European Tourism Online: Comparative Content Analysis of the ETC Website and Corresponding National NTO Websites

Karolien Hellemans a Robert Govers b

a

Graduate Master in Tourism, University of Antwerp, University of Leuven, Limburg Universitair Centrum, Ghent University karolienhellemans@hotmail.com
b

Flemish Center for Tourism Policy Studies University of Leuven, Belgium rgovers@geo.kuleuven.ac.be

Abstract
Pictures and text are basically the two elements that drive marketing promotion. That notion is not new to tourism research. What is new is the study of these two elements in an online environment. Content analysis of online pictures and text can provide a clear idea of the destination images that tourism websites are projecting. In this research study the image projections of 10 European Travel Commission (ETC) member country websites are compared with the messages incorporated on the VisitEurope.com-pages for those countries. The analysis shows mixed results, while for some countries there is a strong concordance between the NTO and ETC image projections, there are discrepancies for other countries. However, for Europe in general, historic and natural environments seem to be important selling propositions overseas. Keywords: online marketing, website content analysis, pictures, text

Introduction

Dann (1996) has argued that the visual and textual content of brochures are important in aiding a conceptualisation of place and have been studied in literature. Fesenmaier and MacKay (1996: p. 41) also state that the analysis of media messages has been tackled from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. In tourism studies however, it seems that this has not yet received much attention in the online environment. This paper will attempt to start changing that. Particularly the relationship between photography and tourism has received some interesting coverage (Albers and James 1988; Cohen 1988; Fairweather and Swaffield 2002; Garlick 2002; Human 1999; MacKay and Fesenmaier 1997; Markwell 1997; Sternberg 1997), but both from a tourism promotion as well as a tourist experience capturing perspective. These two perspectives are illustrated by the following two comments by Fesenmaier and MacKay (1996: p. 40) and Human. Image makers (i.e.

promotion agencies) actively select, organize, combine, and edit what is produced and distributed. Photography represents a key vehicle for manipulating imagery by molding what and how things are viewed. What potential tourists see as a replication of the real and as a credible source of information, is instead a subjectively mediated content and composition (Albers and James 1988 as in; Fesenmaier and MacKay 1996: p. 40) Human (1999: p. 80) characterises the relationship between photography and tourism as ambivalent. Many destinations visited by tourists have a strong identity and sense of place, which is embodied in the history (culture), physical form and social activity. However, photography selectively extracts from this multifaceted expression and reduces it to a series of icons. This distorts the identity and trivialises the place and contributes to the consuming nature of tourism. Tourism can indeed be categorised as a form of hedonic consumption, where the experience is an end in itself (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Leemans 1994; Vogt and Fesenmaier 1998). It has been suggested that people relate their interpretations of experience to others by narrating, or telling stories (Dhar and Wertenbroch 2000; Padgett and Allen 1997; Vogt and Fesenmaier 1998). Therefore it can be assumed that also the narratives presented in the marketing material of tourism destinations are an important means of projecting the rich tourism experience that visitors can expect. Incorporating photographic material may contribute significantly to this, as supported by Fesenmaier and MacKay (1996: p. 37): Although frequently conveyed as a stereotype, visuals in destination promotions are salient in early stages of destination evaluation and when the tourists experience and/or involvement level is low. As such, destination decisions may be based on the symbolic elements of the destination (as conveyed in visual imagery) rather than the actual features. The implications and impact of promoted image are substantial as they can affect tourists through the creation of expectations, and the desire for image verification. This aspect of destination image can be examined through the content analysis of publications about destinations. For one thing, it can provide destinations better insight into the way in which they incorporate the authentic in relation to the identity of place in the online image projection so as to enhance the experiential nature of tourism (Govers and Go in press). But what if the destination is promoted at different levels? Such as in the case of European countries maintaining their own website as well as conducting overseas promotions through the European Travel Commissions (ETC) VisitEurope website. It would be of interest to measure to what extend image projections between these various channels correlate. This is the topic of this paper.

Purpose

In 1995, the European Travel Commission (ETC) launched www.visiteurope.com especially designed for the US (and since 2002 also Canadian) traveller. The website is one of the main means for the ETC US Operation Group to attract visitors to

Europe. This site features images of all 33 ETC member countries, and offers divers links (for instance to the websites of the National Tourism Offices (NTOs)). In connection with a new branding exercise, and plans to develop a next generation site able to serve markets beyond the US and Canada, the ETC became interested in an indepth analysis of the relationship between the image proposed on the existing portal site, and the image proposed on the NTO site of the ETC member countries. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the pictorial and textual information offered by the ETC pages in order to compare this with the pictorial and textual information offered by the NTO websites. Could it be assumed that the ETC pages promote the same elements as their corresponding NTO sites, or are there significant differences? Because of the growing importance of the internet, it was perceived to be of great relevance to investigate to what extent the displayed information is accurate and sect, in order to show a complete image of the destinations involved. But before approaching the analysis and results of this research study it needs to be stated that the detailed research report that resulted from this project has been published, and that the marketing recommendations have been taken on board by the ETC. The VisitEurope website has since been completely overhauled and revamped, and is constantly evolving as reported in the IFITT July 2004 Newsletter (p. 7).

Methodology

In this research study a total number of 11 websites was evaluated: on the one hand the portal site of ETC (www.visiteurope.com) and on the other hand a sample of 10 NTO websites. The following countries were included: Spain (www.okspain.org), Malta (www.visitmalta.com), France (http://us.franceguide.com), Turkey (www.tourismturkey.org), the Netherlands (Holland www.holland.com), Germany (www.cometogermany.com), Sweden (www.visit-sweden.com), Switzerland (http://usa.myswitzerland.com), Hungary (www.gotohungary.com) and Slovenia (www.slovenia-tourism.si). The choice of these countries was mainly determined by aiming to achieve a widest possible spread across: types of destinations; geographical location in Europe; size of the country; accessibility for American tourists (e.g. tour operators, charter flights); membership of the EU; and last but certainly not least, the required ability to save the countrys NTO website offline (see below). to the destination, images of other countries, geographic maps and images with A methodological framework for the study was provided by Govers and Go (2003; 2004). Their study was primarily based on the works of Sternberg (1997), Markwell (1997) and Albers and James (1988), as far as pictorial analysis is concerned, and on the research of Gretzel and Fesenmaier (2003) en Ryan (2000), as far as textual analysis is concerned. First, all the websites were saved in a separate Favourites Folder with Explorers Safe as Offline Web Pages tool (following links within the website itself with a maximum of three links deep). This way, all the images on every website were collected and transferred to a new folder. All JPG-images smaller than 5 KB and all GIF-images smaller than 10 KB were deleted (JPG-files provide better quality pictures at smaller size (Mickiewitz and Danino 1999)). The small size

graphic files were assumed to include mostly navigation and animation elements, banners and other design elements. Other images were not taken into account for the following reasons: duplicates, pictures of bad quality, pictures representing a banner / background / navigation bar, press-related images, pictures irrelevant unknown individuals and without context. For the websites of the NTOs, a total number of 28,546 JPG and GIF files was collected and 3,879 of these were retained These images were content analysed in terms of motifs (objects) and themes. Three steps were followed. The first step was to record all the motifs and contexts (or scenery) appearing in the images in Microsoft Excel 2000. A total of approximately 168 motifs were identified during the analysis, but not more than four contexts were found: view on city, view on village, mountain and sea. The motifs were carefully chosen in order to have clear, representative and single meanings (with no overlaps) for each of them, but at the same time with respect for the identity of each country. For this reason for instance, there is no motif called sports but there are different motifs such as hiking, sailing, skiing and mountain climbing. The contexts were chosen in order to come to a contextualisation of the pictures. The next stage was to transfer all the data gathered into SPSS. For each object, a separate dichotomous variable was created to indicate if the specific object appeared in the picture or not (0 = no, 1 = yes). This made it possible to produce frequency tables and to measure correlations between the variables (if objects appear together, there is a positive correlation, otherwise there is a negative one). By doing this, motifs appearing together can be seen as arrangements. In a last step, these arrangements were correlated with contexts, which should lead to finding and identifying the focal theme of the image. In order to collect all the online textual elements, a software programme called Wget was used. Wget is a freeware package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP (the most widely-used Internet protocols), and consists of a non-interactive command line tool. Another programme was custom-built to retrieve the textual information from those retrieved files. Only paragraphs of two or more sentences were collected and pasted into a separate .txt document, which did not include paragraphs related to press sections, listings of hotel and museum information, brief destination facts (such as temperatures, visa information) and PDF files. As a result of this, a total number of 565,926 words was collected and used in the analysis. Every .txt document was first analysed with TextSTAT in order to produce frequency tables. In a next step, VBPro was used to see in which contexts the most frequently used meaningful (excluding words such as and, if, or) words were used. VBPro provides a tool where it is possible to see the words in their original sentence, in that way referring to the context in which they belonged. Both analysis methods were also applied to 10 pages of the ETC website that related to the 10 countries mentioned above. Those data were then compared with the data of each NTO website. It was obvious that the ETC website had less pictures (a total of 61 pictures for the 10 pages, corresponding to 1.6% of total images of all NTO websites) and textual information (a total of 4,172 words for the 10 pages, corresponding to .74% of total number of

words from all NTO sites). Therefore, because of this relatively small size of the ETC-pages, the analysis of their images and text and subsequent comparison to the statistical results of the quantitative analysis of NTO sites, was more based on qualitative assessments through subjective interpretation by the authors based on face value than on any statistical procedures. Table 1: Number of images from NTO websites versus ETC website
NTO sites Images Words 128 51,490 413 26,087 667 136,784 270 27,589 387 51,705 311 28,785 83 13,437 238 30,534 1,040 98,391 342 101,124 3,879 565,926 Images 4 9 8 5 4 11 6 5 3 7 62 ETC Pages % of NTO Words 3.13 379 2.18 314 1.20 605 1.85 295 1.03 393 3.54 674 7.23 285 2.10 659 0.29 317 2.05 251 1.60 4,172 % of NTO 0.74 1.20 0.44 1.07 0.76 2.34 2.12 2.16 0.32 0.25 0.74

France Germany Holland Hungary Malta Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey TOTAL

Results

Table 2 shows an overview of the results, listing most frequently appearing picture motifs, contexts and themes as well as most frequently used words on the NTO and ETC websites for the countries included in this study. Objects and contexts of NTOwebsites are listed if they represent more than 5% of all motifs and contexts. For the ETC pages, objects and contexts are listed if they appear more than once (considering the low number of images used on the ETC site). Table 2: Results of website comparisons
NTO-site content (%) France Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Germany Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Holland Historic building (22) Nature (20) Sea (16) View on city (10) Town (.21) Paris (.21) City (.18) Wine (.16) Region (.16) Reflections of nature (28) Reflections of heritage (20) Historic building (17) Nature (9) River (8) View on city (5) City/Town (.93) Museum (.23) Castle (.20) Information (.19) Festival (.19) Reflections of heritage (37) Reflections of nature (25) ETC-site content (%) Nature (20) View on city (20) Tips (.77) Paris (.77) Insider (.77) Information (.77) Reflections of nature & heritage Snow and skiing experience Historic building (29) River (18) Garden (12) View on city (12) Towns (1.55) Enchanting (1.24) Heritage (1.24) Sites (1.24) Unesco (.93) Reflections of nature & heritage River cruising

Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Hungary Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Malta Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes

NTO-site content (%) ETC-site content (%) Historic building (10) River (7) Nature (13) River (13) Biking (13) Modern architecture (7) Painting (6) View on city (5) Amsterdam (.46) Museum (.38) Museum (.98) Amsterdam (.98) City (.33) Building (.21) Art (.18) Hermitage (.65) World (.65) Exhibition (.65) Reflections of heritage (36) Traditional way of life experience Reflections of modern Holland (19) Historic building (20) Nature (10) River (6) Folklore (5) View on city (5) Museum (.51) Church (.34) Town (.28) Budapest (.28) House (.26) Reflections of heritage (42) Reflections of nature (22) Historic building (17) Museum (7) Event (6) Sea (11) View on city (6) Islands (.44) Knights (.30) Gozo (.24) Valetta (.24) Church (.17) Reflections of heritage (28) Reflections of nature (24) Reflections of culture (24) Nature (18) Historic building (12) Mountains (8) View on city (7) Ski (.32) City (.32) Valley (.28) Mountain (.26) River (.26) Reflections of nature (42) Historic building (33) Bridge (22) World (.99) Europe (.99) Reflections of heritage Historic building (18) Sea (18) Valetta (1.24) Museum (.99) Paul (.99) Gozo (.74) John (.74) Reflections of heritage Reflections of nature Reflections of culture Nature (22) Historic building (17) Mountains (13) Valley (1.18) Ski (.74) Enjoy (.59) Health (.59) Mountain (.59) Reflections of heritage Reflections of nature

Slovenia Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Spain Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Sweden Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Switzerland

Historic building (24) Nature (10) Historic building (56) Food (6) View on city (9) Sea (6) Mountains (5) City (.50) Region (.47) Roman (.23) Architecture (1.05) Country (.22) Madrid (.20) Reflections of nature (41) Reflections of heritage Reflections of heritage (20) Historic building (8) Nature (8) River (7) Snow (10) Mountains (5) Mountain (.29) Stockholm (.21) Winter (.18) Day (.18) City (.17) Reflections of nature (34) River (19) Boat (13) Traditional town architecture (13) View on city (19) City (1.18) Restaurants (.74) Stockholm (.74) Boat (.59) Islands (.59) Reflections of heritage River cruising

Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes Turkey Picture Motifs Picture Contexts Words Picture Themes

NTO-site content (%) Nature (16) Mountains (20) Snow (13) Mountain (.42) Lake (.30) Town (.26) Region (.26) Winter (.24) Reflections of nature (44) Snow and skiing experience (28) Historic building (13) Nature (9) Archaeological site (6) Sea (7) Mountains (5) City (.44) Museum (.31) Mosque (.30) Ancient (.23) Sea (.22) Reflections of nature (34) Reflections of heritage (25)

ETC-site content (%) Mountains (38) Snow (25) Town/City (1.86) Cultural (.93) Lake (.93) Reflections of nature Snow and skiing experience Historic building (17) Boat (11) Sea (22) View on city (11) Archaeological (1.15) Attractions (1.15) Ancient (1.15) Reflections of nature Reflections of heritage

Figure 1 shows an example of how focal themes were distilled from motifs and contexts and their correlations. The lines mark significant correlations between two terms. The circles indicate clusters as interpreted by the authors. Each theme has a meaningful name with it written in bold. The frequency of each theme is also presented in percentage of the total. The most common themes for each country, which represent more than 20% of the total appearances in the images on that NTO country-site, are listed in Table 2 as well. Themes on the ETC-site were identified based on direct observation and interpretation by the authors, because of the limited number of images available. Gaze-type (Urry 2002) images were marked as reflections of, other types of themes are activity or experience based (often representing tourists) or presenting tourist facilities. As for the textual analysis the 5 most frequently used meaningful words are listed (which generally means at least 50 appearances on NTO-sites, but on the ETC-site a minimum of 3 appearances is required).
NTO HOLLAND
FOOD CHEESE AUCTION SHOP MARKET SHOPPING GASTRONOMY 6.50% REFLECTION OF CULTURE 11.92% GREENHOUSE TRA STATUE HB LAKE MONUMENT GARDEN BRIDGE SQUARE VOC TTA ARCHR BIKING REFLECTION OF HERITAGE 35.54% EVENT FLOWERS TA TC BICYCLE RIVER CRUISING 15.94% RIVER BOAT HARBOUR

NATURE REFLECTION OF MODERN HOLLAND - 18.65% MODTR MODARCH SKYLINE AMUPARK MUSEUM ICE

BEACH SUNSET SEA DELTA

SKATING SUNBA

REFLECTION OF NATURE 9.68%

SUN.SEA AND SAND EXPERIENCE 3.78%

LEISURE AND RECREATIONAL FACILITIES 2.36%

Fig. 1: Focal themes on NTO Holland site

When evaluating the pictorial analyses, it becomes clear that the motifs historic building and nature (as in unspoilt flora) are the most frequently depicted ones on the images retrieved from the NTO websites. Much attention is paid to the context view on city. Nine themes were identified based on the arrangements and the contexts: sun, sea and sand experience, leisure and recreational activities, reflection of culture, gastronomy, snow and skiing experience, river cruising, reflection of heritage, reflection of nature and reflection of modern Holland/Sweden/Switzerland. The analyses of the textual information are based on 570,098 words (565,926 from the NTO websites and 4,172 from the ETC pages). Based on the frequency tables and the analysis of the contexts, it became clear that almost each country promotes its capital, although attention is also paid to the general theme of city tourism. The historic background of the countries can be seen as important too. When comparing both analyses, it can be concluded that the images of the websites from France, Germany and Slovenia can be seen as an amplification of the statements made in the textual information. The same can be said for the sites of Sweden and Switzerland, although the pictures here also promote different focal themes. The images on the NTO sites and the ETC pages from Holland, Hungary, Malta, Spain and Turkey however form a real supplementary source of information, since they highlight different focal themes than the ones offered in the textual information. This illustrates that an analysis based on both components is clearly necessary in order to create a more correct and complete view on the image projected on all websites.

Conclusions

Most of the countries included in this study promote gaze-like images of reflections of heritage and reflections of nature as main themes on their NTO websites. It indicates a general lack of creativity and stereotyping, although with the marginal note that, of course, the general themes of heritage and nature can lead to different interpretations and references to specific local heritage, culture and natural resources. Nevertheless, it seems that the way in which these countries promote their image lacks reference to the experiential nature of tourism (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Leemans 1994; Vogt and Fesenmaier 1998). Exceptions here are Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland, where clear references are made to winter and mountain sport experiences. Another interesting case is Turkey, where uniqueness is reflected in the promotion of the ancient and oriental character of the country. In general, most of the ETC pages correspond very well to their relevant NTO sites, although there are three main exceptions: the ETC pages of Holland, Spain and Sweden. These ETC pages did not reflect the same image as was projected on the corresponding NTO sites. The image of a modern Holland, the sea and mountains in Spain and the snow and mountains in Sweden are not presented on the ETC pages as much as on the respective NTO websites. For the ETC pages of France and Slovenia,

non-imperative recommendations for improvements were made, such as the inclusion of minor themes on winter sports. This illustrates that indeed image makers (i.e. promotion agencies) actively select, organize, combine, and edit what is produced and distributed. What potential tourists see as a replication of the real and as a credible source of information, is instead a subjectively mediated content and composition (Albers and James 1988 as in; Fesenmaier and MacKay 1996: p. 40). Between the ETC and NTOs fortunately the discrepancies if any are small, probably because of their close co-operation and membership structure. But to what extent other cybermediaries, online industry players and travel sites reflect images that are compatible to what the NTO wants to project, is highly questionable. Nevertheless, as far as the coherence between ETC and NTO websites is concerned, this research study generated positive results. However, it still remains to be seen to what extent one can extrapolate these results to the whole ETC website, since the analysis has been restricted to 10 member countries. One must also take into account that the internet is a rapidly changing medium. The NTOs, for instance, pay much attention to their site and are regularly upgrading their content. Even at the moment of writing, the NTO site of Hungary as well as the ETC site was being redeveloped. Two other important factors one needs to be aware of are the abundant amount of information on the NTO sites, compared to the rather succinct information on the ETC pages, and the existence of the ETC site since 1995 whereas most NTO websites have been restructuring their site in a more recent past. Our conclusions must therefore be seen as only indicative for the situation at the time of analysis in spring 2004, but from a methodological point of view the potential for similar future research is promising. However, a particular interesting enhancement of this research could be to include consumers responses to the information presented. This is an area in which the authors are currently progressing their research.

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