Visions of nature in tourism advertising

Abstract

This article relates two concepts narrowly related: the nature and the tourism through the advertising system. If it is truth that the interaction of the nature in the forming of the modern tourism has created a remarkable academic interest, the forms and representations of the nature in the tourist advertising have received much less attention. It is usually an aspect that is taken for granted; on the other hand, the ideological prejudice against advertising may directly emerge. The images of advertising are a privileged screen to observe, as there is not only a unique type of tourist nature; however there is a diversity of forms to represent it, related with different socio-cultural processes that we attempt to define, looking for their prototypical manifestations. The purpose is to analyze conceptually how nature is produced and represented in the tourist discourse by assuming that the idea of nature is a social construct and a changing product that evolves in parallel with the different forms of tourism.