The Study Of The Impact Of Mega-events On The Image Of Host Places

Characteristics of tourism define the importance of tourism image. The image of a tourist destination has a strong influence on people in terms of his or her decision. In this information age, mass media has a great impact on the trend of the tourist consumption. Therefore, to some extent, the development of tourism has entered an image-oriented stage. The image of a tourist destination is one of the most important appeal factors. A successful tourist destination is bound to have a unique and attractive image, which helps establish effective communication with targeted market and build up its competition edge. Therefore, mega-event is regarded as an effective way to build up prestige of a tourist destination. Thus, the holding of a mega-event is considered as a super-engine to improve popularity and to enhance the reputation of the host place. To follow the development trend, many domestic destination hosts a variety of activities in succession and issues also arise one after another. Obviously it is necessary to explore the issue how to enhance impact of mega-events on the tourism image of host places.This paper is composed of five chapters as followings described. As an introduction, Chapter 1 reviews the relevant literature, sums up the achievements in this field, focuses on some basic concepts and establishes the framework and the methodology which this paper follows. Chapter 2 focuses on discussing several related theoretical devices and the comprehensive effects of mega-events, and then it conducts a systematic analysis of the tourism image, takes an insight into its structure,features and formation mechanism, finally it establishes a framework of the image of a tourism destination namely organic image,induced image and cognitive image. In Chapter 3, this paper does a systematic research on the influence of mega-events over the tourism image of host places in terms of original image,induced image and cognitive image. Chapter 4 is a case study of Nanhui Peach Blossom Festival, which is based on a market investigation and analysis. The final chapter is about a conclusion, the limitation of the paper and the fields into which further study should be carried out.