City branding through online travel information search cases of culture led cities in vietnam

Truong Yokohama National University, Japan Abstract Cities around the world brand themselves to build their images as memorable places inwhich culture is considered as an important eleme

City Branding through Online Travel Information Search: Cases of Culture-Led

Cities in VietnamVan-Anh T Truong

Yokohama National University, Japan

Abstract

Cities around the world brand themselves to build their images as memorable places inwhich culture is considered as an important element for the sustainable development Culturalattractions can help cities get away from a seasonal pattern of tourism, focus on higherincome inhabitants Hence, cultural tourism has a strong relationship with city branding Since

a city cannot build separate brands for its different stakeholders, city branding aims to touristswho might be investors or residents in the future In Vietnam, although some culture-led citieshave been adopting various strategies, the understanding of searching trend of onlinetravellers is still limited This study investigates tourism searching patterns and keywordsvolume related to cultural information through search engines and social media The researchsites include different tourism regions of Vietnam which are Hanoi, Hue, Danang, Hoi An, HoChi Minh Successful examples of creative cities all over the world are reviewed fortechnological platform-based communication in three different levels: primary, secondary, andtertiary The findings show the dominance of central Vietnam cities as a tourism cluster Thestudy suggests implications for Danang city to use new technologies for city brandcommunication more effectively

Keywords: Culture; cultural tourism; city branding; city image; digital communication

According to Turner and Freiermuth (2017), travel and tourism have an important role ineconomic development of cities/countries In Vietnam, the direct contribution to GDP is 9.3 bnUSD (4.6% of total GDP, 38th in world ranking) in 2016, and forecast to rise by 6% pa from2017-2027 The employment total contribution of Travel and Tourism is 7.3% of totalemployment (4,003,000 jobs, including indirectly supported jobs) This figure is expectedincreased to 7.5% in 2027 (equivalent to 4,544,000 jobs) Among 185 countries, Vietnam isranked as the 38th country in long-term growth as forecast in the period between 2017 and

2027 The visitor exports generate 51.9% of direct GDP contribution as compared to 48.1% fordomestic travel spending Foreign visitor spending is estimated to grow by 6.4% pa to 368,679

bn VND in 2027 Beside sea-island tourism, MICE tourism, in comprehensive planning inVietnam tourism development to 2020, the vision to 2030, cultural tourism (heritage tourismincluded) is one of the most important section since culture places as the flagship ofsustainable city development

Hence, this study considers cultural tourism as an important element for sustainable citydevelopment through city branding The objective of the study is exploring search patterns of

1

cultural tourists to understand their attention on city brand images Thence, cities can positionthemselves more properly The study explores what the keywords related to cultural tourismattached to cities are Research scope is three places in the central Vietnam – Hue, Danang,Hoi An since this region is a tourism cluster as planned by the government.

2

Keywords analysis method is adapted by using Keywordtool.io This is a new approach tocity branding research not only for scholars but also practitioners Some city brandingimplications are also proposed for Danang city – the representative of regional tourism incentral Vietnam.

2.1 Cultural tourism

Cultural tourism can be defined as tourism related to cultural facilities, such as “heritagesite, historic cities, and art attractions, such as festivals” (Towse, 2010) Resources likemonuments, museums, visitor attractions, art galleries, cinemas, concert venues, theatre aremanifestations of a cultural city These resources are used by the resident and the local visitor,holidaymaker, business, conference delegate, city worker without connection between cityworker and monuments (Ashworth & Page, 2011, p 10)

According to Smith (2009), cultural tourism is a multi-disciplinary subject in aninternational context related to history, politic, society, geography Nowadays, culturaltourism is a diverse tourism term led by culture Cultural tourism is viewed as an instrumentallowing identity forming of new plural-ethnic/state configuration (Lanfant, 1995), For thisaspect, identity can be considered as a type of product need to be placed in relation toothers In addition, cultural tourism is in relation to globalization that is summarized byAppadurai (1990) in five trends including ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes,mediascapes, and ideoscapes Along with this trend, especially in a digital era, it is not easy toclarify the line between illusion and reality (Smith, 2009) Blurring this line is also mentioned inurban tourism context (Massey, 1995) which based on culture and entertainment Somebrands have become cultural tourism icons such as McDonald’s and Disney since globalizationhas been increasing (Ritzer & Liska, 1997)

Mentioning cultural tourism, especially without commoditization, Getz (1994) highlightsthe role of authenticity in relevance with post-tourist experience Authenticity can bedivided into three categories: objective authenticity, constructed authenticity, and personalauthenticity (Jamal & Hill, 2002) The former includes artefacts such as traditional or historicalsites The latter is related to artificial attractions such as or art objects These two types arecovered by heritage tourism and arts tourism respectively as proposed by some scholars(Richards, 2001; Zeppel & Hall, 1992) The last one expresses experiences relating to personalidentity and meaning In general, cultural tourism can be understood as ‘all movements of aperson to specific cultural attractions… outside their normal place of residence’ (Richards,2005) to satisfy their cultural needs Among cultural tourism sectors, arts tourism is moreexperience-oriented than heritage tourism (Zeppel & Hall, 1992) However, in terms ofcultural production, it is difficult to distinguish them (Smith, 2009)

2.2 City branding

The concept of nation brand is proposed by Anholt (1998) regardings to the provenance ofexported brands Deriving from this concept, Govers (2011) argues about the necessity ofdistinguishing place branding from place marketing The differences are a multi-brand strategyseem not to be adapted to place and the need for cooperation between cities as regionalbrands The author supposes that building strong place brand not merely based onexporting qualified products Depending on which place is focused, place branding canbecome nation branding or city branding Today, place branding and city branding areusually used yet distinctly (Sevin, 2017)

According to (Mihalis Kavaratzis, 2005), similar to countries/regions, cities borrow marketingtechniques to attract their target audiences The application of marketing theory to places can

be divided into two trends: non-business/non-profit approach and urban industrialisation approach The second trend shows similarities between cities and businesses.Mentioning place branding trend, he reviews the literature about

crisis/de-the place of origin branding, nations branding, destination branding, culture/entertainmentbranding, and place/city branding Among them, cultural/entertainment branding spreadwidely all over the wold, contribute to forming the city’s image Mihalis Kavaratzis andAshworth (2005) differentiate place branding into three kinds: Geographical nomenclature,product-place co-branding, and place management City branding should be understood as aplace management form with the creation of unique identity to gain the positive perceptionfrom different stakeholders.

Jensen and Richardson (2005) have the same opinion with Mihalis Kavaratzis (2005) andFlorian (2002) in transition context from industrial cities to cultural cities In which urbanbranding is attached to a creative class, cities of culture, knowledge, and entertainment Citybranding is thus overlapped with urban branding in cities with high urban growth

2.3 City branding based on cultural tourism

Many cities all over the world today brand themselves with cultural manifestations such

as museums (Paris, London), architecture institutes (Rotterdam, Singapore, Taipei), art(Birmingham, Beijing, Hong Kong) The salient target audiences they aim to no one else thancultural tourists According to Sevin (2017, p 114), tourists can be positioned as externalstakeholders are invaluable co-creators of city branding processes This tendency of citiespromotion is supported by Towse (2010, p 513) in line with images of culture since culturalactivity also attract creative people Along with the development of cultural tourism, residentsalso benefit from several choices of cultural products When mentioning economic aspects ofcultural tourism, cultural tourists are supposed to “have higher levels of income andeducation” as compared to common tourists They have higher willingness to pay for theexperience

The interrelationship between cities and tourism is discussed in the work of Ashworth andPage (2011) Cities need tourism and cities are the origins and the destination of most tourists

as well The author recognises that new city landscape for tourism is based on the culturaldistricts growth This perception has consensus from Mihalis Kavaratzis (2005) in terms of therole of culture in local economic development Culture and entertainment districts have beenreplacing uninhibited industrial areas Therefore, city branding must be attached by culture,especially cultural festivals and events which are considered as the major materials ofcultural tourism The author mentions two sides of city branding through culture andentertainment including place management aspect and influence of tourism since the culturaltourism trend is growing Along with this trend, the city brand image and the identity of citiesneed to be connected to culture Many cities have rebranded themselves based on urbanculture and heritage with signs and symbols orientation Furthermore, to attract the creativeclass people who look for high-quality experiences, cities should put culture in the heartinstead of solely based on physical attractions (Florian, 2002, p 218) These creative peoplecan be current or potential visitors to cultural tourism

Manuela, Silvia, Annette, and Nigel (2009) define the linkage between cultural attractions

in a city with tourism offers in the case of Milan’s brand image In order to enhance citybrand image, cities should differentiate themselves based on artistic, architectural andcultural heritage to get away from creating the pattern of seasonal pattern tourism Theimprint of Milan is represented by sights, sounds, touch, taste, and smell in tourists’perception Some cities are mentioned as outstanding examples to help Milan identify whichcultural personalities of Milan should be strengthened The Italian destinations such asFlorence, Rome, Venice are popular with international heritage tourism While Europeandestinations such as Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna are successful cases in terms of culturalattractions According to Green, Lim, Seo, and Sung (2010), the host culture is a component ofevent image and destination image also Having similar ideas, Fernández-Cavia and Huertas-

Roig (2010) recognize cities brand themselves based on specific events Despite this, theauthors suppose that it can be the negative effect toward a sustainable city brand if city image

is attached by political events or any private attraction

Place images also are affected by TV shows, diplomacy, popular culture, tourismadvertising Whenever need place imagination, people tend to think about the position ofpotential visitors in their minds Despite negative place images already existed in one’s mind,he/she still can travel to that place because of attractive promotions In similarity to thecorporate brand, a city cannot build separate brands for its different stakeholders.Therefore, city branding is often attached by destination branding aims to tourists who might

be investors or residents in the future At the same time, internal city branding toward residentsmust also be positive Hence, city brand needs to be built based on “the sense of place andidentity of the local population and societal actors” (Govers, 2011, pp 229, 230) This base isconnected to the genetic approach of culture as the classification of Kroeber and Kluckhohn(1952) in relation to society, individuals, environment, and artefacts That is the reasonwhy nowadays building city brand image based on culture have a strong connection withcultural tourism Turku, the old capital cultural city of Finland, is another example which isproved that has a contribution on city branding, increases city awareness, nurture a long-termrelationship with city visitors (Hakala & Lemmetyinen, 2013)

Additionally, Sasajima (2013) remarks on the concept of the creative city in accordance withcreative city projects in Yokohama’s Kogane-cho neighbourhood in Japan As entrepreneurialperspective, cultural activities that usually aim to visitors also contribute to investorsattraction Hence, the relationship between cultural tourism and city branding is enhanced aswell On the other hand, Sevin (2017) supposes that cities have been branding themselves astouristic destinations since tourism has brought income from visitors to cities Moreover,travellers can be seen as temporary residents, not only are influenced by cities’ reputationbut also influence their brands

Festivals and events are the most noticeable attractions of cultural tourism destinations.Quinn (2005) indicates that festivals growth expresses city branding to use cultural facilitiesneeded to attain competitive advantages in the global market The author proves the role

of the festival as city image-maker, tourist attraction through Glasgow case Consequently,festivals can be the vehicles of urban generation or fixers of city image problems A study ofAbsalyamov (2015) shows that the cultural heritage of a host-region, an important element

of cultural tourism, also be positively affected by mega-event in the case of Kazan city,considered as the 3rd capital of Russia The event 2013 Summer Universiade brings manyopportunities for the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan in creating its positive image.Along with the improvement of infrastructure and local businesses, the reputation of the city

is also improved The correlation between event image and destination brand is supported byco-branding approach of Xing and Chalip (2006) Also, according to Arnegger and Herz(2016), events include mega-events, hallmark events, local community events or periodicevents that have interconnection with a certain place The significant impact of EurovisionSong Contest (ESC) that is considered as a cultural mega-event calculated by the authors incase of Azerbaijan’s image Intangible effect of mega-event is proved to change the image ofthe host destination thus can increase the number of visitors and economic benefits in thefuture Overall media coverage related to the event also affect people’s destination knowledgeand visiting intention even they do not attend the event In this case, the host destination’simage is improved after the event Dave and Bart (2013) supply the supplemental fact thatlong-term positive image of the host city in event attendees’ perception will only remain ifhaving a connection between the event and the city aspects Also, city brand attitude ofresidents can be improved through cultural mega-events experiences (Vila López, KusterBoluda, & Marín Aguilar, 2016)

Similarly, the image of a mega-event is affirmed to have effects on destination image at allconstruct, sub- construct, factor levels with cognitive, affective, overall dimensions in the case

of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (Lai, 2018) The author also collects five types of therelationship between event image and destination image: correlational, intersecting, causal,

inclusive, and irrelevant The evidence is shown through studies of Lyon’s Tennis Grand Prix, anamateur bicycling event, the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the 2010 Shanghai Expo, thefootball games, the 2012 Guangzhou Asian Games Despite the influences are not the same,affective image dimensions are dominant.

3 Methodology

After investigating how Vietnam cities brand themselves through digital channels, this studyquantifies the trend of using keywords related to cultural tourism in the middle of Vietnam.English is chosen as the language used through Google search engine After collectingkeywords by using Keywordtool.io, noise filtering is conducted to categorize keywords Allkeywords are defined in relation to the city brand name In other words, they are combinations

between the name of cities and cultural contents Deriving from these keywords, theexpansion can be added Keywordtool.io helps in looking for keywords through Keywordsuggestion and Related keywords offerings For example, after typing ‘da nang museum’, 20unique keywords are suggested such as danang museum, cham museum danang, danangmuseum of cham sculpture, danang military museum, and so on The set of these keywordsthen are saved as excel format in order to filter noise Furthermore, search volume and trend ofevery keyword are displayed in the results Then, keywords are grouped into cities and the

cultural tourism contents The noise filtering and classification must be ensured byunderstanding the keyword meanings related to cultural characteristics of each city On thenext stage, supplement keywords will be added to improve the keywords set This task needsthe knowledge in cities culture of researchers After categorizing keywords, the researchercan define the number of keywords in every subject, the average searches per month, theincrease/decrease trend as compared to the previous year The researcher also knows which

the most popular content on every subject related to cultural tourism is.Then, the comparison between cities in the middle region is made regarding keywords

quantity, average searches, searching trend growth

4.1 Culture-led cities in a digital era all over the world

Digital cities are considered as ‘a set of web pages in the framework of a city/commune’(d’Udekem- Gevers, 2001) When researching Belgian digital cities, d’Udekem-Gevers(2001) analyses city/commune websites in terms of context, technical modes of functioning,information, and communication More briefly, the framework and the real content of the sitesare objects to analyse However, the finding showed that there was a lack of values in thevisitor counters because of weak promotion at that time

Michalis Kavaratzis (2004) proposes a framework for city image communication in thecontext of city branding, based on the interaction between internal city and external city Theexternal city can be understood as identification of a city which is helpful in distinguishing onecity to another city The internal city can be understood as the city of mind related to society,

a way of living, culture (Graham, 2002) Michalis Kavaratzis (2004) divides imagecommunication into three types: primary, secondary, and tertiary The primary one reflectscity actions’ communication regardings to landscape strategies, infrastructure projects,organisational and administrative structure, behaviours Secondary communication refers topromotional practices such as advertising, symbol usage of a city Tertiary communicationexpresses word of mouth communication which is similar to UGC (User Generated Content)messages Besides, Green et al (2010) give notes that the event’s negative pre-event mediacan have negative influences on the host destination The authors suppose that organicdestination image which usually comes from popular sources and culture can be extremelychanged in a short period Also, the induced image of destination is emphasized by the authors

in relevant to the role of pre-event media

According to Fernández-Cavia and Huertas-Roig (2010), the World Wide Web today is themain tool for city brand communication The authors classify city brands into threecategories: graphic, functional conceptional, and emotional conceptional The latter two typesare equivalent to cognitive dimension and

affective dimension of destination brand image However, in cases of cities analyzed, theofficial cities’ web sites are often limited in terms of interaction between users, lead to lack ofcity brand communication Instead of the emotional aspects, the functional aspects often arecentred when cities position themselves Furthermore, there is a tendency of building morethan one brand per city shown in some cases such as Barcelona (adventurous, friendly,diverse, cosmopolitan, innovative), Edinburgh (friendly, imaginative, diverse, innovative),Amsterdam (creative, diverse, cosmopolitan, innovative), Toronto (creative, imaginative,innovative) The 40 chosen tourist cities are considered based on the usability, theinteractivity, and the treatments of city brands through official city web sites The results showthat Hong Kong is the 1st ranked city regarding usability, the 2nd destination in inactivity, andthe 2nd in city brands treatment on the website Additionally, almost tourist cities still focus

on consumer-message interactivity, especially interactive travel organizers marketer interactivity and consumer-consumer interactivity are still limited Amsterdam, thecity with the highest position in terms of city brands treatment, emphasizes in on bothfunctional and emotional brand and investigates much more in graphic and visual aspects

Consumer-As argued by Govers (2011), place branding is similar to corporate branding which also isaffected by popular media Social media can create a social network in which residents andvisitors interact with each other and enhance the brand of a city Among many digitalchannels, social media is the more efficient mean of communication toward city governments,lesser budget, wider spread and much easier to show presence (Sevin, 2017) However, theauthor concerns the different platforms of employment since tourism-related informationoften be shared through generic sharing websites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and tourism-specific websites (TripAdvisor, Booking.com) The former type might affect travel decisionsbecause of the frequency of visit even without travel plan However, the most important role

is a habit of electric users, not technology solely Considering technology as supplementary,the trend of creating material space supported by online art museum – an attraction of culturalvisitors – is discussed by Herzog (2010, pp 25, 26) The digital city concept is proposed as aspace based on a technology platform which allows information exchange

Xiang and Gretzel (2010) investigate the extent of travel-related content searches throughsocial media by search engines The authors develop a framework that expresses onlinetraveller, online tourism domain, and search engine interactions Five main types of socialmedia as mentioned are: virtual community sites, review sites, personal blogs and blogsaggregators, social networking sites, media sharing sites Search results for nine

U.S cities show that virtual communities are the most popular one (40%), next followers areconsumer review sites (27%), blogs (15%), social networking sites (9%), and media sharingsites (7%)

Recognizing the smart, creative, knowledge city concept in the narrow sense is similar toinformational city concept in a broader sense (Fietkiewicz & Stock, 2015) Showing consensustoward the perception of Herzog (2010), the authors suppose that places spaces in parallelwith flows spaces form an informational city Development of informational cities also ismentioned in studies of (Kaja & Sandra, 2014) with characteristics related to technology,knowledge and culture, information flow Four Japanese megalopolis cities include Tokyo,Osaka, Kyoto, and Yokohama are considered the most proper ones for investigation because oftheir digital, smart, or knowledge infrastructures In terms of the digital city, Osaka has the 1stposition, followed by Yokohama, Tokyo, and Kyoto Tokyo is the most developed city inknowledge infrastructure, followed by Kyoto, Osaka, and Yokohama Creative cities aremanifested by cultural infrastructure such as museums, theatres, opera houses, galleries.They are measured by the visitor amount, the arts and culture expenditure Kyoto and Tokyoare evaluated as the most creative cities, followed by Osaka, and Yokohama

Mentioning new technologies applied to cultural tourism, Garau (2017, pp 71, 72) dividesplatforms into three different types: informative, connection, and integrated Not merely

display information as informative platforms, connection platforms take the role of mediationbetween suppliers and users Integrated platforms offer further interactions Radio FrequencyIdentification (RFID) can be used to track tourists’ actual transactions through theirsmartcards Moreover, the author also appreciates achievements of virtual reconstruction, thegeolocation of user, and the presence of tags, cameras, sensors for guidance presented

through projects especially in Europe such as i-MIBAC Voyager (Italy), ARCHEOGuide(Greece), Streetmuseum (London), Digital Pen (New York), Smart Glasses (San Francisco,Paris) To help tourists in enhancing their experiences on cultural tourism in Italian cities, theICT platform is applied for customization during Chrismas event (Clarizia, Lemma, Lombardi, &Pascale, 2017a) The smart city concept as the result of this must be linked with urbancultural tourism Some collected applications adapted to enhance cultural experience oftourists in creative cities shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Technological platforms applied in creative cities

Reference City/Nation Channel/Platform Audience Description

Schuler

(2005) Seattle SCN – web-based community network

www.scn.org

All A free public-access computer

network for exchanging and accessing information.

Carroll Blacksburg, BEV – Web-based

and

Beckers

(2005)

www.dds.nl on the city domain, encourages

information exchange, innovation,

business es

Great place to live and work with beautiful museums and

neighbourhoods listed, instructions for

rel oc at io n

Italy www luoghig io tt oi talia.it / en / Tourists Customized tours across six cities –

Padova, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Assisi, Napes – Italy to discover Giotto

Gara

u

(201

7)

se r vices ar ound , co - c reat ive of fer s Trento RFID for festival Visitors Evaluates and analyzes actual

behaviours of tourists based on the movements and preferences

Mobile Context-aware app Tourists An app is similar to CyberGuide,

Sensay, AnonySense, SOCAM, GeoNotes that supply

customized services and resources based on tourist’s position and global profile Clarizia,

An app similar to FaTe2, Wikinovel, Casting that gives visitors their own tailored story based on their visiting places and information from Facebook, Google Places and TripAdvisor.

(2017b)

Source: Authors’ summary

4.2 Vietnam cities in a digital era

Digital communication channels

Hanoi capital city, Hue ancient capital, Danang city, Ho Chi Minh city are salientrepresentatives of Vietnam regarding tourism and city branding Taking advantages of

13

information technologies and modern communication channels, four cities promotethemselves through their official websites, apps serving tourism needs, social media such asFacebook, Twitter With efforts of Vietnam government to promote the image of VietnamTimeless charm, the information of all cities and towns can be found at the officialwebsite

14