Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
restaurants. A good example of this is the use of a landscape in marketing materials, the picture
of a deserted coastline, could almost be anywhere, however the text gives ownership of the image
to the place or destination being marketed.
The interpretation of narrative images in tourism marketing texts is additionally directed by
the presence of what Kress and van Leeuwen defi ne as 'secondary participants' (1996: 67). These
participants are not related via vectors but become linked in other contexts (2001: 71) within the
'setting' of the narrative images. For example, if an image of a tourist is contained within an
advertisement, they create a vector that defi nes their role and status within the service context,
while waiting staff in the background emphasize the nature of the relationship between the host
and guest and status of the guest within the service relationship as they are demonstrating their
subservience and cannot be separated from the power and ideological relations that underpin
both the promotion and interpretation process.
The fi rst stage of the tourist's interpretation places the experience of tourism within the
numerous cultural and historical discourses that defi ne hospitality (see Tresidder and Hirst 2012).
These discourses are supported by narrative and conceptual structures utilized within marketing
texts. The recognition of these structures both locates and signposts experience of tourism
and is represented in the semiotic language of tourism marketing. The use of hegemonic
representations of tourism within marketing texts creates what Jenkins (2003) calls 'expected
places', these places refl ect the ordering of images by providing representations of all of the
aspects of tourism we would expect to see, or in other words, the foundations of the language of
tourism. Therefore, 'time' as discussed above, represents a semiotic convention in tourism
marketing that unifi es the past, present and future into a temporal malaise that is expressed by
Jameson (1991: 67) as, 'a series of pure and unrelated presents in time'. Although the language
of tourism within marketing communications offers countless escape attempts in which
the consumer can fi nd signifi cance and escape, the experience of hospitality becomes
'. . . dominated by a consciousness which emphasizes the discontinuity of experience' (Harvey
1993: 157). Nevertheless, the representations of destinations and experiences of tourism proffer
a delineated tourism space in which experience may be semiotically consumed in a tangible
ontological way.
Semiotics and power
As stated previously, semiotics and semiosis as a process of signifi cation cannot be separated
from ideological discourses of power, as the images utilized in tourism marketing can often be
seen to be the result of an expression of cultural dominance, and for some, the exploitation of
indigenous peoples and culture. Additionally we must remember that tourism marketing is a
commercial activity that is motivated by the requirement to generate income. Consequently,
the signs and images and their meanings have been adopted as they will generate the most
economically benefi cial result at the expense of those that are not, this is often achieved by
offering access to fragile environments as part of the 'extraordinariness' of the destination while
ignoring the fragile nature of many of these environments. Resultantly, all tourism marketing
texts can be scrutinized for asymmetric power relations and power consequences. For example
Dann's (1996) study of how indigenous people are signifi ed within tourism brochures illustrates
the means by which hosts are represented within marketing texts (see also Nelson 2005) as
either providing entertainment in the form of 'communicative staging', or service, rather
than being represented or characterized as social, economic or cultural equals. Dann's
work provides an insight into the way in which tourism marketing creates and reinforces
defi nitions of subordination and power relations between the host and guest in terms of
