Resumen de Travel destination online image branding: Case study of the promotion, commercialisation and tourist interaction of Santiago de Compostela's museum websites
Pilar Taboada de Zuñiga Romero, Oscar F. Basulto Gallegos
In a globalised world, new information and communication technologies are a fundamental tool in positioning the image of a tourist destination; an image which combines tourism products into an integrated experience for visitors and that they perceive these as such (Bigné, Font y Andreu, 2000). Traditional promotional tools for tourist destinations, such as printed media and personal contact, have been losing ground, giving way in recent years to online forms of communication. We take the city of Santiago de Compostela as a case study, an important destination for cultural and religious tourism, with an image position and branding fundamentally tied to the Camino de Santiago (the pilgrimage of St. James), and where although the presence of museums is of great significance, they remain poorly represented within the wider plan for tourism, despite being considered in the city’s Strategic Plan. In this paper we put forward an in-depth study of the city’s museum websites, from both a communications and tourism perspective, using an innovative system of analysis which employs a range of indicators allowing for the valuation and evaluation of virtual information, promotion, commercialisation and tourist interaction.
