‘No country for old people’. Representations of the rural in the Portuguese tourism promotional campaigns

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the ways in which the rural and rurality are represented through the national tourism promotional campaigns in Portugal since the 80s. The background for this debate is the transformation of many rural areas from productive spaces to consumable places, with tourism playing a paramount role in these rural restructuring processes. In promotional materials and campaigns, rural contexts are frequently presented as ‘idyllic’, ‘authentic’ and ‘genuine’ offering a wide range of experiences to the visitor. The empirical evidence produced from the content analysis of 33 posters and 19 promotional videos issued between 1986 and 2012 by the national tourism body, reveals a significant change from a representation of the rural as ‘old’, ‘static’, ‘unchanged’ and ‘untouched’ to its current representation as ‘young’, ‘active’, ‘enthusiastic’, ‘emotional’ and ‘experiential’, much more oriented (since the middle of the 90’s) to the commodification and consumption of the countryside.