The Effect of Asymmetrical Image Projections on Online Destination Branding

Abstract

Destinations are the heart and soul of tourism products. This is why and richness of the destinations. The creation of destination brand images is no longer limited to content shared by DMOs and often depends on the information and contents generated by traders, travelers, and residents. tourism and hospitality firms and DMOs invest heavily in communicating the destination attributes through appealing brand images, reflecting the uniqueness Discovering the alignment between DMO’ brand communication and tourists’ perceptions shared in digital and social media is an ongoing task for brand managers. To understand the communication alignment, three different archipelagos were chosen due to their tourism maturity levels: Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands. The official website of each archipelago’s DMO and the visitors’ contributions on Facebook were analyzed. The results show different levels of content creation between DMOs and visitors and unveil that videos were more engaging, especially those created by visitors.