A Conceptual Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Tourist Destination Image

The importance of analysing the image taken by potential customers of products or services is currently one of the key aspects highlighted in the field of marketing. Mainly due to the intangibility associated with tourism, the image of destinations is critical to their success and its importance has been widely supported in the related literature of recent decades. Several authors argue that it is of relevance to understand, firstly, which are the factors that determine and shape tourist destinations image and, secondly, which are the attitudinal and behavioral consequences taken by its receivers. This paper, framed in the final phase of an ongoing research project, aims to review the literature on the image effects on attitudinal loyalty of the tourism industry intermediaries, as well as some of the image antecedents of tourist destinations image, such as socio-psychological motivations, socio-demographic features and sales profile of the tourist intermediary, previous experience in the destination and finally type and variety of information sources. It results in an enlightening conceptual model of the several push and pull factors that determine global, affective and cognitive images of a destination taken by travel agents and tour operators, as well as its intention to recommend the destination to their customers. The contribution of this paper lies with the proposal of a conceptual model of tourist destinations image on the less studied perspective of the tourist intermediaries. As future research, it is suggested the test of the proposed conceptual model, which will be part of the final conclusions of this research project.