Tourism marketing employees’ perspectives on digital marketing strategies for communication and competitiveness in the Palestinian tourism sector

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Palestine is rich in distinctive religious, historical, cultural, and natural tourism resources. Nevertheless, the tourism sector continues to underperform due to limited marketing capabilities, weak digital visibility, and persistent negative and misleading narratives that affect destination image and tourism demand. This study examines the role of digital marketing strategies (DMSs) in enhancing communication and competitiveness in the Palestinian tourism sector based on the perceptions of tourism marketing employees. A descriptive, correlational, and comparative research design was employed using a structured questionnaire administered to 141 employees responsible for tourism marketing across four major tourism sector stakeholder groups in the West Bank. Data were analyzed using SPSS. The study findings indicated that tourism marketing employees rated DMSs as highly important and perceived them as making a strong contribution to communication and competitiveness. Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Content Marketing received the highest importance ratings. Perceived contributions to communication centered on trust-building, improved access to tourism information, multilingual engagement, transparency, and timely interaction between tourists and tourism entities. Perceived contributions to competitiveness emphasized the digital representation of Palestinian identity, greater visibility of heritage and landmarks, countering misleading narratives, and broader international exposure. Significant differences were identified across stakeholder groups, with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities reporting the highest perceived contributions and oriental antiques stores the lowest. These differences may reflect variation in organizational roles and operating contexts across stakeholder groups. Overall, the findings indicate that tourism marketing employees associate DMSs with stronger communication and competitiveness, which together represent complementary dimensions of tourism-sector improvement.