Framing the Caribbean in Cruise Tourism: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Royal Caribbean’s Digital Destination Narratives

This study investigates how the Caribbean is discursively constructed as a coastal and marine tourism destination in the promotional content published on Royal Caribbean’s official website. Drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies (MCDS), it explores how both language and visual elements contribute to shaping the destination imaginary of the Caribbean in cruise tourism. Specifically, the analysis considers how promotional tourism discourse reflects and reinforces broader ideological narratives, such as the commodification of tropical spaces and the positioning of tourists as privileged consumers. The Caribbean is a region of particular interest due to its centrality in the global cruise industry and its enduring portrayal as an idyllic, exotic, and leisure-oriented destination. As the area receiving the highest concentration of cruise traffic worldwide, it has significantly influenced the visual and rhetorical conventions of cruise marketing. Royal Caribbean is selected as a case study for its market leadership, global brand visibility, and strong commercial ties to the Caribbean. By analyzing the multimodal rhetorical and representational strategies employed in Royal Caribbean’s digital promotion of the Caribbean, this study contributes to ongoing research on tourism discourse, destination image, and critical tourism studies. It also offers insights into how commercial narratives shape perceptions of marine and coastal destinations in the global tourism economy.