Cultural Heritage Appraisal by Visitors to Global Cities: The Use of Social Media and Urban Analytics in Urban Buzz Research

Abstract

An attractive cultural heritage is an important magnet for visitors to many cities nowadays. The present paper aims to trace the constituents of the destination attractiveness of 40 global cities from the perspective of historical-cultural amenities, based on a merger of extensive systematic databases on these cities. The concept of cultural heritage buzz is introduced to highlight: (i) the importance of a varied collection of urban cultural amenities; (ii) the influence of urban cultural magnetism on foreign visitors, residents and artists; and (iii) the appreciation for a large set of local historical-cultural amenities by travelers collected from a systematic big data set (emerging from the global TripAdvisor platform). A multivariate and econometric analysis is undertaken to validate and test the quantitative picture of the above conceptual framework, with a view to assess the significance of historical-cultural assets and socio-cultural diversity in large urban agglomerations in the world as attraction factors for visitors. The results confirm our proposition on the significance of urban cultural heritage as a gravity factor for destination choices in international tourism in relation to a high appreciation for historical-cultural amenities.

How Can a Destination Better Manage Its Offering to Visitors? Observing Visitor Experiences via Online Reviews

“…Furthermore, in the digital age, the consumer has a strong voice and it is inevitable that user generated content (UGC) will be shared by other people in the world [2]. In tourism, the tourist can shape a strong opinion and voice their opinion via online reviews on TripAdvisor, a photo shared on Instagram and Facebook, and posts made on a personal blog [73]. In each of these examples, tourism businesses have no control over the dissemination of information related to their destination, which can influence others' perceptions of the destination.…”

“…TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) was chosen to retrieve reviews written by visitors. TripAdvisor is one of the most recognized and active online travel communities [73,79,80] that is visited by 435 million visitors monthly on average and the reviews on 7 million businesses (e.g., hotels, restaurants, and attractions) are accumulated to the total of 390 million [81]. The information about the business and reviews on Social Networking Service (SNS) has a significant influence on tourists' decision making process [82].…”

What Drives City Brand Attractiveness? An Empirical Study on Some Provinces in Indonesia

“…Cultural tourism destination introduced three drivers and highlighted the importance of cultural facility collections in a city, the impact of city attractiveness for visitors, residents and international tourism and local people appreciation on cultural heritage. Research finding stated that the importance of cultural heritage is significantly affecting the international visitors interest (Kourtit et al, 2019). Other studies investigated the attractiveness concept, place marketing and events through identity and image.…”

Cultural tourism in cities post-COVID-19: a perspective and proposals for an alternative model

“…Indeed, tourism activity was a continuously growing machine (Mansilla & Milano, 2018), that, for decades, had been generating constantly rising economic benefits based on increased supply and demand. In fact, this trend could plausibly continue in coming decades and tourism would continue to be a source of income for local and regional economies (Kourtit et al, 2019). Some studies, however, suggest that tourism was sustained by a process where investment was built on the anticipation that visitor numbers would continue to grow indefinitely (Cocola, 2019), but the truth is that, as in many other economic bubbles, such warnings were ignored.…”