Analysis of the alternative tourism destination image of Aksaray province

Many factors are affecting the development of the destination image, which is one of the important factors affecting the tourism potential. One of these factors is the diversity of alternative tourism. Alternative tourism has become a tourism activity frequently preferred by tourists in addition to traditional tourism understanding today. Aksaray can be considered as a destination with alternative tourism potential. Drawing attention to Aksaray's alternative tourism potential and evaluating the options is an important step in taking advantage of this potential. This study focuses on measuring Aksaray's current alternative tourism potential and destination image perception, and comparing the measured image perception between local people and those coming from outside the city. In this context, Aksaray's destination image perception was measured first. Then, with the results obtained from these measurements, the destination image was evaluated by making interviews with sector officials and academicians working on the subject. According to the results of the analysis of the data obtained from the surveys, it was seen that among the alternative tourism options, the first 3 types of tourism with high potential for Aksaray are cultural (heritage) tourism, faith tourism, mountain, and winter tourism, and there are some perceptual differences between students and city residents. When the reasons for these differences and the risk status are evaluated by experts; It was concluded that there was no problem and that such differences might be good for Aksaray.