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Over the last two decades, the concept of destination imagery (DY) has gained relevance in the academic literature due to its central role in the tourists’ destination choice process. However, there is still much to be explored within this topic, especially concerning DY processing. More specifically, the way external stimuli are processed in tourists’ memory is still unexplored. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to examine how DY is processed in individuals’ memories upon the reception of verbal stimuli related to food tourism destinations.

Through an online multilingual survey, imagery elements associated with European and Asian tourists’ favourite food tourism destinations were collected. Through a categorical content analysis, tourists’ perceptions were classified within Echtner and Ritchie’s (1993) tri-dimensional model’s dimensions. Results were examined against previous theories on DY. Moreover, a comparative analysis between the imagery of food tourism destinations held by Europeans and Asians tourists was carried out.

Results show that DY processing, when triggered by a food tourism destination stimulus, leans towards the holistic dimension, which reinforces previous theories on the topic, such as the very definition of destination image (DI), as well as the role of food on destination image. Moreover, differences were found between the type of destinations and the imagery processed by European and Asian tourists.

The study is based on a significant data set, which comprised 1,186 responses, representativeness within the research universe cannot be assured. Although relatively equivalent volumes of data were collected from each of the two continents, there are significant discrepancies among the proportions of respondents from different countries within those two groups. Additionally, our theoretical model requires further validation through hypothesis verification procedures. This work builds theory, rather than testing it. In this context, it opens a research avenue for future studies adopting a more positivistic philosophical stance to research, which could submit the theories provided here to the scrutiny of rigorous, hypothesis testing, quantitative methods.

This paper provides an initial idea for destination managers about which aspects to highlight in their marketing campaigns. This particularly applies to destinations to which ethnic food is a relevant part of the tourist appeal, and whose managers intend to attract repeat visitors.

The present study’s findings imply a series of suggestions for tourism practitioners. First, they provide an initial idea for destination managers about which aspects to highlight in their marketing campaigns.

The present study represents a first initiative of building a theoretical model of food tourism destinations’ imagery processing. Findings also provide original theoretical contributions to the concept of DY and lead to relevant managerial insights, particularly, into destinations aiming at attracting repeat, food-oriented tourists.

This paper aims to provide an assessment of tourism promotion in tourist destinations and airports (TPTDs) and to organize and classify the literature on tourism promotion, with the aim of staging the importance of this topic and encouraging future research in the projection of tourism and marketing sectors.

The paper uses the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database to analyze the bibliometric in TPTDs topic from 2000 to 2021. Additionally, the paper also uses the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer software to map graphically the bibliographic material. The graphical analysis uses bibliographic coupling, co-citation, citation and co-occurrence of keywords.

This study provides an amended new definition of tourism promotion, which is the efficient management of a destination’s resources and strategic plans by destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to adapt the tourism supply to market trends and will empower tourists to visit such destinations. Furthermore, results also show a new paradigm applied to TPTDs topic and classified in five first-order research streams. Digital and mobile marketing, infrastructure, branding, quality, accessibility and information factors about a specific destination which are mostly demanded by tourists are considered as an important means of promotion for the tourism industry.

The contribution of this study is important to identify new challenges and opportunities for researchers, DMOs, airport and airlines operators and stakeholders, as disentangling existing contradictions and applying new theoretical framework to make better future decisions by researchers and organizations to provide higher quality to new research in the context of the TPTDs.