Investigating the Effect of Tourism Destination Image on its Reputation (Yazd Province as a Case Study)

Tourism industry is one of the most important income-generating industries in the world. Tourism is said to be one of the fastest growing economic activities in the world. Indeed, Tourism is, one of the most important forces shaping our world. Tourism is usually used as a tool to stimulate marginal economies and to promote development through the jobs and incomes that it can foster. Economically, tourism is of growing importance to many nations and is recognized as the largest export earner in the world and an important provider of foreign exchange and employment. Tourism and its related activities have been developed considerably during the last decades. Indeed, tourism is a beneficial industry which should be considered by tourism planners and marketers. Tourism is expected to become the most important economic activity in the 21st century. In this context, tourism has increasingly become a key economic activity for the economy of the IRAN. The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of tourism destination brand image on its reputation. The statistical population of this study consists of inbound tourists who visited Yazd in 2017. A total of 300 tourists were selected from this population randomly. In order to collect the research data, a self-administrated questionnaire was developed. The validity and reliability of questionnaire were investigated and confirmed. The research data were analyzed through SPSS and LISREL. The findings revealed that tourism destination tourism destination brand image consists of three dimensions including affective, cognitive, and conative dimensions. Another part of our findings revealed that affective and cognitive tourism destination brand image influence conative tourism destination brand image significantly. Also affective, cognitive, and conative tourism destination brand image influence tourism destination reputation significantly