Promoting destinations: An exploratory study of publicity programmes used by national tourism organisations

To date, research into the marketing management practices of destination management organisations (DMOs) has typically focused on topics such as destination image studies, marketing strategy, conversion studies and advertising research. A promotional method that has been largely ignored in research conducted so far is the use of publicity. While much publicity concerning a place (destination) is unplanned and incidental, and occurs in the general course of ‘news’, the publicity programmes conducted by destinations are often quite deliberate, planned, methodical and coordinated with a clear set of objectives. Indeed, some DMOs report receiving a greater annual value (as measured in terms of equivalent commercial advertising expenditure) from their publicity programmes than from their entire annual budgets. This paper reports on research undertaken to gather information on the extent, nature and conduct of efforts by national tourism organisations (NTOs) to generate publicity for the purpose of stimulating tourist demand, and to compare and contrast the different approaches and outcomes.