Sustainable Marketing of Heritage Tourism: Promoting Resilience and Moral Selving

A special issue of Tourism and Hospitality (ISSN 2673-5768).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 March 2022) | Viewed by 4213

Special Issue Editor

School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University-Downtown Phoenix, 411 N. Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0690, USA
Interests: authenticity and authentication of heritage; social and economic viability of different forms of tourism; wellness and wellbeing through alternate healing/preventive therapeutic settings and programs
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Many countries across the globe have used cultural heritage as a platform for urban renewal, economic viability, and for building a shared sense of identity among host communities [1–4]. However, heritage for the purpose of tourism can be a double-edged sword [5]. On one hand, exponential demand can provide the political and economic base for securing government and fiscal support to expand conservation-friendly activities. On the other hand, issues such as increase in visitation and overuse and inappropriate use of cultural assets threaten the survival of fragile assets [2,6,7]. Sustainable marketing strategies are required to promote responsible consumption of heritage resources. Xiang, Pan, and Fesemaier [8] suggest a system design titled ‘SMART search’ which is capable of opening diverse heritage selections and promotes social inclusion instead of societal amnesia [9,10]. It is no surprise, then, that the smart sustainable marketing of heritage tourism has become a crucial management function and area of academic inquiry [2,7,11]. This need is driven by the custodians and consumers of heritage in addition to other stakeholders of heritage tourism (such as the government, lodging and restaurants, destination marketing organizations, and the public sector) and the current pandemic.

A contemporary heritage marketing agenda needs to mix intelligent online and offline heritage ecosystems by strengthening horizontal/vertical heritage supply chains and co-creation/coopetition strategies to optimize both online and offline showcasing of heritage [12–17]. Furthermore, there is a need to design effective instruments that hold the potential to promote ethical selving and moral maturity with the help of diverse informing/knowledge dissemination strategies [12,13,18,19], particularly during intra- and post-pandemic times. This Special Issue of the Tourism and Hospitality journal invites conceptual, empirical, and theoretical explorations to identify and engage with different perspectives/paradigms that examine/test sustainable marketing strategies for intra- and post-pandemic times. This call is open to multifaceted and multidisciplinary research initiatives, and the intent is to feature both case study-specific and theoretical research papers. Innovative papers are invited that attempt to critically address the key emerging areas related to resilient and sustainable marketing of heritage tourism based on (but not limited to) the following themes:

  • Sustainable marketing models for proximate heritage tourism during intra- and post-pandemic times;
  • Smart marketing for ethical consumption of heritage resources;
  • Demarketing for sustainability;
  • Authenticity and sustainable marketing models that promote authenticity of heritage resources;
  • Promoting ethical consumption and/or moral selving through sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
  • Value-based supply chain models for smart marketing of heritage tourism;
  • Smart marketing to forge/strengthen horizontal/vertical coordination between heritage tourism stakeholders;
  • Role of government and public sector in supporting sustainable marketing strategies;
  • Smart marketing theories in the context of heritage tourism during times of crisis;
  • Brand authenticity and digital marketing of heritage tourism;
  • Social marketing of heritage tourism to change behaviors and promote moral selving;
  • Virtual sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
  • Strategizing digitalization in sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
  • Promoting resilience in communities through a sustainable marketing agenda.

References

  1. Chhabra, D.; Zhao, S. Present-centered dialogue with heritage representations. Tour. Res. 2015, 55, 94–109.
  2. Donohoe, H. Sustainable heritage tourism marketing and Canada's rideau canal world heritage site. Sustain. Tour. 2012, 20, 121–142. doi:10.1080/09669582.2011.617826.
  3. Du Cros, H. A new model to assist in planning for sustainable cultural heritage tourism. J. Tour. Res. 2001, 3, 165–170.
  4. Timothy, D.J. Cultural Heritage and Tourism: An Introduction. Channel View Publications: Bristol, UK, 2011.
  5. Butler, G.; Ivanovic, M. Cultural heritage tourism development in post-apartheid South Africa: Critical issues and challenges. Tour. South. Afr. 2016, 47, 58.
  6. Chhabra, D. Proposing a sustainable marketing framework for heritage tourism. Sustain. Tour. 2009, 17, 303–320.
  7. Chhabra, D. Sustainable Marketing of Cultural and Heritage Tourism. Routledge: England, UK, 2010.
  8. Xiang, Z.; Pan, B.; Fesenmaier, D. Developing SMART-Search: A Search Engine to Support the Long Tail in Destination Marketing. Travel and Tourism Research Association Conference: Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2008.
  9. Jamal, T.; Camargo, B. Sustainable tourism, justice and an ethic of care: Toward the just destination. Sustain. Tour. 2014, 22, 11–30.
  10. Ngo, T.; Lohmann, G.; Hales, R. Collaborative marketing for the sustainable development of community-based tourism enterprises: Voices from the field. Sustain. Tour. 2018, 26, 1325–1343.
  11. Font, X.; McCabe, S. Sustainability and marketing in tourism: Its contexts, paradoxes, approaches, challenges and potential. J. Tour. 2017, 25, 869–883.
  12. Chhabra, D. Smart sustainable marketing of the world heritage Sites: Teaching new tricks to revive old brands. In Handbook of Research on Sustainable Development and Economics. IGI Global: Hershey, PA, USA, 2015, 1e512.
  13. Chhabra, D. Strategic Marketing in Hospitality and Tourism: Building a 'Smart' Online Agenda. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.: Hauppauge, NY, USA, 2015.
  14. Hung, S., Chen, C., Hung, H. & Ho, W. Critical factors predicting the acceptance of digital museums: User and system perspectives. Electron. Commer. Res. 2013, 14, 231–243.
  15. Kylanen, M.; Mariani, M. Unpacking the temporal dimension of coopetition in tourism destinations: Evidence from finnish and italian theme parks. Anatolia 2012, 23, 61–74. doi:10.1080/13032917.2011.653632.
  16. McCamley, C.; Gilmore, A. Exploring Entrepreneurial Networking: A Case Study of Coopetition in Heritage Tourism Marketing. In Global Research Symposium on Marketing and Entrepreneurship, San Francisco, USA, 8–10th August 2017.
  17. Ritala, P.; Tidstrom, A. Untangling the value-creation and value-appropriation elements of coopetition strategy: A longitudinal analysis on the firm and relational levels. J. Manag. 2014, 30, 498–515.
  18. Szmigin, I.; Carrigan, M.; McEachern, M. Exploring intentions to use virtual worlds for business. Electron. Commer. Res. 2009, 10, 94–103.
  19. Truong, V.; Hall, M. Corporate social marketing in tourism: to sleep or not to sleep with the enemy? J. Tour. 2017, 25, 884–902.

Dr. Deepak Chhabra
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Tourism and Hospitality is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

19 pages, 5386 KiB  
Article
Crises around Concepts of Hospitality in the Mountainous Region of Svaneti in the North of Georgia
by Stefan Applis
Tour. Hosp. 2022, 3(2), 416-434; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/tourhosp3020027 - 04 May 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3148
Abstract
This study revolves around the village community of Ushguli, located in the Upper Svaneti region in the North of Georgia, which attained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1996. Since around 2010, Ushguli has seen a step-by-step rise in tourism. Until now, it has [...] Read more.
This study revolves around the village community of Ushguli, located in the Upper Svaneti region in the North of Georgia, which attained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1996. Since around 2010, Ushguli has seen a step-by-step rise in tourism. Until now, it has found itself relatively unprepared to meet visitors’ interests and needs and cope with the diverse aspects of modern lifestyles. The encounter and, in many instances, clash of interests between villagers and tourists, occurring in a context in which the economic objectives of the former group are encouragingly continuously growing visitor numbers, is correspondingly difficult to channel and manage. Ushguli represents a region with ideal conditions for exploring tourism as a strategy for overcoming economic and social crises and its effects on spatial, economic, environmental and social structures against a backdrop of change in material and immaterial objects driven by all stakeholders involved. This paper provides an overview of the specific focus of a multi-year study, which began in 2017. The research approach is critical findings related to impacts on regional values and life organization. In a nutshell, it can be concluded that tourists’ online communicated expectations and reviews have a profound impact on local communities and create intense competitive pressure on the local people. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop