Images of New Orleans: The relationship between visual media and tourists' expectations of a travel destination (Louisiana)

New Orleans is both a tourist destination and a city with high mass media representation. In recent years, New Orleans has increasingly become the focus of numerous media events ranging from MTV's Real World television series to the unmistakable images of the French Quarter in a Volkswagen commercial. This dissertation explores what images of New Orleans visitors expect to see, how prior visual media exposure affect visitors' satisfaction with the city, and how visitors use the media to form perceptions about New Orleans. Specific to this study, content analysis provides a technique to determine the dominant themes and images of New Orleans that are projected to tourists through selected official and unofficial visual media from 1985–2000. One of the arguments of this research is that in addition to the official images of New Orleans marketed for the sole purpose of attracting tourists, unofficial media such as motion pictures present images of the city to an even greater number of potential tourists. Although unofficial media are not created or intended to attract tourists, they can increase tourism and influence expectations of a destination. Investigations into how tourists use the media and how prior media exposure affects satisfaction with the destination could be an important resource for cities attempting to expand their tourism industry, target a new population, or change their destination's image.