Due to the intangible nature of tourism products, successful destination marketing depends on whether visual materials can evoke tourists' vivid fantasies of their future travel experiences. Our research sheds light on an effective visual cue (i.e. human presence) that can be easily manipulated in destination photographs to facilitate such mental simulation processes. Across three experimental studies with cross-cultural subjects, we found that the presence of a person in photos significantly prompted tourists to imagine their future travel experiences in the depicted travel scenes, thereby enhancing the perceived destination attractiveness. However, this favorable effect is mitigated when the photo features an urban (vs. natural) landscape and when the person's face is clearly shown. These findings provide new insights into the theoretical understanding of tourist mental simulation activation and human presence perception, with critical implications for effective destination photo marketing.

中文翻译：

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激发游客的想象力：照片中的人物如何以及何时增强旅行心理模拟和目的地吸引力


由于旅游产品的无形性，成功的目的地营销取决于视觉材料能否唤起游客对未来旅行体验的生动幻想。我们的研究揭示了一种有效的视觉提示（即人类存在），可以在目的地照片中轻松操纵该视觉提示，以促进这种心理模拟过程。在三项跨文化实验研究中，我们发现照片中人物的存在显着促使游客在所描绘的旅行场景中想象他们未来的旅行经历，从而增强感知目的地的吸引力。然而，当照片具有城市（相对于自然）景观并且清晰地显示人脸时，这种有利的效果就会减弱。这些发现为游客心理模拟激活和人类存在感知的理论理解提供了新的见解，对有效的目的地照片营销具有重要意义。