The main purpose of this study was to compare the validity of two methodologies in measuring the change of a destination image resulting from a small-scale community festival. One method compared same respondents’ rating of image attributes during and after their event participation, while the other method asked respondents to directly report their image change, and chose which factors contributed to the change. Interestingly, the two separate measures employed within this study provided contrasting information on how the festival impacted the image of the host community. The more subjective method indicated that the vast majority (77.9%) of respondents felt that the festival improved their image of the hosting community, while the more objective measure identified decreased image ratings between on-site and mail-back measurement periods. Potential reasons of the conflicting results are proposed and implications of the findings are discussed.