Raquel Camprubí

Analyzing Image Fragmentation in Promotional Brochures: A Case Study of Two Urban Destinations

Tourism image is a relevant issue that affects the way in which tourists make decisions regarding their choice of destination. However, there is a lack of studies focusing on emitted images and particularly on the fragmentation of emitted images in tourism destinations. This article proposes a conceptual framework to analyze emitted tourism destination image fragmentation patterns and explores these patterns in two urban destinations, Perpignan and Girona, with the purpose of finding out why they emerge, which are their relevant dimensions, and how these are interrelated. By analyzing the promotional brochures of these destinations the authors first identify the attributes of their induced images and, then, by means of a cluster analysis, determine the patterns of fragmentation of their emitted image. The results show that both destinations have a slightly different image fragmentation pattern in terms of image content, and a clearly different structural pattern of image fragmentation, as Perpignan has a more centralized pattern than Girona. This difference is reflected in the higher relevance of the local destination marketing organization in the case of Perpignan.

Tourism image fragmentation: The case of Perpignan

Being recognized by academic literature that tourism destinations has a natural tendency to have more than one single image, this paper aims to analyse image fragmentation of an urban destination. Taking the city of Perpignan (France) as a case study, this phenomenon is analysed through a content analysis of 35 brochures and a cluster analysis, in order to find evidences and patterns of image fragmentation. Results show that tourism image is fragmented in four different profiles, although this situation is well managed by the Local Tourism Board, minimizing the possible effects of this situation.

The Influence of Information Sources on Tourist Image Fragmentation

Information sources have been postulated as relevant for several reasons, and particularly to influence the decision-making process to travel and to generate images of places. Despite the fact that previous research detected the existence of possible gaps or incongruences on the promoted tourist image, there are no studies that prove the relationship between information sources and the fragmentation of the tourist image. In view of this context, this chapter aims to determine to what extent the information sources consulted influence the tourists’ perceived image of a given destination, and to detect incongruences in the emitted image of the destination studied. Photo elicitation with a sample of 594 respondents was used to measure perceived image. Results reveal that emitted image fragmentation has effects on perceived tourist image of a destination; and it concludes that the number and type of information sources influence the degree of tourists’ knowledge about a destination.

Destination Image Versus Risk Perception

The literature on destination image and risk perception studies was reviewed to provide tourism researchers with a summary of the key cognitive attributes identified in both literatures. A content analysis was conducted, and the main findings revealed an overlap between the attributes assessing each concept in terms of cognition. This is due to the fact that image studies tend to describe the attributes of tourism destinations positively, whereas risk studies tend to adopt the negative version of them. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research studies are discussed.

THE PERCEIVED IMAGE OF BARCELONA BY SHORT BREAK TOURISTS

The National Academic Depository of India is a crystallized vision. The depository was conceptualized to digitalize academic awards offered by educational institutions at one place. The depository can eliminate the need to store awards in physical form. It can verify the awards issued by different organizations to different individuals. The secure digital depository is a good remedy to fake and forged certificates. The concept of academic depository is very similar to the concept of financial securities. The concept of depository was tried out with the help of academic awards of one examination body in India. The pilot was completed successfully. In order to become fully functional, the depository has to overcome a few challenges with respect to academic diversities in terms of duration of courses and equivalence. The Legislation on academic depository is being drafted to take care of these challenges. Besides that, the NAD is begetting with many other new kinds of uses and possibilities. The NAD may open up new roles for the educational institutions as well such as to prepare reports for teachers from examination data on teaching learning gaps rather than just labeling students. Academic Depository is a pioneering effort of its kind in the world.The Annual Report is a good mean of describing the situation of a company to all the stakeholders although it is difficult to compare Annual Reports coming from different entities. A process of harmonization of European accounting standards was started in order to bring Annual Reports into line and it is currently being carried out through the adoption of IFRS standards. Once Annual Reports have been created adopting a common accounting standard, the very next step is to code them using the same IT language. If a common computer language is selected, Annual Reports or other documents can easily be compared without recoding and retyping them. The starting point of this process is the definition of an appropriate taxonomy to be used by both those drafting and reading the documents. The process of adopting an appropriate set of accounting standards, selecting the related taxonomy and, finally, drawing up documents using a new business language, called eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) leads companies to produce sound, meaningful and clear documents that greatly improve sharing of useful information. Moreover, the adoption of IFRS standards and XBRL encoded statements provides a set of measures for building sound and widely accepted models. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the changes to income statement presentation and the new concept of financial performance that emerges as a result of the adoption of IFRS and XBRL language. The drawing up of the Income Statement by XBRL may improve the financial performance measurement and disclosure with many benefits for all the stakeholders.The low quality of primary and secondary education in most Latin America countries is a well-known problem. As a response to this reality, the private educational market has been steadily growing in those countries. These private schools, in general, offer a higher quality and personalized education for the students that can afford it. The main selling point of these institutions is access to better resources: better teachers, technologies, materials and pedagogical methods. This difference in education quality creates a problem once students from public schools reach university. This IGUAL project will generate learning solutions (combination of e-learning software, pedagogical methodologies and learning materials) to facilitate the assimilation of new knowledge and the development of new skills even when the student has deficient background knowledge and/or underdeveloped required skills. The solutions that this project will provide have the potential to be used by all students in the Latin AmericanThe relationship between teacher and student is of extreme importance, especially as the latter is going through a delicate period in his life require planned to meet the requirements of the positive relationship in education and influence the psyche and personality and then impact in the community beyond. The most important characteristic of human from other organisms other being a social being by nature it affects and is affected at the same time by culture, traditions and customs of the society, and in this context says sociologist (role Chaim): * it when he speaks of human society is the one who speaks.The author in her article focuses on the issue of long-term unemployment and poverty, which often results in interdisciplinary problems. It is a problem of the whole society, which needs to be constantly looked into and it also constantly needs the elimination of the outside world´s effects on it. The aim of this work is to highlight the seriousness of this problem, the need for its elimination, with emphasis on the confrontation between scientific disciplines and their connections.

The lighting dimension of perceived tourist image: the case of Barcelona

ABSTRACT Perceived tourist image has been studied from different dimensions. However, destination lighting, as a dimension of the perceived tourist image, has so far been unexplored. This research letter analyses illumination of tourist sites as a dimension of the perceived night-time tourist image. Results show that lighting is a relevant issue for image perception, and is related to the image projected by some monuments and tourist attractions. Results show that age and origin are determining factors of this dimension of image perception. Some managerial and research implications are also considered and discussed.