Fabricação de imagens-destino: o impacto dos estereótipos ao nível do turismo

Abstract

Images of places,cities and countries are strongly influenced by tourist and economical-political portraits in the media and marketing communication forms.As human cognition relies on inferential perception and framed categories, marketing strategies exploit partial truths in short, straight statements, producing places stereotyped images to direct public perceptions and behaviours. This paper addresses the relationship between international perception, image building by the mass media and its impact on tourism development and marketing strategies in two places in South Asia: Maldives Islands and the city of Kolkata (Calcutta), India. These two study cases are represented in the tourism marketing media with contrasting “closed” images, and although this media portrayal also depends on intrinsic qualities, my argument is that it is their media representations that mainly determine their international position in the growing international competition for resources within tourism and elected strategies to be implemented.