Emerging place image: From Czechoslovakia To The Czech Republic and Slovakia

Tourism offers an arena through which a place identity is imagined, negotiated and contained.This paper compares the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and show how these countriesconstruct and assert their identities through tourism. They both share a common history asCzechoslovakia, however, they are perceived differently by the outside world. These formerEastern Bloc countries are promoting themselves in several ways and they are alsomarginalising their socialist past and invoking their Central European identity. The Czech andSlovak search for destination identity takes into account tourists' demands and perceptions.This paper introduces the concept of the orientalist tourist gaze, and demonstrates howorientalism may manifest in tourism. Data on how these two countries are imagined werecollected in Denmark.Keywords: destination identity, host society-guest interaction, impact of tourism, orientalism