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Within destination marketing activities, in recent years substantial efforts have been directed towards accurately assessing the ideas, or perceptions, travelers hold about a tourist destination, in terms of destination image measurement. This, in particular when dealing with long-haul tourist markets, where geographical and cultural distance makes harder for DMO marketers to convey the specific identity of a place, highlighting those aspects that distinguish the destination from its competitors. The goal of this study is to identify and qualify the main features that define Italy’s destination image in the Russian outbound leisure travel market. To this end, new insights on the Echtner and Ritchie model are suggested, by introducing a fourth continuum (Encouraging vs. Discouraging) where more emphasis is paid on the role of distance and travel constraints in experiencing the tourist product. Findings highlight that overall Russian outbound tourists’ perceptions of Italy are of relax, warmness, happiness, enjoyment and fun, especially connected to food, culture and fashion.

Among the factors determining the attractiveness and competitiveness of a tourism destinations, the variety of available resources, both tangible and intangible, emerged as a driving factor. As a prerequisite, the correct perception of the contribution given by the different equipment of the destination is need, even though this results hard for what concerns intangibles. For this reason, the present research aims: 1) to identify the role of intangible assets in destination competitiveness; 2) to verify the degree of adoption of plans based on the development of intangible assets; 3) to observe the role played by the involvement of the various actors, and thus the activation of a network, in intangibles’ development. Results, deriving from semi-structured interviews with the managers of 13 European Destination Cities, highlights the perception DMO managers about the role of intangible assets for destination competiteness, while the development of proper networks within the destination still lacks.

Information and Communication Technologies have deeply transformed business strategies and practices in the tourism and hospitality industries (Ip et al., 2011). Among them, the Internet in particular has served as a competitive marketing and communication tool for hoteliers in facilitating information sharing and online transactions (Tse, 2013), thus leading businesses into a new era. Authors have to re-examine the transactional tools employed in the hotel-OTA relationship, with a particular regard to the issue of trust, which is widely recognized by managerial literature as a key factor for fostering customer-vendor relations and sustaining market share (Urban et al., 2009) in socially distant relationships, such as online hotel booking. A topic point of research concerns the development of trust between vendors and buyers in the distribution channel relationships: from the buyer’s perspective, the vendor’s reputation and its investment in the relationship are trust boosters.

From the perspective of destination management policy and strategy, the present research aims to: 1) identify the role of intangibles – in the perception of destination management – in supporting the achievement of a DMO’s institutional goals; 2) verify the adoption of programs that effectively recognize intangibles as a source of equitable development; 3) identify the main elements that may positively affect network development in terms of collaborative project management, strategic planning, organizational focus and fostering cooperation among destination actors. After identifying and categorizing the intangibles that differentiate a tourism destination and make it more competitive, the paper presents a quali-quantitive analysis based on in-depth interviews with DMO managers and stakeholders, and an examination of projects that DMOs have developed, financed or participated in over the past five years.

L’affermazione dei nuovi modelli di business ha comportato la necessità, da parte delle destinazioni turistiche, di ricorrere a strumenti di costruzione e promozione della propria identità basati su socialità, emozionalità, interazione e connettività. Obiettivo del presente lavoro è approfondire determinanti e pratiche di storytelling nei processi di management delle destinazioni turistiche (“destination telling”). L’indagine è stata condotta seguendo la metodologia qualitativa del multiple case study.

The development of Web 2.0 lead to an evolution in the Enterprise – Customerrelationship, allowing the latter to access a wide range of information with a growingimportance in the purchaseprocess. Enterprises – particularly the small ones – havebeenrequired to use the web with greaterawareness and a sense of observation to deal with consumers’ empowerment and to generatesustainable benefits to both the territorial and business systems. In the light of these considerations, this study aims at highlighting the contribution of web communication to agri-food Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SMEs’) competitiveness and atanalysing agri-foodSMEs’ web communication patterns. In line with these goals, a fieldresearchon Italian- and English-language websites has been conducted to identify the essential determinants in the "brand-land-product" web communicationaswellas the most common verbal contents adopted by agri- foodSMEs and their transmission through the Internet. Managerial implications are indicated in the possibility for Mediterranean agri-food business SMEs to acquiredeepersemantic and lexical expertises in communicating their products on the web, in support of their competitiveness, by filling the gap between their opportunities and capabilities to compete on the global scene.

Nell’attuale contesto competitivo, il territorio si configura come l’alveo nell’ambito del quale si sviluppano le imprese: se, infatti, esso ha l’humus adatto – in termini di conoscenza, relazioni e capitale sociale – queste cre- scono e si sviluppano, altrimenti vivono con difficoltà e rischiano di scom- parire. Ai fini dell’attivazione di tali processi co-evolutivi sinergici, un ruo- lo significativo è rivestito dalle politiche di comunicazione, in quanto capa- ci di veicolare un’immagine unica e in grado di rammentare le specificità di un territorio e dei suoi prodotti. Lo sviluppo delle nuove tecnologie dell’informazione e, in particolare, le potenzialità del Web 2.0 hanno determinato un’evoluzione nella morfo- logia e nei meccanismi di gestione della comunicazione aziendale permet- tendo, da una parte, l’accesso del consumatore a un patrimonio informativo diffuso che ha acquisito peso crescente nel processo di acquisto; dall’altra, hanno costituito la base per l’implementazione e la diffusione di piattafor- me virtuali, caratterizzate da interazione, condivisione e cogenerazione dei loro contenuti (Constantinides e Fountain 2008). Per tali ragioni, le imprese – soprattutto se di piccole dimensioni – sono sempre più chiamate a un impiego consapevole e mirato delle applicazioni web, in quanto capaci di valorizzare le potenzialità connesse alla modifica dei modelli relazionali con la clientela e di apportare, in ottica di sostenibi- lità, benefici al complessivo sistema territoriale e aziendale. Alla luce di queste considerazioni, con il presente lavoro si è cercato di giungere alla costruzione di un datasetdikeywordsin lingua italiana ingrado di supportare le PMI dell’agroalimentare nell’acquisizione di compe- tenze semantico-lessicali per la comunicazione dei propri prodotti sul web.

Obiettivi. Obiettivo della ricerca è qualificare, alla luce del mutato contesto socio-economico, il ruolo strategico della fiducia nella relazione Impresa-Banca, ai fini della valorizzazione territoriale. I risultati raggiunti hanno consentito di individuare gli attributi fondamentali che generano fiducia nelle relazioni Impresa-Banca ed analizzare le eventuali differenze, nella percezione delle imprese, nel confronto Banca Locale / Banca Globale. Limiti della ricerca. Lo studio è stato condotto su uno specifico ambito territoriale, storicamente caratterizzato dalla presenza di banche locali, quale è quello pugliese. Ciò potrebbe ridurre la portata dei risultati ottenibili. Implicazioni pratiche. Con tale lavoro si è cercato di fornire elementi conoscitivi utili a rivitalizzare le relazioni fiduciarie e a costruire percorsi di sviluppo volti a corroborare le peculiarità frutto del connubio “impresa-territorio” e, quindi, le caratteristiche dei luoghi e del capitale sociale ivi presente. Originalità del lavoro. Il tema della fiducia è stato affrontato prevalentemente con un approccio sociologico, mentre la letteratura manageriale ne ha studiato l’impatto sullo sviluppo del capitale sociale e della performance economica. Ancora carente, tuttavia, appare l’analisi del ruolo della fiducia tra gli attori economici territoriali nella relazione “banca-impresa” e dell’importanza che essa assume per lo sviluppo della comunità di riferimento.

This study aims to measure the image of Italy as a tourism destination on the Chinese leisure traveller market. To this end, Echtner & Ritchie’s model (1991) is applied; however, compared to its original formulation, it is implemented with greater consideration of the experiential dimension and potential travel constraints affecting the perception of the range of tourism goods and services on offer. This enables not just a denotative, but also and above all a connotative measurement of the image, thereby reducing the risk of ambiguity in the interpretation of the most significant attributes that emerged during the analysis. Adopting a hypothetical segmentation of the market in question, it was also possible to the elements that act as encouraging and discouraging factors regarding a holiday in Italy are highlight, identifying tailor-made approaches to the construction and promotion/commercialisation of tourism products designed to be attractive to the specific segment of interest.

The rise of new business models based on shared content and experience has required tourism destinations to adopt appropriate tools for the construction and promotion of their identity based on sociality, emotions, interaction and connectivity. The aim of this paper is to analyse actors, actions, processes and relations related to the adoption and development of storytelling practices in tourism destination management, analysing critical aspects linked to the generation of content and the narration of territories. As an attempt to understand the processes of innovation and value-creation underlying the development of storytelling in destination management (“destination telling”), the Service Dominant Logic, and the actor-network theory interpretative framework have been adopted. The study was conducted following the qualitative methodology of multiple case studies. In view of the interviews and the analyses conducted, Destination Telling preconditions, contents, managerial criteria and outcomes have been identified, in reference to each of the three stages (“planning”, “narration” and “assessment”) the process has to be split. Finally, managerial implications for an involving construction and sharing of stories to happen have been examined and discussed.

The web is increasingly ranged as one of the options available to agri-food small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in order to face the challenge on how to provide personal taste experiences and manage differentiation in a global market. This research aims at analysing users’ lexical choices in unstructured web sources, identifying the essential determinants in the local products web communication, while highlighting the latter’s contribution to both consumer empowerment and SMEs’ competitiveness. A content analysis of Italian and English-language agri-food blogs was done, in order to retrieve the most frequent concepts from and detect the language used in such sources, thus guiding SMEs in their market decisions. Managerial implications are discussed, due to the sector’s role in the development of the whole Mediterranean area and its ability to gain local preservation and territorial sustainable development.

This study aims at providing a better understanding on how Chinese leisure travelers perceive Italy as a vacation destination. The authors attempted to measure Italy’s destination image by both identifying major features of the Italy travel brand and the associations among them, and by finding out what aspects encourage, or discourage, a trip to Italy. The methodology proposed by Echtner and Ritchie (1993) was enriched by using a combination of quali-quantitative analyses. The obtained knowledge is critical for destination positioning and competitive strategies, in order to provide useful guidance on alliance building and travel itinerary design.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the features of the relations between hotels and online travel agencies, with a particular regard to the issue of trust, which is widely recognised as a key factor for fostering customer-vendor relations and sustaining market share in socially distant relationships, such as online hotel booking. A multiple case study approach has been chosen, through 30 in-depth and semi-structured interviews to three, four and five-stars Italian hotel managers. In terms of results, four different kinds of relationships have been observed, depending on how information as a resource and contractual power may be balanced.

La presenza di un sistema di attrattori materiali è una condizione necessaria ma non sufficiente per assicurare la competitività di una destinazione turistica. Prova ne sia la presenza di destinazioni che, pur con attrattori di particolare notorietà, evidenziano livelli non soddisfacenti di competitività. Per tali ragioni, viene analizzato l’apporto, in termini di attrattività e competitività, delle risorse immateriali in una destinazione turistica e se ne ipotizza una sistematizzazione teorica.