69821 - Destination Marketing and Management

Learning outcomes

Learning Outcomes: At the end of the course the student: knows the relevance of the destination management for the tourism sector; is able to identify and critically evaluate the marketing tools available for tourism destinations; knows how to interpret and evaluate the organizational models of coordination, control and marketing implemented by the destination authorities to effectively manage the tourism activities.

Course contents

It is often argued that tourism destinations are increasingly competing within an international challenging scenario. Similarly, the economic growth of many individual countries is being understood in relation to the success of different types of destinations in national and domestic tourist markets. Marketing and branding have rapidly emerged over the last decades as widely adopted business philosophies at disposal of destination managers willing to raise the profile of the tourist places they are developing.

The application of commercial marketing and branding to the spatial realm of tourist places, however, brings with it questions and problems that regard the applicability of marketing principles and the specific ‘translation’ required. The course aims at illustrating the challenges and the opportunities disclosed by a sustainable adoption of marketing and branding within cities, regions and nations. The globalization of tourism also means that tourism has geographical, cultural and political dimensions that destination managers need to take into account. To address the particular challenges and acknowledge the role of the visitor/guest experience in co-creating some elements of the destination experience, this course provides participants with essentials of marketing tools and skills they can relate to real-life situations as they arise in industry. Furthermore, the course intends to enable participants to critically relate the principles of marketing and branding to empirical examples of successful (and unsuccessful) destinations in Italy, Europe and from around the globe.

With the inclusion of a module on destination marketing research it is also hoped that this course will stimulate interest in the subject area and encourage participants to further study destination marketing and management.

Readings/Bibliography

Key text: Y. Wang & A. Pizam (2011) Destination Marketing and Management Theories and Applications, CABI International.

Furthermore, a selection of peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters will be suggested. Among them:

Giovanardi, M. Lichrou, M & Kavaratzis, M. (forth). Critical Perspectives on Place Marketing. In Tadajewski, M., Higgins, M., Denegri-Knott, J, & Varman, R (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Critical Marketing, Routledge, forthcoming (pp. 1-7 – AVAILABLE ON https://campus.unibo.it )

Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation of urban governance in late capitalism, Geografiska Annaler 71B, 3-17.

Saraniemi, S., & Kylänen, M. (2011). Problematizing the concept of tourism destination: An analysis of different theoretical approaches. Journal of travel research, 50(2), 133-143.

Medway, D., Warnaby, G. and Dharni, S. (2011) Demarketing places: Rationales and strategies. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(1–2), pp. 124–142.

Kavaratzis, M. (2004). From city marketing to city branding: Towards a theoretical framework for developing city brands. Place branding, 1(1), 58-73. AVAILABLE AT: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.455.3119&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Anholt, S. (2008). Place branding: Is it marketing, or isn’t it?. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.pb.6000088

Kalandides, A. (2011). City marketing for Bogotá: a case study in integrated place branding. Journal of Place Management and Development, 4(3), 282-291.

Goulart Sztejnberg, R., & Giovanardi, M. (2017). The ambiguity of place branding consultancy: working with stakeholders in Rio de Janeiro. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(5-6), 421-445.

Hassen, I., & Giovanardi, M. (2017). The difference of ‘being diverse’: City branding and multiculturalism in the ‘Leicester Model’. Cities, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.06.019

Charters, S., & Spielmann, N. (2014). Characteristics of strong territorial brands: The case of champagne. Journal of Business Research, 67(7), 1461-1467.

Teaching methods

To enable participants to achieve the above objectives, a combination of traditional lectures and more participatory/interactive sessions will be used for this course. The language of instruction for all teaching and learning activities is English.

Lectures

Topics will be introduced during lectures and readings suggested. Students are expected to do some of the prescribed readings before lectures, as the lecturing method for this course is a two-way interactive presentation, including students’ verbal participation in terms of their views/opinions of the information being presented.

Interactive sessions

Interactive sessions provide a means for students to verify their understanding and mastery of information presented in the preceding lecture. To that end, interactive sessions will be conducted in the form of group/class discussions, case study, question and answer sessions, and whenever possible a short project group presentation for classroom evaluation so as to engage all attendees. This will enable the tutor to diagnose students’ challenges and help to focus participants’ efforts on critical ideas and techniques to assimilate lecture content.

Assessment methods

Assessment of participants for this course will consist of a written examination, which will include a combination of open-ended answers and multiple choice questions. The pass-mark for this course is 18 out of 30.

Office hours

See the website of Massimo Giovanardi