Dr. José Fernández Cavia and Dr. Sara Vinyals Mirabent, both members of CAS research group, have recently published a study in the renowned Journal Profesional de la Información. The study aims to demonstrate how the overall positive perception of a country determines potential tourists’ intention to visit it, and it was conducted together with two other colleagues: Dr. Valeriano Piñeiro Naval (Universidad de Salamanca) and José Filipe Torres (Bloom Consulting).

The study pursued a twofold objective: (1) to provide a global snapshot of tourists’ perception of and intention to travel to different  parts  of  the  world,  and  (2)  to  empirically  demonstrate  the  relationship  between  two  constructs:  the  general perception of a country and the intention to visit a country.

The researchers surveyed 2,151 individuals from 21 countries and they assessed their familiarity with, perception of, and intention to visit 55 countries around the world through a two-stage cluster analysis. 

Overall, their results were able to statistically prove that, the better an individual’s perception of a country, the higher their intention to visit it, validating previous research that demonstrated such a relationship. Furthermore, it was also observed that underdeveloped countries, in general, have a worse perception, which translates into a lower intention to visit, which in turn compromises, in a sort of vicious circle, their possibilities for future development.

Reference

Fernández-Cavia, José; Vinyals-Mirabent, Sara; Piñeiro-Naval, Valeriano; Filipe-Torres, José (2024). “Nationbrand and tourism: Familiarity, perception, and intention to visit”. Profesional de la información, v. 33, n. 2, e330204.https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2024.0204