Chung, Ki-Han*·Shin, Jae-Ik**
In 1998, WTO(World Tourism Organization) concluded that by the year 2020, tourists will have conquered every part of the globe as well as engaging in low orbit space tours, and maybe moon tours. It was forecast that by 2020 the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide would reach 1.6 billion, with plus 4% growth in each five year period between 1995 and 2020.
The ever-increasing competitive of the tourism industry requires destinations to develop an effective marketing plan and strategy. Destinations mainly compete based on their perceived images and affective images relative to competitors in the marketplace.
Travel agents have multiple and critical functions in destination marketing efforts; (1) they provide information to potential travelers and (2) develop and promote destination packages.
The study aims (1) to understand the differences between travelers' and non-travelers' destination images and travel agents' destination images, (2) identify images strengths and weaknesses of asian countries and (3) the degree of influence of perceptive and affective images.
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The conclusions of this study are as follows; (1) the recommendation and non-recommendation for toured asian countries is significant in package and non-package, tour period. Unsatisfactory behaviors for tourism packages are tour significant in only jobs of respondents. (2) Toured country is high associated with tour period and re-visit country. (3) Tour Frequency is high associated with job and age of respondents. (4) The ranks of re-tour are as follows; interesting historical/cultural attractions and appealing local food, beautiful scenery and natural attractions, good night life and entertainment, great beaches and water sports. (5) The ranks of searching for destination information are as follows; internet, word-of-mouth, travel agent, TV. (6) In the group comparisons of 17 items, perceptive and affective images for destination are little significant except age. (8) The pricing satisfaction for tour goods is little significant. (9) There are the differences between travelers and travel agents in the perceptive and affective image comparisons.
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Marketers of the destinations included in this study, should take necessary action to improve their weak or negative images and promote their strengths in targeting travel intermediaries they have business with their marketing plans. It is necessary to reduce the gap of travelers' and travel agents' images.
The limitation of this study is that the sample size was small and non-response bias was not assessed. Therefore, the finding can not be generalizable over all listed or“preferred”travel agents of the destinations.
Key Words : Tourism Destination Image, Travel Agent, Perceptive, Affective
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* Professor, Department of Business Administration, Gyeongsang National University
** Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Gyeongsang National University