Cultural Heritage under the Gaze of International Tourism Marketing Campaigns

A country's touristic self‐promotion may be the most direct window into its dominant narrative of national identity. State agencies charged with designing tourism campaigns highlight what they regard as most characteristic and desirable about their country. Independently, however, the potential tourist has access to a vast array of representations in multiple media that generate a tourism imaginary, which may be variously, even subversively, interpreted. The application of critical discourse analysis to two recent internet videos produced by the national tourism boards of Peru and India reveals remarkable script similarities based on stereotypes that commoditize people and place, and brand them for global consumption. Surprisingly, UNESCO World Heritage sites are not prominently featured in the two videos. Seeing a strong tourist attraction to achieving personal experiences with the local people who embody local culture, the tourist boards of Peru and India have clearly favored intangible over tangible heritage.