Touristic Promotion in the Municipalities Websites: The Case of Douro Region (NUT III)

Abstract

“Imaginaries” and narratives about  places are often a starting point of tourism demand. It is mainly through these representations that the potential tourist can have a destination preview. Thus municipal websites become official touristic representations of a place. The goal of this text is to debate the destination image projected by the official Douro sub-region (NUT III) municipal websites. The methodology used was mainly based on documental, content and visual analysis. This article is structured in three phases: analysis of quality, content analysis based on the destination attributes (pull factors) and critical analysis of the websites touristic discourse. A clear dissonance has been detected between the “ideology of tourism” as a local development strategy and its application in the technical, aesthetic and narrative contents of online touristic promotion.