The Ethics of Tourist DestinThe Ethics of Tourist Destination Promotion

7/30/2019 The Ethics of Tourist DestinThe Ethics of Tourist Destination Promotion

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The Ethics of Tourist Destination PromotionA. V. Seaton

One of the intermittent subjects of academic tourism discourse is a critique of the

biased, "distorted" representation of destinations offered in commercial NTO

promotion. Anthropologists and sociologists have analysed NTO promotional

materials demonstrating that they are manipulated by powerful agencies to offer

stereotypical,optimistic images which exclude harsher, more complex, socio-political

realities. Host populations, even in developed countries, such as Wales and Scotland,

have criticised tourism representations of their countries as simplistic, reactionary and

often based on "invented traditions" and "staged authenticity" (e.g Scotland as a land

of bagpipes, kilts, and picturesque tartanry).

At the back of such critiques are several assumptions:that a representation of a

destination could be "truthful" rather than misleading; that a representation could be

complete rather than partial and selective; that the aim of promotion should be

documentary realism rather than a persuasive text.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that such criticisms represent a

misunderstanding of tourism promotion, its relationship to the prime audiences for

whom it is intended, and also the ultimate effect it is designed to achieve for host

populations. The arguments are as follows:

1. All representations are selective. There is no such thing as absolute truth,

particularly about such a complex entity as a destination, only different, often

competing constructions.

2. Since all tourism promotion is designed to attract visitors it is naive to expect thatdestination promotion will do anything but offer favourable constructions. Advertising

never attempts documentary realism (whatever that might be, and whoever might

claim authority to know and represent it); it is essentially a paid-for, sponsored

message of advocacy, not an objective report. Still less is any advertiser going to

allocate scarce promotional funding to deliver a hostile message which shows a

destination or society in a bad, threatening light, or even to portray it as similar in

many respects to others (increasingly the case as urbanisation, industrialisation and

modernisation work their homogenising effects internationally). The amplification of

societal problems is not part of the agenda of NTOs.



3. Since tourism promotion typically consists of a few images on a page or a few

seconds of broadcast time there is little time or space for complex narratives.The good

news will invariably be delivered in stereotypical chunks

4. Stereotypes are also the way in which tourists think about destinations. Stereotypes

are constrained by the expectations and entrenched images the visitor already holds.

Americans think Scotland is a land of romance and bagpipes therefore it would be

dangerous and also probably impossible to alter this through NTO advertising.

Generally speaking advertising cannot achieve major educative transformations.

5. Tourism promotion must be judged by its economic effects, as a means to an end,

that of generating tourists, rather than as an end in itself.

6. That once the purposes of promotion, and the constraints under which it is

produced, are recognised the effects of promotion must be judged in terms of its

effectiveness in a) generating visitors b) prefiguring expectations which are actually

realised in the visitor experience.

As long as the visitor experiences some of the elements carried by the stereotypes

presented (however "staged", "invented" or unrepresentative these may be e.g.

watching a rodeo show at the Calgary Stamepede; attending a tartan military display

at the Edinburgh search-light tattoo; being attended by hula-hula skirted girls in a

Hawaian bar), then the promotion may be deemed appropriate.

7. That the primary issue in relation to the ethics of tourism promotion is not its

representational means, but its social effects. This is a political matter (e.g.involving

such questions as the balance of power in tourism development; the question as to

who actually benefits materially from tourism etc)

8. Academic analysts will always be able to deconstruct NTO promotion as

ideological,stereotypical myths in the same way that all advertising can be seen as

such. Such deconstructions are easy to do (getting a sample of brochures and

performing desk analyses is a relaxing and comparatively easy way of writing a

paper).But if the end result is mainly to point out how far promotional images differ

from other kinds of construction (including that seductive ideological construction

called "reality") they will always be stating the obvious.Though such critiques are

useful as a way of contesting particular representations (that "struggle over the sign"



which semiologists debate) they have very little relevence to the function of tourism

promotion. In short sociologists and anthropologists are doing one kind of activity;

promoters are doing another.

NB The arguments in this paper are, of course, highly oversimplified and somewhat

crudely expressed to meet the 800 word limit for internet use.

Questions:

Is there an irreconciliable difference between the way a destination must be promoted

to tourists and the way in which a destination may be perceived by its indigenous

population?

Is it possible to avoid the selective, glamorous imaging of destinations which may,

almost inevitably,camouflage or misrepresent other aspects of a destination (social

problems, poverty, etc).

Can tourism promotion of destinations ever avoid stereotypical presentations?

Biography:

Tony Seaton is Reader in Tourism and Director of the Scottish Tourism Research

Unit, the Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde whose main interests are

tourism marketing, tourism behaviour and tourism history.

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The Ethics of Tourist DestinThe Ethics of Tourist Destination Promotion