Mega-events have extensive and long-time
impacts on destinations,which include tangible and intangible effects(Dwyer,et al,2000)."It's difficult to evaluate the intangible impacts of
Mega-events,which include effects on social life and group welfare,proudness provocated by the event,and long-term impacts on the regional or tourism destination's image."(Allen J.,et al,Chinese Edition,2002).Among the intangible impacts,the image effects are important one(Getz,1997).Shaping destination image and extend it after the event is one of government's obvious objectives to bid and host mega-event especially shaping image according to destination place or its attractions,meanwhile government always use mega-event to turn over the old negative image(Allen J.,et al,Chinese Edition,2002).Taking the 14th International Horticulture Exposition held in Kunming 1999(i.e.
Expo '99 Kunming) as case,the
paper made a large amount of samples survey including university students in Kunming & Guangzhou,families of Yunnan Province,outlander families in Kunming and Kunming's tour operators during September to October 2003,in which 2,945 questionnaires were sent and 2,654 taken back.The survey's data are statistically treated with SPSS to analyses the impacts of Expo '99 Kunming on Kunming
Urban image from five points as followed: the image of the Expo,the image position of Expo garden in latent tourists,Expo Garden's image and
Kunming's urban
image and the relative position of Expo Garden compared to other sight spots of Kunming.The conclusions are that the Expo and Expo Garden have the same effects on shaping and promoting the image of Kunming and Yunnan,and that the Expo garden's image has detached from the image of the Expo itself after Expo '99 Kunming ended.The paper also indicates that although the Expo Garden has gained an image attraction enough to contend with Stone Forest,one worldwide famous sight spot in Kunming it has not become preferred sight spot when people travel to Kunming and for tour operators to organize tourist routes.The paper points out some issues worthy of more attentions,which include the image effects of the Expo on the overseas tourists,their regional distribution of different spatial scales and conceptual model analysis,the further researches on the image of the Expo Garden,the cognitive characteristics and mechanism of one time mega-event's image and its difference compared with repeated mega-event.Finally,the paper regard that it is an important issue for the city municipality to translate the urban image impacts into planning polices when bid,promote and host a mega-event.
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