Inward- and Outward-Facing Governmental Tourism Units in the United States: A Content Analysis of Names Used by States and Commonwealths

Developing meaningful names for government units that promote tourism can serve to facilitate more efficient identification by interested others. While the process would appear to be relatively intuitive (i.e., use of descriptive/suggestive identifiers), the results of this study reveal that the names used for official US state/commonwealth units responsible for administrating and promoting tourism-related commerce to businesses and visitors do not always include tourism-related identifiers. First, the review of inward-facing units (i.e., administrative units responsible for promoting business commerce in tourism) reveals that some of the states/commonwealths do not appear to use names that clearly identify the unit as tourism related. Second, the review of outward-facing units (the official state/commonwealth websites dedicated to promoting tourism to visitors) reveal that some of the domain names either do not reflect a clear tourism focus and/or may be difficult to interpret. To mitigate potential interpretational issues with the names, it is recommended that administrators consider the use of descriptive/suggestive names that more clearly identify the unit as tourism related.