Co-performing tourism places: The “Pink Night” festival

Abstract

This paper adopts an ecological perspective to analyze the practices and processes inherent in encounters between residents and tourists. The study contributes to the literature on performance and performativity, seen as a novel theoretical approach in tourism studies, by proposing the concept of performative field, which enables a holistic and ecological consideration of the performances and relationships in tourism. This is in contrast with the binary logic emerging from the available studies, where confrontation between "hosts" and "guests" as two well-distinguished performative forces appear to be the norm. The study draws on non-representational theories and illustrates its arguments through an investigation, through participant observation, of the "Pink Night" (La Notte Rosa), an annual festival staged along the Romagna coastal region -one of the most renowned Italian mass-tourism destinations.

The Role of Partnerships in Staging Tourist Experiences

“…Last but not least, we innovatively recognize how partnerships between DMOs conjointly staging a tourist experience through an event could modify the comprehensive image held by tourists of the wider tourist area involved in the event itself, thus contributing to rebrand the individual destinations themselves. Unlike the ethnographic study carried out by Giovanardi et al (2014) on the Pink Night festival, this study sheds light on the importance of the DMOs and their cooperation in order to develop a complex creative tourism product. In order to achieve the aforementioned objective, the chapter is structured as follows.…”

How is value created? – Extending the value concept in the Swedish context

“…In that sense, the within-case analysis and the later juxtaposition of findings for both consumers and firms are integral to the analytical triangulation employed here. As qualitative analysis was ongoing, complex and arduous, one researcher who acted as a sounding board crosschecked the findings from the within-case analysis (Giovanardi et al, 2014). The constant revisiting of the emerging theory with concrete evidence and examples from the case resonates with the theoretical sampling strategy of the grounded approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).…”

Conceptualising on-screen tourism destination development

“…Dramaturgy can also elucidate the construction process of tourism places and their identity formation as, by employing the metaphors of performance and performativity (Ziakas and Costa, 2012), tourism activity can be analysed as a series of performances within places that are continuously created by the performances of tourists and hosts (Giovanardi et al, 2014). As such, the making of an on-screen destination is the outcome of projected signs and their interactions with stakeholders emanating from the contextual environment of a place (human, social, cultural, physical, etc.).…”