Magda Antonioli Corigliano

Food for tourists?determinants of an image

Eating is a physical necessity, but catering services and food image are also very important ingredients of cultural tourism. Food and tourism are increasingly being combined, e.g. in agri-tourism, wine tours and the sale of food products as souvenirs. However, as this paper illustrates, the development and standards of food for tourists are not determined uniformly by tourism policies, but more significantly by national economic, agricultural and food policies. A comparison between Denmark and Italy illustrates core elements in food cultures. Particularly in Denmark, food production is a major economic activity, and the power of the agricultural and food processing industries has in many cases compromised the quality image. In Italy, on the other hand, food policies and traditions, which give a high priority to freshness, intrinsically allow consumers to stay in control of food to a much larger extent than in Denmark. In both countries, a concentration of tourists in space and time tends to result in a decline of food profile. The paper concludes that only residents are in a position to put a more permanent pressure on food suppliers, and only if they are given the appropriate instruments. Further improvement of the food heritage in both countries (but especially in Denmark) will have to include a reconsideration, and probably changes, in food policies in more global terms. Copyright

Tourist destination brand equity and internal stakeholders: An empirical research

Successful destination branding strategies require the commitment and mobilization of internal stakeholders in order to reinforce the communication of the brand message to the tourist market. To this purpose, the literature suggests that adopting an inclusive and participative approach to the branding process can increase and maintain the stakeholders’ willingness to share the brand mission. However, the results of such sharing and involvement strategies in terms of internal brand equity creation are still under research. In order to fill such a gap, the article proposes to build on the established consumer-based brand equity model for assessing the internal stakeholder-based brand equity of tourist destinations. The model, comprising four dimensions – brand awareness, image, commitment, and satisfaction/loyalty – is then applied to the analysis of South Tyrol’s (Italy) regional branding strategy, through a survey of internal brand users. Findings confirm the importance of a participative approach to the branding process in order to enhance its overall internal equity. Findings also show a relevant information gap regarding brand performance that impacts the stakeholders’ commitment. This confirms the link between the internal and external performance of destination brands. Moreover, significant differences in the levels of brand awareness, commitment, and satisfaction among different categories of stakeholders suggest that the brand authorities should enact targeted internal communication efforts.

On the Significance of Tourism Website Evaluations

Website evaluation methods are an important tool to gather information for the development and the management of a website in order to ensure a good acceptance by the users. Mainly based on detailed questionnaires administered to actual or potential users, this activity can be costly and time consuming. This paper present methods, based on the statistical bootstrapping techniques, to derive confidence intervals for the evaluations produced by a certain sample of users. It is shown that relatively small (less than 10%) confidence intervals can be achieved even with small sample sizes (less than 20).

The Websites of a Tourism Destination: A Network Analysis

How to reveal throughout a quantitative survey of the websites the cooperation development of a tourism destination? The analysis of the links among the tourist websites of a destination allows it. The website network of a tourism destination is examined and the main statistical characteristics of the underlying graph are calculated. The general topology of the network is similar to the one characterizing such systems. However, differences are found, mainly due to the relatively poor connectivity among the vertices of the network. These results are discussed and interpreted. Moreover, the usage of quantitative network parameters is shown to be able to measure the degree of collaboration and cooperation among the destination stakeholders and their tendency to act in such a way.

Technological aspects of public tourism communication in Italy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the online presence of Italian destination management organizations (DMOs) by assessing the quality of their web sites through a demand‐side heuristic approach. Moreover, given the importance of a clear strategic vision for an efficient and effective use of online media, the paper examines the alignment between tourism development plans and practical implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT). Finally, the possible impact of the adoption of a strategic approach on the overall quality of the web sites under investigation is explored.Design/methodology/approach – A double analysis was conducted. An assessment of the main quality features of the official tourism web sites and an evaluation of the statements of public authorities concerning strategic intentions and guidelines for developing ICT instruments. The two evaluations are compared in order to examine their relationships. A strategic matrix of the technological performance and ...

On the Importance of Hyperlinks: A Network Science Approach

Hyperlinks are the essence of the World Wide Web. Their importance is very high due to their ability to provide a visitor with a wealth of good quality information and for the role they play in the ranking of sites by modern search engines. This paper provides a network science approach to provide evidence to the importance of hyperlinking. We examine the webgraph of a tourism destination using graph theoretic methods to highlight the effects that the topological structure has on its navigability. Moreover, through a series of simulations performed on the representation of the real web network we show how a modest increase in the number of links may improve the visibility and the navigability of the destination’s webspace.

Gastronomy and Tourism in Turkey: The Role of ICTs

Food has an undeniable importance for holiday makers. As such, food tourism has gained an enormous potential in recent years. A high percentage of travellers, consider dining and food as relevant activities during their travels. On the other hand, Internet has shown to be a powerful means for promoting a destination and all its resources. Studies on the uses of ICTs and the Internet with regards to tourism, and food tourism in particular, have mainly focused so far on European and Western countries. This exploratory investigation deals with Turkey and how food and wine are represented online and examines the behaviour of website visitors when searching information. The findings indicate a good, yet niche, demand against low levels of supply for gourmet tourism with lack of sufficient understanding of tourism by the governing institutions. The latter finding becomes more evident when considering online offerings.

Tourism Development Through the Quality Area Plans

In the global competition system the environmental variable is acquiring more and more significance both from the micro-economic and the macroeconomic points of view for three main reasons: it allows to improve the product at corporate or at area-system level in a growing — standardised environment (thus inducing the consumer to accept an increased price for additional distinctive elements); it calls for greater attention and greater “sensitivity” to multiple actors such as firms, public authorities, policy makers and various associations, thus contributing on one hand to step up attention and the instruments at protection system level and on the other hand to create ethical values; it helps to overcome the antithetical position of public policies and corporate criteria, especially where the latter gain in competitiveness by eluding regulations.

Web Services as a technology to support a global tourism offer

The wide diffusion of disintermediating Internet technologies poses a threat to the role of tourism intermediaries. Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services look to be one of the few practical ways to develop operational systems able to provide customers effective tools to satisfy their needs and to ease the travel intermediary chores in a highly dynamic market environment. This paper presents an implementation under development and analyses the advantages of the solution adopted. Possible future developments and extensions are outlined.