Discourse and power in tourism communications - Tourism Marketing - page 92

'textualization' of tourism practice. Facebook, twitter, Google Earth, travel agent websites, direct
(Internet) marketing, online reviews, travel and mainstream media all represent the broadening
of textual spaces where tourism can be communicated about by a range of actors. Knowledge of
tourism is no longer so easily mediated by 'cultural brokers' but is opened up to a wider range
of infl uences by various stakeholders, offering huge potential for the engagement in and
transformation of relations of power. For marketing managers, policy makers and academics this
represents new opportunities as well as threats. At the time of drafting this chapter, The Guardian
ran an article entitled 'Maldives tourism campaign backfi res as Twitter shows darker side of island
life'. The initiative of the tourism authority to redefi ne the Maldives as a paradise island used
twitter as a powerful marketing communications force to promote the island's credentials for
love, romance and the exotic. Their campaign became hijacked by 'tweets about police brutality,
coups d'état and political illegitimacy', bringing attention to the tourist audience, a range of
power struggles, violence, political unrest and oppression commonly concealed within the
'paradisal' view of the island. Whilst these outcomes may be illuminating and instructive for
tourists, locals and policy-makers, they offer something of a cautionary note to tourism marketers
in terms of how they contribute to, as well as manage, the tourist's interpretation of holiday.
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