International symposium on tourism, communication, and translation

Communication is essential to tourism. International tourism particularly, is situated at the crossroads of language, culture, marketing communication, and “worldmaking”.

As destinations compete for visibility in an increasingly global and digital environment, where traveller expectations shift rapidly, where the challenges for destinations in terms of sustainability and managing tourism responsibility become imperative, the ability to mediate experiences and translate local identity into compelling and meaningful narratives for diverse audiences has become a central strategic function, where communication and translation (understood broadly) play a critical role in generating positive outcomes.

This international symposium organised by the Tourism, Communication, and Translation (TourCT) Network aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from linguistics, translation, tourism studies, marketing, communication studies, and other disciplines that focus on tourism as a study context to explore how language, interaction and discourse function as a mediating force in tourism.

By examining tourism communication through multiple disciplinary lenses, we aim to demonstrate that, despite methodological and conceptual differences, we all engage with the same communicative object: the construction, circulation, and communication or promotion of tourism destinations, products, and experiences. We seek to identify points of contact, similarities, and differences among the disciplines, and to understand how their distinct tools, methods, and analytical frameworks contribute to the same overarching goal: to make destinations, products, and experiences visible, appreciated, and chosen.

The event will serve as a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue, collaborative research design, and the official launch of the multi-institutional network devoted to tourism communication and translation that is TourCT.

Topics

We invite submissions on one or more of the following topics, though the list is by no means exhaustive. We particularly invite submissions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches (e.g. examining how linguistic analyses inform marketing strategies and/or how marketing insights reshape translation and communication practices).

Linguistics and translation

• Tourism discourse as mediation and meaning-making
• Lexical, pragmatic, and multimodal features of tourism communication
• Translation strategies and challenges in tourism texts
• Intercultural communication and framing of local identities
• Accessibility and inclusive tourism communication

Marketing, tourism, and communication studies

• Destination branding and narrative construction, making places and worlds
• Strategic communication and storytelling for attraction
• Discourse of social media, influencers, and digital tourism promotion
• The language of user-generated content and its impact on destination image
• Customer experience as multi-sensory communication

Keynote speakers

• Elena Manca (Università del Salento, Italy)
• Mihalis Kavaratzis (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

 Organising committee

• Sofia Malamatidou (University of Birmingham, UK)
• Gloria Cappelli (Università di Pisa, Italy)
• José-María Castellano-Martinez (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain)

Submission

Submissions must include:

• Presenter(s) details: name, affiliation, email, and bionote (up to 150 words)
• Anonymised abstract (up to 300 words excluding references) including a title, clear outline of the aims and methods of the study as well as (preliminary) results, and up to five keywords.

The abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by at least two members of the organising committee.

Please submit to tourctnetwork@gmail.com by 20 March.

Important dates

• Submission of abstracts: 20 March 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 1 May 2026
• Registration: TBA
• Conference: 4 September 2026