The promotion of tourism in Italian regions from a sensorial perspective: a website content analysis

Abstract

Recent tourism literature has identified the sensory dimension as key to understanding, planning and marketing tourist experiences. This paper aims to understand to what extent Italian regions consider the sensorial perspective in tourist communication, focusing the analysis on their institutional websites. We used the content analysis method considering two different periods to investigate the evolution of Italian tourism promotion. The results show that for all institutional websites, over time, attention engages only some of the five sensorial dimensions. That is, the communication does not appear balanced. Furthermore, the promotional communication in several regions is more oriented towards a specific human sense in both periods. Empirical evidence can offer useful knowledge to those involved in the planning and promotion of tourist offerings, as well as to managers, to develop a stronger and more attractive destination image.