Visual Media and Tourism

Book excerpt: Tourism is all about visuals. Visuals stimulate our imagination, create fantasy, and drive the audiences to take actions to realize these dreams through perceived reality. With media content presented through channels of television drama, reality shows, TV commercials, and movies, this book presents findings that help us better understand the relationships between nostalgia and film tourism; how reality TV shows affect tourist experience and authenticity; and how visuals stimulate audiences’ taste and olfactory senses and their relationship with gastronomical tourism. The book presents findings that explain the psychological mechanism of how modality and navigability influence tourists’ behavioral intention. With its balanced research methodology (qualitative, quantitative, and the combination of both) and important topics covered in media tourism, Visual Media and Tourism serves as a pertinent reference book for subjects related to special interest tourism, such as film tourism, in undergraduate programs, or modules related to research methods in both undergraduate and graduate programs. It helps readers become better informed on how visuals stimulate travel motivations, condition tourist behaviors, and affect travel experiences. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing.