1 Engagement of readers/customers in the discourse of e-tourism promotional genres Francisca Suau Jiménez IULMA (Interuniversity Institute of Modern Applied Languages) Universitat de València This paper is part of the R+D Project Ref. FFI2011-24712, funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain. Abstract Tourism 2.0 involves direct e-communication between travellers and the tourism industry, and needs websites that attract customers. Recent research in this field (Austin 2009; Brodie, Hollebeek et al. 2011) suggests that they must also include the co- creation of values that align with the customer in some way. Their design must be persuasive yet trustworthy. This is partly achieved through discursive strategies that reflect the voice of the institution or business (author), and others that engage the customer (reader). This study discusses engagement as a key concept in promotional websites (hotels, tourist guides, etc.) from interpersonality, based on the COMETVAL corpus. Its conclusions note significant and controversial differences on how these e- genres are construed in English and Spanish, with societal implications. Keywords: engagement/promotional genres/interpersonality/tourism/discourse/e- genres/hotel websites 1. Introduction The world of tourism has undergone a dramatic change with Web 2.0 technologies. While this is undeniable, it is also true that current discourse studies in professional domains need to take into account research findings in this discipline if they want to have meaningful implications for society. In the discursive study of e- tourism genres, fields like marketing, hospitality, the tourism industry and sociology must be brought into the equation as a means of identifying specific needs and shifts that help to show the way to useful linguistic analyses. In this vein, Austin (2009), a marketing analyst in tourism, suggests that increasingly, hotel selection processes might