The cultural content analysis of the international tourism destinations websites

Abstract

Travel and tourism represents one of the most globalized sectors facing strong competitive pressure. Thus, cultural adaptation has become a vital strategy for tourism destinations that desire to succeed in the global tourism market. The paper focuses on the international tourism destination websites as a key marketing communication channel in the 21st century. Its aim is to analyze to what extent the websites of five European top destinations reflect the cultural values of the English-speaking Asia-Pacific countries. To meet this aim, cultural content analysis based on adaptation of Hofstede’s framework is conducted for the English versions of the official tourism websites of France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. The results are subsequently compared with Hofstede’s cultural scores for six English-speaking countries located in the UNWTO Asia-Pacific Region. The results reveal how intensively the tourism destination websites meet the predominant culture values of the Asia-Pacific region. In such a way, the results should help destination marketers to attract visitors from the promising Asia-Pacific market more effectively.

Keywords

• marketing
• tourism destination
• cultural adaptation
• websites