Tourism Advertising and Destination Image Building Through Cultural Heritage in Croatia

Abstract

Through this research, an attempt is made to understand how Croatian coastal cities Dubrovnik and Split, with rich historical and cultural heritage, promote, market, and advertise this heritage through the official websites of local tourism organizations. In this context, after examining the general discourses on the homepage of the official websites of these cities, the discourses they adopt to promote their historical and cultural wealth in order to create a destination image are analyzed using content analysis. To do this, key concepts are discovered, and themes are determined, under which these concepts are collected inductively. The coding process is performed based on the concepts extracted from the data. Then, the two destinations, the official sites, and the sites to which they link are analyzed on the basis of the themes and concepts, discussing their weaknesses and strengths, identifying gaps, and making improvement proposals.