Written evidence submitted to "High streets and town centres in 2030 inquiry" parliamentary select committee

The current state of high streets and town centres in England and much of the UK can be probably best described as “being at a crossroads” in terms of central government’s policy making as well as the effectiveness of their management. Although online retail is progressively undermining the viability of many traditional high street retail formats, it could also be argued that there are a number of avenues that remain underdeveloped by town centres and high streets. These include the management of the visitor economy, the development of attractive evening and night-time economy formats, the innovative use of traditional markets (for instance, as platforms for innovation and local entrepreneurship) and the strategic positioning of town centres and high streets as competitive place brands that build on the local DNA of the area to offer a unique selling proposition that is not limited to retail

Does place matter in hospitality?

Location is a dominant factor affecting the success of hospitality businesses. However, when that location is not blessed with the footfall of a busy high street or cannot rely on the proximity of a nearby major visitor attraction, a more creative approach is required. Indeed, offering an attractive façade, attentive staff and excellent service may not be enough for a hospitality business to succeed unless it already enjoys a well-established reputation. Even then, research suggests that the brand of a place can still have a bigger influence on customer decisions and satisfaction than a business brand on its own, no matter how established. Hospitality professionals can have a big impact on the attractiveness of a place brand by adopting a partnership approach to managing and marketing places that deliver memorable experiences to local residents and visitors alike

Marketing smart tourism cities – a strategic dilemma

There is a growing consensus among scholars in neuroscience with regards to the adverse effects of technology on the cognitive functions of the human brain (Loh and Kanai, 2016). These include the processing of emotions, memory and the storage of lived experiences. In fact, this has been shown to be particularly applicable to regular users of smartphone-based mobile applications (Wilmer et al., 2017). Rather worryingly for today’s prevalently technology-based conception of what a smart tourism destination should deliver, recent research has shown that visitors’ intentions to preserve the memories of a visit to a tourism attraction by engaging with mobile media (e.g. taking photos and sharing them with others via social media) during their visit may actually prevent those same visitors (though perhaps not the recipients of their photos via social media) from remembering the very experience they are trying to preserve (Tamir et al., 2018; see also Soares and Storm, 2018). Furthermore, research has also shown that this ‘hyperconnected’ state of affairs may be altogether detrimental to visitors’ enjoyment of the overall experience (Barasch et al., 2017). For those tourists who can still boast an adequate level of battery charge on their smartphones after a busy visit spent updating social media profiles with new photos whilst trying to simultaneously absorb the multi-sensory experience offered by the tourist attraction, there is further bad news. Similar neurological research has shown that people who are over-reliant on satellite navigation systems for way-finding (say, back to the hotel or to a restaurant highly rated on Tripadvisor) tend to perform worse at finding their way in the absence of their digital aid than those who rely on paper maps (McCullough and Collins, 2019). Parallel research in tourism has argued that this ‘smart’ technology-enabled tourist may run the risk of alienation (or “e-lienation”, to use the term coined by Tribe and Mkono, 2017) from their surroundings and missing out on potentially enriching experiences offered by the tourism destination. All in all, this should be rather worrying news for aspiring and existing smart tourism destinations. Why? Well, given that memorable experiences remain arguably a desirable goal in the design and delivery of visitor experiences, it appears that technology could be actually conspiring to rewire our brains in the opposite direction (Ward, 2013). Should, then, smart tourist destinations strive to become more efficient at delivering other services instead of memorable experiences? Maybe, though this is perhaps particularly applicable to some of the earlier models in the smart cities longitudinal spectrum. In fact, there is growing consensus around the fact that technological innovation (Pinke-Sziva et al., 2019; Skeli and Schmid, 2019) can alleviate some of the effects of overtourism, particularly in the context of smart tourism destinations (Gretzel and Scarpino-Johns, 2018). This includes ‘smarter’ transport solutions, even if we know that residents and tourists will differ considerably in their assessment of urban mobility improvements (Albalate and Bel, 2010). However, all this is part of what smart cities (presumably) do already. Consequently, if the whole raison d'être of the ‘smart’ concept applied to tourism destinations rests mainly on the proviso of experience design and delivery, where do the insights from the latest neurological research leave smart tourism destinations? Should the next generation of smart tourism destinations re-consider their strategic focus altogether? This special issue of the International Journal of Tourism Cities (IJTC) on “Overtourism and the Marketing of Smart Tourism Destinations” attempts to shed light not only on the overtourism phenomena but also on a nascent field of research: the marketing and branding of smart urban tourism destinations. Inevitably, and given that both topics can hardly be considered in isolation, much of the research showcased in this special issue, including this editorial, explore also elements spanning the overtourism phenomena and the marketing and management of smart tourism destinations, chiefly from an urban perspective

Beyond smart tourism cities – towards a new generation of ‘wise’ tourism destinations

Purpose – Building on exponential trends of technological change affecting our cities and urban tourism destinations, avenues for further research and practice are explored in the context of smart tourism destinations. Design/methodology/approach – The literature on smart cities and smart tourism destinations is analysed in view of delivering a research agenda for a new generation of ‘post-smart’ tourism destinations, beyond existing paradigms in this field. Findings – Smart tourism research to date is found to be lacking in terms of addressing emerging (‘post-smart’) social issues increasingly faced by global tourism cities, such as growing inequalities between host communities and visitors, wellness (e.g. slow tourism, slow cities), resilience and mental health (e.g. digital detox), among others. Practical implications – A post-smart approach to tourism city management and marketing calls for a re-think of existing tourism and urban policies that address wider sustainability issues exemplified by the urban transitions debate as well as adopting a more holistic networked approach to smartness involving entire regions. This also calls for the development of a new research agenda in urban tourism through a new prism – the post-smart ‘wise’ tourism destination. Originality/value – A new tourism futures construct - the ‘wise’ tourism destination - is posited. This is done within the context of a new (‘post-smart’) generation of tourism cities. It is argued that ‘wise’ tourism cities will require novel attributes and adopt a visionary strategic positioning well beyond today’s smart tourism destination paradigms. Additionally, a tentative research agenda for ‘wise’ tourism cities is discussed

National high street retail and town centre policy at a cross roads in England and Wales

For eighty years, UK government policy related to urban sprawl, town centres and high streets in England and Wales has been dominated by planning/land-use control. In the post-war period, retail developments have often been discussed in the literature on planning for places – but the wide range of pressures for retail change are rarely brought together. This review of policy discusses many of these pressures: many of which fall beyond the urban planning remit. For example, although retail planning regulations have been influenced by Central Place Theory, this theoretical framework offers no insight on those private sector businesses that interface with urban planning. Worse, few (if any) professional town planners study retailing before formulating plans. Furthermore, the willingness of successive governments to exert meaningful influence through planning rules has ebbed and flowed, leaving town centres at a potential crossroads. This study addresses the vital missing link to business operations – and the rising pressures upon them – using Institutional Theory. Building on the findings of this analysis as well as earlier studies from other parts of the world, this article outlines implications for the management of town and city centres in England and Wales

Driving Research to Support Local Authorities and Marketplaces to Regenerate High Streets

Presentation delivered at the Inside Government High Streets Conference on 8 May 201

"High Streets and Town Centres in 2030" inquiry - oral evidence submitted on 10th September 2018

This full HANSARD transcript includes the full content of the oral evidence session held on 10th September 2018 as part of the "High Streets and Town Centres in 2030" inquiry led by the Housing, Communities and Local Government parliamentary select committee, which Assoc. Prof. J. Andres Coca-Stefaniak was invited to participate in as an expert witness

Smart urban tourism destinations at a crossroads: being ‘smart’ and urban are no longer enough

Concepts such as smart or smartness have evolved over time from rather narrow technological interpretations in the form of mobile devices to more nuanced applications involving geographical locations (e.g. smart cities, smart tourism destinations). As a result of this, smart places have arisen partly as a result of the widening impact of new and disruptive technologies on the spaces we live in, including cities, regions and countries (Hedlund, 2012; Zygiaris, 2013; Vanolo, 2014). Urban tourism destinations are not immune to these global trends, particularly as regards their strategic positioning (Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2014) to compete for a larger and/or higher value share of the tourism market, regardless of whether their priority is leisure or business. In line with this, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has developed substantially over the last two decades to deliver new experiences for tourists and visitors, while supporting wider automatisation processes (Gretzel, 2011), which remain a common challenge for urban managers and tourism destination managers alike (Hughes and Moscardo, 2019). Key channels for ICTs today include social networks, big data analysis, artificial intelligence, the internet of things (Vicini et al., 2012), sensor equipment and other monitoring and data processing systems (Haubensak, 2011)

Contemporary issues, challenges and trends in urban tourism

As the Co-Editors-in-Chief of the International Journal of Tourism Cities (IJTC), the Editors of the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities have a deep and long-term interest in urban tourism research and tourism cities. The main aims of the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities are to: Review contemporary issues, trends and challenges in urban tourism and tourism cities. Present practical approaches and solutions for marketing and branding tourism in urban environments. Describe key markets for urban tourism. Elaborate on tourism product development innovations and trends for cities. Examine the impacts of technology on tourism cities including smart city destination dimensions. Explore the unique characteristics of marketing and development of urban tourism in different regions of the world. The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities covers key issues, trends and challenges for urban tourism destinations worldwide as well as contemporary debates related to research and practice in this field. Topics discussed include the marketing and branding of tourism cities, the growth of smart city tourism destinations, sustainability in urban tourism management, overtourism, sharing economy influences on urban destinations, cultural-heritage tourism in cities, business tourism, urbanisation, terrorism, among others. The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities merges the latest academic research with insights drawn from practice in urban destinations internationally to provide recommendations for tourism management professionals as well as researchers. Unlike other texts, the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities adopts a multidisciplinary approach to tourism drawing from fields such as sociology, psychology, urban management, business and critical management perspectives. In addition to this, a balance is provided between urban destinations in emerging economies and more established tourism cities in G20 countries

City tourism destinations and terrorism – a worrying trend for now, but could it get worse?

The advent of the tragic events of 9/11 in the USA and subsequent terrorism attacks in global tourism cities such as Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Istanbul, London and Barcelona, to mention but a few, have resulted in major challenges for the tourism sector, including the events industry in cities. Although terrorism attacks continue to increase in number and magnitude, the phenomenon is hardly new historically, and scholars have suggested that the concept of organised terror on a wide-scale stretches as far back as the French Revolution in the eighteenth century or even some of the war tactics employed by Genghis Khan, ruler of the largest empire in history in the thirteenth century (see Edgell and Swanson, 2019). Academic research on the impact of terrorism on tourism has developed substantially over the last two decades both in terms of its breadth and depth as a reflection of the new world order we continue to navigate today