Paper Title
“Word-of-Picture” in Attracting Tourists to Distant Destinations
Abstract
Pictures have become one of the most evolving tool in marketing destinations. Using pictures in destination
marketing is important as “word-of-picture” (WOP) speaks very loudly in influencing tourists to travel. This study aims to
investigate which dimension of pictures speaks loudest in pulling tourists to travel and also to explore the significant
relationship between “word-of-picture” (WOP) and tourist’s actual behaviour in travelling to distant destinations. The
methodology used for this study is quantitative by distributing questionnaires to domestic tourists visiting the distant
destinations, with questions regarding “word-of-picture” (WOP) and tourist’s actual behaviour. With 211 responses, findings
indicate that the dimension of “geography”, particularly nature and landscape speaks the loudest in making tourist to travel
as well as the dimension of “culture” particularly food speaks second loudest in pulling tourists to travel. Furthermore, the
result shows there is a significant relationship between “word-of-picture” (WOP) and tourist’s actual behaviour especially
for dimension of geography, culture and events. The results too showed that pictures say it all and they accomplish the task
of tackling the tourist’s inner feelings and turning it into actual travelling as “word-of-picture” (WOP) does stimulate and
influence tourists to travel to distant destinations. Therefore, pictures should be used more to motivate travel to these places
as distant destinations have the potential to be developed and garner more tourist arrivals. Besides that, pictures are the
closest tool that tourists see to visualise desired destinations. Through this, “word-of-picture” (WOP) is a highly capable and
would become a powerful tool as the pictures speak for themselves.
Keywords: Word-Of-Picture (WOP), Actual Behaviour, Distant Destination, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs),
Domestic Tourists.