Web advertising messages in Croatian tourism: Exploring qualitative and quantitative perspectives

Purpose:Today's tourism has become a multinational business of global importance, and therefore advertising tourism destinations and national tourism is crucial. Advertising is a tool that can shape the desired image of the destination, building a positive image and reputation of the destination and, consequently, attracting tourists to the destination, helping tourism providers save money and energy. The research aim is twofold: first, to contextualize the research empirical and conceptual contributions in terms of peer-review articles concerning tourism advertising messages; second, to provide insights into the characteristics and the structure of online tourism advertising messages appearing in Croatian tourism websites. Methodology The study examines 231 tourism advertising messages available online on official tourist boards of the main Croatian tourist regions. The research methodology consists of both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis. Firstly, discourse analysis was conducted on the collected advertising messages to identify salient linguistic traits; secondly, quantitative as well as sentiment analysis will provide further insight on the most recurring forms and functions together with an evaluation of the impact of the texts on potential tourists. Findings The performed qualitative and quantitative analysis confirmed the typical structure and form of advertising messages. However, the sentiment analysis results pointed out that the investigated advertising messages have a rather low impact on tourist and customers. Therefore, to make advertising messages more attractive and catch readers' attention, they should be designed and created with a greater focus on visitors' expectations, desires and needs, so that they could be used as tourism flows redistribution tools. Contribution The present paper represents an introductory analysis of the scientific research project ZP UNIRI 4/18 supported by the University of Rijeka and is aimed to contribute to a deeper understanding of online tourism advertising messages on Croatians tourist boards websites, their structure and forms. The research results are to be considered as a prerequisite for further detailed and systematic analyses from a multidisciplinary and multimodal perspective.