Online brochures: relationship between message strategies and communicated attributes

Abstract

This paper develops a theoretical model to define tourism destination brand’s online content. Message strategies and positioning attributes that brands want to communicate are the main inputs to develop communication content. However, the relationship between message strategies and attributes has not been studied in the literature. Our research examines this relationship, using 400 online brochures from around the world. Based on the positioning attributes and message strategies, a taxonomy is developed to analyse online brochures through content analysis. A comprehensive benchmark model was designed to assist tourism destination managers and advertisers while planning the concept and production of their online tourism brochures, and a new creative methodology based on several workable strategic alternatives are proposed.

Keywords:

• Destination brands
• online brochures
• message strategies
• positioning attributes
• benchmarking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.