From brochures to blogs : Opportunities and challenges in implementing a digital genre in English for tourism

Abstract

As digital communication reshapes tourism-related genres, digital multimodal composing (DMC) becomes essential to surpass traditional writing and prepare learners for a digitally immersed world by combining linguistic, visual, and aural modes. This chapter analyzes five travel agency blogs in an English for Tourism course by assessing four dimensions: Task fulfilment, Communicative purpose, Digital features, and Multimodal features. Using move analysis and DMC as analytical frameworks, this study explores and evaluates the main strengths and weaknesses displayed by students in creating the digital genre of travel agency blogs. Findings reveal challenges meeting the genre macrostructure and communicative moves and effectively leveraging technological and multimodal features. Overall, this study highlights the difficulties lecturers might encounter when shifting from traditional—i.e., the travel agency brochure—to digital formats—i.e., the travel agency blog. Several teaching implications and recommendations for practitioners to adjust traditional teaching methods to fit the online environment are derived from the findings.

This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Grant PID2022-137554NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF: A way of making Europe) as well as by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR, Grant 2021 SGR 01295).