractions, activities and events, environment and acces-sibility Master and Prideaux (2000) selected eight attributes to assess Taiwanese tourist sat-isfaction in South East Queensland Heung and Qu (2000) examined the satisfaction levels

of Japanese tourists to Hong Kong in terms of

31 travel attributes Mazanec (2006) studied tourist satisfaction with ski resorts using six satisfaction indicators: ease of access, situation

at ticket selling points, level and variety of prices, cableways and ski lifts, skiing area, skiing runs, services and restaurants In the hospitality research, Yuksel and Yuksel (2002) investigated restaurant selection and food-service evaluation by measuring the level of tourist satisfaction with dining based on 10 factors: service quality, product quality, menu diversity, hygiene, convenience and location, noise, service speed, price and value, facilities and atmosphere

Tourist loyalty

Tourist loyalty is commonly measured by three indicators: intention to continue buying the same product, intention to buy more of the same product and willingness to recommend the product to others (Hepworth and Mateus, 1994) However, various tourism products have different loyalty measurements Chen and Gursoy (2001) used inclination to use the same airline and stay in the same franchised hotel whenever traveling to measure tourist loyalty, and willingness to recommend the product to others to measure tourist loyalty towards a destination However, other studies have chosen two indicators to measure desti-nation loyalty, such as tourist intention to revisit the destination and willingness to rec-ommend it to others as a favourable destina-tion (Chi and Qu, 2008)

1 This defi nition of theatrical performance was available at

http://www.thefreedictionary.com (accessed April 2009).

In the theatrical performance research, Chen

et al (2008) measured tourist loyalty towards

theatrical performance using two indicators:

would you recommend the theatrical

perfor-mance you have seen to your friends and

rela-tives, and would you watch the same theatrical

performance in the future? They found that

inbound tourists were willing to revisit the

same theatrical performance and to

recom-mend it to others Petrick et al (2001) examined

tourist intention to revisit an entertainment

destination, live theater entertainment, and

take advantage of an entertainment package

again, and found that past behaviour,

satisfac-tion and perceived value are not good

predic-tors of intention to revisit live theater

entertainment

METHODOLOGY

Because of the lack of theatrical

performance-specifi c research in the tourism literature, this

study tried to gain detailed information and

uncover issues related to this topic for

discus-sion in future research (Cole, 2004) To meet

these goals, it used a qualitative method —

focus group discussion Focus group samples

can be selected by age in order to create a

per-missive atmosphere, or can be balanced by

dif-ferent age, sex and economics status groups

(Finn et al., 2000) By following these two

selec-tion guidelines, members in Group 1, 2, 3 were

recruited from universities, and all of the

par-ticipants had similar age; Group 4 members

were selected from the community, and they

had different age, sex and economics status In

total four focus group discussions, with a total

of 31 participants, were held in Hong Kong

and Shenzhen in February 2009 Email

invita-tions were sent to the mainland Chinese

stu-dents studying at the School of Hotel and

Tourism Management in Hong Kong, and

par-ticipants were directly recruited from a course

with a large number of students at Shenzhen

University in China Group members were

also recruited by poster advertisements from a

community in Shenzhen In order to ensure the

validity of the sample, all participants in the

focus groups were screened to ensure that they

had watched at least one theatrical

perfor-mance in China in the past 12 months

The researcher facilitated and mediated every section An assistant helped to distribute the open-ended questions, took notes and recorded the discussions The researcher fi rst explained the defi nition of theatrical perfor-mance being used in this study Then, four open-ended questions stimulated the discus-sion among participants Finally, participants were asked to provide demographic informa-tion Open-ended questions were used in the focus group discussions, as they can reveal the world as seen by respondents and capture the points of view of other people through prior selection of questionnaire categories (Patton, 2002) The open-ended questions used

in the discussions are as follows

(1) What kind of stage attributes affected the level of your satisfaction with the theatrical performance that you saw in China?

(2) What other attributes do you think affected the level of your satisfaction?

(3) Would you watch the same theatrical formance in the future? Why or why not?(4) Would you recommend the theatrical per-formance that you saw to others? Why or why not?

per-Data coding and analysis of the audio ings and notes of the discussions were carried out by two researchers to develop a categorisa-tion scheme Two researchers participated in this data analysis to ensure the high credibility

record-of the process and the interpretation First, one researcher (A) transcribed the audio record-ings into text version Second, researcher (A) conducted the data coding according to the nature of the theatrical performance attributes When the data coding procedure was com-pleted, another researcher (B) independently examined the data to come up with the data coding results, a kind of inter-coder reliability check (Berg, 2007), at the same time provide suggestions to the terms of the coding and names of the theatrical performance attributes Third, researcher (A) compiled the data coding results from previous procedures The fi nal resulting categories were created under a con-sensual process of interpretation by the two researchers Both researchers discussed and compromised with the resulting categories.Direct quotations from the focus group par-ticipants were used in the data analysis and are

included in the Findings section as they

dem-onstrate the depth of emotion, thoughts,

expe-riences and perceptions of the participants

(Patton, 2002), and provide a trail of evidence

to support the categorisation scheme

FINDINGS

Profi le of the participants

A total of 31 people, all mainland Chinese,

par-ticipated in the four focus group discussions

The Group 1 and 2 discussions were conducted

in Hong Kong, while the Group 3 and 4

discus-sions were conducted in Shenzhen The

demo-graphic characteristics of the participants are

presented in Table 1

Nineteen females and twelve males

partici-pated in the study The majority (90%) of

par-ticipants was aged between 20 to 30 years old,

and there were also more single than married

interviewees Among the 31 participants, 12

were students Twenty-eight out of thirty-one

respondents had a higher educational degree

One third respondents, full-time students, had

no income (10), followed by those with an

unstable income (7) and those with a monthly

income of more than RMB5000 (7) Seventeen

respondents were in families of 2–3 persons,

and twelve were in families of 4–5 persons

Tourist satisfaction and attributes affecting

the level of tourist satisfaction with

theatrical performance in China

Almost all of the focus group participants said

that they were satisfi ed with the performance

they had seen Most reported a very high level

of satisfaction Experiencing a theatrical

per-formance, an innovative tourism product, was

perceived by respondents to be a valuable

opportunity to enjoy fantastic scenery and

culture, amazing performing arts and

high-technology effects

Analysis of the audio recordings and

researcher’s notes from the focus group

discus-sions yielded 34 attributes affecting the level of

tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance

In order to sustain an order of categorisation,

these attributes were then divided into fi ve

categories: stage, performance, venue, service

and tourist-related attributes (see Figure 1) It

should be noted that the fi ve categories are analytically developed by the researchers, and they are not wholly independent and relation-ships exist among them

Stage attributes

Stage attributes are items associated with stage

facilities and equipments Hede et al (2004)

assessed tourist satisfaction with theater events based on three attributes: ‘costumes’, ‘acting and singing’ and ‘stage work’; and found a signifi cant relationship between each of these and tourist satisfaction However, the three attributes are general features of theater events Therefore, the current study considered nine attributes: ‘costumes’, ‘stage decorations’,

‘background scenery or screen’, ‘scale of the stage’, ‘water and a waterfall on the stage’,

‘smoke’, ‘lighting’, ‘music and songs’ and ‘loud sounds.’

The nine attributes provide a detailed picture

of the stage facilities and the high-technology effects incorporated into the performance A lot of respondents mentioned that these tan-gible stage-related attributes played a great role in the level of their satisfaction, as these features drew their attention to the stage and the show being performed Regarding common stage facilities, namely, ‘costumes of the per-formers’, ‘stage decoration,’ ‘background scenery or screen’ and ‘scale of the stage’, most respondents said that these could have been better, which resulted in lower levels of satis-faction with the performance However, most participants said that the high-technology effects, including ‘water and a waterfall on the stage’, ‘smoke’ and ‘lighting’, exceeded their expectations They were very surprised when they fi rst saw these effects Some respondents mentioned that the beautiful music and songs really impressed them However, some said that the loud sounds made them uncomfort-able The stage items and related quotations drawn from the focus group discussions are presented in Table 2

Performance attributes

Performance attributes concern both the

perfor-mance and performers Hede et al (2004) found

that storyline had a signifi cant relationship with

tourist satisfaction in the theater-event context

This study considered seven performance

attributes: ‘performance is special and unique’,

‘professional performers’, ‘good coordination

among performers’, ‘performers show

emotion’, ‘performers show enthusiasm’, ‘good

order of performance’ and ‘punctual start of

performance’

Many respondents mentioned that they prefer a unique and special performance They appreciated a unique storyline or new kind of

production The Impression of Liusanjie, for

example, was staged outdoors in a natural environment, unlike other productions ‘Pro-fessional performers’, ‘good coordination among performers’, ‘performers show emotion’

Table 1 Profi le of the focus group participants

Stage attributes Performance attributes

Tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance

Figure 1 Five categories of attributes affecting the level of tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance in China

Table 2 Summary of nine stage attributes and related quotations

I really liked them, and you can only fi nd these kinds of costumes in this area

such as the red lantern, and ethnic decorations, which refl ect the local culture or traditional Chinese culture

During the performance, the background changed, following the theme of the different parts of the performance

that in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing

I don’t care if the stage is large or small, I do care about the content of the performance and size of the stage being coordinated

surprise to me In the middle of performance, drizzle suddenly fell from above the audience, and we could feel the rain

impressed by the magic lighting The lasers and fi re during the performance were big surprises to me

famous musicians

and ‘performers show enthusiasm’ were other

attributes mentioned by the respondents, who

were moved by the facial expressions and

acting of the performers ‘Good order of

per-formance’ was also important, as respondents

noted that every part of the performance

should proceed in proper order A punctual

start was also important to the participants,

who preferred a performance to start on time

so that they did not have to wait for a long time Performance items and related quota-tions are given in Table 3

Venue attributes

Venue attributes can also affect the level of

tourist satisfaction Hede et al (2004) used

‘ambience of the theater’ and ‘vision from the

seats’ to assess the level of tourist satisfaction

with theater events, and fi nd a statistically

sig-nifi cant relationship between ‘ambience of the

theater’ and level of tourist satisfaction, but no

such relationship between ‘vision from the

seats’ and level of tourist satisfaction The

current study considered 11 venue attributes:

‘cleanliness of the venue’, ‘comfortable seating’,

‘vision of the performance’, ‘clean air’,

‘moder-ate temperature in the venue’, ‘safety and

secu-rity of the venue’, ‘behaviour of other audience

members’, ‘suitable audience number in the

venue’, ‘accessibility of the venue’, ‘location of

the venue’ and ‘weather.’

The attributes of the venue at which the

per-formance was staged had a signifi cant effect on

the focus group members ‘Ambience of the

venue’ has been found to infl uence tourist

sat-isfaction in not only the theater (Hede et al.,

2004) but also the destination (Swarbrooke and

Horner, 1999; Chi and Qu, 2008) context Other

attributes affected the enjoyment of

partici-pants of the performance, including

‘comfort-able seating’, ‘vision of the performance’, ‘clean

air’ and ‘moderate temperature in the venue’

Many respondents also mentioned ‘safety and

security of the venue’, consistent with tourism

studies such as that of Chi and Qu (2008), who

found safety and security factors to be an

immediate antecedent of satisfaction with the

venue and to contribute indirectly to overall

satisfaction ‘Behaviour of other audience members’ has been confi rmed to be a factor infl uencing customer satisfaction in various tourism contexts, especially destination (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999), while in the restaurant context, ‘suitable number in the venue’ has been found to directly affect the level of the quality of hospitality service and indirectly affect the level of tourist satisfaction (Yuksel and Yuksel, 2002)

‘Accessibility of theatrical performance’ and

‘location of venue’ were found to be factors affecting the level of participants’ satisfaction with theatrical performance in China Many theatrical performances were put on in remote areas and most were staged at night, so acces-sibility was a big problem Many focus group members felt unsafe when returning to their hotels The destination literature has also found that accessibility is a factor affecting the level of tourist satisfaction (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999; Chi and Qu, 2008)

Previously, large-scale theatrical mances were only staged indoors in indepen-dent or in tourist theaters In 2004, a new type

perfor-of theatrical performance was presented in

Guilin by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, The

Impression of Liusanjie, which played outdoors

on an open river surrounded by hills Since then, many theatrical performances have been

put on outdoors, including The Impression of

Table 3 Summary of seven performing attributes and related quotations

others I want to see an original performance that demonstrates the local culture

can guess whether the performers are professional or amateur through their performance

coordination and cooperation with others

emotion

performing We could feel their enthusiasm through their body language and facial expressions

order

time

Table 4 Summary of eleven venue attributes and related quotations

satisfaction to the performance

role The theater should provide comfortable seats to tourists

theatrical performance

air was terrible

summer of 2008 The temperature in the venue was really high, which made me uncomfortable

Zhangjiajie, I found the theater to be of very simple construction; therefore I worried about our safety in the theater I was so scared that it would collapse

level of satisfaction Some spoke loudly, while others took pictures although it was not allowed Some even stood up during the performance All of these kinds of bad behaviour affected my feeling about the theatrical performance

performance The small number of tourists could affect the feeling of performers as well as that of the tourists The staff added even more seats in the theater in case there were more tourist arrivals It was terrible The theater was so crowded

The Impression of Lijiang, it’s not easy to get to the

‘theater.’ You need to hire a taxi to drive for half an hour from the downtown area to the venue If I were on my own, I could not easily fi nd a car in the evening

far from my accommodation In particular, it is unsafe for individual tourists to be out at night

windy amphitheater at 3100 meters Performances could

be cancelled or postponed by heavy rains or thick fog.The bad weather could cause safety problem for performers who might slip on the muddy stage I would also feel terrible if the weather were cold or there were heavy rain, because one watches the performance out of doors

Lijiang, The Impression of West Lake, Zen Music

Shaolin Grand Ceremony and The Song of Eternal

Sorrow Outdoor productions can be greatly

affected by bad weather, and cancelled

because of heavy rains or thick fog Tourists

are unwilling to brave the cold weather or

heavy rains, as most watch the performance

unprotected from the elements (VIP tourists are exception) ‘Weather’ is an uncontrollable factor that has been found to affect the level

of customer satisfaction in the destination domain (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999) Venue items and related quotations are pre-sented in Table 4

Service attributes

Service attributes are service factors affecting

the level of tourist satisfaction with theatrical

performance Many tourism and hospitality

studies indicate that service quality is an

ante-cedent of satisfaction, and fi nd a clear and

sig-nifi cant relationship between service quality

and tourist satisfaction (Rust and Oliver, 1994;

Ekinci, 2004; Hede et al., 2004) In this study,

‘service quality’, ‘ticket price/value for money’,

‘performances are staged at night’, ‘suitable

duration of the performance’ and ‘sale

activi-ties related to the performance’ were found to

affect the level of satisfaction of participants

‘Service quality’ in the theatrical

perfor-mance context extended from the ticket offi ce

service to the services offered at the venue The

friendly and competent staff affect the viewing

experience and emotions of tourists ‘Ticket

price/value for money’ also affected the level

of tourist satisfaction Perceived price fairness

is defi ned as the perception of the price by

consumers as reasonable, acceptable and just

(Bolton et al., 2003), and is found to be

posi-tively related to customer satisfaction and

loyalty (Bei and Chiao, 2001)

In China, most theatrical performances are

put on at night, which enriches the nightlife of

tourists by providing them with a chance to relax and experience the local culture However, some respondents did not want to see a night-time performance, as they needed to wait for a long time before it would start Some respon-dents also mentioned that they did not want to see a performance of great duration; they just wanted to relax Therefore, ‘suitable duration

of the performance’ was important, especially for productions staged at night

‘Sale activities related to the performance’ also affected the level of tourist satisfaction Some respondents said that they did not care for such activities, but that these activities took place before the performance started They said that such activities were annoying, and some were even organised by the theater operators Service items and related quota-tions are presented in Table 5

Tourist-related attributes

There are both intrinsic and extrinsic related attributes In the current study, the focus group participants mentioned that

tourist-‘tourist understanding of the culture being showcased through the performance’ (intrinsic attributes) and ‘tourist companions’ (extrinsic

Table 5 Summary of fi ve service attributes and related quotations

affected my level of satisfaction Competent staff could answer my enquiry about the theatrical performance; however, some of them did not know much about the performance

the tickets were so expensive It was not value for money

− when the performance ended, I found that it wasn’t worth it

impossible for me after spending the whole day at attractions to watch an evening performance

don’t want to watch a long performance; I just want to relax Some lengthy theatrical performances made me tired I prefer a one-hour performance

Chinese paintings, and souvenirs I did not like these activities Souvenir selling is irritating to me

attributes) affected their level of satisfaction

The different attitudes, standards and

preju-dice of tourists affect the level of their

satisfac-tion; their satisfaction, or otherwise, is based

on subjective views about an issue that is

important to them, and which they judge in

their own way (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999)

Cross-cultural studies suggest that cultural

values result in different beliefs, perceptions

and behaviours (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980)

Li et al (2007) found a positive relationship

between culture and level of satisfaction In the

present study, the participants mentioned that

they could not understand the local culture

There are various local cultures and

subcul-tures in different parts of China Altogether

there are 56 ethnic nationalities in mainland

China, and Han Chinese accounted for 92% of

the total population Different ethnic

nationali-ties have various history, custom, lifestyle and

cultures, thus some Chinese from east China

might have problems understanding the

culture of ethnic minorities living in west

China

Some respondents also mentioned that

their companions infl uenced the level of their

satisfaction with the theatrical performance

Tourist-related items and related quotations

are presented in Table 6

Tourist loyalty towards theatrical

performance in China

In this study, almost all of the focus group

participants said that they were satisfi ed with

the theatrical performance that they had seen

However, they said that they would not watch the same theatrical performance alone in the future The fi nding of tourist loyalty towards theatrical performance in this study is consis-

tent with that of Petrick et al (2001) that

satis-faction is not a good predictor of intention to revisit with regard to live theater entertain-

ment However, Chen et al (2008) found that

inbound tourists were willing to watch the same theatrical performance in the future, and that intangible factors related to theatrical per-formance had a positive and signifi cant effect

on revisit intention The different fi ndings may

be due to the different samples The current study uses a small sample of domestic travel-

ers, whereas that of Chen et al (2008) used a

sample of inbound tourists

The respondents gave a number of reasons why they would not want to see the same the-atrical performance in the future First, most said that they would prefer to see a new theat-rical performance rather than the same one It should be noted that the content of some the-atrical performances changes somewhat from time to time; however, there is little difference compared to the previous shows Second, many respondents in Group 1, 2 and 3 men-tioned the high price of tickets as the main factor affecting their revisit intention, partly because they were price-sensitive tourists who were younger and earned less money than the participants in Group 4 Third, some Group 4 members noted that the feelings of their family members were the main factor affecting their revisit intention If their family members liked the performance and it was not too far away

Table 6 Summary of two tourist-related attributes and related quotations

1 Tourist understanding of the culture

being showcased by the performance

I didn’t completely understand The Impression of Liusanjie

I am not familiar with the folk stories and local culture of Guilin, which made it tough for me to understand the performance

satisfaction with the performance If I am not familiar with the local culture but my companion knows the culture very well and explains it to me, I will defi nitely know much more about the production, and thus be more satisfi ed with it

If my family members didn’t like it (the performance) or were annoying to me I would be affected by them

from where they were staying, then they would

be willing to see it again Fourth, some

respon-dents said that the great distance of the

theatri-cal performance from the downtown area

would deter them from watching the same

performance in the future Finally, many

men-tioned that the theatrical performance was not

the main attraction of the destination, and that

they usually plan to see a performance after

deciding on a specifi c destination or after they

arrive at their destination

Although 21 of the 31 respondents would

not watch the same theatrical performance

alone in the future, they did not object to

accompanying their friends or relatives to see

it again, and were very likely to recommend

what they had seen to others The fi ndings of

this study are consistent with those of Chen et

al (2008) that tourists are willing to

recom-mend the theatrical performance that they

have seen to others, and that factors of the

theatrical performance have a positive and

sig-nifi cant relationship with recommendation

intention

Regarding why they would or would not

recommend the shows that they had seen to

others, the focus group members mentioned

that they wanted their friends, relatives and

colleagues to enjoy the high-quality theatrical

performance They said that if they knew that

their friends or relatives were planning to visit

the destination at which they had seen the

per-formance, they would recommend it to them,

rather than directly recommending it to others,

as most tourists do not visit a destination just

to see a theatrical performance In addition,

some members said that the interests and

hobbies of their friends and relatives were also

a factor affecting whether they would

recom-mend the show they had seen That is, they

would recommend it to those who might be

interested in such an activity

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The fi ndings of this study can help theater

operators to understand tourist satisfaction

with loyalty towards theatrical performance in

China The results of the study reveal fi ve

categories of attributes affecting the level of

tourist satisfaction: stage, performance, venue,

service and tourist-related attributes

Regard-ing stage and performance attributes, to be cessful, a theatrical performance should have unique and special stage and performance-related elements Therefore, the theme and content of theatrical performances should be based on the unique culture and attractions of

suc-a destinsuc-ation Thesuc-atricsuc-al productions should incorporate the local culture, high-technology effects and professional performers

Venue and service quality factors are also of great importance to the level of tourist satisfac-tion Some focus group participants with fami-lies said that the venue attributes were more important than either the stage or performance ones They viewed a theatrical performance as

an unforgettable event, comprising not just the theatrical performance product itself but the whole experience Theater operators should focus on venue and service quality attributes, such as ticket price, the environment of the venue, services provided by the staff and secu-rity Training for the staff to improve service quality is needed to increase the level of tourist satisfaction with the whole theater experience Theater operators should also maintain venue facilities to a high standard, and address secu-rity and seating issues The value for money problem could be solved by the improvement

of venue facilities and service quality while, regarding such problems as audience members speaking loudly and taking pictures during the performance, notices and announce-ments could be used to remind the audience to refrain from these practices It should be emphasised that a successful theatrical perfor-mance does not depend on one attribute but rather an extensive number of them, including those in fi ve categories identifi ed herein.Implications for theater operators can be given to increase its revenue and to enhance tourist loyalty Recent studies suggest that the collaboration between theaters, tour operators and local governments contributes to the suc-cessful theatrical performances in China (China Economic Times, 2007; Zhou, 2008) The theat-rical performance as a new tourism product in China, it is at early stage of development; therefore, more marketing promotions and cooperation with other stakeholders, such as tour operators, hotels and local governments, are required Marketing strategies linking the theatrical productions and the destination

Mean-should be jointly implemented by theater

operators and local governments They can

collaborate together to design theatrical

performance-specifi c tour itineraries to attract

more package group visitors Local hotels can

provide theatrical performance brochures to

the tourists in the rooms and front offi ce

Des-tination marketing organisations should

promote the attractiveness of the theatrical

performances held at a specifi c destination,

because tourists could recommend a theatrical

performance to others based on the

attractive-ness of the destination A win-win situation

can be created in theaters, tour operators, and

local governments, as a successful theatrical

performance not only attracts visitors to

the-aters, generates tour operator’s income, but

also boosts up tourist demand to a destination

In addition, marketing promotions of

theatri-cal performance highlighting improvements in

venue accessibility and changes in theatrical

content could also attract more repeat visitors

All of these measures can increase tourist

revisit intentions to theatrical performances

CONCLUSION AND LIMITATIONS

This exploratory study addresses the gap in

knowledge about tourist satisfaction and

loyalty related to theatrical performance in

China Based on four focus group discussions

with 31 participants, this study identifi es 34

attributes that affect the level of tourist

satis-faction with theatrical performance, and

groups these into fi ve categories: stage,

perfor-mance, venue, service and tourist-related

attri-butes The fi ndings on tourist loyalty reveal

that 21 of the 31 respondents would not watch

the same theatrical performance alone in

the future; however, they would recommend

it to others The article also provides a

dis-cussion of the rich and insightful fi ndings

and their implications for tourism industry

practitioners

This study has some limitations First, it

focuses on large-scale theatrical performance

in China Hence, the fi ndings are not

generalis-able to all types of theatrical performance

Second, all of the focus group participants are

mainland Chinese, who have been recruited

from a community in Shenzhen and from

uni-versities in Shenzhen and Hong Kong Further,

the sample is limited to two Chinese cities; however, the target market of some theatrical performances is international tourists Third, this study does not differentiate the visitors based on the purposes for leisure or tourism

It should be noted that leisure visitors and tourists perhaps will have different satisfaction levels with various theatrical performance attributes Fourth, a qualitative method alone

is insuffi cient to assess tourist satisfaction and loyalty Therefore, future research should use

a quantitative method to test and confi rm the study fi ndings

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Jeju Island is a major domestic tourism

destination in South Korea and is an

increasingly signifi cant international

tourism destination, especially for the

Japanese and Chinese markets The Jeju

provincial government strongly supports the

tourism industry and has, along with the

Korean central government, invested

heavily in the construction of tourism

infrastructure and tourism promotion There

is an abundance of printed literature

available to tourists, in the form of

brochures and guidebooks, during their stay

in Jeju Island In this study, the types of

photographic representations found in that

media is identifi ed using a previously

developed typology of four ‘spaces’ and

four ‘subjects’ Content analysis of a

proportional sample of 4115 pages in 225

tourist guidebooks and brochures

determined the frequencies of certain

‘types’ of photographs Further interpretive

analysis probes the intentions behind the

imagery, if any exist, towards the

representational construction of this island’s

destination image as it appears to the tourist

reader Theoretical issues related to

destination image and its representations

are explored in light of the fi ndings and

implications for tourism policy and

management are discussed Copyright ©

2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 17 November 2009; Revised 27 February 2010; Accepted 9 April 2010

Keywords: destination Image; discourse; interpretation; photograph; representation; typology

INTRODUCTION

The destination image is a major theoretical

concept in tourism that is generally stood as a complex and relativistic dynamic of conveyances and interpretations

under-(Gallarza et al., 2002) But attempts to generate

a singular and universal defi nition have not been successful (MacKay and Fesenmaier, 1997) This is probably due to a fundamental ontological and epistemological problem con-cerning the ‘reality’ of images wherein ‘imagery’, actual pictures or representations, are confused with ‘image’ Image can refer to either the ‘per-ceived destination image’ (the impressions or associations that visitors and potential visitors hold regarding a place) or ‘projected image’ (the impressions or associations that marketers, designers or policy-makers with to convey) Imagery or representations of a destination convey a sense of objectivity (Wolcott, 1995) because they are the actual features of the inhab-ited landscapes of tourism Image, on the other hand, consists of the various meanings embed-ded in the representation and makes sense only within the hermetic discourse of tourism be it the perspective of sender or receiver In this sense representations (imagery) are the medium and image is the message

In this paper the connection between tion image and its representations is investigated The published photographic representations of Jeju Island, a major domestic tourism destination

destina-Int J Tourism Res 12, 680–695 (2010)

Published online 14 April 2010 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.783

Groomed Spaces on Jeju Island:

A Typology of Photographic

Representations for Tourism

William Cannon Hunter

Department of Convention Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul City, Republic of Korea

Correspondence to: William Cannon Hunter, Ph.D

Department of Convention Management, Kyung Hee

University, 1 Hoegi Dong, Dongdaemun Gu, Seoul City,

130-701, Republic of Korea.

E-mail: primalamerica@yahoo.com

for Koreans, are analysed and their visually

implied message, the image, is qualitatively

eval-uated Representations are empirically discrete

data whereas imagery is a ‘reasoned and

emo-tional process’ (Beerli and Martin, 2004)

Repre-sentations, particularly visual representations

such as the photograph provides a powerful

means to convey the reality of a tourism

destina-tion and is generally recognised as the physical

evidence of the touristic partnership of developer

and consumer (Herbert, 2001, p 317) But the

nature of that partnership is obscured by a

delib-erate or habitual collaboration between

destina-tion and tourist (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998)

In destination image there is still not enough

empirical research concerning the quantitative

analysis of representations that either form, or

are formed by projections and perceptions

In other words, the projection (Sonmez and

Sirakaya, 2002) or the perception (Hunter and

Suh, 2007) of the representations that form

des-tination image are not understood because

the basic work of counting and describing the

representations conveyed in certain touristic

media has not been fi nished In addition, the

quantitative analysis of touristic imagery (or

representations) is rarely conjoined with the

interpretive analysis of the image they convey

The work going on in destination image

research and that going on in research on

rep-resentations are like the right hand and the left

hand groping about for each other But before

they can grasp each other, the work on

repre-sentations must catch up to what is already

known about image To this end, a previously

developed typology of photographic

represen-tations for tourism (Hunter, 2008) is further

tested A similar approach to empirical research

has been used before in the development and

testing of a cultural tourism typology

(McK-ercher 2002; McK(McK-ercher and du Cros, 2003)

Replication of scientifi c research is of major

importance in ensuring the reliability and

validity of results, higher confi dence in

gener-alising and better application of those results

to real world situations (Lincoln and Guba,

1985)

Testing of the typology of photographic

rep-resentations for tourism described in this paper

consists of replicating the content analysis of

photographs found in touristic guide books

and brochures published at a single

destina-tion and comparing the fi ndings to those erated in other research where photographs in tourism print media from 21 different coun-tries (Hunter, 2008) were analysed The desti-nation selected for this research was Jeju Island

gen-in Korea, a destgen-ination with distgen-inct ‘island’ borders and a relatively homogeneous tourism market The specifi c aims of this research are

to test a typology of photographic tions in tourism and to examine the ontological relationship between ‘representations’ and

representa-‘destination image’ In addition, there are fi ve research objectives guiding this research:

(1) To address the ontological relationship between ‘representations’ and ‘destination image’;

(2) To describe the role of the photograph in tourism destination promotion;

(3) To identify the ‘types’ of photographic representations used in destination promo-tion, particularly in Jeju Island;

(4) To interpret the meanings visually implied

by the photographic representation and(5) To list research and policy implications for tourism destination development and promotion

JEJU ISLAND TOURISMJeju Island is politically identifi ed as a special self-governing province in Korea It is located about 200 km from the southern shores of the Korean peninsula and is a popular tourism destination, especially for domestic travelers The island is volcanic and covers an area of

1848 km2 with 253 km of coastline and Halla Mountain, the tallest mountain in Korea at

1950 meters and defi nes the landscape of the island The island has a population of 565 519, one major city (Jeju City) and a large and unde-

fi ned service industry that caters to the nant tourism industry In Jeju a secondary agricultural and fi sheries industry and con-struction rounds out the base of the island’s economy Basic socio-economic fi gures and a map depicting the location of the island are offered in Figure 1, below

domi-Two events secured Jeju Island’s position as

a major tourism destination for Korea’s tic travelers The fi rst event was Korea’s Eco-nomic Development Plan of 1962 (Suh and

domes-Hunter, 2006) which identifi ed fi ve areas in

Korea for development as tourism

destina-tions In Jeju this development included the

opening new roads, expanding ports and

airport and eventually identifying sites for

tourism development on the island and

equip-ping it with tourism complexes, big hotels, an

international convention center, world cup

stadium and other facilities The second event

was the Pacifi c Asia Travel Association (PATA)

General Assembly’s declaration of Jeju as a

‘fascinating tourist attraction’ and a visit to the

island in 1965 by a PATA delegation Visitation

to Jeju has continually increased although the

majority of visitors remain, to an almost

over-whelming extent, Korean A basic profi le of

Jeju Island’s tourism statistics are depicted in

Figure 2, below

It can be seen that while the numbers of

international visitors in recent years have

increased dramatically, they still make up only

about 10% of all tourists The Japanese market

has historically been well established in Jeju,

visiting for relaxation, and especially, golf The

Chinese market is the most rapidly growing and tourists from China visit in package tour groups Visitors from Taiwan make up the third largest segment of the market, many stopping over on the way to Shanghai With new policies implemented by the KMT gov-ernment in Taiwan opening direct air connec-tions to major Chinese cities, and the recent bankruptcy of the major Taiwanese carrier, Far Eastern, this market is expected to plummet unless new promotional strategies are developed

The domestic Korean market remains the primary focus of the development and promo-tion of Jeju Provincial Government authorities They are continually supporting and promot-ing the growth of tourism by investing in large scale development projects and putting special emphasis on the hosting of international con-ferences Medical tourism, an ‘English village’ and other special products are also under development Concurrently public and private interests continue to publish large quantities of tourism brochures, guidebooks or catalogs

Jeju Island, 2007 Socio-economic Profile

Economy (see pie chart),

Location, satellite photo and

map (see image, below)

Figure 1 Jeju Island, 2007 socioeconomic profi le

These are found in surplus at any location

where the traveler visits or passes through —

beginning and ending at the airport or

com-mercial ferry terminal They are a ubiquitous

feature of the Jeju Island travel experience The

question arises however, when the

photo-graphic representations published in this

material is scrutinised, whether tourism

devel-opment authorities are conscious of the visual

implications involved in the use of those

photographs, or the power of the photograph

to infl uence the visitor’s travel choices

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION AND TOURISM

The photograph is the preferred medium of tourism’s highly visual discourses (Urry, 1990), conveying messages in a way that is ‘true’ (Brown, 1995) and at the same time, potentially

Jeju Island, 2008 Tourism Visitation

2008 540,516

2000 288,425

1990 235,073

1980 20,503 Domestic Visitors, Purpose of Visit,

Relaxation International Visitors’ Nationality,

Japan, China and Taiwan

Total Visitors (in Thousands)

Figure 2 Jeju Island, 2008 overview of basic tourism statistics

deceptive Photographic representations are

considered to be highly reliable in depicting

the desires and experiences related to touristic

destinations They transcend the earlier

descriptive language used by ethnographers

and travel writers (Adler, 1989) and replace it

with a visual code, a view ‘through a frame’

(Ryan, 2002, p 953) Among the wide variety

of representations circulated in touristic

dis-courses (Papson, 1981), the photograph is

unique in its verisimilitude to reality, ‘light

writing’ in the semiotic sense is an indexical

sign (Metro-Roland, 2009) that provides

evi-dence that certain destinations exist and do, in

fact, promise certain experiences

The power of the photograph is almost

irre-futable as a mechanism that transforms the

reality of a destination’s most typical or

recog-nisable features into goods or experiences that

can be purchased by the visitor (Prideaux,

2003) By this means, the photograph facilitates

and reinforces the collaborative relationship of

developers, operators, tourists and residents in

the ‘touristic exchange’ (Doorne et al., 2003)

With photography, touristic representations

become real in an immediate way They

‘ontologise the visual’ (Crawshaw and Urry,

1997) and instruct tourists in the construction

of expectations, ways of seeing, and in the

cre-ation of their own photographs (Dann, 1996a)

They create a ‘hermeneutic circle’ (Ryan, 2002,

p 965) where the tourist seeks what has been

photographed and published in tourism media

in order to photograph it The photograph has

been described as the most important thing in

tourism marketing (Holloway and Robinson,

1995) and a primary factor infl uencing travel

decisions (McGregor, 2000)

Photographic representations can also be

deceptive when in tourism research suspicion

is aroused concerning the photographer’s

‘framing of sights’ (Jackson, 1992) and

dislocat-ing of subjects (Edwards, 1996) The

photo-graph found in tourism promotion conveys

scenes where spaces and human subjects are

combined in ways that exaggerate purity of

purpose and purposively highlight the

extraor-dinary It is an instrument of desire, visually

implying what is ‘worth viewing’ (Dann, 1996b,

p 66) The ‘sense of place’ (Hughes, 1995, p

791) created in the photograph conceals the

other identities or social roles of hosts and

guests and ensures that culturally and tially, the touristic experience will leave all players fundamentally unchanged Display (Lanfant, 1995) imagery (Selwyn, 1996) and depiction (Sontag, 1979) convene in the drama-turgical event of tourism’s (Conquergood, 1992) photographic representations

existen-The photograph has transformed the world’s consciousness of reality, making the visual rep-resentation of distant realities widely accessible

to people who would otherwise never have the chance to see them The democratisation of the visual has provided an overfl owing supply of information to the traveler, in the form of travel brochures, guidebooks, postcards and more recently websites, blogs and other forms of user generated content found on the Internet In fact online pictures and text are becoming a new and largely unexplored territory of the ‘image’ (Govers and Go, 2005) Yet the relevance of print media has by no means been compro-mised It still remains a ubiquitous feature of the traveled environment at a destination The pho-tograph seems to be an ideal medium for tourism Its immediacy, its color and depth and its apparent neutrality, however, disguise the fact that photographs used in tourism promo-tion only depict the ‘preconceived landscape’ (Weightman, 1987, p 230) that tourists are expected to ‘discover’

Photographs are one form of the many sentations in tourism that serve as the primor-dial commodities of tourism (Laxon, 1991; Aramberri, 2001), said to ‘drench’ the tourist in

repre-‘commodity fetishism’ (Selwyn, 1996, p 14) and drain rituals, ceremonies and folk art of their cultural meanings or signifi cance (Cohen, 1988)

To a great extent, the representation is the modity in tourism — commodities that repre-sent commodities They have currency because they are encoded within the social context (Hall, 1997) of tourism, a context that has its own defi nitions and implications Representations provide the basis for an ethnocentric and highly purposeful discourse that reappropriates the

com-‘order or appearance of a thing or event, ing to conventions’ (Hollinshead, 2000b, p 501) They are practical for tourism because they reduce the complexities of a way of life or a strange and foreign destination to a few visual cues and serve as the functional shorthand of touristic discourses (Geertz, 1995)

accord-TOURISM DESTINATION IMAGE

Without photographic representations,

touris-tic narratives would need to be more explicit

and would rely largely on the rhetorical skills

of writers and broadcasters There would be

less doubt as to the intentions of marketers and

developers who would have to explain why a

particular sight or attraction is worthwhile to

the tourist On the other hand, in a world

where different languages and social contexts

exist, linguistic messages formed by ‘senders’

at the destination can seem absurd to

‘receiv-ers’ who do not share a common

understand-ing of ‘reality’ (Crick, 1985) A common

example of this is the English language travel

brochure prepared by non-native English

speakers who emphasise the wonders of their

destination culture, as they see it It might not

seem so to the potential traveler In this sense

destination imagery fails to connect the

‘projected image’ with ‘perceived destination

image’

It would seem that the problems (Mellinger,

1994) encountered in tourism research

con-cerning destination image stem from the

ambivalence of the message, or the uncertainty

that potential ‘receivers’ are not getting that

message as it is intended In destination image

research the focus is on marketing (Gartner,

1993; Pritchard and Morgan, 2001) and the

social effects of promotion There is a concern

that mythologies of the exotic and the

authen-tic, and promises of certain experiences distort

the social reality of a destination and are

cor-rosive to local culture (Cohen, 1988)

Destina-tion image continues to be a ‘nebulous concept’

(Hughes and Allen, 2008, p 30) that describes

the guesswork involved in creating an imagery

that can break the cultural language gap

between destination based promotion or

‘pro-jected image’ and the ‘perceived destination

image’ of the real or imagined visitor

A tourist-centric point of view on

destina-tion image describes it as a closed (but sloppy)

semiotic loop of visitor ‘perceptions’ (and

pre-conceptions) and destination ‘impressions’

(Echtner and Ritchie, 1991) It is a dynamic

event where the tourist’s perceptions move in

various directions, impressed by or impressed

upon the experiences encountered at a

destina-tion (McGregor, 2000, p 29) The image is said

to be imbued with both denotative (literal/learned) and connotative (implied/unique) meanings or implications (Edwards, 1992) In any case the image is seen as more than an empirical object It is the reasoned and emo-tional processes that occur in the interpretation

of the discourses that convey the image (Beerli and Martin, 2004) In this sense the image is

relativistic (Gallarza et al., 2002).

A destination-centric point of view on nation image is concerned with the manage-ment of the tourist’s imagined or perceived exposure to imagery (Markwick, 2001) It is concerned with the promotional effects of tourism image and understands it as a ‘social language’ (Hollinshead, 2000a, p 153) that makes sense in terms of a single set of repre-sentations intended for a particular kind of audience The problem of a destination image discourse is the prediction of effects If tourists receive and understand the message, will they conform, obey and act in accordance with the desires of the destination’s developers, manag-ers and operators?

desti-Efforts to anticipate or control tourist ior and the discussion of its effects on the part

behav-of the destination are alluded to in the material symbolism in place at a destination It raises concerns regarding the authority and author-ship of narratives and whether this machinery

is silencing or suppressing others head, 1999) Such efforts to frame certain themes by unknown agents of destination pro-motion (Horne, 1992) might be equally inef-fectual, since there is little way to effectively collect empirical information on such a complex and relative phenomenon as perceptions and intentions Additionally there is the ‘intelli-gence’ of the tourist to account for, whose indi-vidual authority and autonomy might not be entirely at the mercy of an overwhelming des-tination image that must inevitably compel their actions

(Hollins-THE ONTOLOGICAL GAP BETWEEN IMAGE AND REPRESENTATIONWithin the elusive universalism of destination image is an ontological gap that divides the relativistic and the empirical, and intentions and perceptions It is an ontological gap between image and representation or the