Digital business models in cultural tourism

Purpose Digitalization had a relevant impact on the cultural tourism sector, both demand and supply. If, on the one hand, advances in digital technologies provided tourists with new mobile services able to amplify the cultural experience, on the other hand, they catalyzed the development of new business models by digital enterprises. This paper has a twofold purpose: to detect business models and key characteristics of mobile apps for cultural tourism and to analyze the offering of app-based services in this sector. Design/methodology/approach The authors defined a methodology to identify, characterize and analyze a particular category of digital products for cultural tourism: app-based services. They are studied in terms of value creation, proposition and capture with the aim to identify the distinctive features of business models. As a result, the authors identified a classification framework on three main dimensions, namely "how to exploit mobile app features to create value for cultural tourists" (value creation), "which valuable services are delivered to cultural tourists" (value proposition) and "how companies are rewarded for the value they offered" (value capture). The authors apply the framework to perform a situation analysis of app-based services in the cultural tourism market. Findings The analysis highlights that digital enterprises offering app-based services do not fully exploit advances in technologies about users' value requirements. Hence, the results of our work suggest some directions that digital enterprises may follow to better exploit mobile app technology. Originality/value To date, little research has been devoted to investigating cultural tourism business models involving the exploitation of mobile app-based services. This research provides a useful framework to analyze fundamental aspects of business models in this sector. Such a framework represents a practical tool that provides fruitful insights for the design of a new generation of app-based services within the so-called "Internet of things" domain

Sustainable Development for Rural Areas: A Survey on the Agritourism Rural Networks

The topic of sustainable growth is becoming central in the debate over the rural development policies. Rural communities can completely fulfil the new challenges in the area of sustainability only with the implementation of innovative forms of collaborations among their business networks. In this work, we consider a particular form of business collaboration arising within rural communities, namely Agritourism Rural Network (ARN). In an ARN, a farm, providing agritourism activities, represents a touchpoint between a network of business and organizations in a rural area and tourists interested in enjoying the local territory. With the aim to deeper the extend of the agritourism phenomenon in a rural region and the potential of the related ARNs in being means of sustainable development, we report main results of an empirical survey carried out in 2016 on a sample of 105 agritourism farms all belonging to the same region (Calabria, Italy). Results confirm our intuitions about the importance at farm level of setting agritourism activities and their impact for the ARN related to the farm and for the sustainable development of a local community as a whole

Smart Tourism Destinations: Can the Destination Management Organizations Exploit Benefits of the ICTs? Evidences from a Multiple Case Study

Recent developments of ICTs enable new ways to experience tourism and conducted to the concept of smart tourism. The adoption of cutting-edge technologies and its combination with innovative organizational models fosters cooperation, knowledge sharing, and open innovation among service providers in tourism destination. Moreover, it offers innovative services to visitors. In few words, they become smart tourism destinations. In this paper, we report first results of the SMARTCAL project aimed at conceiving a digital platform assisting Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) in providing smart tourism services. A DMO is the organization charged with managing the tourism offer of a collaborative network, made up of service providers acting in a destination. In this paper, we adopted a multiple case studies approach to analyze five Italian DMOs. Our aims were to investigate (1) if, and how, successful DMOs were able to offer smart tourism services to visitors; (2) if the ICTs adoption level was related to the collaboration level among DMO partners. First results highlighted that use of smart technologies was still in an embryonic stage of development, and it did not depend from collaboration levels

Tourism Destination Management: A Collaborative Approach

Collaboration is a key factor of sustainable growth across territories and industrial sectors. Tourism, one of the largest industries in the world, has been subject to strongest innovation in the last years. Main reasons of this reside both in the availability of new ICTs - Information and Communication Technologies - and organizational models, which directly connect tourists among them and with service providers, and in the always more personalized supply of tourism experience. Tourism destinations can benefit of such innovations if they are able to reorganize the territorial tourism offer around different pattern of collaboration in order to give 2.0 tourists opportunities to live an augmented tourism experience. This paper deals with the possible forms of collaborative networks that can rise within a destination with a focus on relationships between services delivered by the Tourism Destination and the requests of services at the different phases of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle

North, South, Least, Best: Geographical Location and the Thinking Styles Of Italian University Students.

There are economic and socio-cultural differences that characterise the north and south of Italy. A stereotype is that university students from rural southern Italy are more disadvantaged and isolated than those from the urban north. Past research has hypothesised that differences in socio-economic status impact on student learning, which is a factor of thinking style. This study set out to explore if university students from a northern and a southern Italian university report markedly different thinking style preferences. Samples of 170 students from the University of Calabria and 263 students from the University of Milan were surveyed using Sofo's (2005) Thinking Style Inventory. If economic and socio-cultural differences impact on preferred ways of thinking of university students, the impacts may very well be mediated through various pedagogical or informational methods and communication technology. The results of the study did not produce all the expected differences

Adaptive Decision Making and Intellectual Styles

The book provides the reader with a theoretical and practical approach to adaptive decision making, based on an appreciation of cognitive styles, in a cross-cultural context. The aim is to describe the role of thinking-through different options as part of the decision-making process. Since cognitive style influences decision behavior, the book will first examine thinking styles, which involve both cognitive and emotive elements, as habits or preferences that shape and empower one’s cognition and emotion

Digital business models in cultural tourism

Purpose: Digitalization had a relevant impact on the cultural tourism sector, both demand and supply. If, on the one hand, advances in digital technologies provided tourists with new mobile services able to amplify the cultural experience, on the other hand, they catalyzed the development of new business models by digital enterprises. This paper has a twofold purpose: to detect business models and key characteristics of mobile apps for cultural tourism and to analyze the offering of app-based services in this sector. Design/methodology/approach: The authors defined a methodology to identify, characterize and analyze a particular category of digital products for cultural tourism: app-based services. They are studied in terms of value creation, proposition and capture with the aim to identify the distinctive features of business models. As a result, the authors identified a classification framework on three main dimensions, namely “how to exploit mobile app features to create value for cultural tourists” (value creation), “which valuable services are delivered to cultural tourists” (value proposition) and “how companies are rewarded for the value they offered” (value capture). The authors apply the framework to perform a situation analysis of app-based services in the cultural tourism market. Findings: The analysis highlights that digital enterprises offering app-based services do not fully exploit advances in technologies about users' value requirements. Hence, the results of our work suggest some directions that digital enterprises may follow to better exploit mobile app technology. Originality/value: To date, little research has been devoted to investigating cultural tourism business models involving the exploitation of mobile app-based services. This research provides a useful framework to analyze fundamental aspects of business models in this sector. Such a framework represents a practical tool that provides fruitful insights for the design of a new generation of app-based services within the so-called “Internet of things” domain