The role of tourism marketing videos in destination marketing: "Turkey-Home of Turquoise" example

With the development of technology, the use of media tools has become quite common today. Mass communication, which was carried out only with tools such as radio and TV in the past, is now widely maintained in many platforms as a result of the developments in Internet and Information and Communication Technologies. As a result of these developments, the use of technology has become widespread in tourism promotion activities and promotional videos have become an important tool. In this study, it is aimed to examine the effects of tourism promotion videos on destination image and to carry out an evaluation in terms of the paradigm of effect in communication. The reason behind the evaluation of media effect is that it can be discussed to what extent the video may affect tourist's buying behavior. Accordingly, the video "Turkey: Home of Turquoise" was selected and evaluated within the scope of focus group discussions. The data obtained in the focus group interviews were interpreted by descriptive analysis method. In this interpretation process, the functionality of the video "Turkey: Home of Turquoise" was discussed within the scope of Lasswell's general communication model in terms of Propaganda theory. In the study, firstly, the conceptual and theoretical framework is presented in line with the literature. Focus group interview method was used in the data collection process. Participants included in the focus group interviews were selected by the snowball sampling method. The data obtained from the interviews were interpreted by descriptive analysis method. Although the video "Turkey: Home of Turquoise" is a proven success in general terms, it draws attention that there are certain deficiencies as a result of the study findings. Suggestions for eliminating these deficiencies and presenting ideas for future studies are presented as a result of the study. Keywords: Tourism, Marketing, Communication, Destination, Image, Turkey.