Abstract:

Tourism industry thriving every passing day induces enhancing expectation for destinations over tourists’ mind, by the same token, some determinants consisting positive or negative image of a settlement over minds may affect taking a vocation decision on a destination. Students benefiting from educational facilities in a city are considered as a potential tourists. On the other hand, once a student leave her hometown and reside in an another settlement for two years at least, some favorable impressions and positive word of mouth tendency are formed over student’s mind during this process. In this study, Image of the Gaziantep city were evaluated from the point of view of students as potential tourists. Besides, advantages of this city in relation to city image were examined. An another purpose of this study is to find out to what extent students regard the this city popular all over the region. Accordingly, opinion of students were classified to determine whether any difference occurs in point of their academic unit and gender. In conclusion it was found that while students mostly agree the expression referring “Industrial opportunities in Gaziantep are arousing interest of both internal and external investors”, “Resident in this city are farseeing” were found to be agreed at least on the contrary. By the way, Significiant difference were found in terms of industrial evaluation according to gender. Furthermore, Students at physical sciences were setted as more selective than for students at social sciences in the expressions built upon tourism. However students training at social sciences were found to be more selective on the expressions edited upon the value of humanity than students training at physical sciences.