Verbal signs in an advertisement are about texts. The texts in an advertisement explain the product and other terms which are supporting the product, for example the name of the product and the advantages of the product. Sometimes a text is hard to understand. In analyzing it, one person with the other can have different argument about it. Different people read and interest texts in ways, and it is possible to ask different groups of consumers how they interpret or understand a specific text. In the tourism brochures, visual sign become the major focus. The pictures as the visual sign can describe the product, the benefit of the product and what people could do through the product. Through the visual sign the audience can understand the meaning of the tourism brochures easily. Person who perform at the tourism brochures has important role to makes the audience attracted to the brochures. In order to understand the meanings of an advertisement in this case a tourism brochure featuring human subject we need to delineate the principle visual communication means by which people communicate. This picture takes from the cover one of the brochures in Meshginshahr county (Figure 1).

This means the advertiser wants to inform that attracts the readers not only to visit regency in Meshginshahr. The advertiser also wants to guarantee that the guests who came to the area will enjoy the beauty and exciting of the area. The visual signs in the this brochure show the beautiful area which is called The longest suspension bridge in the Middle East. This brochure can attract the tourist to come and join the tours, in this brochure most of the pictures are the real situation that can be found in the area. If we look inside of the page we can see a attract pictures of Meshginshahr city suspension bridge area.

Nomads of Shahsavan Meshginshahr

For example, we can see the nomads of Shahsavan Meshginshahr (Figure 2). The below picture we can see the local costume of the Shahsoon tribes, which is a symbol of beauty and simplicity. Life goes on according to their ancient customs and traditions. All the visual signs are match with the verbal sign and it’ make these brochures are so attractive for the tourist. Each brochure in this Travel has different pictures which are attractive picture so the readers can do something and understand between the texts and the pictures meant.

Sheikh Heydar Tomb

For iconicity to occur, the person whose interpretant completes the representation triad must be familiar with and recognize the object, and thus able to realize that the content of the photograph resembles the object photographed. The representation Brick structure with turquoise tiles conveys the structure’s historical accuracy: the object is a Brick structure; the architecture Sheikh Heydar Tomb is recognizably Safavid era. Thus, a potential tourist with the adequate collateral experience, considering traveling to Meshginshahr, would perceive not only a sign of an object that resembles tower; the tourist would readily see that the photograph depicts the old town tower lit up against an evening sky. Sheikh Heydar Tomb exemplifies the landmark as an iconic sign. Landmarks are unique cases of icons that are easily and quickly recognized as, for “a rare and treasured cultural resource”. Besides its iconic and indexical qualities, the photograph Sheikh Heydar Tomb also invokes a symbolic sign–object relationship, crucial to the successful marketing of heritage tourism. Any interpretation of that relationship draws heavily on those parts of a heritage tourist’s collateral experience, which allows him/her to associate and identify with related, real or imagined, cultural or historical contexts. Sheikh Heydar Tomb as a historic landmark, is likely to invoke a latent conception of a local past highly pertinent to some tourists. Depending on the tourist’s prior knowledge of relevant aspects of Safavieh history, can be a potent symbol of the Safavieh heritage, or of the process of maturation into nationhood (Figure 3).

This short analysis of a photograph of the Sheikh Heydar Tomb illustrates the relevance of analyzing destination representations with a view to potential semiotic interpretations of the sign–object relationship. Such detailed analysis would help destination marketers target with greater precision the desired audience of potential tourists and foretell, with some accuracy, the meanings the sign feeds into tourists’ destination images.

Shahar Yeri Ancient Site

In this example, the semiotic method is applied to the analysis of a photograph Shahar Yeri Ancient Site, as a representation of Ardabil culture. From a slightly high angle, the photograph captures include stones made by hand in shape of human form consisting of face without mouth, hands and sword. Ancient Site of Shahar Yeri, which dates back to 8 thousand years BC, includes hundreds of stones in shape of human. The photograph itself lacks certain indexical qualities, photograph of an old raised stone stands indicates nothing about the time or place that the photograph was taken. The objects in the photograph, though, have indexical qualities that signify their distinctness. Firstly, they are constructed from beech, although these are not simply wooden toy soldiers in any generic sense. They are a particular well-known kind. The human carvings on the stones are in the form of people holding hands to their chests with daggers and usually without mouths, and only one engraved statue of a woman has been found to have a mouth. The site contains 280 ancient man-made stones that are estimated to be more than 8,000 years old. The artifacts of this area date back to the Late Bronze, Neolithic and Late Copper periods, as well as the Early Iron Age. The artifacts of this area date back to the Late Bronze, Neolithic and Late Copper periods, as well as the Early Iron Age (Figure 4).

Fine dining in Gasabeh rural

Gastronomy has become an increasingly important component in marketing local attractions in tourism. Figure 5 is not an advertisement for itself or for any particular object represented in the photograph – not the entrées, not the families, not the Restaurant where the photograph was taken. It is an advertisement for dining out as such or more precisely, fine dining as a cultural experience awaiting the tourist who comes to Meshginshahr.

The composition of the image is traditional, with one table nearly center. The foreground is dominated by the several women, who are smiling. In the middle ground are the several men and the one woman, who is serving an additional portion, while the background is blurred by shallow focus, although other servers as well as the rest of the dining room remain indiscernible. There is no clear indication of either couple’s marital status, which allows the photograph to represent young unmarried or married couples at the same time, a reading that presumes the several families are sitting next to and not across from one another. The seating arrangement indicates at least partial adherence to the social custom of Observance of Islamic cover women. Their attire suggests that the four are middle to upper middle class (the only visible jewelry is a silver watch on one of the women’s arms). All four are relatively look healthy. Their expressions represent, as indeed they are surely intended to do, a pleasant moment shared by friends. At the same time, their social class, age, and attractiveness function to perpetuate a traditional objective of tourism advertising: Providing symbolic representations for status display that would otherwise be socially invisible in everyday life. In this case, the status is that associated with dining at a fine restaurant. The ability to recognize the dining situation in a photograph depends on iconicity and the ability of potential tourists to recognize familiar patterns of social behavior that conform to their collateral experience. Thus, the photograph subtly appeals to a potential tourist’s collateral experience of episodic information about eating at a restaurant, the cultural categories related to fine dining, and knowledge of or interest in ethnic foods fare served. It does so by iconically representing such disparate objects as water glasses, rice, patrons, and as well as symbolically representing imagined objects that are social concepts or cultural categories such as “having a good time” or leisure activities or lifestyle activities such as fine dining or dining in an restaurant. While leisure activities such as shopping and dining out must be represented by familiar – iconic – signs, they also have to be imbued with an aura of difference or exoticness, if they are to function as “pull” factors. In the photograph of the diners, the table presents the crowded, such as Each of the guests’ plates is visible, rice plate, barbecue plate is, visible as well as a bottle water in the middle of the table. As a whole, the symbolic opulence of the scene invites the potential tourist to participate in a “tourist culture that encourages people to behave in a hedonistic manner to a degree that may not be acceptable in their place of origin”. At the same time, the guests’ attire and demeanor, and the dignity of the architecture of the Patio dining room iconically assure the viewer that eating at the Gasabeh rural would be a gastronomical and not a Excellent experience. The attire, demeanor, and architecture also foreground indexical and symbolic aspects related to ethnic food and heritage tourism. In sum, this photograph serves to capture ritual at two levels: at that of the advertisement, which provides a “stylized presentation of tourism as a ritual activity” and, and that of dining out, which is itself a highly ritualized and culturally laden event. If “every tourist is a voyeuring gourmand”, the photograph represents the potential for an enjoyable culinary experience.

CONCLUSION

This article has shown how semiotic analysis can be applied advantageously in tourism studies. The representation triad was applied to destination representations by conceptualizing destinations, related activities, or entities as objects; photographs or textual descriptions as signs; and potential tourists’ comprehension of the sign as interpretants. Through analyses of photographs utilized in cultural and heritage tourism as well as national branding, it was emphasized that the sign–object relationship is always characterized by a combination of iconic, indexical, and symbolic qualities, each of which destination marketers should take into consideration because of the influence those qualities exert on reception. In sum, the semiotic model can assist marketers in making informed decisions about the relevance and probable impact of the iconicity, indexicality, or symbolism of representations, and helps to avoid conceiving of representations as if they were uniform and static rather than diverse and dynamic components in an ongoing process.