Place-product or place narrative(s)? Perspectives in the marketing of tourism destinations

This paper utilizes a narrative approach to critically appraise the challenges and paradoxes faced by tourism destination marketing, and the inherent weaknesses of the traditional marketing management framework to adequately address them. In so doing, the treatment of place as a set of attributes is contrasted with its conceptualisation as a set of meanings. In perceiving place as a set of meanings, the focus of attention shifts to a number of different issues, such as the role of culture and symbolic meanings in the construction and experience of place and the contested “realities” involved in the making of a tourism destination.