The application of brand theory to destinations has grown in the last few decades, with the destination brand personality being a viable metaphor for creating and positioning destination brands. An often-overlooked tourism typology is geotourism; more specifically, volcanic tourism, since it can be a passive element of any tourism form or active nature tourism. However, its potential is relatively unexplored in terms of online branding. For this reason, the present study analyzes online brand image co-creation, using 300 websites related to three unique volcanic tourism destinations—Iceland, the Azores, and the Canary Islands. Three different types of sources (destination marketing organizations, commercial, and editorial websites) created these contents. The results demonstrate significant differences between the communication of the three destinations, with Iceland, where there is less aligned communication, most valuing geo elements in their communication, and the Azores, where all stakeholders communicate similar brand personality traits, displaying more aligned communication regarding brand personality. In the Canary Islands geotourism is less explored as a destination offer and is consequently less communicated. Acknowledging the different brand positioning and the parity and differentiation points among destinations with the same baseline offer—volcanic tourism—can be helpful for destination brand managers to reignite tourism and promote a unique tourism experience.
The article examines a double case study framework for analyzing perceived and projected destinations by using ITC solutions. First, 22,362 photos tagged with “Brasov” were collected and analyzed using the Flickr API. Second, a descriptive-explanatory research was employed, applying an instrument for the analysis and to address the online identity of place brands where a proposed online platform generates an automatic score calculation. The spatial patterns of tourist activity revealed many similarities and differences compared to promoted attractions by the DMOs, as the results indicated that geotagged photos reflect the projected image of the destination as the data provided a hotspot distribution of popular tourist attractions. The article makes a theoretical and practical contribution: (a) visual imagery may be more fully implemented in research studies; and (b) the distribution of popular tourist attractions may be in synergy between the perceived and projected image of a destination. Implications for marketing managers are presented.
This chapter will present the online environment as the new channel for social interaction, putting into focus the organizational communication and its development from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Nowadays, talking about the online environment, Social Media is the main concept, defined by: social networks, Social Bookmarking sites, business blogs, and many other web pages where users can interact and can generate or access content, as well as more static sites, generating unidirectional information. The chapter will also discuss the implication of Social Media characteristics, defining the main terms and includes a case study discussing the OMV Petrom strategy of communication using Social Media channels. So, the online environment can be seen as a second reality in terms of professional activity. Specialists become users, networking, and communicating permanently. The online environment is therefore in favor of any organization that wants to be connected to this technologically and professionalized world.
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