A model to explore the impact of tourism Infrastructure on destination image for effective tourism marketing

Tourism is no more an occasional past-time for wealthy and adventurous people. Nowadays, everyone is participating in the tourism industry, may it be a catering company, a hotel or an entertainment business. In fact, tourism has an impressive impact on its host country’s economy. It increases the growth rate, national profit, investment and country’s popularity as well, going from short term to long term improvements. The growing attention for quality from the customer perspective is an important development in the tourism industry. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) also endorses this advancement, and includes this as a major thrust area in its 'Tourism Vision 2020', which is a strategic thinking on priorities needed for countries seeking tourism development. Tourism infrastructure holds much potential to attract visitors and to enhance sustainability in tourism. Infrastructure plays a distinctive role in the development of this ever-expanding industry. The decision-making process concerning tourism destination selections is strictly related to the availability of tourism infrastructure. Tourism infrastructure acts as the push and pull market factors of the travel industry. In order to be successfully promoted in the targeted markets, a destination must be favourably differentiated from its competition, or positively positioned, in the minds of the consumers. A key component of this positioning process is the creation and management of a distinctive and appealing image of the destination through appropriate marketing strategy. Destination image is the most important factor which tourists value highly to determine their destination. Infrastructure directly impacts to form destination image, which can be the primary or secondary image of the destination. Previous experiences or information sources favour to form a destination image, which is considered as the pre visit image. Thus, there is a need for creating a post visit destination image to ensure repeat visitation and word of mouth publicity, which works as a catalyst for Destination Marketing. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of Infrastructure on destination image for effective Tourism Marketing. The study will specifically examine the impact of Infrastructure on two phases of the destination image: before actual visitation and after actual visitation and the study will also assess how the tourist satisfaction and tourist’s future intentions will impact Destination Marketing. This research has used the combination of quantitative and qualitative data methods and adopted an approach of observation, literature review, survey and case study to meet the objectives. The empirical study was carried out in Dubai, UAE. A case study of Dubai has also been chosen for this research to identify the context of the study “Tourism Infrastructure” in a wider perspective and also to provide an extra input for the direction of the overall research. The advanced technique of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM – SmartPLS) was used for the data analysis. Large scale survey questionnaire data were used to test the model and confirm the hypotheses. The findings confirm the impact of infrastructure on destination image in order to facilitate effective tourism marketing. The research makes several significant theoretical and managerial contributions. This study which is specifically related to the impact of Infrastructure on destination image is a relatively new concept or is rarely reported. Therefore, this study would contribute to the tourism infrastructure and marketing literature. A further contribution to knowledge is the study’s investigation of the impact of Infrastructure on two phases of the destination image: before actual visitation and after actual visitation to assess how the tourist satisfaction and tourists future intentions will influence Destination Marketing. This is the first study to empirically test a model comprising of these particular concepts within this specific context. Tourism Infrastructure and Destination Image are considered essential inputs in the destination marketing efforts, and this forms the major focus of the study.