LAKE-DESTINATION IMAGE ATTRIBUTES: CONTENT ANALYSIS OF TEXT AND PICTURES

Lake tourism is a growing academic sub-field of tourism studies with an emerging body of literature. However, little research attention has been given to lake-destinations' projected or perceived tourism images. Specifically, there has been a scarcity of literature investigating the variables involved in the formation of a lake-destination image. Therefore, this study aims to explore the main attributes that might potentially influence this type of destination, and simultaneously, contribute to conceptualizing and defining lake tourism as recent research area. An explorative study was then conducted in order to generate a set of image variables through the use of textual and photographic data. The results will contribute to characterize potential lake-destinations and to develop a final list of variables specifically related to this type of destination.