Assessing residents’ perception for a sustainable co-creation of brand identity in regional destinations

Tourist destinations worldwide have started to pay particular attention to the creation of territorial brands to communicate their identity values to visitors and to differentiate their areas from their competitors. In the academic debate, it is claimed that brand creation needs to be achieved through an integrated and sustainable decision-making process that includes the numerous stakeholders that may be involved in a particular destination. Among the various stakeholders, residents are certainly essential to be considered when it comes to building durable and effective destination brands and sustainable development strategies. Although the importance of residents in place branding has been acknowledged in the literature, there is still a lack of conceptual and empirical research regarding their role in the brand creation process and on their perceptions of the brand identity elements that should be conveyed. The main aim of this study is to address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework that will serve to assess residents\u2019 perception of their own destination identity during the brand development process. This framework is tested empirically in the area of Alto Piemonte and perceptions of residents are assessed with an online questionnaire. Thus, the study provides both conceptual reflections that can be used for teaching and research purposes, as well as empirical evidence that enable to conduct similar investigations in other geographical areas

Regional Destination and Brand Identity: The Case of Piedmont, Italy

In recent years, research relating to marketing promotion has focused on the concepts of place branding and destination branding. However, a number of gaps in the existing literature need to be addressed. For example, while there are many studies on tourists and destination brands, few studies have considered the internal perspective of relevant public stakeholders. Moreover, many studies on place branding have focused on either entire countries or individual cities, paying little attention to place branding at the regional and sub-regional level, apart from regions that are already wellknown brands. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the Piedmont region of Italy, this paper addresses this lack of research, and focuses on the internal views of the destination management organisations (DMOs) on the brand development and brand identity of their territories. The results show that the process of developing a brand identity in the region is influenced by issues related to fragmentation, cooperation and coordination

Religious Events And Event Management: An Opportunity for Local Tourism Development

Religious events represent one of the ancient forms of encounter and should play an important role in enhancing tourism in the areas in which they take place. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of religious events as a key component of local tourism development. The adopted research methodology is primarily based on the gathering and interpretation of qualitative data. The paper considers small and medium sized religious events, analysing their event management process. It focuses on two case studies in northern Italy: the Devotional and Cultural Tourism Exchange of Oropa and the Passion Play of Sordevolo. The paper ha an original approach to the analysis of qualitatove data and it gives a contribution to the debate on events. The paper has 2,584 downaloads since 21 July 2015 to 18 March 2021

Religious Tourism and Event Management: An Opportunity for Local Tourism Development

Religious events represent one of the ancient forms of encounter and should play an important role in enhancing tourism in the areas in which they take place. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of religious events as a key component of local tourism development. The adopted research methodology is primarily based on the gathering and interpretation of qualitative data. The paper considers small and medium sized religious events, analysing their event management process. It focuses on two case studies in northern Italy: the Devotional and Cultural Tourism Exchange of Oropa and the Passion Play of Sordevolo

The Role of Tourists’ Feedback in the Enhancement of Religious Tourism Destinations

Over the last few decades, tourism has faced several challenges and opportunities mostly related to the tremendous rise of online social networks and tourist platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, etc.). The revolution brought about by Web 2.0 (or Travel 2.0) has radically changed the behaviour of tourists, who are now able to access information rapidly and to contribute in generating information to share with other users. The advent of the Internet has forced destinations to transform themselves to be more interactive, innovative and efficient as the online consumer is more active, demanding and in control. As a consequence, online reviews are becoming increasingly important, as they represent a significant information source both for the tourists and for the local management of tourism destinations. In this new scenario, religious tourism destinations should make an effort to manage tourists’ feedback, in order to adapt their offer to the needs expressed by their visitors. The aim of this research is to assess: how the ‘Sacred Mount of Oropa’ and ‘Sacred Mount of Orta’ (Piedmont Region, Italy) are perceived as religious destinations by tourists and; how local management should improve the quality of the offered experience based on this analysis. The methodology consists of a qualitative content analysis of a sample of reviews on TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) - 237 and 243 reviews respectively. TripAdvisor provides detailed, rich and relevant data which includes information about the visitors of the Sacred Mounts and information about their beliefs and expectations within their comments. In accordance with content analysis methodology, the study selected a manual coding process in order to transform non-structured information into a format that allows analysis, which is possible due to the nature of the reviews. This paper presents empirical findings on the importance of online feedback for a religious destination

The increasing value of Cultural Routes and Religious Itineraries for potential tourism destinations.

The increasing value of Cultural Routes and Religious Itineraries for potential tourism destinations