Promotion of inclusive tourism by national destination management organizations

Abstract

Purpose Inclusive tourism has the potential to counter balance some of the disadvantages relating to tourism development and effectively exert positive impacts on society at large and specifically on tourist destinations. However, there is a research gap in studies on inclusiveness related to the promotional efforts of national destination management organizations. Design/methodology/approach Data science-based methods, mainly text mining and image mining, were used to analyze both the explicit and implicit content in text and images in the English brochures published by nine European official destination management organizations. Findings Results highlighted that the countries' attitudes towards inclusion were aligned with what the countries’ destination management organizations were promoting, especially in the case of highly ranked countries on an inclusiveness index. However, there were differences between their explicit content (what they write in text) and their implicit content (what they show in images). Originality/value The combined analysis of text and image content allowed for a complete understanding as to how national’s destination management organizations are promoting inclusion, showing that destination management organizations should make an effort in improving their promotional material and above all the images they use.