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22
региональные проблемы развития туристского сервиса
regional issues of tourism service
UDC 338.48
DOI: 10.24411/1995-0411-2020-10405
Ganna G. ZAKHAROVA
Malaga University (Malaga, Spain)
PhD student; e-mail: anya25vanya@mail.ru
RHETORIC IN TOURISM WEBSITES: INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES TO ENGAGE CONSUMERS
Abstract. The persuasive power of advertising discourse is very much experienced today. The same happens in relation to tourism marketing materials. In order to attract the attention of the viewers, the travel companies choose various techniques to express their notion of the brand. Technologies are constantly evolving bringing new solutions for web designers. Hence, there exist different innovative approaches in tourism marketing to attract and convince potential tourists to book a tourism product. The present article elucidates and discusses new technological solutions for tourism websites to allure potential tourists. The paper reviews the elements of persuasive web tourism marketing, such as 3D virtual tour, online webcam, interactive map, Google Maps, and online booking form. These technologies provide useful information, create additional experiences in the viewers and help them finalize their decisions. The article highlights how these components as persuasive strategies of tourism promotional materials can influence the decisions of tourism websites' users. The result section provides the real examples of deployment of the mentioned technologies in influencing the audience by the websites of "Karpaty" and "Solva" resorts (Ukraine). All these techniques form a theoretical framework for researches on persuasiveness and are worth attention as they play an important role in the promotion of tourism services. The data collection of this study will provide updated information in relation to rhetoric of tourism.
Keywords: tourism discourse, tourism promotion, persuasive discourse, persuasive techniques, new technologies in marketing.
Citation: Zakharova, G. G. (2020). Rhetoric in tourism websites: innovative technologies to engage consumers. Service and Tourism: Current Challenges, 14(4), 57-68. doi: 10.24411/1995-0411-202010405.
Article History Disclosure statement
Received 16 August 2020 No potential conflict of interest was reported by
Accepted 21 September 2020 the author(s).
© 2020 the Author(s)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
UDC 338.48
DOI: 10.24411/1995-0411-2020-10405
ЗАХАРОВА Анна Геннадьевна
Университет Малаги (Испания) аспирант; anya25vanya@mail.ru
РИТОРИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ ТУРИСТИЧЕСКИХ САЙТОВ: НОВЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ ПРИВЛЕЧЕНИЯ КЛИЕНТОВ
Туристический маркетинг очень хорошо известен сегодня своими убедительными материалами. Чтобы привлечь внимание аудитории, туристические компании выбирают различные техники в своих электронных текстах. Немаловажную роль в туристическом дискурсе играют современные технологии, которые стремительно развиваются, принося новые решения для веб-дизайнеров. Существуют различные инновационные технологии в туристическом маркетинге, чтобы привлечь и убедить потенциальных туристов купить туристический продукт. В данной статье рассматриваются технологические решения для туристических сайтов, которые работают для привлечения потенциальных туристов. Эти компоненты предоставляют необходимую информацию, создают дополнительные впечатления и помогают убедить пользователей туристических сайтов. В статье анализируется влияние элементов убедительного маркетинга веб-туризма, таких как виртуальный 3D тур, онлайн веб-камера, интерактивная карта, Google Maps и сервис онлайн-бронирования, на решения пользователей туристических сайтов. Результаты анализа приводят реальные примеры использования данных технологий для привлечения клиентов на сайтах санаториев «Карпаты» и «Сольва» (Украина). Эти маркетинговые приёмы заслуживают особое внимания, так как они играют важную роль в продвижении туристических услуг. Исследование позволит получить актуальную информацию в отношении риторических аспектов языка туризма.
Ключевые слова: туристический дискурс, продвижение туризма, влиятельная речь, методы убеждения, инновационные технологии в маркетинге.
Для цитирования: Захарова А.Г. Риторические аспекты туристических сайтов: новые технологии привлечения клиентов // Современные проблемы сервиса и туризма. 2020. Т.14. №4. С. 57-68. DOI: 10.24411/1995-04112020-10405.
Дата поступления в редакцию: 16 августа 2020 г. Дата утверждения в печать: 21 сентября 2020 г
Introduction
Nowadays, tourism industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. It is presently one of the fastest growing economic sectors. Since tourism involves the greatest people movement and is one of the largest economic activities in the world, hence it has become a popular focus of research. As a multidiscipline, tourism is also one of the exited research areas, in particular its discourse. Unlike other industries, tourism is an information-intensive business, therefore the discourse of tourism mediates the relationship between tourist and destination by manipulating various kinds of linguistic, visual, audio, and audio-visual resources to persuade potential consumers and convert them into actual clients [5]. The language of tourism is a highly specialized discourse which has its own established practices and characteristics, but these practices evolve in accordance with the technologies that constantly develop, bringing new inventions and innovations for tourism marketing.
Tourism promotion is an essential source of information for the potential tourists. The main goal of tourism promotion is to portray the beautifulness and uniqueness of a certain place. Tourism promotion engages people in decision-making concerning the destination they would like to travel to [10]. Advertisement gives significance to the things; they try to sell emotions, sensations and experiences that travellers look for. Moreover, promotion allows to a destination to differentiate to the others and build its own identity. Advertisement allows positioning a destination in the tourist mind. The function of all of them is to make all the possible efforts in order to try to make the would-be customer to become a real tourist.
Potential tourists cannot test-drive a destination before purchase; it results in an inherent uncertainty for the tourists. In other words, a holiday is not something tourists can check beforehand, and thus, promotion is the product and plays a bigger role in leisure and tourism than in any other market. The consumer buys a holiday, purely on the basis of symbolic expectations established promotionally through words, pictures, sounds or promises [9].
Preliminary results indicate that the search for the ideal touristic destination, the desire to go and experience new places is supported both by strategic, persuasive language and by technological choices used in tourism promotion [7]. Contexts have to be selected in order to attractively present the place and persuade potential tourists to choose the product or service advertised. Hence, new technological representations are important in designing tourism texts to be turned into objects of tourist consumption.
With such vast competition, the promoter needs to demonstrate the uniqueness of their product using effective discourse techniques. Therefore, discourse of tourism is described as rhetoric since it implies the power of speaker over the addressee.
Nowadays, tourism discourse highly relies on various innovative technologies, the functionality of which embodies certain cultural norms. The websites using innovative technologies become more powerful and more effective. For example, the map that integrates with Google Maps provides quick and easy directions for travellers trying to find the resort complex. 3D virtual tour digitally transports potential customers to a hotel or travel destination. The interactive map visualizes the location of the resort complex and its premises. Such visualising data give a quick summary and overview of the place. The online webcams provide live aerial views of touristic places. The booking engine is essentially the last step before making an actual transaction. All of them simplify communication and the booking process. Due to the implication of these technologies, tourism websites become a multi-authored environment.
Due to the fact that technologies are constantly evolving and new solutions appear, the designer of tourism websites need to stay up to date on everything that is happening in the industry in order the tourism websites to stay relevant and engaging. For this reason, new techniques for website layout are of paramount importance in tourism industry.
Advertising discourse is persuasive because the intention of any kind of advertising
is to touch the target market and make that market aware of the excellent characteristics that a product can offer. Tourism discourse is also highly persuasive because its ultimate purpose is to sell a product by describing a reality that has to be perceived by potential tourists as authentic and which can give them the illusion of really living an "off-the-beaten-track" holiday experience [8, p. 21]. In the same manner, persuasiveness is observed in the technological tools of tourism website design.
Theoretical background Advertising and promotion are two words frequently used nowadays. They are closely related and in a continuous expansion. Both of them are expensive but at the same time money generating. More than often the choice of a holiday depends on how well it was advertised or how persuasive and engaging the message was. Tourism advertising does not only influence a potential visitor's initial choices but it also influences perception and length of stay, which is an important bonus for any advertiser. Consumers do not buy products or services, but the expectation of benefits that satisfy needs. To reach desired advertising responses, it's important to design advertisements that match these needs [2]. New technologies are helpful tools in reaching this aim.
The challenge for tourism marketers is to stand out, get the attention of tourists and influence the decision of them. Furthermore, the growth in the number of tourist destinations around the world has resulted in a similar product offer by different destinations. Arguably, each destination today claims to have luxury accommodations, unique attractions, friendly people and so on, and it becomes increasingly difficult for a destination to compete merely on the grounds of its functional characteristics. Therefore, the knowledge on effective advertising in tourism is not just important, it is crucial in this business. The knowledge on the functionality of some technical tools can be very precious for those who create tourism websites In this globalized world, one of the important aspects to consider when promoting and advertising a new product, whether it is in the tourism industry or in any other field,
is the packaging of the product. The way of presenting a product is important in attracting new customers. The expansion of tourism around the globe has created new and major questions for destination marketing. An increasing tourist activity and a growing number of tourist destinations have resulted in a complex and highly competitive global marketplace in which destinations compete for the attention of potential tourists. An outcome of this situation is the need to create an efficient positioning strategy. A destination should be favourably differentiated from other destinations in order to receive a place on potential tourists' "shopping list" [6]. With such vast competition, the promoter needs to demonstrate the uniqueness of their product and persuade him or her to it.
To convince potential tourists to visit a particular place, marketing practitioners have to create an appealing imagery of a place that would stand out from the other competing destinations and would fit the needs and interests of a target market. The most important component in this business is to create the desirable image in tourists' mind. However, the product in the tourism business is destination, it is therefore crucial for this industry to create and manage destination image that suits effective marketing strategy.
Hence, the communication of a desirable and realistic image of the tourism destination to potential tourists is predominant, as nothing will convince potential tourists to visit a destination unless they possess a desirable image of that destination, and unless the marketing process is successful in attracting tourists through the creation of such images. Before tourists choose a destination, they need to have some information about destination and have the interest to go there. Therefore, destination marketers have to create a positive destination's image. Using different techniques is extremely important for tourism marketers to create this image.
Therefore, promotional texts for destinations are not created by accident, but they are well-thought discourses. Tourism discourse is a type of specialized discourse typically characterized by stylistic choices
and different strategies of persuasion [1; 4]. The persuasive power of discourse is very much experienced in web promotion. Marketers rely on powerful discourses and technical strategies, shaping world-views of each destination. Before setting foot on certain soil, tourists already have a mental image of what it will look like. Without seducing imag-inaries, there probably would be very little tourism at all.
Advertisers often use rhetorical devices, techniques and strategies to achieve their goals of moving their audiences and changing their attitudes. The persuasive functions are expressed not only through the lexical and syntactic means, but also by using non-linguistic or non-verbal elements. Tourism information, usually a combination of linguistic and supporting visual elements, creates, codifies and communicates certain mythical experiences [3].
One of the most innovative visual options is to highlight the associated amenities with the help of a virtual reality (3D) tour. Virtual reality, or VR for short, is one of the biggest emerging technology trends. The tourism marketing world starts to make use of various opportunities it provides. Virtual reality is essentially a digital augmentation of the real world through the use of computer-generated simulations. This innovative technology employs images, sounds and sensations to make users feel as though they are physically present in a virtual world. Virtual reality technology typically makes use of virtual reality headsets and this equipment enables users to look around and immerse themselves in a digital environment. While these tours are best experienced with a VR headset, they can also potentially be made available to those without access to a headset, using 360 video technology.
For designers of tourism websites, virtual reality has particular appeal, because it can digitally transport potential customers to a travel destination. Within the hospitality industry, VR has become particularly important, because of the amount of information the average customer needs before they will actually book a hotel room. Rather than reading through descriptions, which may not be trustworthy, it offers customers
the chance to experience things for themselves. For example, this potentially allows customers to experience a virtual recreation of rooms within a resort or to take a look at nearby attractions.
Online webcams are used in tourism industry for reality experiences online. This technology is a useful tool to stream an image of certain place in real time through the Internet. The designers of tourism websites make use of this technology to present the places of interest to the potential customers. It helps the users of website to understand how a site looks like and become familiar with the place. Moreover, the viewers are introduced to the real weather conditions of the region.
Interactive map is an innovative technology for tourism websites that helps give an entire image of destination location. It allows zooming in and out, panning around, identifying specific features, querying underlying data, such as by topic or a specific indicator. It generates reports and other means of visualising select information in the map.
Google Maps provides a wider vision of a place. Embedding this technology in tourism website is a beneficial issue, as the viewers will be able to localize a place on earth map. It gives an imagery of destination allowing zooming in and out. Furthermore, it can also arrange a route planning for travellers right on a destination website, thus, the viewer stays longer on it.
Online booking form helps quickly and easily complete reservations. It gathers all necessary information from clients and can provide payment options to finalize booking. It requires only a one-side action, from clients, which may be realized at any time convenient to them.
In terms of internet commerce, persuasive marketing includes how a web page is designed. Applying technologies to web design, focusing on their influential perspective for decision-making process, elements, such as 3D virtual tour, online webcam, interactive map, Google Maps, and online booking form, combined with the right promotional messages, encourage website visitors to follow pre-planned pathways on the website and take specific actions, rather than giving
them free choice in how they interact with a website. An e-commerce websites want to convert visits to sales, and persuasive new marketing techniques ease that process. Research objective, methodology and data
As all languages have to be learned, the language of tourism, too, requires a process of socialization for those who generate it. For better understanding and analysing tourism information from the persuasive point of view, it is more than important to consider technological aspects which tourism text involves to create persuasive unit. Paying attention to these details will give an opportunity to look at the nature of tourism promotion and realise which technological tools are used nowadays from which this persuasive effect come from.
Often called "loaded language" [2], the language of tourism advertising aims to inform, persuade, sell, thus, changing people's opinions, choices and points of view. In this case, promotional texts for destinations cannot be created by accident, but they follow a specific and specialized discourse. Therefore, due to the multimodality of the language of tourism, techniques of different types are employed to attract the potential clients.
The purpose of this paper is to offer a general view on the some technological components of this type of discourse in order to better understand their main persuasive features. I will undertake an explanatory study from which we will see examples of the use of these techniques in tourism promotional material with the intention of persuading. I will consider the technologies deployed by the websites of "Karpaty" hotel and resort and recreation-therapeutical complex "Solva Resort & SPA" accessed from https://san-kar-paty.com/ and http://solvahotel.com/en/ in order to encourage visitors to choose these places as their travel destination. The selection of these websites is purposeful. All of them officially represent health tourism and describe their varied tourism locations, healthcare services, nature attraction, and culture in an attractive language using various technological strategies. The data compiled was taken during 2019-2020.
The previously discussed technologies, namely, 3D virtual tour, online webcam, in-
teractive map, Google Maps, will be considered in the analysis of two corpuses. Each technique will be discussed in relation to its contribution to the persuasive effects. It will be observed how the technologies shape consumers' attitudes and evaluation towards the services and ultimately influence their purchase decision. Hence, I will identify the technological tools used to enhance the tourist experience during the search phase, prior to the travel. I will give a complete view on these strategies employed in order to persuade.
Thus, a closer look at the techniques will help us understand the way the discourse of tourism operates and their role in tourism promotional documents. I will investigate how these elements adopted in the tourism promotional materials construct the persuasive discourses of tourism. Hence, this paper will look at how tourism promotion, from a technological perspective, depends on certain elements in order to promote a break away from everyday life.
This paper contributes to the field of tourism studies by focusing on the concept of persuasion and on how persuasion is activated in tourism communication through various technologies. The results of this study could be helpful for those who design tourism websites or create tourism promotional materials.
Results and discussion
1. Virtual Reality (3D tour). To keep customers engaged, the resort "Solva" offers a virtual reality tour on their website. Using this virtual reality technology, the guests can experience the location remotely. This means that through the virtual tour, they are able to visit the place virtually and experience the surrounding even without being there. The detailed and fast-loading virtual reality environment showcases key features of the location and its services. It delivers information allowing users to experience the exterior and what the inside of resort actually looks and feels like and how it is organized. The tour takes the viewer on a virtual reality experience to all the attractions and highlights, focusing upon the spacious and luxurious qualities of the property and the main activities that guests can expect to enjoy.
Through this latest technological advancement, the website is presented in a more attractive and explorable manner enabling the user to get all the information they need in one single experience.
This type of presentation is used to illustrate the functional nature of the place. The unique sensory experience gives users the opportunity to embark on an immersive journey through the lobby, the stunning marble reception area, the hotel's rooms and exquisitely private accommodations, explore its amenities, take a walk around the resort, visit the hotel restaurant, banquet facilities, and explore the spa treatments, private massage parlour and other areas in a 360-degree virtual walkthrough. The guests can look at the resort's spa facilities and check out all the water activities they can take part in. As the resort is located in a scenic area, the author makes the use of this cutting edge technology to show-off the property's surroundings involving the sheer natural beauty associated with quiet and relaxing place that provides a sense of peace and rejuvenation.
The viewers can now fully immerse themselves in the property, moving within the rooms and outside as if they are actually inside the resort. By displaying how guests will be able to interact with this splendid environment, the viewer is provided with a first-hand glimpse of what he or she can expect to enjoy. Technically speaking, virtual reality is a 3D computer-generated environment that looks just like the real world.
The most powerful aspect of this virtual tour is that it submits all control to the viewer. The virtual tour allows viewers to explore a property independently. The viewers can select which images they would like to view and navigate as they choose. They can choose in what direction they want to head and what they want to skip. The user can move through at their own pace, looking in every direction from multiple angles to gain an unprecedented level of knowledge about what they are going to be paying for, all from their desktop or smartphone.
As every visitor has unique needs, they can interact with the media by zooming in on details or panning up, down, left and right. It is a valuable tool to get an in-depth view
of the interior. In each room, they can focus on the lighting, flooring or another aspect of interest to them. They can check out every room and corner with a few mouse clicks. Therefore, this virtual reality presentation is imbued with a personalised feel due to the fact that the viewer is allowed to remain within each area for some amount of time before moving on. Compared to photos and videos, this technology offers a more accurate and realistic experience providing detailed visual information to the potential customers.
In other words, this first-person virtual tour allows users to interact with the environment. The marketing strategy helps try the tourism product before booking it. The virtual tour gives the users the power to interact with images to get a better understanding of the location and its services. It is an excellent way to represent the entire brand and to build a digital rapport with potential guests. By highlighting the most attractive features of the resort, the author entices the audience to make a booking.
The author designed the stunning tour to deliver dynamic, compelling and powerful visual content promoting the health resort in a vivid and convincing way. The enjoyable experience helps convey the message that the website is transparent and authentic. Transparency with the clients leads to increased trust in the services making the brand trustworthy. The wide-angle views offer an effective way to show customers how their stay could look like and give them confidence that they are dealing with the honest website with nothing to hide, before arriving at a purchase decision. Thus, it is a useful tool to increase reliance on making a decision online.
This innovative and valuable technological tool enhances customer experience, generates a higher level of curiosity and maximises engagements making the website stand out and more attractive. It keeps the potential customers longer on the website by allowing them to interact with the location and services with just a click of a mouse. Unlike plain text or still images, the 360-degree panorama helps the visitors stay hooked on the website for longer period of
time, thus increasing web visitor retention. The users are likely to stick around and see what else the resort can offer. This ensures they will continue browsing the website to learn more about the resort. The more they stay on the website, the bigger the changes of them converting into a booker.
Hence, this high-quality, engaging, interactive virtual tour helps grab the audience's attention and creates a positive first impression. With eye-catching features in the tour, the resort is more memorable to the potential guests. It increases the user's willingness to experience the destination for real, thus finalising their decision. It means that the virtual tour positively influences buying behaviour in viewers.
Moreover, this ultimate marketing tool for the travel industry creates a sense of value. Having interactive media on the website lets the consumer know the resort cares enough to invest money and time in the way to market its services, thus creating an additional value for this place.
2. Interactive map. The reader is offered an interactive map to virtually explore the resort "Karpaty" (Figure 1). It is truly the best thing to being on the website. This map visualizes the location of the resort complex and
the premises inside of Karpaty's resort limits. It is an image with hotspots where a hotspot is a location on the map that responds when the mouse moves over it. When the mouse over a hotspot, a text appears next to it. It can be manipulated without triggering a page load. This data-driven graphic helps to keep the visitors engaged and demonstrates all relevant information on the points of interest within the resort such as outdoor pools, parks, SPA-centres, hotel building, restaurants, parking space, etc. These locations are connected to actual images and descriptions of the destination that will appear in a tooltip. The map with its layers of information assists the clients in finding the position of these places within the complex.
It is very easy to explore it. The viewer does not have to click and press the back button over and over to see the content. The text labels are added without the user having to click around to explore what is hidden. The primary purpose of this data-driven graphic is to make complex information understandable and easy to analyse. These types of visualisations are useful when there is a lot of complex data to present and the user needs to be able to analyse that data.
This simple illustrated map does a good job of conveying the information that is im-
Fig. 2 - Two shots of the video streaming by webcam on Independence Square in Truskavets in the corpus of "Karpaty" resort website
portant for a would-be customer. The visualising data give a quick summary and overview of the place. The destination is shown in context, giving viewers a real sense of place and perspective. It is a pleasant experience for the viewer that can be converted in an entire trip on one web page. Thus, the author gives the addressee a sense of being there.
3. Online webcams. The website incorporates the Truskavets online webcams and dedicates the entire page for these visual imageries. Truskavets is the city where the resort complex "Karpaty" is located. The viewers can visit this place online and enjoy Independence Square and the Buvet area. These two street-level webcams are video cameras that stream video in real time offering views of these places. The cams give the live, streaming views of current happenings and events taking place in those spots. They feature the local time and a name of the area where the camera is located and provide live aerial views of these important places of Truskavets to the world 24 hours a day. High resolution allows capturing the surroundings in good quality.
The first webcam overlooks the main square of Truskavets - Independence Square (Figure 2). This HD (high definition) webcam is situated at one end of Central Park Adam-ivka the glimpse of which is featured in the background. It is one of the busiest spots of the city, which can be seen in real time. This central part of Truskavets is something that is worth coming here. Here are held public events, festivals and concerts, as well as meetings and marches. Through this camera, the viewers get to see all these cultural events live (usually held on the weekends and holidays).
The second webcam takes the viewer on a virtual tour of the most visited spot in Truskavets - the Lower Buvette where the tourists are provided with the pump facilities (Figure 3). The gist of the treatment in Truskavets is taking the mineral waters and this spot is considered to be the main one for these services. It is located in the heart of the city on Torosevicha Street. Probably, it is interesting for whose who is interested in this kind of treatment to observe what the heart of Truskavets looks like. It is worth not-
Fig. 3 - Two shots of the video streaming by webcam on the Buvet in Truskavets in the corpus of "Karpaty" resort website
Fig. 4 - Images of Goggle Maps in "Karpaty" sanatorium website
ing that the building in which the Lower Buvette is located is included in the list of sights of the city. The Lower Buvette is visited not only for drinking mineral water, but also for just walking, listening to birds, observing the local representatives of the park fauna, including hedgehogs, squirrels, pigeons, and others new acquaintances. The webcam almost completely covers the object, showing not only the area for tourists seeking the treatment, but a small part of the surrounding area. Thus, the website visitors can watch live the activity in the beautiful city centre of Truskavets, in western Ukraine.
By clicking on webcam, the target audience can go from any place in the world to Truskavets. The traveller is given the opportunity to travel live online and discover the special places next to the sanatorium "Karpaty". The live webcams keep people interested as they have the allure and appeal of a "now" event. They create an authentic and meaningful content. They provide a passive interaction with the would-be customers, maintaining and building the relationship with them. The webcams' real-time views provide an avenue for people to "be there" from far away and to share in the experience and dream of their future visit. With the webcams, the travellers are always up to date with the latest weather information out of the holiday region. Therefore, this virtual travel to Truakavets tourist attractions is used to persuade the target audience and can be considered as a good technique in the promotion of the location and region.
4. Google maps. The website of "Karpaty" resort provides the web mapping
service developed by Google (Figure 4). Google Maps is one of the most widely used services nowadays with interactive zooming and panning, location details, satellite views, and 360 degree street level panoramas. It has a smooth moving, simple to use interface that is regularly updated with new features. It is an incredibly versatile tool that is quick and easy to handle.
Embedded Google Map into the website offers the visitors a lot of benefits. It is a simple way to help them easily find the direction to the location and build a route to the spot right on the page as the map includes a pin dropped at the address of the resort. They can also navigate the area for more general overviews of the neighbourhood. Thus, the map is useful to highlight nearby points of interest, like parks, lakes, rivers, restaurants, etc. It allows the website visitors to actually see where each point is, making it clearer to understand and easier to plan their trip.
The virtual map can be displayed as a map view image or a street view image (terrain or earth view). The author includes a street view picture of the location to help people see what the location will look like if they arrive. They get a first impression of it through pictures and street view. This might be also helpful for orientation when visiting the place in real life.
By adding the map on the website, it saves customers the steps of opening maps in another window and copying over the address. They can simply click on the map pin and get directions. This makes it easy for customers to access the information right when they need it. It keeps visitors on the
site. Whatever they want to know about the location, they can find it in the map while remaining on the site instead of leaving for the Google site.
The virtual map service increases confidence by demonstrating maximum details about the resort's physical presence. The author can assure the clients that this place is reliable. Moreover, the map adds an air of tech savviness and professionalism to the website. Therefore, the resort presents itself in the best way by using Google Maps which can be considered as a suitable tool for online tourism marketing.
5. There is an embedded online booking form in the header of "Karpaty" website. On the upper right end of the header, a ribbon-shaped interactive sign with a green background and a white typed 'Book Now' can be clicked and a pop-up window opens providing online booking form to fill in. This is a method to keep the customers on the site while they are booking. Moreover, the customers can make a reservation whenever it fits into their schedule. It helps to collect details from the visitors, to offer the guests to check room availability and to find the appropriate dates to visit the resort. The immediate availability of booking can increase the number of purchases. Without one, the resort might lose all the potential clients who make bookings online only. It is a call-to-action area containing and the most important element on the website and all efforts are focused on getting people to click through. The author provides a meaning path through the sections of the site that guides the viewer to taking action, the main goal of the website. The content of the header remains consistent from one webpage to another, so the user can click a call-to-action button at any time.
Conclusion
Tourism has gained a prominent position in international business markets, and the constant flow of information to promote destinations and attract potential clients is one of the most sensitive and strategic keys to success. In other words, tourism industry owes much of its success to the way tourist
destinations are advertised, that is, to the content of tourism promotional texts. For this reason, the discourse of tourism enriched with technological choices is of paramount importance.
The communication of a desirable and realistic image of the tourism destination to potential tourists is predominant, as nothing will convince potential tourists to visit a destination unless they possess a desirable image of that destination, and unless the marketing process is successful in attracting tourists through the creation of such images. Hence, the advertisements make use of a wide range of techniques to attain their ultimate goal: persuade and eventually sell. More than often, good advertising techniques are the flne line between success and failure.
The present article has detected the innovative technologies of tourism persuasive language to influence people, namely, 3D virtual tour, online webcam, interactive map, Google Maps, and online booking form. Both corpuses under analysis have shown how they heavily rely on the innovations in the web design that can influence a reader. All of these techniques deployed engage the viewers and keep them on the websites longer.
Therefore, the discourse of tourism implies power of the speaker over the addressee, the art of persuasive or impressive website design. The use of promotional material with the help of new technologies on websites has an enormous power over the addressees due to the information they provide. The article identifies the technological tools and enticing strategies employed in these tourism materials to achieve persuasion and to establish social control.
This article contributes to the fleld of tourism studies by focusing on how persuasion is activated in tourism communication by tourism destinations. In particular, the aim was to understand what technological components of tourism website communication could be considered as persuasive ones. The results of this study could be helpful for those who create tourism marketing materials.
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