DMOs and User-Generated Photography: Comparison of Projected and Perceived Destination Images Using Perceptual Maps

As the advent of new media and communication technologies in recent years, user-generated content (UGC) in the Internet has been increasingly considered as a credible and organic form of “word of mouth” among tourists. New social media websites like Flickr enable more and more tourists to share their experience through uploading photos they took during their trips, an activity that has been gaining popularity among internet users. Unlike the pictorial materials that are produced by destination marketing organizations (DMOs), pictorial content that is generated by internet-users reflect users’ perceptions of the destination. This study aims to make a comparison between projected and perceived image of a destination by using qualitative pictorial data collected from both DMOs and UGC. Peru was chosen as a case study destination to assess the difference between projected destination image that is produced by Peru official websites and perceived image that is reflected by visitors’ photographs posted on Flickr