Capturing Destination’s Cognitive and Affective Image on Social Media. The Case of Pafos, Cyprus

The democratization of travel and tourism has led to increased competition among tourist destinations, bringing the importance of destination image to the forefront. At the same time, the expansion of social media made it possible for visitors and stakeholders to collaborate on the creation of the destination image. Thus, both cognitive and affective destination image can be observed in social media and can be found in posts that users upload either in groups dedicated to a specific destination or in posts that use the name of the destination as a hashtag. This study adopts a mixed method approach in order to reveal features of the cognitive and affective perceived destination image and compare them with the projected image. The city of Pafos was chosen as a case study and all the Instagram posts using the hashtags #visitPaphos and #visitPafos (7861 in total) have been collected and analyzed. At the same time, a questionnaire designed and answered by a sample of 108 respondents who are members of Facebook groups acting as forums for holidaymakers in Cyprus. This research attempts to provide practical implications for destination managers and stakeholders to prepare and build their future marketing strategies by gaining a deeper understanding of the impact shared content has on visitor perception.