Challenging the Negative Image of Destinations at Pre-visit Stage Using Food and Food Events as an Educational Tool: The Case of Romania

Destinations with a negative image struggle to attract tourists (Alvarez and Campo, 2014). Research addressing the issues of these destinations remains limited. Seraphin, Butcher and Korstanje (2016) have provided evidence that the education of tourists at pre-visit stage using visual online learning materials can contribute to improve the image of a destination. As for this paper, it provides evidence that off line resources like food and food events can play an important role in the chain of marketing actions to put in place to improve the image of a destination. Food and food events appear as efficient tryvertising and educational tools at pre-visit stage. From an academic point of view, this research paper contributes to the meta-literature in the field of marketing, tourism and food research as it introduce the DRA model as a way to gauge the efficiency of a tryvertising tool.