Almatourism Special Issue N. 09, 2018: Kalbaska N., Ayala Ramírez E., Cantoni L., The Role of Tourism Destinations within the Online Presence of Fashion Weeks Almatourism Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development ___________________________________________________________ The Role of Tourism Destinations within the Online Presence of Fashion Weeks Kalbaska, N.* Ayala Ramírez, E.† Cantoni, L.‡ USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland) ABSTRACT Special events, if well organized, assist a tourism destination to improve its image and attract new visitors. Though there is an emerging research on the connection between tourism destinations and fashion events, little is known about how online presence of tourism destinations is framed with the help of established fashion events. The purpose of this research is to study four primary destinations holding major fashion weeks: New York and “New York Fashion Week”, London and “London Fashion Week”, Milan and “Milan Fashion Week”, Paris and “Paris Fashion Week”. This research identifies the role of tourism destinations in the online presence of the four primary “fashion weeks”. To do so, two converging analyzes are done: on one hand the websites and online presence of the fashion weeks are analyzed, assessing tourism related content; on the other hand, the websites of Destination Management Organizations at the city level are inspected with the main aim of assessing the presence and relevance they provide to fashion weeks. _________________________________________________________ Keywords: Destination Branding; Tourism Marketing; Fashion Weeks; Event Management; Website Design; Digital Fashion * E-mail address:
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[email protected] almatourism.unibo.it – ISSN 2036-5195 – https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-5195/7245 87 This article is released under a Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 license.