Visual destination images of Peru: Comparative content analysis of DMO and user-generated photography

With the arrival of new media and communication technologies in recent years, user-generated content (UGC) on the internet has increasingly been considered a credible form of word-of-mouth. Social media websites, such as Facebook, Flickr, and Panoramio, allow tourists to share their travel experiences with others by uploading travel photos online, an activity that has gained popularity among internet users. Unlike images created and projected by destination marketing organizations (DMOs), pictorial UGC reflects users' perceptions of a destination. This study compared images of Peru collected from a DMO's site and from Flickr, a photo-sharing website and identified statistical differences in several dimensions of these images. The study visualized these differences by constructing maps representing "aggregated" projected and perceived images of Peru, as well as maps of geographical distribution of the images. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.