Destination management plans: use of language as representation of power

The analysis of discursive practices and language is critical to understand power relationships and power struggles. In particular, control over orders of discourse by institutional and societal power-holders is one factor in the maintenance of their power. This paper analyses how Tourism Queensland used political language and symbols to legitimate and generate support for its decisions. The destination management plans, developed for the 13 Queensland regions, were analysed using an automated content analysis software combined with quantitative network theoretic measurements. These methods prove to be effective in identifying the main concepts contained within the documents and their interrelationships. Results show that the core concepts of the destination management plans relate to the social impact that tourism has on communities as well as to the importance of the marketing and promotion of tourism. On the other hand, some concepts on which academics have focused, such as sustainability and collaboration, do not appear core elements in how Tourism Queensland prescribed tourism to be managed through its official discourse.