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Images of Iceland as a tourist destination, as they appear through
branding, in promotion or other material is, of course, not the same as
images that particular tourists may have or construct. In a recent study
Bjarnadóttir investigated destination image and Iceland as a tourist
destination, through Danish tourists who have visited Iceland and tour
guides working in Iceland. According to her, the study shows that:
[M]ost of the tourists expected to experience nature in Iceland, and most
tourists were definitely not disappointed. According to the guides,
nature, purity and diversity are strong motives for the destination image
of Iceland. Surprisingly for many tourists, the Icelandic society is more
modern than they thought. /…/ Before their visit, the Danish tourists´
destination image of Iceland had to do with nature, hot springs,
volcanoes, and, in some cases, cultural phenomena such as Icelandic
sagas and history. The nature became the middle of the tourist
experience, although different parts of nature appealed to different
tourists. Aurora borealis, purity, The Golden Circle, black fields of lava,
waterfalls and the constant change of scenario are some of the parts
mentioned by the Danish tourists (Bjarnadóttir 2007, p. 103).
The powers of cartographic tourism and tourist representation
should now be clear. The cartography gives the tourist product a tangible
quality which it, in certain ways, lacks itself. By ontologically
transforming the intangible tourist experience, bounded and fixed to certain
locations, into a mobile form, comes an imaginative ability to attract and
influence tourist behaviours, experiences, motivations and consumption
elsewhere. Even “nothing” is possible to map:
A certain “nothing” was also mentioned to be part of the touristic
experience and left a permanent mark on the tourists´ post visit image of
Iceland. This “nothing” refers to the Icelandic landscape, which is
somewhat different from what the Danish tourists are used to. The naked
wilderness and the scattered population contrast the manmade
surroundings and heavily populated cities of the world. “Nothing”
becomes something positive and desirable and boosts the tourists´
experience of nature (Bjarnadóttir 2007, p. 103).
It therefore comes as no surprise that research on tourism destination
images, or what is also referred to as “destination imagery”, has
traditionally been assigned an important role and function in the travel
purchase decision making. The map of tourist imagination again meets the
territory of tourism so that:
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