New Paradigms in City Tourism Management

worden sei. Als einzige Möglichkeit bleibe nun die sogenannte Partizipation. Wie das Beispiel einer geplanten Autobahn durch das Walliser Rhônetal zeige, entstünden durch Beteiligung der Bevölkerung " bessere, umweltschonendere und eher akzeptierte Lösungen ". Man wolle das Atommüllproblem in der Schweiz lösen, sofort, und nicht durch Export, aber die Nagra 4 sei der " verlängerte Arm " der Atomindustrie, man brauche als Gegenpol auch unabhängige Experten. Zudem gelte es, bestehende Ängste Ernst zu nehmen. 4 Lösung " nicht einfach aus dem goldenen Schuh hervorziehen " In der Diskussion mit dem Publikum flackerte der sattsam bekannte Grabenkrieg auf: So stan-den einer " totalen Obstruktion der Elektrizi-tätswirtschaft " gegen die erneuerbaren Ener-gien (Rudolf Rechsteiner, Nationalrat, Sozial-demokratische Partei der Schweiz) der " gras-sierende St. Florian mit dogmatischer Angst-macherei " (Riklin) 5 gegenüber. Angesichts der festgefahrenen Position, notabene der Kern-energiegegner, fragte sich Bühlmann: " Da kommen Zweifel an den Möglichkeiten der Partizipation auf. Ich möchte jedenfalls von den Experten wissen, wie da eine Mediation erfolgreich ablaufen soll. " Renn entgegnete, man könne eine Lösung " nicht einfach aus dem goldenen Schuh hervorziehen – es braucht entsprechende Ausdauer bei der Partizipation ". " Akzeptanz durch Partizipation? " war das vorgegebene Generalthema der Tagung und widerspiegelt hohe Erwartungen, die in den Diskussionsvoten immer wieder aufschienen. Es sei " höchste Zeit ". Riklin meinte: " Es ist feige, nach 30 Jahren Diskussion dieses Problem, das wir alle mitverursachen, jetzt nicht zu lösen ". Allenthalben wurde und wird mehr erwartet als " Konsens über Dissens ". Verwaltung und Poli-tik haben es mit dem Instrument des Sachplans in der Hand, die Mitwirkung in einem Standort-auswahlverfahren so zu regeln, dass ein gemein-sames Grundverständnis für das anstehende Problem geschaffen wird – und zwar unter Be-rücksichtigung der eingangs erwähnten Grund-voraussetzungen für einen wirklichen Dialog. Der bisherige technikzentrierte Ansatz ist ge-scheitert. Jetzt muss einem integrierten Ansatz eine Chance gegeben werden. Zielgerichtet, aber nicht überstürzt – denn beliebig viele Anläufe wird es nicht mehr geben können. Die Misser-folge werden von der Öffentlichkeit erinnert und sie machen die Rucksäcke von Verwaltung, Politik und Abfallverursachern immer schwerer. Anmerkungen 1) Weiterführende Links zu dem Thema finden sich unter: Tagung [Verantwortung für die Entsorgung radioaktiver Abfälle] (alternativer Tagungsbericht im Bulletin 2/05, 2) NEAT steht für ‚Neue Eisenbahn-Alpen-Transversale' (die Redaktion). 3) Alle Protokolle, Gutachten und Arbeitsergebnis-se zur Mediation am Flughafen Wien sind ab-rufbar unter http://www.viemediation.at. 4) Nagra steht für " Nationale Genossenschaft für die Lagerung radioaktiver Abfälle ". Die …


New Paradigms in City Tourism Management
Reflections on the Legacy of the First World Tourism Forum

Istanbul, Turkey, 1-3 June 2005 by Krassimira Paskaleva-Shapira, ITAS
City tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism sectors in the world.The unexploited opportunities and the rising harmful effects on the urban communities, however, highlight the importance of dealing with the sector in relation to the urban economy, environment and social and cultural local specifics.One of the key challenges facing tourism and urban re-searchers and practitioners today is to establish the right framework and strategies which will extend tourism's contribution to building sustainable cities and prosperous urban tourist destinations, both in Europe and world-wide.
This diagnosis formed the background of the First Global Forum on City Tourism, held in Istanbul from 1-3 June 2005.The event, hosted by the World Tourism Organisation and the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, gathered speakers -top level experts from academia, travel and tourism industry, national and city tourism councils, organisations, and boards from 12 countries who addressed 200 senior officials from 35 states in Europe, North and Latin America, Asia and Africa.The Forum was set as a focal point to sustainable development and effective management of competitive city destinations as complex and diverse systems of interrelated economic, social and environmental phenomena and networks.
Four main topics were in the heart of the event focusing on designing and promoting competitive and sustainable urban destinations; the new 'value for effort' approach in creating and providing quality city tourism; city tourism marketing and promotion of city's image as a tourist destination; and management of complex urban systems: industry performance and strategic destination development.Together, an ambitious agenda for tourist cities around the world was set up for the 21 st century.The current paper presents some of the most significant presentations and concepts and underlines the challenges around which the main debates occurred.
In the session on "Market Opportunities and Competitiveness of City Tourism", the emerging trends, opportunities, and innovative frameworks for City Tourism and Competitive Destinations were highlighted.The European Commission's vision of tourism "as a corner stone of a policy for urban development that combines a comparative supply able to meet the visitor's expectations with a positive contribution to the development of cities and the well-being of their residents" (EC 2000) shaped up the core of the discussion on establishing a Conceptual Framework for City Tourism Com-petitiveness, promoted by Frédéric Dimanche, European School of Business CERAM, France who emphasized that raising the city's tourism stakes requires two action lines (i) imagemaking and tourism development (establishing place identity, transforming ordinary places and eliminating negative images, focusing on symbols) and (ii) building tourism infrastructure (creating tourism districts, ports and riverfronts, space and activity differentiations, convention centres, retail districts, etc).
Competitive tourism requires that a destination must provide an overall attractiveness and quality experience that are equal or better than those of the alternative destinations for the specific markets.With the goal being to achieve a competitive advantage, the definition sets around the destination's ability to create and integrate value-added products that sustain the resources while maintaining a market position relative to the competitors.Destination competitiveness therefore must be viewed as a relative and multi-dimensional concept; it's also about the extent to which an economy is focused on those tourism activities for which it is optimally endowed as well as the ability to pursue such optimal mix of activities well.The main yardstick being that the destination's development of tourism must be sustainable, not just economically and ecologically, but socially, culturally, and politically as well.The key attributes of a competitive destination thus refer to the industry level and the level of attractiveness of the destination.
How can destinations build up and use their competitive advantages to become more prosperous and sustainable?As Dwyer and Kim (2003), for example assert in their integrative model, these rest on four main sets of components: (i) supporting factors and resources (the characteristic of the city inherited and the inherited resources that make it attractive to visitors) (ii) the core tourism resources and attractors (iii) the management, policy, planning and development capacities and (iv) some additional qualifying and amplifying determinants of the destination.Thus while the comparative advantage refers to a destination's natural endowment in factors of production and the resources that make it attractive, the competitive advantage is about the destination's ability to use the resources effectively.Therefore the indicators for measuring competitiveness should be based on both subjective and objective attributes.While some of the factors of competitiveness refer to tourism specific factors (architecture, history, local way of life, cultures, festivals, museums and galleries, music and performances, nightlife), others concern generic business factors (staff costs and skills, good retail sector, technology level, strategies for local firms, political stability, government 'cleanness', education and training, strong currency and prices).
The latter suggests that both business factors and tourism attractors should be considered in the plans for tourism competitiveness where the determinants should vary in respect to the specific markets (e.g.leisure vs. business).It is also useful to conduct importance and performance analysis to measure the city's ability and success in building a competitive destination.Planning for competitive positioning should involve envisioning, setting the goals and objectives and developing the strategies and actions that need to be implemented in the future.
Yet, cities are complex systems of flows which interact and constantly change.The new challenge therefore, said Mara Manente, International Center of Studies on the Tourist Economy, Italy, is to see cities -in their relationships with tourism -and no longer as 'spaces of place' but as 'spaces of flows' meaning that cities need to define the role of tourism according to their specific models of growth and the sector's functions in the local or regional economy.This suggests that cities should consider defining the specific tourism function of the community and the different patters of growth, such as 'traditional cities' where tourism is established in a strong economic structure, vs. 'tourism cities', where the sector is a promoter of local urban development and 'non-tourist cities' in which the sector is an opportunity to revitalise the local economy.Managing the city as a space of flows can allow aiming at sustainable development in the long term and improving its competitiveness, balancing the city's different functions, embracing other user's quality of experience, ensuing quality of life for the residents, and enlarging and differentiating the economic base.To curb the negative impacts, however, tourism flows and mobility management should become an integral part of destination management.This will op-timise the use of the urban transport network and services and combine efficiently the requirements of tourists and local residents.
Cities are humanity's cradles of culture, art and traditions.City tourism therefore should be closely linked to Urban Culture.Like in Italy, for example, where a strong trust is growing to shift from the 'cities of art' to the new concept of 'urban tourism' in which the city is viewed as an ever evolving living space for people, art, architecture, history, traditions, fun and leisure.In this context, culture is to be redefined with reference to cultural tourism -a notion reinforced by Augusto Huescar, World Tourism Organisation, who endorsed the findings of a major study of the European Travel Commission and the World Tourism Organisation promoting urban cultural tourism as an integrated two-layer system, in which the primary traditional elements of the sector (heritage tourism and arts) form the inner circle and the secondary elements of cultural tourism, lifestyles and creative industries -the outer circle.Amidst emerging trends of increasing competition between the European cities, it is likely that traditional cultural tourism cities will be losing market share in favour of new destinations offering more innovative products such as signature architecture, new lifestyles and creative industries.
In view of optimising the links and the relations, the synergy between the cultural sector and tourism thus becomes a critical point in future urban tourism development.Streamlining frameworks and objectives is emerging as a dire necessity.Differentiated marketing of cultural tourism to purposeful and sight seeing cultural tourists and those who come for culture and others whose historic décor is of importance, for example is also significant.Addressing the age groups, with those over 55 on the increasing side, is yet another alternative.With the value of authenticity becoming increasingly important for cultural tourism, visitor management is to play a much larger role as well.The novel opportunities for the sector range from innovation for attracting repeat visitors and cultural events, to promoting 'creative cities' where competitive creative industries link with traditional indus-tries, especially for large cities and metropolises, as is the case of Turin, where new offers like chocolate making, aperitifs, industrial city, and a growing Olympic Village are promoted and provided through guided tours, testing, and interactive online platforms.
Tourism undoubtedly will continue to be a primary source of economic earnings for many cities in the years ahead; yet, other industry potentials should also be exploited to benefit the urban communities and the surrounding regions.Take for example the cities of Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Dubai or Paris which have chosen to develop tourism not just as an economic enabler but also as a social safety net to speed up and balance the urban development processes.In managing tourism growth and development, the goal should be to work with all institutions to share the benefits among all sectors, social and economic.Yet, strategies on commercialisation of the territorial heritage and the city resources into products and creating new value of old traditions should include safeguards to preserve the quality and the sustainability of the local amenities and attractions.

Competing Through Value: The novel Value for Effort Approach
Competitive management of city tourism will require new development approaches.The 'value for effort' approach, endorsed by Eulogio Bordas (T.H.R.International Tourism Consultants, Spain), offers one strategic opportunity.In cities, tourism should be seen as a catalyst to urban prosperity, building on the value efforts, competitiveness, yield, and investments.This, however, requires a shift from the traditional approach of tourism as an economic benefactor to industry, to a sector that promotes people's desire to be in a place and the interest of the tourists to experience and live the attraction with their senses.There is a growing need for the personalisation of services to address the special interests of the customers and their emotional attitudes.The old paradigm to attract 'more visitors, more times, for more money' is being replaced by the novel attitude to 'the quest as a partner, emotionally linked to the values, the experiences and the feelings staged by a city, or the place'.
Providing the guests with positive emotional states requires that cities reinvent and offer new tourism products to today's and tomorrow's customers.Understanding the 'value for effort' formula requires considering first, the 'value perception' -what the industry offers to the client, and second, the 'efforts perception' -the request from the client -in a way that the value for money notion reflects the earnings generated from the experiences and the feelings of the clients.Clustering the city, choosing a competitive strategy, developing the set of experiences and the emotional pyramid of each cluster are the first steps in the right way.The next steps refer to managing the process well and in perspectives.
Brand promotion and creating an image is critical for the city's positioning in the highly competitive urban tourism market.Projecting the image of quality and diversity, inspiring fidelity in tourists and transforming marketing in a powerful competitive advantage requires competing strategies based on a combination of product, technology and marketing.City 'branding' has to become more than offering a product.A 'city brand' has to be a unique and identifying symbol, a name of trademark, which serves to differentiate competing products or services.Both are emotional and physical triggers to create relationship between the consumers and the product or the service.Creating 'competitive value' requires investing in the overall local prosperity.The benchmark of success is turning the city from a 'place to stay' to a 'place to play', said Standley Bendelac (Delvico Red Cell Advertising Agency, Spain).The challenge to tourist cities is to search for strong brands that add value by answering to what people want, and what is relevant to them, now and in the future.
To make a city 'engaging' for the visitor is a great challenge."Travel needs a new face" said David Naggar (FODOR´s Guide, US) -to be able to respond to the visitors' demands who want connections with the city, immersion, experience, fun.The new traveller seeks to fit in the community rather than to bop from sight to sight, surrounded by other tourists.People look for ways to ease into the local way and pace of life -therefore cities need to erode the barrier between residents and tourists to help them interact and enjoy the city together.
Quality is becoming a key principle of city tourism.Quality refers not only to tourism services and products, but also to urban life in cities in general.With the latter affecting not just the tourists' experience and satisfaction but the livelihood of the local residents as well, as the author of this article, Paskaleva, reinforced.Urban quality of life ought to be taken seriously in urban destination management and cities need to establish the framework to address this challenge.
With nearly 80 per cent of the population living in cities, Europe is the most built up continent and urban development is one of the major challenges of the future.The vision is of building sustainable, prosperous, and competitive knowledge cities of the 21st Century.Governing sustainable cities is foreseen as participatory with residents, steered by their local government, taking ownership of their communities and addressing the challenges of sustainability collectively in a spirit of cooperation and long-term commitment.Urban Quality of Life emerges as a New Paradigm of tourism management, planning, performance measuring, and impact assessment.
To-date, better quality of life is primarily part of sustainable development's general strategies.Sustainable tourism indicators focus more on tourism's economic and environmental impacts.The potentially far reaching consequences of social and cultural impacts of the sector have so far attracted less attention.The welfare of the local population in tourism destinations is equally underscored in tourist management and planning.Only recently Quality of Life (QoL) Indicators are linked to the quality of tourist destinations and management, as in the latest EU and Wold Tourism Organisation's strategic documents.
Why the change?Because tourism impacts urban communities and life of local residents in many and different ways.In cities, citizens and tourists interact.If interactions are unmanaged, tensions can build and disrupt industry and the urban system.Tourism impacts on cities are diverse and implications are broad and complex in a range of areas -economic, physical, social, psychological, cultural, and political.Tourism affects life in urban destinations for both hosts and visitors.Once a city becomes a visitor destination, the lives of residents in that city are inevitably affected to some degree (Jurowski, 1994).The social and cultural changes often entail long-lasting consequences.Recognizing, developing, analyzing and using urban QoL indicators for tourism in urban community management, planning and development in view of building sustainable and attractive tourist cities lies in the heart of the process.The latter, however, requires a shift from a 'top-down' to a more dialogue-based approach, known as 'governance'.
Attitudes and perceptions of quality of life of residents and visitors are diverse and broad.As modern perception studies underline, dealing with the issue needs an integrated approach.When tourists feel they are welcome by the host community, they are more likely to return and recommend it to others (Bachleitner, Zins 1999).Residents' attitudes to tourism impacts can influence sector and community development.Understanding and reconciling hosts and visitors perceptions should become part of urban tourism management and planning.A system of QoL indicators is necessary to assess performance and measure progress on those issues which are important to the local people and the visitors.By assessing and reporting regularly what is important to them, cities can ensure that they focus on enhancing them, while trying to tackle the problems that may arise.Formulating these indicators should form part of the Local Agenda 21 for Tourism process with the aim being to work with the rest of the sectors to raise the quality of life within the urban communities.
Using QoL indicators by cities requires a driving role of the urban authorities.The chosen indicators should reflect the main social, economic and environmental issues of concern to the local people and the tourists.These should be selected by experts and should represent key issues for the public.Sharing experiences, values, attitudes, goals and action can generate new opportunities to tourism development and can contribute to the improvement of the general quality of life in the urban community.

Competing through Advertising and New Media
To earn competitive positions, cities need powerful and effective tourism marketing.Successful marketing of urban destinations is an art interwoven in a powerful business model that is based on several 'Marketing Myths', said Eulogio Bordas (THR International Tourism Consultants, Spain).These are the city's seduction tools, the people whom the city wants to seduce, the ways the city stages the seduction, and the way the city attracts and retains the targets.Better promotion, improving the yieldmore people, more and better days, higher spending, more recommendation, more loyalty, and competing strategic plans are other elements of a successful marketing strategy.Good advertising is the heart of marketing -it needs to be emotional, show value and should always be tackled seriously.Successful marketing however rests in the quality and the professionalism of the people who do it.The best investment in marketing is the one that earns results for the guests, makes the visitors happy and creates positive emotions for tourists and locals alike.Successful city marketing is part of successful destination management.In today's complex realities, new questions start to evolve of who should be the primary responsible for promoting the city as a destination and a place to live, work and enjoy.What should be the role of the City Tourist Boards in this regard?Should they solely deal with destination management?'Not necessarily, said Claes Bjerkne (European Cities Tourism) -the 'key to success are the partnership' where the City plays a leading role, like the case of Barcelona, a city with its own identity and success, which has been carefully shaped in a unique political setting -"Tourism de Barcelona" is a joint venture between the City Council and the Chamber of Commerce in which local government and private partners have jointly set up the framework of the city as a destination and has allowed them to adapt to the new needs, assume greater knowledge of the market, open up new market niches and bring order to the range of activities and attractions.While the public involvement brought a moral authority to the decisions being taken, tourist information offices have played a key role in shaping the image of the city and market its own products and services.As a result, Barcelona remains a city where 'one can still have a home and a friend to meet'.
The increasing impact of New Media on destination management and marketing is also to be considered, as Roger Carter (TEAM, United Kingdom) noted.With changes occurring by the day and online market size growing rapidly, city tourism communities need to focus on locationbased services while maintaining relationships with the customers.Customer relations management needs to be relevant to the destinationa new underlying philosophy which requires forming local partnerships for development.Destinations ought to promote web sites where content is the king and content quality management is shared by the players.Forming dynamic packaging online is another challenge that will enable the customers to create their own travel preferences.To offer novel and attractive travel opportunities, cities need to work together with local IT companies, the tourist industry and other culture and heritage providers, which requires raising higher awareness, training and investing in the ICT sector.
At the end, and in reflection, it will be fair to say that the 2005 WTO Forum in Istanbul left a legacy which will stay in the years to come.And if one still wonders why giving such attention to cities -here is one simple answer: Cities all over the world treasure most of mankind's wealth of the past, today and the future.Cities also leave marks on our spirit.A city becomes memorable if it offers unforgettable enjoyment, fulfilment and inspiration to the visitor.Tourism is an unsurpassed source of inspiration, life-long memories and empathy to place, people, culture, cuisine, heritage, and language.The new dynamic and complex world tourism market poses new challenge to the urban destinations.Together -the urban spaces and their qualities and people -locals and visitors alike -shape our senses and impressions.The art and responsibility of staging enjoyable and unforgettable experiences rest on all -community, authority, residents and tourists.Building stunning and affluent cities of heritage and pride for tourism, living, working, and leisure emerges as a 21st Century's must.If only becoming sustainable and prosperous was that easy!Rather, it deserves the determination and commitment of all who care and love the cities of our common world.Nanotechnology is an enabling technology for a wide variety of traditional scientific disciplines.This had led to high expectations that nanotechnology will be a key technology for improving people's standards of living, in the short-term by significantly improving existing processes and products and in the long-term by providing revolutionary and life-changing advances across a wide variety of industries from cancer treatment, light-weight materials to renewable energy.However, the novel properties that make nanotechnologies so interesting have also raised many unanswered questions and concerns related to the impacts nanotechnology may have on society and the environment from the vantage point of sustainability.
The Editors invite authors to submit papers (8,000-9,000 words in length) which deal, in depth, with sustainable development in the field of nanotechnology.Sustainable technologies are, in their view, characterized by high benefits, low risks for the short and long-term and which are socially acceptable.

References
Bachleitner, R.; Zins, A.H., 1999:  Cultural tourism in rural communities: The residents' perspective.In: Journal of BusinessResearch 44/3, p. 199-209  Dwyer, L.; Kim, C.W., 2003: Destination competitiveness: A model and Indicators.In: Current issues in Tourism 6/5, p. 369-414 EC -European Commission, 2000: Towards quality tourism -integrated quality management (IQM) of urban tourist destinations.Luxembourg: Office for official publications of the European Communities Jurowski, C., 1994: The interplay of elements impacting resident perceptions of tourism: A path analytic approach.Unpublished dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University G. Kastenholz, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA), Technology and Society Lab, and Mr. Asgeir Helland are Guest Editors of a special issue of the peer reviewed American 'Journal of Cleaner Production' (JCP) and thus inviting authors for contributions addressing the 'Development of Nanotechnology in Light of Sustainability'; abstracts should be sent in by March 15, 2006.The objective of this Special Issue is to publish high quality papers that objectively and critically analyze how the development of nanotechnology may contribute to sustainable development.