Author ORCID Identifier
Abstract
Online communication plays a vital role in tourist image formation and travel choices in the digital era. In this way, institutional communication performs a central role in tourism, influencing the market through text and keywords choice on websites. This study aims to analyse online communication by focusing on tourism discourse, i.e. English language as a specialised and promotional discourse in tourism, with a special emphasis on Dann’s rhetorical strategy of keywords. The present study explores the communication used in UNESCO websites and its contribution to tourist destination image formation through corpus-based Discourse Analysis. The focus on a selected number of Sicilian and Maltese UNESCO websites highlights the differences in online communication and the potential influence on tourist image formation. A combined methodological approach, both qualitative and quantitative, is adopted. Specifically, the Corpus Linguistics approach is utilised to extract quantitative data; a qualitative analysis is derived from the data interpreted from a linguistic perspective. The data emphasise that the two sub-corpora of UNESCO Sicilian and Maltese websites communicate different destination images. Findings can contribute to a further reflection on tourism discourse used for institutional communication, to influence the tourist impact on UNESCO sites and potentially influence destination image formation and consumer purchase behaviour.
Recommended Citation
Pagano, Ninfa
(2023)
"Keywords in UNESCO websites: The Role of Image in Destination Marketing,"
International Journal of Islands Research:
Vol. 4:
Iss.
1, Article 2.
doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/9GEX-1A64
Available at:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijir/vol4/iss1/2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/9GEX-1A64
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