The brand images of tourism destinations: a study of the saliency of organic images

Assesses the relative saliency of image attributes associated with history, heritage and culture in shaping the perceptions of places as tourism destinations. Such images tend to have been formed over a long period of time and result from exposure to communication processes largely outside marketing's core sphere of influence such as education, literature and the arts. Images formed in this way are referred to in this paper as organic images. The research used the repertory grid technique developed by George A. Kelly in the context of Personal Construct Theory combined with depth interviews to elicit the attributes associated with the images of 25 destinations in the UK. The study identified 11 categories of image attribute. Those associated with a destination's history, heritage and culture were found to be the second most salient category. The implications of these findings are discussed.