Abstract
Organized tours are one of the main ways that tourists experience cultural destinations. They are often described as ``a destination bubble,'' conveying a sense of isolation rather than involvement. The extent to which tour participants interact with and learn about destinations is not well understood, although the acquisition of knowledge is frequently cited as significant in peoples' decisions to travel by this mode. This article investigates cultural tour participants' experiences, and specifically addresses the extent to which participants' images of their destinations change or remain unaltered after their visit. The empirical research employed route mapping to elicit information about tour members' knowledge before and after touring. Ireland was selected because it presented elements common to many nonspecialized cultural tour itineraries. A multimethod approach combined qualitative and quantitative techniques in the analyses of the route maps, and triangulated the findings with those from focused interviews and participant observation. The study found that tourists' images changed in magnitude as the tour had enforced already well-defined images. It concludes that future work focusing on the critical prepurchase period in the destination\n\image formation process would contribute to this area of research.
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