Depicting National Cultures: Comprehensiveness of 21st Century Travel Guidebooks

Abstract

Travel guidebooks play an important role in tourism as an information source. They not only give practical information but also cultural information. However, this latter aspect of guidebooks has barely been researched. Guidebook authors can choose to write about any aspects of a country's national culture, but we do not seem to know which aspects they chose to write about—that is, how comprehensive the guidebooks' depictions of culture are. In order to establish the comprehensiveness of contemporary guidebooks, a framework of cultural categories is developed based on theories about culture and intercultural communication. The method is content analysis of document data. In the empirical part of the study, three guidebooks about Denmark are examined quantitatively in order to establish how comprehensive their representation of the cultural values and cultural behavior categories of Denmark is. Based on the criteria set, travel guidebooks cannot be considered comprehensive. Readers should be aware that guidebooks only give a partial view of a destination's culture. With the increased availability of online hotel and restaurant resources for tourists, the publishers of travel guidebooks could expand the sections on national culture. This will increase readers' experiential value of the guidebooks and give guidebooks a competitive edge, whether the guidebooks are printed or digital.