A dimension of tourism promotion

There seems to be a tendency among scholars concerned with tourism to neglect the area of communication in their discussions of marketing or, in specific, promotion. Why this tendency exists is not quite clear. It might be that communication (and the knowledge of it) is taken for granted. The following will show that the communication process is highly complicated and as such should not be taken for granted. Also, Barnet, in his recent article in this journal, described marketing as a consumer‐oriented concept. Since communication is part of the marketing process it is also consumer‐oriented. This moves the concept of communication from a mechanistic to a behavioral basis for discussion. An attempt is made here to use this behavioral basis and to describe a possible total communication framework with the help of the general systems approach, underlying the use of a medium for mass distribution in the area of tourism promotion. In specific, what are some of the necessary considerations when a country, with the hypothetical name SHOMEE, tries to entice nationals of another country, in this case U.S. citizens, to come and visit the host country.