Towards a contemporary research agenda for island branding: developments, challenges, and dynamics
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Towards a contemporary research agenda for island branding: developments, challenges, and dynamics Angeliki Mitropoulou1 · Ioannis Spilanis1 Revised: 24 February 2020 / Published online: 7 September 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract This opinion paper aims at suggesting a research agenda for contemporary place branding by presenting developments, challenges and dynamics of the field based on meta-analysis of relevant literature. It is high time place branding is identified as a significant tool for exercising contemporary public administration. In order to achieve this scope, it is mandatory to advance the theoretical understanding of the field by building on existing knowledge and models like Hankinson’s and by incorporating cross-disciplinary knowledge from other relevant fields. Therefore, in this conceptual paper the authors attempt a critical review of the existing bibliography and professional reports in order to contribute to the creation of a regime of knowledge production, to group some key findings about selected gaps of the field and assess whether such analysis can reveal the need to identify new potential research paths. Building on existing cross-discipline theoretical foundations, adopting a conceptual approach, the authors aim at (a) urging readers—especially practitioners and scholars—to move beyond towards investigating more challenging and intriguing research gaps like the need to examine more alternative research units than cities like island and insular areas and (b) proposing to elaborate more on the relationships between concepts like tourism, sustainable development, place branding and islandness. Keywords Place branding dynamics · Tourism · Sustainable development · Islandness
Introduction Globalization has changed the way locality is viewed, hence leading to a new era for places, products and even experiences. In addition, the past decades several changes have occurred and abrupt crises like the Covid19 pandemic have emerged that impose us to rethink how places and destinations are managed internationally, regionally, and locally and to generally reflect on mass tourism model that has being prevailing around the world for decades. Given this necessity, and while the pandemic is still spreading globally, the real question is how prepared nations and smaller regions like islands are to tackle pressures towards local society and environment and therefore to set an effective framework for managing all different types of places. So, despite the growing body of literature around city branding, nation branding and similar, there is still a significant gap for island branding.
* Angeliki Mitropoulou [email protected] 1
University of the Aegean, Lesvos, Greece
In fact, as (Hildreth 2010, p. 8) had underlined few years back […] “all of the ‘continents’ of place branding appear to have been discovered, despite many territories retaining the tantalizing label: unexplored”. So, why not exploring more in depth certain place branding territories like island brandi
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