English abstract
This study aims to identify the communication strategies used by the
Ministry of Heritage and Tourism to promote the Sultanate of Oman
as a tourist destination electronically, as well as the extent of
employing electronic communication activities to support these
strategies, in line with the premises and objectives of the Tourism
Strategy 2040. The study relied on the media survey methodology to
achieve its objectives and answer its questions, using several tools,
namely: observation, document and data analysis, in-depth interview,
and content analysis.
The results of the study concluded that the Ministry of Heritage and
Tourism uses several communication strategies to promote the
Sultanate of Oman electronically as a tourist destination, which are:
push strategy, pull strategy, cognitive strategy, emotional strategy,
persuasion strategy, information strategy, dialogue strategy,
consensus-building strategy, and relationship-building strategy. The
results of the study also indicated that the Ministry of Heritage and
Tourism has a diversified electronic communication activity, and
focuses more on websites and social media, as well as conducting
many electronic promotional campaigns at the local, regional and
international levels. The results of the study also confirmed that the
most prominent and main objective of the electronic promotional
campaigns carried out by the tourism representation offices to
promote the Sultanate as a tourist destination. In addition, the videos
were the most used type of media in these campaigns.
The study confirmed that the (Experience Oman) account tweets on
a daily basis during the study sample period, and the ministry uses
images in most of the study sample's tweets. Additionally, 74٪ of the
total tweets is not content that created by the Ministry of Heritage and
Tourism, but rather sharing of the content of others. The study
showed that interaction with the account's posts is modest. Moreover,
the study confirmed that the most important challenges, facing the
ministry in implementing communication strategies through electronic
platforms are the lack of sufficient practical experience for local and
regional marketing communication agencies, in the field of promoting
tourist destinations.
Finally, the study recommends paying attention to developing
electronic communication activities, virtual reality technologies, and
artificial intelligence, as well as optimizing search engines, and
focusing on storytelling content. The study also recommends
updating the social media strategy in line with modern trends in the
media content industry and training employees. In addition, the study
recommends paying attention to the measurement and evaluation of
all electronic communication activities carried out by the ministry .
