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2. Image & destination
The actual act of communion between tourist and attraction is less
important than the image or the idea of society that the collective act
generates.
- Dean MacCannell 8
To compete for tourists, a location must become a destination.
- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 9
We have to imagine a foundation with wings on its feet!
- Michel Serres 10
The storyline that tourist destination images play a central role in tourism,
for example in the transformation of places into tourism commodities, will
in different guises appear throughout this report. In this chapter, we will
begin by taking a closer look at precisely the two concepts of “image” and
“destination”. However important they may be in themselves, we are here
primarily interested in their role in tourism theory.
That tourist destinations increasingly must compete on a global
tourism market for attracting tourists is something that if often stressed in
tourism studies, as well as in the tourism industry. A prerequisite for
appearing there is that specific locations on the surface of the Earth
manage to ontologically transform themselves through re-presentations
into places for tourism. In other words, in order to be successful in the
competitive struggle, locations must meet the tourists on the generating
market as images with touristic values.
In the literature these are often referred to as “tourist destination
images” (TDIs) and they can be found in tourist brochures, adverts,
commercials and in various media coverage of places for tourism. These
images have been a central concern for marketing agencies and various
actors and stakeholders within the tourism industry, in particular because
of their assumed capability to influence tourism consumption. That images
play a mediating role in tourism is something that also the tourism
researcher is facing. As Hunter states:
8 MacCannell 1976/1999, pp. 14-15.
9 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, p. 152.
10 Serres with Latour 1995, p. 114.
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