Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
comprehensive series of PR strategies and actions to put these actors together and orchestrate
their resources and actions towards attracting tourism fl ows.
In this context, we need to remind ourselves that public relations and related terms such as
communication management, corporate communications, public affairs and integrated commu-
nications are twentieth-century terms associated with an occupation that has its roots in a variety
of historical public communication practices. The idea of 'relating to the public', meaning the
general public, has developed into more focused 'stakeholder relations/management'. That is not
to say that media relations and publicity are not still important, particularly in certain contexts
such as marketing communications, but increasingly practitioners and academics advocate a
'strategic' role for public relations whereby public relations activities are closely linked to organ-
izational strategy and objectives and operations such as intelligence gathering, issues and risk
management as well as crisis handling and day-to-day media relations and event management.
In thinking about defi nitions it is important to understand that:
1 The term 'public relations' connotes different meanings in different cultural contexts (in some
parts of the world it means 'guest relations' or hospitality, in others it means 'working with
publics and public opinion' or 'reputation management'; the terms 'public relations', 'com-
munication management', 'corporate communications', 'public affairs' overlap even though
a term may connote a particular emphasis, for example, 'public affairs' may imply work in a
more political context, working with governmental publics (civil service and politicians).
2 The term 'public relations' has fallen into some disrepute in some cultures such as the UK,
partly through its historical connections with propaganda and because more recently it has
become associated with 'spin doctoring'. For this reason, alternative terms for the occupation
have become more common.
3 In some cultural contexts the term 'public relations' has become a term that is interchangeable
with 'media relations'.
4 Defi nitions need to be understood in terms of the specifi c cultural context since the term
'public relations' is not a neutral technical term but a concept that has historical and cultural
baggage that varies from context to context - and therefore is of central importance to
tourism.
Tourism, on the other hand, although a more established practice than public relations has
nevertheless evolved in a parallel way, making use of public relations, marketing and promotional
tactics since the second industrial revolution. Indeed, organized mass tourism evolved from the
need to commodify the industrial workers' free time and appropriate/alienate it in terms of
capital and reproduction of social capital that could foster and help sustain social cohesion. Over
the years tourism has become a complex social phenomenon diffi cult to describe succinctly,
which is why some authors have called for 'tourism systems' in order to explain its dynamics
(Goeldner and Ritchie 2009). We have our own reservations in using the notion of systems as
explanatory frameworks for both tourism and PR as they are positivist-functionalistic inter-
pretations that tend to exclude materialistic relations of power. Nonetheless, these systems are
useful to explain certain dynamics and the orchestration of resources and actions with regards to
PR and tourism.
Overall, tourism systems' ability to attract tourism fl ows depend largely on their ability to
present themselves and be perceived/understood by potential audiences as places of leisure,
devotion and engagement with experiences of fulfi lment (encompassing the full range of human
emotions including empathy, pain, pleasure, solidarity). In so doing, they rely on reputation(s)
that can articulate among the wider public a sense of what they are in terms of the touristic
