Storytelling in destination brands’ promotional videos

Abstract

Storytelling represents an extensive and rich body of research in tourism. Prior studies mainly focus on tourists’ stories in understanding travel experiences and little knowledge exists as to whether destination promotional videos embed the principles of storytelling. Using the Hero’s Journey as a guiding framework, this study conducts a narratological analysis of six destination brand commercials. The advertisements are deconstructed, assessing their story structure, story type, archetype enactment, and experiential outcome. Findings indicate that the majority of destination commercials fail to exhibit state of the art practices of storytelling and this represents a missed opportunity. The Hero’s Journey offers a useful tool to help destination marketers to develop powerful storytelling promotional videos that connect with and engage prospective tourists.