Messages de la Grèce , 1946: resistance as a vehicle to rebrand Greece for tourism

Tourism periodicals play a crucial role in nation branding and image-making, acting as cultural mediators that construct travel narratives and shape readers’ perceptions and cultural knowledge of a country. Hercule Joannidès, a Greek-born businessman and intellectual based in Paris, organised cultural cruises from France to Greece and published the tourism magazine Le Voyage en Grèce during the interwar period. This article analyzes the magazine’s 1946 special issue, ‘Messages de la Grèce’, as a strategic initiative designed to serve as a key instrument of tourism marketing in preparation for the relaunch of Joannidès’s cultural cruises to Greece. It argues that in the immediate postwar context, Joannidès deliberately adapted his promotional policy about Greece to the shared experience of occupation, resistance, and liberation that appealed to his French elite audience. Departing from the magazine’s interwar emphasis on Greece’s ancient past and picturesque Mediterranean landscapes, ‘Messages de la Grèce’ foregrounded themes of liberty, resistance, and heroism, presenting them as enduring values of Greek history from antiquity to the present. After outlining Joannidès’s understanding of tourism in the interwar years, the article examines the special issue’s visual and textual representations of Greece as a strategy of rebranding the country in the postwar context.