How Do You Promote Tourism during the Outbreak of a Pandemic? A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Egypt’s 2020 Tourism Promotional Film

Abstract

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 has presented a serious blow to the world economy including the tourism sector. Countries, like Egypt, where tourism is regarded as one of the primary sources of national income were negatively affected by the pandemic. However, in Egypt this was faced with an official marketing campaign. This paper examines the official promotional film of Egypt entitled 'An experience of a lifetime! Same Great Feelings', issued in June 2020 by the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board and sponsored by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism to promote inbound tourism after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The research draws on Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) Visual Grammar Theory to examine how new meanings are constructed along with traditional marketing discourse through the interplay between both verbal and non-verbal language, specifically visual semiotic resources. The study utilizes the three levels of visual meaning: the representational, the interactive and the compositional functions. Findings indicate that the challenges presented by the pandemic called for a new type of discourse that emphasizes the presence of precautionary measures such as social distancing and sanitization in addition to the traditional discourse of promoting tourism.