Destination managers are investing considerable effort (i.e., time, resources, and money) to market their destinations on the Internet. In addition to official destination websites, many unofficial websites are populating the results pages of search engines, diffusing almost the same contents as official destinations websites. The aim of this study is to investigate the information market available to the traveler searching for destination-related information in the so-called online tourism space. Search engines are indexing not only official websites, but also any other websites such as blogs, review websites, wikis, reviews, etc., which are available online. Starting from a log file analysis for a given destination, a set of nine keywords was used to perform search activities on two major search engines (Google and Yahoo!). Search results were first organized and described in order to describe the destinations' information competitors. Second, a content analysis study was performed in order to examine topics and arguments of the retrieved results that are shaping the Web reputation of destinations. The article shows that unofficial sources of information are equally important with respect to officially provided information. Hence, destinations need to manage their brand and online reputation holistically by attempting to coordinate the players offering information about themselves and also amalgamating the entire range of information and service providers on platforms of experience creation.
This paper engages with issues of universality and locality in the context of community-based participatory design (PD), and focuses on the challenges and opportunities associated with incorporating local views and forms of participation in the design process. The notion of 'designing for participation' is advanced as a quintessential perspective for approaches in which design practices are re-configured from a community-centric standpoint. Building on insights from PD and community development studies, as well as on empirical evidence from two community design studies, we argue that designing for participation appears to be located in a space between the designer's and local views of participation, which are at times both ambiguous and conflicting. To overcome these tensions, we argue for the importance of engaging critically and reflectively with PD in community contexts, and in this process capitalising on disciplinary dialogues that can expand the viewpoint from which PD projects are negotiated and evaluated.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have had a significant impact on both the travel and tourism experience and industry. In particular, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) have found ICT a powerful ally to harmonize and coordinate the activities of local stakeholders, as well as to reach travellers. The aim of this research is to analyse destination brand communication strategies, especially those applied to online communication (official websites, social media and mobile applications). Data was collected from Spanish destinations -regions, provinces and cities -via an online survey addressed to destination brand and communication managers. Results show that destination brand communication is not fully standardised or professionalised yet; online tools (websites, social media and mobile applications) are used tactically and not strategically and the usefulness of social media and official websites is clearly more appreciated by DMO managers than the usefulness of mobile applications.
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