Travel Reference
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has rarely been applied to tourism, and yet offers potential to understand how consumers'
attitudes, desires and behaviours might be 'nudged' into more positive directions. Shaw and
colleagues discuss the political and practical issues surrounding this approach. Chapter 6 continues
this theme in the context of the complexities of the relationships between public relations (PR)
and tourism.
L'Etang and Lugo-Ocando ( Chapter 6 ) argue for the fundamental dependency between
tourism and reputation, implicitly linked to the importance of image, and in particular the
organic forms of image production. L'Etang and Lugo-Ocando outline the main debates
surrounding PR and explain how it has evolved into a broader strategic function from its earlier
context as a function of micromarketing. However, the inclusion of this chapter in relation to
tourism macromarketing is due to the positioning of the discussion of the ethicality of tourism-
reputation systems, as they have developed into complex networks of actors and socio-political
dynamics that orchestrate media information in an effort to attract tourists through reputation
management, largely incorporating varying levels of government. Similarly, the authors argue
that the emergence of digital media and social networks create a need for PR to rethink its
research approaches and conceptual frameworks to develop multidisciplinary understandings and
approaches to reputation management in the future that have critical implications for tourism
fi rms and destination managers. What this chapter ably demonstrates is that communication is
inextricably linked to power. This theme is the main focus of Chapter 7 .
Caruana ( Chapter 7 ) examines the role of marketing communications in producing discourses,
and shows how tourism marketing has been directed towards the reproduction of power
dynamics. Tourism marketing communications are social constructions, and as such they shape
information in particular ways. This has been recognized as one of the main contributions of
tourism social science within a marketing context, since tourism marketing texts and images have
been shown to actively constitute broader social discourses of hedonism, alterity, authenticity,
mythological places and post-colonial power relations for example. Caruana goes on to discuss
how these cultural texts produce sets of power relationships between tourists and hosts which
creates implications for marketing practice. In the last chapter of this section ( Chapter 8 ), Tresidder
takes the analysis of tourism marketing texts to a different level to explore how semiotics can be
used to understand how marketing texts communicate to tourists through signs.
Tresidder argues that there is a discrete semiotic language of tourism, one that we would
perhaps all recognize ('escape' for example is a trope discussed in Chapter 7 ). Signs and images
act as a sort of prism through which meaning and value is connoted. As such, an understanding
of the principles and practices of semiotics will enable a better understanding of how marketing
functions at a symbolic level in the minds of consumers. The application of semiotics to tourism
is signifi cant, and has attracted social anthropologists, experts in communications and socio-
linguistics, and cultural and media studies over many decades (e.g. MacCannell 1975; Culler
1981), and yet the links between these disciplines and tourism marketing has been limited.
Tresidder highlights that in an increasingly mediated world, semiotics offers real insights into
marketing theory and practice.
Strategic issues in tourism marketing
Having set the paradigmatic and broader socio-political context, Part 3 presents fi ve chapters
dealing with strategic issues in tourism. It is quite incredible to think that 'experience marketing'
has only recently become a prevailing force in tourism marketing perspectives. Despite the
experiential nature of tourism, a main criticism of tourism marketing until recent times can be
that it has focused too much on the technical aspects of service delivery and not enough on the
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