Use of digital activity in tourism destination marketing in Turkey: Pandemic period applications

Covid-19 disease, which emerged in China at the beginning of 2020 and then spread rapidly all over the world; It has changed fields such as health, education, sports and industry. During the pandemic period, new processes such as remote working, online business meetings, distance education, virtual fairs and promotions have emerged. Destination advertisements and promotions in the tourism sector have also adapted to this change and provide people with a realistic impression and visit experience; Virtual Reality (Virtual Reality, VR), Augmented Reality (Augmented Reality, AR), Mixed Reality (Mixed Reality, MR), Extended Reality (XR), 3D Mapping, Hologram, Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligent, AI), Digital promotion tools and concepts such as Metaverse and Metaverse have started to be used (Erkemen and Güler, 2020). In this study, it is aimed to examine the activities of the tourism authorities operating in the province of Şanlıurfa from the TRC 2 region and Gaziantep from the TRC 1 region, which are affiliated to the General Directorate of Development Agencies of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and to determine the possibilities of these officials in tourism destination marketing by in-depth interview method. In this direction, while all the cities in Turkey constitute the universe of this study, the provinces of Şanlıurfa and Gaziantep from the TRC 1 and 2 regions of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, General Directorate of Development Agencies were taken into consideration as samples in the study. In-depth interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used as a data collection tool in the research. However, due to the pandemic conditions, face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 2 tourism sector representatives. Most of the data was obtained through the interview forms filled by the representatives via e-mail. In this context, first of all, a list of authorities showing competence in tourism activities in the relevant destinations was drawn up, and detailed information was collected about the promotional and advertising digital activities of the destinations during the pandemic period by asking various questions to the representatives of the authorized tourism authorities with the open-ended questions developed. In this way, it has been tried to evaluate the level of opportunities of the managers about digital advertisements and promotions and whether there are any studies they have done in this field and whether they plan for the future. Keywords: Tourism, Destination, Digital, Event, Advertisement