Augmented Reality Apps for Tourism Destination Promotion

2. Tourist Destination

Destinations can be featured as a tourism product consisting of a variety of components. On this feature, destinations can be of many different types. From the theoretical understanding owed to Page (1995:1), tourism destinations can be classified as below:

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  Capitals (i.e. London, Paris, New York) and cultural capital (i.e. Roman, Istanbul);

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  Metropolitan Centers (i.e. cities that are built with walls) and small castle cities;

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  Big historical cities (i.e. Venice, Oxford);

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  Enlivened seaside areas (i.e. Sydney, Darling Harbour);

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  Industrial cities;

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  Coast resorts and winter sports resorts;

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  Tourist resorts that are specially created;

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  Tourist entertainment centers (i.e. Disneyland, Las Vegas);

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  Cultural Art Cities (i.e. Florence).

In the recent decades tourism industry has experienced different changes. These changes forced destinations to promote their potential correctly to be able to get sufficient share from the competitive world tourism market, where intense competition reaches an international level. To achieve a successful market strategy and get monophony, cooperative marketing communication should be enabled in destinations. Industrial products are produced firstly and they are delivered to the nearest retailer businesses with consumers and consumers purchases the products from retailers. However, unlike industrial products, tourism products are consumed where they are produced (Olalı, 1982; Olalı ve Timur, 1988). Considering key feature of touristic product, in order to be successful in destination marketing, all the organizations working in tourism industry must act together. Destination marketing organization needs support of public and private industry stakeholders for effective branding and positioning (Williams et al., 2004: 8).