A Comparison of Official Tourism Websites in Tuscany Region and Istria County Using Topic Modelling

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this study is to explore the textual and visual contents of official tourism websites of Tuscany Region (Italy) and Istria County (Croatia) to understand how destinations from different countries, but with similar characteristics, promote their tourism offer to an international audience. Methodology – A total of 185 web pages from the official tourism websites of Tuscany Region (n. 98 webpages) and Istria County (n. 87 webpages) were analysed. To explore the characteristics of tourism offer promoted by the DMOs of both analysed destinations, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model was applied to textual data. Furthermore, more than 1,000 images were analysed to investigate if there exists a correspondence between text and visual contents published on the webpages. Findings – Eight topics that characterise the tourism offer promoted on Tuscan and Istrian official tourism websites have emerged. The findings reveal differences in the promotion of visual and textual tourism offer, highlighting that destinations focus their communication on different topics. Each destination places greater emphasis on different characteristics that make its territory unique by adopting different communication strategies. Furthermore, for both destinations a correspondence between textual and visual content communication is observed in many topics. Contribution – The findings shed light on the current state of the art of the tourism offer promoted online supporting Tuscany Region and Istria County in understanding if the current promotion is in line with their communication goals. Furthermore, this study provides inputs to determine if there exists synergy between the promotion of the tourism offer and the development of tourism products in the destination.