Rol de las relaciones públicas en los destinos turísticos que sufren atentados terroristas: análisis de la comunicación de crisis realizada en Londres, Mánchester y París tras los atentados de 2017

Abstract

Los atentados terroristas suponen crisis para los destinos turísticos. Por ello, el objetivo de este artículo es verificar cómo las Organizaciones de Marketing de los Destinos de Londres, Manchester y París (OMDs) gestionaron dicha crisis durante y después de los atentados en 2017, desde una perspectiva de las Relaciones Públicas. Para ello, se realizó un análisis de contenido de los tuits publicados en las cuentas oficiales de los destinos a lo largo de 30 días tras los atentados terroristas. Los resultados muestran que las 3 OMDs centraron sus esfuerzos comunicativos en la difusión de contenidos de promoción turística para gestionar la crisis, pero comunicaron poco o nada lo ocurrido en el atentado. Asimismo, las Organizaciones de Marketing de los Destinos apostaron por imágenes fijas y textos como recursos de información para difundir sus contenidos.

Terrorist attacks have a negative impact on destination image, affecting their tourism demand and generating a crisis in the tourism sector. The objective of this article is to investigate how the Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) of London, Manchester and Paris managed the crisis during and after the terrorist attacks of 2017 from a Public Relations perspective. A con-tent analysis method of the tweets published in the official account profiles of said destinations was carried out during the 30 days that followed the ter-rorist attacks. Based on the existing literature on crisis communication, an analysis template was developed that analysed the timing, format and con-tent of the tweets, as well as the reactions they generated in the public. The results indicate that the 3 DMOs focused their communication efforts on the dissemination of messages to promote tourism in the region in order to manage the crisis, but despite the fact that the public want to be informed when an attack occurs to understand what happened and feel safe, DMOs communicated little or nothing about what happened in the attack. In addi-tion, the tweets that reported on the management of the attack carried out and the protection of stakeholders were the ones that obtained the great-est reactions among the public. The main contributions of the study are the analysis template created for the analysis of destinations’ crisis communi-cation and the fact that public value the information received about the at-tack and the protection management carried out by the DMOs.