Where are you going? : A dive into destination image and destination marketing

Destination image is one of the most important factors affecting travel decisions by tourists. Establishing and maintaining an attractive image in the minds of potential visitors should be the number one goal of destination marketing organisations. This research aims to develop a model and fitting measuring instrument to measure a current destination image, with the important variables personal factors, stimulus factors, destination attributes, affective and cognitive image, expected satisfaction and behavioural intention. A survey was conducted among Dutch residents. Structural equation modelling was applied to test the direct and indirect effects of these variables. The final model shows a >50% prediction of the variance in cognitive image, expected satisfaction and behavioural intention.