A study of Rome's image as a tourist destination

This study aims to analyse the concept of image applied to destinations. There are two research objectives and, consequently, two research phases. The first objective is to examine and measure the image of a specific place: the city of Rome. The second objective is to analyse the potential differences, if any, among the responses obtained in the first phase of the study from respondents of different genders, age groups, educational levels and countries of origin. The first research phase consists of a quantitative analysis, which was performed by providing 247 questionnaires to a convenience sample of national and international visitors to Rome. The questionnaires were drawn up using descriptive statistics and an exploratory factor analysis; they also were tested using a reliability analysis. The second research phase is conducted on the same dataset using analyses of variance. To the best of our knowledge, this work identifies, for the first time in general terms, Rome's image. The main limitation of this research is related to the sample: because the study uses a convenience sample, generalisations pertaining to its conclusions must be limited to representations of the sample.