Sustainability in Mountain Tourism: a Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Web Sites in the German Language

Sustainability is a fundamental concept of Alpine tourism in countries like Germany and Austria, which have signed the Alpine Convention, a treaty between Alpine countries and the EU. The following paper presents the main results of a multimodal discourse analysis conducted on selected online presentations of eco-friendly hotels in Austria and in Germany. The selection of this textual genre is due primarily to the fact that online presentations are a sort of gateway to introduce the reader into the world of tourism—a world that, at the pre-trip stage, is only virtual, becoming real in the ongoing-trip stage. Hotel presentations try to convince readers to go beyond the pre-trip stage and to choose the accommodation structure for the holiday. Austrian and German presentations use common verbal strategies, but they differ in the relationship between visual and verbal components.