Components of Destination Experience: A Comparative Research on Antalya and ？stanbul Destinations

Forming the destination’s DNA nucleons and becoming like integrated structure, the destination experience components such as architechture, gastronomy, substructure have the potential to effect tourists’ travel experiences and their behaviours. In this context, it is thought that destination managers should discover and notice the experiental components of tourism destinations by developing particular point of views. The current study aims (a) to put forward the experiential components of resort and cultural destinations on the basis of comparative research approach, (b) to find out whether there are statististically significant differences between tourists’ nationalities related to experiential components. For this purpose, embracing the quantitative research method and using ‘questionnaire forms’ as data collection method, the study is carried out in Antalya and ？stanbul. 1281 foreign tourists in total took part in the study. The findings indicate that destination experience components are obtained as follows: local culture, activities, hospitality, substructure, novelty opportunities, service quality, superstructure esthetics, gastronomy, accessibility, physiography, economic value and emotions. The all of dimensions are discovered in both destinations with two exceptions. It is seen that the physiography’ for ？stanbul and ‘accessibility’ for Antalya couldn’t form a dimension. The results indicate that the German tourists have more negative perceptions than Russians and English regarding the issues of ？stanbul’s substructure, service quality, accessibility; and Antalya’s economic value and emotional aspects