Abstract

MAYNEZ GUADERRAMA, Aurora Irma; PALAFOX MUNOZ, Alejandro; VERA SOSA, Erick  and  CAVAZOS ARROYO, Judith. The Relationship between Competitiveness and Perceived Image of Mexican Tourist Destinations: Theoretical Background and Recent Empirical Work. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2012, vol.21, n.5, pp.1211-1224. ISSN 1851-1732.

This paper pretends: a) to recognize the relationship between the competitiveness of a tourist destination and the image perceived by its visitors; b) to describe the theoretical background of the image formation process, and finally c) to identify newly developed empirical research on image of tourist destinations in Mexico. Finally, we searched for articles and research papers published in academic sources during the period 2006-2011. The inquiry was conducted in Google Scholar, Scirus, Science Direct, JSTOR, Ebsco and Wiley, using the following keywords: tourist destination image, Mexico. It was conclude that the issue with regard to tourism in Mexico is minimal, exposing an object of study of interest to the tourism sector, which has been developing little more than thirty years on the same target image, a destination for sun and sand for U.S. tourists.

Keywords : Competitiveness; Tourist destination image; State of the art; Mexico; Tourism.