Tourism experience and destination image: the case of Garda Lake

In the last years, the study of image has become one of the most popular topics in tourism research, mainly because of its impact on potential travellers’ destination selection, evaluation and purchase intentions. Basing on the idea that actual visit of a destination affects and modifies the destination image, this study investigates how the image of Garda Lake is perceived among international and Italian tourists. In particular, in this paper we report the first results of a content analysis focusing on how tourists’ experiences on Garda Lake are portrayed and expressed in travel consumer review websites. The analysis reported in the paper tried to identify if tourists are more willing to describe the tourism offer of Garda Lake or the feelings evoked during their visit. The content analysis we carried out on 1.109 Italian and international posts collected from Tripadvisor and Travelpod confirms that people use travel consumer review sites to describe many aspects of their trip, ranging from visiting attractions and enjoying the culture to the use of tourism-related facilities. Hence, they cannot reflect experiences except operationally, as they lack the “experience essence”(Volo, 2009). Some important differences among Italian and foreign tourists emerge too.