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The tourist’s image of a city : Vancouver, B.C.

University of British Columbia

This is an exploratory study of the social construction of tourist images of Vancouver, British Columbia. The various definitions of "image" as used by social scientists are reviewed, and the concept of the image as a socially-constructed product of indirect and direct experience is developed. To illustrate the images of a place that may be derived from secondary sources, 192 periodical articles concerning Vancouver, written since 1907, are examined using a modified content analysis technique. Secondly, the images tourists actually acquire by visiting the city are studied. A questionnaire designed to ascertain the past travel experience, intentions, information sources, and images of the city was administered to 1-2- escorted tour groups who visited Vancouver in August and September 1978. The results suggest that Vancouver has the public image of a beautiful, exciting, booming, cosmopolitan city, with Stanley Park as its outstanding landmark. Negative images figure low in the overall impressions of Vancouver, although non-travel-oriented periodicals tend to present more information on crime and politics than do other periodicals. Both analyses suggest that holistic images of the city may provide organizing schemata around which particular images of individual places are built. The study points to the benefit of travel as an enriching experience, and emphasizes the importance of information sources in the development of a sense of place.

Text

2010-03-17

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21956

Geography

University of British Columbia

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