Guía de viaje y turismo 2.0: los borrosos confines de un género

The trave l guide and touri sm 2.0: The blurr ed boundar ie s of a genre The travel guide is one of the most typical genres in tourism discourse. Among its main constitutive features one may find its prescriptive character and an objective and impersonal style. In the last few decades, the rise of Internet communication has had an important impact on the configuration of this genre and has changed some of its conventional aspects. This paper aims to evaluate the main transformations that have occurred in this genre in the era of tourism 2.0, by means of the analysis of some excerpts extracted from recent tourism texts. First of all, migration to a virtual environment has changed the presentation, distribution and quantity of information transmitted; besides, the boundaries between the traditional descriptive guidebook and the promotional leaflet have become blurred. On the other hand, the social qualities of Web 2.0 generate a new expectation horizon and promote the creation of new “cooperative” travel guides, exploiting the participation of the community of travellers. Due to these transformations, the objective and neutral style of the traditional guidebook has shifted towards subjective evaluation and personal narrative. These new elements, coming both from traditional genres, such as reportage and travel writing, and the new cybergenres, such as forums and blogs, have contributed to intensifying the hybridization between different genres.