The destination image of Russia: From the online induced perspective

With the Internet becoming a prominent means of destination marketing and promotion, this study compared US and Russian website materials related to travel to Russia to determine whether the two sides differed in: (1) most frequently mentioned places within the country; and (2) descriptions of Russia as a travel destination. These different perspectives can contribute to a better understanding of the induced component of Russia's destination image in the online environment and their analysis resulted in important marketing implications. The research approach for this study was to view every website as a case in the selected sample of the whole population of US and Russian websites. Two software programs, CATPAC II and WORDER, were applied to analyze the content of website materials and solve the technical issues of destination counting. This study clearly suggests that US tour operators are narrowly positioning Russia as mainly being a historic and cultural destination, with a relatively tight geographic emphasis on the western portion of the country. Technically and content-wise, the Russian websites require the greatest improvements. They tend to be loaded with information and not particularly well targeted to specific countries of visitor origin or market segments by travel interests.