Developing the Tourist Market through the Exploitation of the Typical Products

Typical products are considered suitable features to characterise the tourist supply of a destination. Their exploitation can contribute both to develop and to create the tourist market, enriching a tourist package or specializing a specific segment. Many typical products are simultaneously an expression of the culture of a territory; they identify a local community and its identity, they represent its traditions and its cultural heritage. Then they can defined ‘territorial intensive products’. The paper considers this issue, drawing parallels with the case of wine tourism.typical products, tourist supply, territorial intensive products, wine tourism

The Role of Medialabs in Regional Cultural and Innovative Policy

Purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of a new cultural institution, "medialab". Media laboratory is an interdisciplinary institution that combines the tasks of scientific, educational, cultural and artistic institutions. They are spaces in which technology and digital media are designed. Article introduces the main features of medialabs and possible public tasks in the field of regional cultural policy and innovation policy. It also draws attention to the challenges and barriers in the organization and management of these centers

Cultural Heritage Information Practices and iSchools Education for Achieving Sustainable Development

Since 2015, UNESCO began the process of inculcating culture as part of the UN’s post-2015 Sustainable (former Millennium) Development Goals, which member countries agreed to achieve by 2030. By conducting a thematic analysis of the 25 UN commissioned reports and policy documents, this research identifies 14 broad cultural heritage information themes that need to be practiced in order to achieve cultural sustainability, of which information platforms, information sharing, information broadcast, information quality, information usage training, information access, information collection, and contribution appear to be the significant themes. An investigation of education on cultural heritage informatics and digital humanities at iSchools (www.ischools.org) using a gap analysis framework demonstrates the core information science skills required for cultural heritage education. The research demonstrates that: (i) a thematic analysis of cultural heritage policy documents can be used to explore the key themes for cultural informatics education and research that can lead to sustainable development; and (ii) cultural heritage information education should cover a series of skills that can be categorized in five key areas, viz., information, technology, leadership, application, and people and user skills

Social Media and Hotel E-Marketing in Iran: The Case of Parsian International Hotels

With a quantitative study, this research has aimed to investigate the role of social media in Iranian hotels’ electronic marketing. A questionnaire technique was used on a sample of 140 marketers who work in the Parsian International Hotels’ marketing department. For data evaluation an SPSS program was used. Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Cochran, Regression, Non-standardized coefficients and Standard coefficient tests were carried out. Based on the findings, we can state that social media are still not an important marketing tool for Iranian hotels. Facebook and YouTube are the media which are most used for marketing purposes as videos and photos can be used on these sites more than others. The results show that the marketing abilities of Parsian Hotels improve with the increasing use of social media, but the hotel marketing sector has failed to fully utilize internet opportunity as a marketing tool

A participatory approach for digital documentation of Egyptian Bedouins intangible cultural heritage

The Bedouins of Egypt hold a unique intangible cultural heritage (ICH), with distinct cultural values and social practices that are rapidly changing as a consequence of having settled after having been nomadic for centuries. We present our attempt to develop a bottom-up approach to document Bedouin ICH. Grounded in participatory design practices, the project purpose was two-fold: engaging Egyptian Engineering undergraduates with culturally-distant technology users and introducing digital self-documentation of ICH to the Bedouin community. We report the design of a didactic model that deployed the students as research partners to co-design four prototypes of ICH documentation mobile applications with the community. The prototypes reflected an advanced understanding for the values to the Bedouins brought by digital documentation practices. Drawing from our experience, three recommendations were elicited for similar ICH projects. Namely, focusing on the community benefits; promoting motivation ownership, and authenticity; and pursuing a shared identity between designers and community members. These guidelines hold a strong value as they have been tested against local challenges that could have been detrimental to the project

Technology innovation and applications in sustainable destination development

This paper introduces information and communication technologies as an innovative approach to managing sustainable tourism development from a destination management perspective. Specific attention is focused on the how destination managers utilise the various forms of technology in addressing both the positive and negative impacts of tourism. Building on Hjalager’s (Tour Manag 18:35–41, 1997) analytical typology for sustainable tourism innovation, this research aims to advance tourism innovation research and demonstrate new uses of technology and the wider applications for sustainable tourism. Using a thorough literature review and primary research with destination managers, a collection of technology based tools and their uses were examined for sustainable tourism development and how these tools can foster destination innovativeness

CULTURAL HERITAGE DIGITIZATION OF BOROBUDUR AREA TOURISM: A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

In supporting the efforts to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage, this research aimed to implement project-based learning by designing e-books as digital information media to promote tourism development. This research attempted to report and illustrate the implementation of project-based learning, which aimed to explore twenty potential tourist attractions in the surrounding villages of the Borobudur Temple in Central Java, Indonesia. This research involved 127 students of the Informatics Management Study Program enrolled in the Graphic Design course. This qualitative case study exemplified the implementation of project-based learning in designing and digitizing information media in the form of a collection of e-books. The overall process consisted of three main stages, i.e., pre-production, production, and post-production. The stages included conducting preliminary research; formulating the concept of design; collecting visual and typographic references; outlining; performing the design and digitization; and presenting the final product. The data were taken from class observations and documentation from March to June 2022. By demonstrating the project-based learning model of preserving the cultural potential of twenty traditional villages surrounding the Borobudur Temple area in a digital environment, it is hoped that the digitized cultural heritage can be introduced to and recognized by wider audiences