Official Tourism Websites: A Discourse Analysis Perspective investigates the construction and promotion of identity of tourist locales by the designers of the official websites for destinations such as Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia; New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana; Myanmar/Burma; US Sports Halls of Fame; and, in recognizing the influence and popularity of such sites, three websites parodying the imaginary nations of Phaic Tan, Molvania, and San Sombrero. Analysis addresses how tourism websites foster social action and, therefore, contribute to the (re)construction of nations and other communities by variably fostering re-imagination, rebirth, renaissance, promotion and caution, and patriotism. Recognizing that tourism texts can function to both construct and embody identity for their respective locales, this investigation employs critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, and visual semiotic analysis in the investigation of web texts and images.

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The discourse of tourism is a discourse of identity construction, promotion, contestation and acceptance. It is a discourse created through linguistic and visual texts and increasingly today, through the internet on a whole range of travel-related websites, including those of destination management organisations and a plethora of social networking sites. In this immensely informative and provocative text Rick Hallett and Judith Kaplan-Weinger take to task the role of the World Wide Web in mediating the construction of identities. Theirs is a timely and thought-provoking book which makes a major contribution to the task of making the meanings of these sites transparent through discourse analysis. The book is scholarly yet hugely readable and well-illustrated; it readily communicates the authors’ command of their subject.

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Official tourism websites represents a fascinating preliminary venture into an as yet underexplored field. The authors describe the text as an “initial foray into the analysis and understanding of the role of the internet in fostering identity construction for tourists and destinations” (121), and they invite further analysis building on their innovative approach.