Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities

Tourism is an enormously important industry, but the nature of the tourism product is elusive and the task of marketing and promoting tourism is difficult. Informed by modern marketing theory this book offers a unique approach by taking a comprehensive, synthesised and integrated sociological and cultural approach to tourism marketing. It focuses on controversial issues of tourism imagery, highlighting issues such as gender, sexuality and race as key determinants of tourism power dimensions. The authors take their experience in the tourism industry, combined with their academic knowledge, to produce a deep insight into the cultural role of tourism imagery. The key concepts and procedures are illustrated by case studies of good practice. Students of tourism will find this book a thought–provoking and conceptual evaluation of the subject. Practitioners will find value in the discussion of how the issues raised have been integrated throughout the case studies.

INTO THE TOURISM IMAGE. Reading the Image. Creating and Consuming the Image. Culture and the Image. THE IMAGE AND CHANGING MARKETS. Fragmenting Identities, Fragmenting Power. Power, Image and Markets. Branding, Identity and Power. CHANGING WORLDS, CHANGING IMAGES? The Image, Politics and Power. The Gendered and Sexualised Image. Images of "Them" and "Us". Changing Ways of Seeing the Image. Bibliography. Index.