Does branding improve destination image and intention to visit risky country: an application to tourism in lebanon

Tourism is becoming one of the most profitable industries but despite its importance, it is a vulnerable and defenseless industry prone to disaster (Hall, 2003). The ‘‘intangibility’’ and ‘‘inseparability’’ factors in the tourism industry limit the information availability to consumers (Hsu and Lin 2006), which make it impossible to eliminate the risk (Wong and Ye, 2009) of political instability, terrorism, natural disasters and much more. Image is one of the most significant factors of the prosperity of any destination and a key element when choosing a destination (Gartner, 1993). The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the effect of branding to enhance the image of a destination leading to a more willingness of tourists to visit a country that is known to be politically unstable as the case of Lebanon. The Results have shown that the better the branded image of a destination, the better the image perceived