Tourists' images and ratings of destination attributes : the case of Iceland

• Main Author: Thorsteinsson, Jakob
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: McGill University 1992
• Subjects: Tourism > Iceland; Iceland
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=56621

Foreign tourists' images and ratings of Iceland before and after a visit to Iceland were investigated. Two self administered questionnaires were used to gather the data. Of 372 tourists, mainly from the USA and Great Britain, answering the first questionnaire 243 answered the follow-up questionnaire. The tourists come mostly because of the scenery and particular landscape features and there is evidence of further tourist potential having to do with history and perhaps culture and customs. Changes in image during stay were considerable. The image of cost, which is the most negative aspect of the country, worsened, but the image of many landscape attributes improved. The importance of attributes changed in some instances. The evidence supports the hypothesis that the greater the negative difference between expectation and experience of an destination attribute and the more important the attribute is to the tourists, the likelier they are to become dissatisfied.