British tourists' perceived destination image of Malta as projected through promotional photographs

Abstract

Research in destination image as an important aspect of the successful management of the brand image of a travel destination is an increasingly popular trend with tourist destination researchers and marketers. This study aims to discover the destination images of Malta perceived by British tourists from those projected through five categories of tourist promotional photographs supplied by the national tourist authority for liberal use by tourist operators internationally. Applying an adaptation of an instrument used in a similar study by MacKay and Fesenmaier (1997), this study affirms the need expressed by Echtner and Ritchie (1993) to base quantitative destination image research instruments on destination-specific dimensions extracted from a preliminary qualitative phase. The current study also successfully explores the adaptability of the 'excitement' dimension of brand personality proposed by Aaker (1997) as a potential addition to the brand concept of destination image. Factor analysis on data gathered by the instruments adapted or introduced from previous studies reveals destination image to be made up of three components: Perception, Excitement and Image. This study finds gender and previous visitation, in contrast to previous research, to be the only demographic variables that have a significant effect on the components of the destination image construct, especially in the History and Architecture photograph category in the case of gender. This study's major finding is that different categories of photographs bundled together in one media pack used to promote the diverse attractive facets of Malta as a tourist destination are giving rise to significantly incongruent and dissonant perceived images of the destination calling for guidelines directing their deployment in promotional material according to target market. In this sense, the the current study constitutes a pilot attempt at developing a pre-testing procedure for the selection and commissioning of photographs to be used in tourist promotional material.