The socio-economic dimension of ten european capitals through the lens of destination@-branding

The contribution considers – among others - the socio-economic dimension of ten European historical Capitals through the lens of @ - branding applied to the tourism sector. Starting from Anderson’s Theory (1983) and continuing with the definitions and key concepts of brand identity (Aaker, 1996) and brand image (Keller, 1998; Cai, 2002) for a destination’s successful branding, here we propose a re-interpretation of “destination branding” (Morrison & Anderson, 2002) in terms of “destination@-branding” by considering the city destination through Internet not only as an object of perception but also, more comprehensively, as an object of representation (Vanolo, 2010) in light of the Social Representations Theory (Moscovici, 1961/1976). In particular, among various Internet environments, the contribution focuses on exploring two commercial tourism websites: Booking.com and TripWolf. The data selected from Booking.com highlight the main motivations of users to visit historical cities. In this research are considered the following cities: Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Vienna in the context of a broader research project conducted on ten European historical Capitals, initiated by de Rosa in the 1980s (de Rosa, 1995a, 1997, 2006, 2013c; de Rosa, Antonelli & Calogero, 1995; Bocci, de RosaDryjanska, 2017, among others). The analysis shows that the main motivations for visiting the ten European Capitals are: shopping, museums, culture, monuments, food etc. These different aspects fall into a broader categorization proposed by de Rosa (1995, 2013) aimed at encouraging the reconstruction of the social representations of the cities in the twofold perspective of tourists and residents, including among others: Cultural, Aesthetic Artistic-Architectural Dimension, Economic Dimension, Socio-Interpersonal Dimension. This categorization was also used in the analysis of the guides created by Tripwolf users. These particular users are not only "customers" of the tourism enterprise but they are real actors who actively contribute to creating and sharing representations and images of the European Capitals, what in literature is referred to brand image. The goal is therefore to capture the brand image of the cities through the analysis of the commercial websites, after having also studied the institutional and institutional tourism websites, for highlighting the brand identity (de Rosa, Bocci & Picone, 2013; de Rosa & Bocci, 2014; de Rosa, Dryjanska & Bocci, 2017). The results, as shown in detail in the contribution, valorise the historical capitals in the different characterizing dimensions, indicating the @ - branding as an engine of development not only in the economic perspective, but also in that of identity. Pursuing policies aimed at "quality tourism" would also contribute to reconciling economic development and social identity with the themes of social cohesion and relationship between host and hosted.