Travel Reference
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adverts etc.) from wider social discourses. These wider
macro
-social discourses (e.g. hedonism,
nature, otherness, authenticity, autonomy, gender or independence) are drawn upon by marketers
(and tourists alike) in the process of establishing tourist meaning/s in local texts. In this vein,
Johns and Clarke's (2001) study of boating holidays revealed how tourist narratives (linguistic),
created 'liberated' identities (discursive), by drawing upon wider discourses (socio-ideological)
that were re-worked into personal accounts of their holiday experiences:
The myths used by respondents in this study derive from popular and commonsense sources,
but were sometimes intensely personal in their interpretation. They included forms from
postmodern society, such as 'nature' 'adventure' and 'good fun for adults and kids', but also
concepts such as 'otherness' and 'activity'.
(Johns and Clarke 2001: 356)
That the study involved the analysis of
photographs
as part of the tourist's discourse, points to
another core feature of this discursive view of marketing communications - the centrality of
the
text
.
Marketing communications as a tourism text
Knowledge of tourism is produced, mediated and disseminated through texts. Texts, then, are the
central subject of analysis (not the subjective minds of tourists, agents or marketers). Here,
postcards, tourists' diaries, travel fi ction, corporate as well as tourist-board adverts, brochures,
photographs and websites are broadly conceived of as textual sites (Ateljevic and Doorne 2002;
Bhattacharyya 1997; Caruana
et al
. 2008; Caruana and Crane 2011; Markwick 2001; Salazar
2006; Urry 1990). Taken in their broadest sense, even tourists' verbal accounts can be considered
as texts in the sense that they utilize textual devices such as narratives, metaphors and myths
(Johns and Clarke 2001) in rendering the holiday experience meaningful. Crucially, these texts
are sites of cultural production and meaning-making, in which tourism is defi ned and created as
a certain kind of social practice. In the context of this chapter then
marketing communications are
cultural texts
that constitute the social meanings of tourism
.
The advertising campaigns of National
Tourist Boards are littered with such cultural texts, attempting to infuse a given country with
cultural meanings appealing to the international tourist imaginary (exotic, adventure, cultural,
primitive, erotic, untouched etc.) (Ateljevic and Doorne 2002; Borgerson and Schroeder 2002).
Websites too are considered as texts in which cultural meanings create interpretations for
specifi c market segments (Caruana and Crane 2008) whilst signifying differences between other
segments. Texts not only produce cultural meanings but they are responsible for disseminating
them throughout tourism markets and reinforcing, as well as transforming them, over time.
The dominant interpretation of
tourism as freedom
is the cumulative outcome of a history of
tourism texts that have normalised tourism as the social practice of 'being away', 'escape' and
'getting away from it all'. Of the most iconic tourism text - the postcard - Urry (1990) notes
how they traditionally drew upon other popular discursive critiques of work, city life and
economic labour. Postcards (re-)constructed work and city life as the negatively motivating
'social toils' to which beach holidays were presented as the fun, healthy and above all liberating
tonic. These textually situated cultural meanings are rarely fi xed or uniform, highlighting the
dynamic nature of discourse in texts. The meaning of freedom, for instance, has been found to
vary across tourism markets, such that freedom is constructed for 'hedonist tourists' as avoiding
work, for 'independent travellers' ('backpackers') as evading inauthentic, commercial tourists and
for 'ethical tourists' as avoiding harmful tourism choices (Caruana and Crane 2011). In this sense
