Destination’s projected and perceived image through digital photography. Instagram as a new answer for data collection: Lisbon’s case study.

Abstract

Tourism and Photography have a very close relationship, the photographic practice is an essential element in the touristic experience for many tourists. Destination Management Organizations (DMO) have explored this relationship for long time, being focused on the destination promotion and image projection, however it is less common to see DMOs starting from the photo as the source point to understand the tourist. The fast and global dissemination of information, is giving users/tourists an important role in destination image’s construction, maybe even more important than DMO’s. It is crucial that DMOs understand what kind of information is being generated among users and analyze preferences that come up in social networks. In order to monitor this information, we had to measure indicators, which entail strategies and tools for data retrieval. We took Lisbon as a case study to build a methodological system supported on analogue situations, as well as data retrieval software developed by us and used on an image sharing social network – Instagram. By doing so we were able to analyze photos’ content and create a set of attributes that allows us to compare the similarity or dissimilarity among images of DMO and Tourists (user-generated content).