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Image 2.2: Start with a hot bath. 12
Start the celebrations with a hot
bath
The Nightlife in Reykjavik is famous.
On New Years Eve it is more wild
than usual. Join the Icelanders when
they take the party out on the
street with fireworks, bonfires and
singing. There is hardly any other
better place for party-animals to
ring in 2009. Iceland is cheaper than
it has been for a long time, and the
clubs and bars are open the whole
h
The image consists of both picture and text, which is a common
combination found in tourist destination images in general and which
potential consumers of tourist products are all familiar with. In principle
they have no problems in reading and understanding it. Yet, in tourism
studies it is highly important to put a bold question mark around any naïve
taken-for-granted understandings of images and destinations as simple and
unambiguous phenomena “out there” which a researcher simply can
“collect” information on.
A theoretical consideration of images reveals that the production of
their meanings is often difficult to spatially demarcate and locate. In image
2.2 above one might wonder if the tourist destination image of Reykjavík is
in the picture or in the text on the right hand side, or is it perchance in the
relation between them? Or, could the meaning be located wholly
elsewhere? Is it produced in someone’s tourist imaginationing that
includes, among other things, the marking of the destination image of
Reykjavík through its differences in relation to other destinations and
images or previous travel adventures in different places, or at home?
These questions point to the fact that the meanings we assign to
destination images are context-dependent. It is very likely that those
tourists that we do research on are themselves engaging with tourist
destination images in highly complex and varied ways. What kind of
information and knowledge a potential tourist will have when preengaging
with the tourist destination image of Reykjavík above will have
12 From the Swedish newspaper Expressen, 2008-11-26 (photo by Bibbi Johansson and our own
translation into English).
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