Destination branding and cultural identity construction. Discourse analysis of publications on the official website of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Abstract

Constructing the right destination image is important not only in the tourism industry - a well-developed tourism sector, that attracts a large number of international visitors, has the potential to enhance the national economy of a country. For this purpose, Destination Marketing Organizations strategically use tourism discourse in their destination-branding materials. Such goal-oriented discourses necessarily contain ideological component. Ideologies help the author create an engaging text for the readers and arouse the interest in the destination since they operate with people’s beliefs and motivations and connect the author with the audience. This research examines the texts from nine publications on the official website of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism through the method of discourse analysis, in order to discover the underlying ideologies. First, based on Fairclough’s framework of evaluations (2003), the constituents of the destination image were determined. These positively evaluated objects appear as the values of the destination for potential tourists. Secondly, these representations were examined against the theory of the “tourist gaze” (Urry, 1990) - the most prevalent form of tourism writing. This step defined the narrative characteristics which the author uses to construct the destination image in the desired way. The analysis revealed a high degree of exoticization in the representation of the values, and thus, orientalism was identified as the overarching ideology of the destination marketing publications. This concept refers to power relations between the West and East. Originated in the literary discourses of the colonial period, it proves to be an effective tool in contemporary tourism narratives, such as destination-branding publications on the official website of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.