An analysis of tourism imagery promoting Malta’s cultural heritage

Abstract

When travelling to the Maltese islands via Air Malta, the island’s national airline, passengers are presented with a free printed monthly issue of the airline’s in-flight magazine, which has been offering visual representations of the Maltese archipelago’s cultural heritage for more than 40 years. The changing nature of these representations over time, and in particular, the images chosen for the front cover of these magazines, may offer interesting insights into changing trends in the use of heritage in the destination imagery presented to visitors to the Maltese archipelago. Marketing promises such as those implicit in destination imagery generate expectations. If such expectations do not coincide with visitors’ experiences upon arrival, there is the danger of misrepresentation and disappointment. This dissertation explores a lacuna in academic literature by critically analyzing the gap between the projection and experience of the island’s heritage from Independence (1964) until the present day, through the medium of the in-flight magazine front covers, as a sample that allows comparisons to be made over a long period of time. Qualitative content analysis was applied to the visual and verbal discourse found in tourism policies and reports as well as the front covers of Air Malta in-flight magazines ranging from April 1977 until 2020. The actual visitor experience and perception of Malta’s cultural heritage were examined through a critical discourse analysis of Tripadvisor travel reviews spanning between September 2007 and March 2021 before developing a longitudinal perspective on the expectation-experience gap of the island’s cultural heritage based on the data available. The results and main findings showed how the policy promise, projection and experience of Malta’s heritage have converged and diverged over time. Through this study, the researcher also traced several destination experience factors that appear to be increasing the gap between the expectation and experience of Malta’s cultural heritage. Recommendations on how this divide can be mitigated are also offered along with suggestions for future research.