The role of cinema on the tourist destination image formation process

Abstract

Tourism literature widely acknowledges that images of tourist destinations are a product of all the experiences of an individual, being influenced by a series of information sources. The movies figure amongst this sources, and as an autonomous information agent, which in theory are not associated with the tourist market interests, they transmit information that is perceived as more reliable than conventional publicity. Thus, cinema acts directly on the organic image, creating and perpetuating associations about the places it depicts on the collective imagery. The present article aims to provide a bibliographical state of the art about the influence of films on the tourist destinations’ image, contextualizing the cinema on it’s formation process, as well as the cognitive and phsycological processes involved.