Tourist attractiveness: measuring residents' perception of tourists

To date, tourism research has primarily explored resident perception and attitude in terms of tourism impact and development. Comparatively, resident perception of tourists themselves has attracted less attention from tourism researchers despite the fact host communities see the benefits of tourism through positive relationships with tourists. Moreover, studies on the resident-tourist relationship have largely been interested in the perspective of tourists, considering tourists as customers who bring economic benefits to a destination, while seeing residents as beneficiaries of the tourists' expenditures during their trip. The skewed approach has amplified the incomplete understanding of the resident-tourist relationship, disregarding the importance of reciprocity and the merchandized purpose of the exchanges in this relationship. As a starting point to study the residents' perspectives toward the resident-tourist relationship, this study explored and operated the concept of tourist attractiveness through a mixed-methods approach using a case study of Jeju Island, South Korea. As a result, this study found that tourist attractiveness can be measured using five sub-dimensions: tourist compatibility, tourist financial capacity, tourist responsibility, positive tourist influence, and negative tourist influence.