The politics of tourism representations: Discourse analysis of British travel brochures about incredible India

The tourism marketing materials play a crucial role in the creation of national image as the places are chosen to be planned upon, since there are expectations of intense pleasure, either on a different scale or including diverse rationalities from persons customarily coming across. Tourism can be interpreted as a certain pattern of capitalist industry, which does not only trade supplies human beings of significance and experience marketed by creating specific, idealised histrionics of the plaza of destinations. After the spearheading publication, the “tourists gaze” by Urry (1992), tourism representations became one of the most researched areas in which the overwhelming majority of the studies engrossed on the portrayals of hosts in tourism discourses highlighting the pervasiveness of banal images of places and the authenticity of these portrayals. Meanwhile, there has been much fewer attempts at studying how the current trends in geopolitical circumstances affect the matters of touristic representations, especially in the case of the developing countries. However, previous studies point out the perennial existence of hegemonic Western stereotypical imagination in the discourses, those that are mainly generated as well as consumed by them. In this study, the discourses about India in the tourism brochures published in the UK are analysed by using qualitative discourse analysis. While this research elements the recognition of India as one of the prominent nations in the contemporary world, it also provides evidence for the unceasing denigration of India as a stagnant, oriental, and ancient place, with a trace of colonialism.