The Promotion of the Veneto Territory in Times of Crisis: A Discourse Analysis of a Tourist Board Website during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on institutional tourism communication. In view of the necessary changes occurred in the tourism field since the start of the pandemic, a comparison will be made with the results of a previous study on the English and the Italian versions of the seven tourism board websites corresponding to the seven “provinces” in the Veneto region (Cesiri 2019). The present study analyses the changes in the communicative strategies used by the tourist board website of the Veneto Region, that collects all the websites of the provinces, examining how the territory is presented to prospective visitors as well as how the website informs prospective visitors about the pandemic and the regulations in place to prevent contagion. The Italian and the English versions of the website are investigated using Fairclough’s (2003) approach to discourse analysis. Particularly relevant is the notion of ‘presupposition,’ namely any kind of background assumption that is present in a text. Levels of presupposition are investigated considering not only the territorial description and promotion but also elements of specialized communication about the pandemic, its outcomes, and the corresponding restrictions and regulations that are in place at the moment of writing and that will presumably still be in place in the near future. Results show that some territories do not provide any mention to restrictions, while others provide only superficial mentions to safety measures or external links to the website of the Italian Ministry of Health.