Tourism and public relations - Tourism Marketing - page 78

cultures. Culture is both a carrier of traditions and a site of transformation. It is within this
dialectical tension between tradition and transformation that identities and relation-
ships become meaningful, suggesting the necessity of conceptualizing public relations
within an organic framework of evolving relationships rather than within a simplistic
modernist frame that seeks to develop the best strategy for a national culture based on
predefi ned markers.
(Pal and Dutta 2008: 167-68)
The key example of this are the diffi culties and struggles which places such as the United Arab
Emirates (UEA) face to attract, deal with and retain tourism fl ows into their countries. The
responses of the UEA have been as complex as the challenge: by creating a diversity of options
for expectation-experiences, such 'reproductive tourism' is designed to attract parents looking
for less expensive and high quality fertility treatment (Inhorn and Shrivastav 2010: 685).
Conclusions
Tourism is largely sponsored by governments and commercial enterprise that use public relations
concepts and approaches to facilitate the expansion of markets. However, as we see here it is a far
from centralized activity. Because of this, those studying public relations need to understand
tourism as a series of reputation systems that are based on a complex set of elements, institutions
and actors that are not only directly and indirectly interlinked but that also act, intentionally or
not, in an orchestrated manner. It is our view that by bringing about this perspective, public
relations scholars can be better placed to interpret and analyze the fi eld and especially the
relationship between public relations and tourism. We do not think, however, that this approach
is suffi cient to solve all the questions posed here. What we can assuredly state is that insuffi cient
research in this fi eld has been done. At a time where the research councils in the UK and
in Europe in general are looking for ideas for growth and recovery - with this being the
main theme of the new research funding scheme Horizon 2020 of the European Research
Council - public relations scholars are faced with a unique opportunity to develop ground-
breaking knowledge with high impact for our communities by exploring the complex
relationship between tourism and public relations.
References
Banks, S. (1995) Multicultural Public Relations: A Social - interpretive Approach . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bardhan, N. (2003) 'Rupturing public relations metanarratives: the example of India', Journal of Public
Relations Research , 15: 225-48.
Boltanski, L. (1999) Distant Suffering. Politics, Morality and the Media . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Couldry, Nick, Hepp, Andreas and Krotz, Friedrich (eds) (2009) Media Events in a Global Age . London:
Routledge.
Crawford, Charles and Kerbs, Dennis (eds) (2008) Foundation of Evolutionary Psychology . NewYork: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Crouch, D., Jackson, R. and Thompson, F. (2005) The Media and the Tourist Imagination: Converging Cultures .
London: Routledge.
Curtin, P. and Gaither, K. (2005) 'Privileging identity, difference, and power: the circuit of culture as a basis
for public relations theory', Journal of Public Relations Research , 17(2): 91-115.
— (2007) International Public Relations: Negotiating Culture, Identity and Power. London: Sage.
Dayan, Daniel (1994) Media Events: Live Broadcasting of History . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dodds, Rachel and Joppe, Marion (2005) CSR in the Tourism Industry? The Status of and Potential for
Certifi cation, Codes of Conduct and Guidelines . Study prepared for the CSR Practice Foreign Investment
Advisory Service Investment Climate Department. http://www.turismdurabil.ro/literatura/csr/