Wizerunek jako czynnik przewagi konkurencyjnej obszarów recepcji turystycznej

Abstract

Tourism is widely considered as one of the fastest developing branches of services. That is why municipalities and regions, based on their resources, eagerly compete for tourists’ attention, thus increasing competition. Typical tourist features and tourist infrastructure may appear too common to become a tourist-magnet. Therefore, a competitive advantage will belong to entities, offering a certain value added – by inspiring unique emotions. An image is a carrier of all emotions and impressions, connected with a certain location. The ability to shape an image may become a major factor in building a competitive advantage of a location, in the context of attracting tourists’ attention. A specific character of an image makes it necessary to treat it as a sparate category among the conditions and factors of tourist reception areas’ competitiveness. This results from the fact, that an image is a derivative of tourist reception area’s properties and it is created in areas generating tourist movement, influencing the decision of potential tourists. Through its influence of on tourists’ behaviour, an image acts as a competitive factor of tourist reception areas. The studies of selected cities’ image among potential tourists and tour operators, conducted in Łódź, being a tourist movement generating area, revealed a number of regularities: 1. There is a clear relationship between types of tourist decisions and the degree of resemblance of certain location’s image in comparison with an image of an ideal tourist destination. A perfect image is an abstract entity, built individually by every receipient, adequatly to one’s current tourist needs. 2. Perception of different locations in the eyes of tourists and tour operators is not always the same. The latter pay more attention to the tourist function of a location. 3. Based on the results of the study, it cannot be unambigiously stated whether only a positive image is important. A tendency for tourist behaviour can be also observed in case of negative associations, even more frequently than in case of no associations at all. 4. The relationship between images of the studied cities and their tourist function has been confirmed. The higher the level of similarity between location’s image and a perfect tourist destination’s image, the higher the level of such relationship. Analogically, the abovementioned relationship level increases with the decrease in lack of associations, related to a specific location.