Portuguese Continental Islands as Coastal and Maritime Tourist Destinations. Ria Formosa: An Exploration of Its Media Impact Through Marketing

This paper highlights the tourism promotional impacts of the tourism marketing strategies and the related media activities in relation to the Ria Formosa Natural Park, a set of islands located in the Algarve, in southern Portugal. It seeks to understand which representations are induced in the potential customers of a directly targeted tourist market. For this, we will use the conclusions of scientific studies on the geographical and physical reality of this territory and the content of the messages spread by intentionally directed marketing as well as the news spread by the media. Here we particularly reflect on the prevailing ecological concerns, considering their positive and / or negative interference in the construction of the messages and images diffused in correlation with the measures taken on the ground.