Public relations and reputation management in organizational culture: An example of Aegean and the Mediterranean region tourism organizations

There are a lot of organizations aiming to convey their products andservices to the consumers in today?s intense competitive conditions. In time,there has been a rapid increase in the number of such organizations.The drastic decrease in production cost and production factors? betterutilization of the advantages of technological infrastructure have led to easierproduction of many products by various organizations.Similar products manufactured by different organizations do not displayas much variety as the ones in the past in terms of quality. Well-knownorganizations have been forced to consider the small-scale ones in today?scompetitive conditions. The increasingly conscious consumer behavior of thecustomers have forced all organizations, either large- or small-scaled, to providegoods and services of higher quality. Therefore, organizations find it hard toreflect their differences on their products and they choose to come up withdifferent strategies of marketing their products and create a unique image onthe consumers? minds. The image is now created through various marketingstrategies, namely advertisements and promotion, and also the organizationshave now realized the importance of public relations much more than before.The credibility management, which is today an important factor of publicrelations, has started to gain as much importance as image creation.The tourism industry involved particularly in the service sector has hadto attach much more importance to the values of credibility management.The purpose of this study is to identify the perceptions/opinions oforganizations involved in tourism sector about credibility management and tosubmit various suggestions.Key Words: 1) Public Relations, 2) Culture, 3) Image, 4) Identity,5) Reputation, 6) Reputation Management