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time in which the relational networks and media ecologies that surround and shape reputation
are undergoing important changes both in terms of inter-institutional relations as well as power-
structures. By this, we do not only mean the emergence of digital media and social networks that
facilitate active reconfi gurations, the hyper-fragmentation of audience and the digitalization of
information, but the over-arching process of globalization and interactivity that now frames all
of the former. In this context, public relations needs to re-think and adapt its traditional research
approaches and incorporate multi-disciplinary understandings if it is to explain fully the changing
nature of tourism-reputation systems.
We have also linked this perspective in the broader context of the ethics of public relations
and reputation because it is impossible to assess these tourism-reputation systems outside the
ethical prerogatives that derive from tourism as economic activity. In so doing, the public relations
fi eld needs to raise questions regarding tourism-reputation systems and the economical
sustainability of tourism in the face of commercial fairness, environmental issues and national/
local politics. Is it ethical that tourism-reputation systems are designed and implemented only to
attract touristic fl ows primarily for economic reasons while disregarding ethical considerations?
What do tourism fl ows to Egypt under Mubarak tell us about reputation systems in terms of
their ethical responsibilities? What can we say in relation to the politics of public relations and
tourism visiting places under authoritarian and oppressing regimes? What can we learn about
promoting touristic fl ows, the increasing pollution of beaches in the south of Spain and the
fi nancial crisis? This is indeed an overdue discussion in the public relations fi eld; in particular in
relation to the massive social, political and environmental impacts of tourism globally, nationally
and locally and the issues that this raises for the PR industry in relation to risk, crisis, community
relations and social responsibility.
Confi guring public relations and tourism
The impact of strategic managed communication and relational activities in tourism has not
received much attention even within public relations (Kang and Mastin 2008; Fall, 2004; L'Etang
et al
. 2007; Tilson and Stacks 1997). There has been some engagement within media and cultural
studies, but the notion of public relations as a source for the media or as an occupation that is
one of the cultural intermediaries in the touristic activities is still largely under-explored by
scholars. Exceptions to this include of course the work of Crouch
et al
. (2005) and Long and
Robinson (2009) and Pike (2005), the last of whom has infl uenced our approach in highlighting
complexity as a useful metaphor for understanding the complex relationship between tourism
and public relations.
However, the management disciplines (that have been highly infl uential on the public
relations discipline even if it is largely understood as a communications discipline) have taken
mostly a functional approach, while reducing communication to messaging and output-
production rather than meaning-making; as consumer, rather than stakeholder and public
focused. While we acknowledge the opaque boundaries and overlaps between public relations
and marketing in many contexts, and the jurisdictional struggle between these aspiring semi-
professions, our analysis is informed nevertheless from critical communications studies and our
view that public relations plays an infl uential role in cultural intermediation and articulation of
tourism-reputation systems. In this context we acknowledge the contribution made by the
instrumental dominant paradigm in the use of systems theory as an explanatory framework to
understand how PR in general creates reputation systems (Hazleton 1992; Hazleton and Botan
1989). Nevertheless, as indicated before, we believe that this functionalistic-system is overall
unable to provide a comprehensive explanatory framework for the relationship between public
