The Internet as new medium communication for the destinations: Madeira Island case study

Abstract

With Internet new tourism destinations are promoted and developed. That communication medium generates and increases the consumers' demands and expectations. Local and regional government bodies and private companies both play a new role: through Internet they should be able to feed the tourist's imaginary in order to choose their communities and regions instead of others. This article analyses the importance that local and regional authorities attribute to new technologies for promoting their municipalities as tourism destinations. The research was based on interviews and analysis of web sites. The fieldwork has been done from January 2004 to June 2004. This article mainly approaches the interviews analysis and it is structured in the following topics: Introduction; theoretical approach, interviews analysis and conclusion.