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

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

City Branding through Online Travel Information Search:

Cases of Culture-Led Cities in Vietnam

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 ofcultural 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 Ansince this region is a tourism cluster as planned by the government.

104

Keywords analysis method is adapted by using Keywordtool.io This is a new approach to citybranding research not only for scholars but also practitioners Some city branding implicationsare also proposed for Danang city – the representative of regional tourism in central Vietnam.

2 Literature review

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 an internationalcontext related to history, politic, society, geography Nowadays, cultural tourism is a diversetourism term led by culture Cultural tourism is viewed as an instrument allowing identityforming of new plural-ethnic/state configuration (Lanfant, 1995), For this aspect, identity can

be considered as a type of product need to be placed in relation to others In addition, culturaltourism is in relation to globalization that is summarized by Appadurai (1990) in five trendsincluding ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes Along withthis trend, especially in a digital era, it is not easy to clarify the line between illusion and reality(Smith, 2009) Blurring this line is also mentioned in urban tourism context (Massey, 1995)which based on culture and entertainment Some brands have become cultural tourism iconssuch as McDonald’s and Disney since globalization has been increasing (Ritzer & Liska, 1997).Mentioning cultural tourism, especially without commoditization, Getz (1994) highlights the role

of authenticity in relevance with post-tourist experience Authenticity can be divided into threecategories: objective authenticity, constructed authenticity, and personal authenticity (Jamal & Hill,2002) The former includes artefacts such as traditional or historical sites The latter is related toartificial attractions such as or art objects These two types are covered by heritage tourism and artstourism respectively as proposed by some scholars (Richards, 2001; Zeppel & Hall, 1992) The lastone expresses experiences relating to personal identity and meaning In general, cultural tourismcan be understood as ‘all movements of a person to specific cultural attractions… outside theirnormal place of residence’ (Richards, 2005) to satisfy their cultural needs Among cultural tourismsectors, arts tourism is more experience-oriented than heritage tourism (Zeppel & Hall, 1992).However, in terms of cultural 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 on exportingqualified products Depending on which place is focused, place branding can become nationbranding or city branding Today, place branding and city branding are usually used yetdistinctly (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 bedivided into two trends: non-business/non-profit approach and urban crisis/de-industrialisationapproach The second trend shows similarities between cities and businesses Mentioning placebranding trend, he reviews the literature about

105

the place of origin branding, nations branding, destination branding, culture/entertainmentbranding, and place/city branding Among them, cultural/entertainment branding spread widelyall over the wold, contribute to forming the city’s image Mihalis Kavaratzis and Ashworth(2005) differentiate place branding into three kinds: Geographical nomenclature, product-placeco-branding, and place management City branding should be understood as a placemanagement form with the creation of unique identity to gain the positive perception fromdifferent 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 asmuseums (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 and education”

as compared to common tourists They have higher willingness to pay for the experience.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 of culturaltourism The author mentions two sides of city branding through culture and entertainmentincluding place management aspect and influence of tourism since the cultural tourism trend isgrowing Along with this trend, the city brand image and the identity of cities need to beconnected to culture Many cities have rebranded themselves based on urban culture andheritage with signs and symbols orientation Furthermore, to attract the creative class peoplewho look for high-quality experiences, cities should put culture in the heart instead of solelybased on physical attractions (Florian, 2002, p 218) These creative people can be current orpotential 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 city brandimage, cities should differentiate themselves based on artistic, architectural and culturalheritage to get away from creating the pattern of seasonal pattern tourism The imprint ofMilan is represented by sights, sounds, touch, taste, and smell in tourists’ perception Somecities are mentioned as outstanding examples to help Milan identify which cultural personalities

of Milan should be strengthened The Italian destinations such as Florence, Rome, Venice arepopular with international heritage tourism While European destinations such as Barcelona,Berlin, Vienna are successful cases in terms of cultural attractions According to Green, Lim,Seo, and Sung (2010), the host culture is a component of event image and destination imagealso Having similar ideas, Fernández-Cavia and Huertas-Roig (2010) recognize cities brandthemselves based on specific events Despite this, the authors suppose that it can be thenegative effect toward a sustainable city brand if city image is attached by political events orany private attraction

106

Place images also are affected by TV shows, diplomacy, popular culture, tourism advertising.Whenever need place imagination, people tend to think about the position of potential visitors

in their minds Despite negative place images already existed in one’s mind, he/she still cantravel to that place because of attractive promotions In similarity to the corporate brand, a citycannot build separate brands for its different stakeholders Therefore, city branding is oftenattached by destination branding aims to tourists who might be investors or residents in thefuture At the same time, internal city branding toward residents must also be positive Hence,city brand needs to be built based on “the sense of place and identity of the local populationand societal actors” (Govers, 2011, pp 229, 230) This base is connected to the geneticapproach of culture as the classification of Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) in relation to society,individuals, environment, and artefacts That is the reason why nowadays building city brandimage based on culture have a strong connection with cultural tourism Turku, the old capitalcultural city of Finland, is another example which is proved that has a contribution on citybranding, increases city awareness, nurture a long-term relationship 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’ reputation butalso 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 facilities needed toattain competitive advantages in the global market The author proves the role of the festival as cityimage-maker, tourist attraction through Glasgow case Consequently, festivals can be the vehicles

of urban generation or fixers of city image problems A study of Absalyamov (2015) shows that thecultural heritage of a host-region, an important element of cultural tourism, also be positivelyaffected by mega-event in the case of Kazan city, considered as the 3rd capital of Russia The event

2013 Summer Universiade brings many opportunities 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 destinationbrand is supported by co-branding approach of Xing and Chalip (2006) Also, according to Arneggerand Herz (2016), events include mega-events, hallmark events, local community events or periodicevents that have interconnection with a certain place The significant impact of Eurovision SongContest (ESC) that is considered as a cultural mega-event calculated by the authors in case ofAzerbaijan’s image Intangible effect of mega-event is proved to change the image of the hostdestination thus can increase the number of visitors and economic benefits in the future Overallmedia coverage related to the event also affect people’s destination knowledge and visitingintention even they do not attend the event In this case, the host destination’s image is improvedafter the event Dave and Bart (2013) supply the supplemental fact that long-term positive image ofthe host city in event attendees’ perception will only remain if having a connection between theevent and the city aspects Also, city brand attitude of residents can be improved through culturalmega-events experiences (Vila López, Kuster Boluda, & 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

107

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 ischosen as the language used through Google search engine After collecting keywords by usingKeywordtool.io, noise filtering is conducted to categorize keywords All keywords are defined inrelation to the city brand name In other words, they are combinations between the name of citiesand cultural contents Deriving from these keywords, the expansion can be added Keywordtool.iohelps in looking for keywords through Keyword suggestion and Related keywords offerings Forexample, after typing ‘da nang museum’, 20 unique keywords are suggested such as danangmuseum, cham museum danang, danang museum of cham sculpture, danang military museum, and

so on The set of these keywords then are saved as excel format in order to filter noise

Furthermore, search volume and trend of every keyword are displayed in the results Then,keywords are grouped into cities and the cultural tourism contents The noise filtering andclassification must be ensured by understanding the keyword meanings related to culturalcharacteristics of each city On the next stage, supplement keywords will be added to improvethe keywords set This task needs the knowledge in cities culture of researchers Aftercategorizing keywords, the researcher can define the number of keywords in every subject, theaverage searches per month, the increase/decrease trend as compared to the previous year.The researcher also knows which the most popular content on every subject related to culturaltourism is Then, the comparison between cities in the middle region is made regardingkeywords quantity, average searches, searching trend growth

4 Research context

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, away of living, culture (Graham, 2002) Michalis Kavaratzis (2004) divides image communicationinto three types: primary, secondary, and tertiary The primary one reflects city actions’communication regardings to landscape strategies, infrastructure projects, organisational andadministrative structure, behaviours Secondary communication refers to promotional practicessuch as advertising, symbol usage of a city Tertiary communication expresses word of mouthcommunication which is similar to UGC (User Generated Content) messages Besides, Green et

al (2010) give notes that the event’s negative pre-event media can have negative influences

on the host destination The authors suppose that organic destination image which usuallycomes from popular sources and culture can be extremely changed in a short period Also, theinduced image of destination is emphasized by the authors in relevant to the role of pre-eventmedia

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 three categories:graphic, functional conceptional, and emotional conceptional The latter two types areequivalent to cognitive dimension and

108

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, the interactivity, and thetreatments of city brands through official city web sites The results show that Hong Kong is the

1st ranked city regarding usability, the 2nd destination in inactivity, and the 2nd in city brandstreatment on the website Additionally, almost tourist cities still focus on consumer-messageinteractivity, especially interactive travel organizers Consumer-marketer interactivity andconsumer-consumer interactivity are still limited Amsterdam, the city with the highest position

in terms of city brands treatment, emphasizes in on both functional and emotional brand andinvestigates much more in graphic and visual aspects

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 and visitorsinteract with each other and enhance the brand of a city Among many digital channels, social media

is the more efficient mean of communication toward city governments, lesser budget, wider spreadand much easier to show presence (Sevin, 2017) However, the author concerns the differentplatforms of employment since tourism-related information often be shared through generic sharingwebsites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and tourism-specific websites (TripAdvisor, Booking.com).The former type might affect travel decisions because of the frequency of visit even without travelplan 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 onlineart museum – an attraction of cultural visitors – is discussed by Herzog (2010, pp 25, 26) Thedigital city concept is proposed as a space based on a technology platform which allows informationexchange

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 citiesshow that virtual communities are the most popular one (40%), next followers are consumerreview sites (27%), blogs (15%), social networking sites (9%), and media sharing sites (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 parallel withflows spaces form an informational city Development of informational cities also is mentioned instudies of (Kaja & Sandra, 2014) with characteristics related to technology, knowledge and culture,information flow Four Japanese megalopolis cities include Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Yokohama areconsidered the most proper ones for investigation because of their digital, smart, or knowledgeinfrastructures In terms of the digital city, Osaka has the 1st position, followed by Yokohama, Tokyo,and Kyoto Tokyo is the most developed city in knowledge infrastructure, followed by Kyoto, Osaka,and Yokohama Creative cities are manifested by cultural infrastructure such as museums, theatres,opera houses, galleries They are measured by the visitor amount, the arts and culture expenditure.Kyoto and Tokyo are 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 merelydisplay 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 their smartcards.Moreover, the author also appreciates achievements of virtual reconstruction, the geolocation

of user, and the presence of tags, cameras, sensors for guidance presented

109

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 helptourists in enhancing their experiences on cultural tourism in Italian cities, the ICT platform isapplied for customization during Chrismas event (Clarizia, Lemma, Lombardi, & Pascale,2017a) The smart city concept as the result of this must be linked with urban cultural tourism.Some collected applications adapted to enhance cultural experience of tourists in creativecities shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Technological platforms applied in creative cities

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 ofinformation technologies and modern communication channels, four cities promote themselvesthrough their official websites, apps serving tourism needs, social media such as Facebook,

Twitter With efforts of Vietnam government to promote the image of Vietnam Timeless charm,the information of all cities and towns can be found at the official website

110