Understanding tourism destination image of India: a cross-cultural research

Tourists' destination image generally includes two dimensions such as organic image and induced image. In fact, the image of the destination contains qualities, attributes, holistic, functional, psychological, common and unique components. Recently, numerous studies on tourist destination image have received much attention in the tourism literature. However, these studies have focused a little on the cross–cultural aspect. Therefore, this study has a twofold purpose: to investigate perceived attributes among the tourists visiting in the Indian destinations; and to investigate these perceived attributes depend on the demographic characteristics of tourists. The results show that no significant differences were found in perceived image of India as tourist destination among visitors from four countries. However, the results reveal that perceived image of India as tourist destination found different as per demographic characteristics. The study suggested that tour operators and tourism planners should need to consider cultural segmentation while developing their tourism strategies.