Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

Key Words:
destination image, perceptions, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina 
INTRODUCTION 
Tourism as an industry has grown into one of the world’s largest income generators. In 2006 World Travel 
& Tourism is expected to generate US $6,477.2 bn (Total Demand) and in the United States Travel & Tourism is 
expected to generate US $1,652.6 bn of economic activity (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2006). A study by 
the University of New Orleans Hospitality Research Center showed that tourism in New Orleans provided 35 
percent of the operating budget of the city with its $4.9 billion in annual visitor spending (Williams, 2006).
The importance of a tourist destination’s image is universally acknowledged since it affects the individual’s 
subjective perception and consequent behavior and destination choice (Chon 1990, 1991; Echtner and Ritchie, 
1991). Yet, as competition among tourism destinations is getting more intense it has become increasingly more 
important to understand the dynamic structure of image by studying forces contributing to destination image 
formation and their interaction with each other so that an effective destination image development strategy can 
occur. However, determining a precise meaning of the term “tourist destination image” has proven challenging. The 
phrase has been used in a variety of contexts including those pertaining to the destination images projected by 
tourism promoters, the publicly held or stereotype image of destinations and those images held by individuals of the 
destination (Jenkins, 1999). Gunn (1988) broke new ground regarding image, he contended that images are 
developed at two levels: organic (e.g. visitation) and induced (e.g. externally received and processed information – 
mass media). The underlying assumption is that image development in inextricably linked to various forms of 
information sources. A positive destination image and the tourism related to it are important to the city of New 
Orleans and to the state of Louisiana because of its economic and social contributions.
The tourism industry was devastated in the months immediately after Hurricane Katrina arrived on August 
29, 2005. According to Wikipedia (2006) Katrina was the costliest (e.g. at least 1,836 killed and $81.2 billion in 
damage) natural disaster in US history. Katrina caused devastation along much of the north-central Gulf Coast and 
flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. The media coverage has had a lasting undesirable effect on New Orleans’ 
tourist destination image. A report by Louisiana Recovery Authority (2006) noted that 1,409 tourism and hospitality 
businesses shut down after the storm affecting 33,000 hospitality-based employees. The report also noted that the 
negative images of affected areas portrayed by the media has caused business and leisure travelers to choose other 
destinations resulting in the New Orleans region losing an average $15.2 million per day. Further documenting the 
immediacy for current information, the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and the Louisiana 
Recovery Authority was just recently allocated $28.5 million for recovery plan strategy development. 
Bringing the crowds back in greater numbers requires a shift in public perceptions, said a spokeswoman for the New 
Orleans Metropolitan CVB (Oberman, 2006). For that reason, tourism managers are concerned with those aspects of 
destination image that are held in common with shared groups of people. This understanding affords the 
segmentation of markets and facilitates the formulation of marketing strategies enabling the manipulation of 
negative destination images. The purpose of this study was to investigate leisure travelers’ perceptions of New 
Orleans before and after the storm. Further this study assessed the influence of media exposure and geographic point 
of origin on perceptions.

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