PROMOTION IN TOURISM: A BRIEF HISTORY AND GUIDELINESS OF THE NEW COMMUNICATION PARADIGM

Promotion has been and it is considered by famous authors as the key to any successful business in tourism. This fact reveals the need for this activity in any tourism business, at any level. The literature associates the promotion activity with the marketing activity but the practice has shown that the promotion can take place in the absence of a marketing plan or a promotion strategy. Moreover, promotion in tourism is closely linked to human activities without being able to specify an exact moment in history when these activities began to take place. Thus, this paper aims to make a journey through history to mark the moment of the promotion as an individual activity, which is interfering with the marketing activity. At the same time, by reviewing the specialized literature, this article wants to make the transition to the new communication paradigm, identifying the guidelines and its implications at the level of the tourism enterprise. The article presents the results of a theoretical, qualitative research, creating the theoretical framework for the development of tourism promotion, from antiquity to the present based on the review of the literature. The conclusions of this research highlight the contrast between the first manifestations of the promotional activity, the characteristic elements of the old paradigm and the new communication paradigm.