Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
expectations and experiences. This is where public relations largely intersects with tourism. This
because despite its functional role as part of marketing and promotion, public relations also
makes strategic claims to be responsible for reputation, risk and relationship management, issues
and crisis management, public affairs and lobbying, and corporate social responsibility. Therefore,
PR plays more broadly in the relationships within tourism and between tourism, its stakeholders
and the wider global societies and cultural contexts. Consequently, over the years, the tourism-
reputation systems to which we refer here have become increasingly complex, incorporating a
diversity of new actors and social dynamics.
Taking all this into consideration, it is surprising how little we know about the way reputation
in particular and public relations in general relate to tourism as an economic activity and the role
that is played in the development of international networks (L'Etang
et al
. 2007). This chapter
therefore explores the relationship between public relations and tourism. In so doing, it tries to
highlight the challenges of multi-cultural communication, ethics, safety, social responsibility and
globalization in the extensive range of tourism contexts that includes business tourism, spiritual
tourism, eco-tourism, city tourism, wildlife tourism, adventure tourism, sex tourism.
We locate public relations as a central feature of organizational strategy that is fuelled by
political and economic imperatives rather than being only considered as a set of communications
tactics in relation to tourism as an economic activity and sociological phenomenon. We have
used complexity as a conceptual framework that can help explore the articulation of relational
networks and the articulation of media narratives that affects reputation. Complexity has
already been deployed in tourism (Faulkner and Russell 1997: 93) and public relations literatures
(Lauzen and Dozier 1994; Murphy 2000) and permits nuanced understandings of the way in
which different parts of tourist-reputation systems react and adapt to environmental changes.
We understand tourist-reputation systems as networks made up by a diversity of individuals,
organizations and institutions that orchestrate - although not necessarily in an intentionally or
coordinated manner - efforts to attract tourist fl ows to a country, region or place at regional,
national or international levels.
Although the state remains the main orchestrator of these efforts and does so from a geo-
political stance and in terms of its own needs and aspiration for economic growth and
development, the different actions are nonetheless carried out in a multi-level manner by a
diversity of actors even within the state itself. In fact, as we will argue here, the tourism industry
intersects and interpenetrates government in relation to heritage, nation-building and national
identity and programmes of public and cultural diplomacy as well as public events.
Hence, while a campaign from the Turkish government to attract tourists from the US
would have to promote the country as an attractive and secure place to visit, diplomatic
efforts would also be required to minimize sensibilities and issues in relation to its Muslim
identity and the positions taken by its post-9/11 government. These same efforts would need to
be complemented directly or indirectly by a variety of actions performed by international
individuals and networks that set the reputation of Turkey as a tourist destination. Within a
complexity framework, we can understand that the small travel agent in a suburb of Milwaukee
(USA) would not only play a role in the establishment of the reputation of Turkey as a tourist
destination but s/he would also have infl uence in the ability for the tourism-reputation system
to adapt and survive post-9/11 challenges. One of the few works in public relations that has
explored such issues is Lisa Fall (2004) who researched the increasing role of public relations as
a crisis management function by examining the efforts among destination organization managers
in the wake of 11 September 2001.
Nevertheless, further empirical work of this nature is required in order to understand how
tourist-reputation systems react and adapt to environmental changes. This is especially true in a
