Editorial

Citation

Roberts, G. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 6 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-07-2013-0017

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Place Management and Development, Volume 6, Issue 3

Welcome to Volume 6 Issue 3 of the Journal of Place Management and Development. Once again we have an internationally diverse range of papers. Despite this, the editorial team has actually met all the authors published in this issue. We make this observation not because there is anything untoward going on in our review process – but instead to show how the place management and branding community is growing and to take this opportunity to say how glad we are that the journal is central to this development.

Our first paper “University students’ needs and satisfaction with their host city” by Andrea Insch and Benjamin Sun, pursues three objectives: to identify which attributes of the host university city are important to students; to assess students’ satisfaction with the key attributes of their host city university city; and to determine the drivers of students’ overall satisfaction with their host university city. To reach these objectives, a two staged mixed methods research design was selected comprising of focus groups and a survey of full time students attending the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. The research found that overall, students’ expectations of the city’s attributes were reached and exceeded, however the relation between expectation and reality with regards to individual aspects of the city was not always in sync. With students representing an important stakeholder group of many cities around the world; the findings of the research will be of value to city managers, whose efforts towards satisfying their student stakeholder group could have an important bearing on the future success of their cities.

Our next paper “Festival spaces as third places” looks at whether festival spaces can be identified as “third places” – a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Clayton Jon Hawkins and Lee-Anne J. Ryan examine two case studies, the first being the falls music and arts festival held in Marion Bay, Tasmania, Australia, and the second being the festival of lights which is held in Pukekura Park, New Plymouth, New Zealand. A methodology including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and surveys are carried out to assess the validity of the attribution of third place characteristics to these festival spaces. Despite the application of third place status to festival spaces being at odds with traditional third place theory; findings suggest that these spaces do indeed possess the characteristics of third places, with both of the case study festivals supporting this. The paper provides an original take on the third place theory, and adds to this by affording an Australasian perspective.

From Australasia to Asia; Emma Bjorner’s paper, “International positioning through online city branding: the case of Chengdu” looks at how cities’ utilisation of the internet and online media can facilitate their branding efforts. The author employs a case study approach, taking as its subject matter the Chinese city of Chengdu. As the authors state, despite the growing body of research concerning place branding; little research has been committed to how places make use of online platforms to reach new audiences, particularly in relation to use of both online and social media. The authors aim is to address these gaps in knowledge, and to do so a combination of observations, analysis of documentation and interviews are employed to build a picture of how Chengdu is utilising online and social media to attract international custom, and how this can be of benefit to other cities.

In another web oriented paper; Efe Sevin presents a descriptive analysis of how US cities are employing the use of Twitter to market themselves in his paper “Places going viral: Twitter usage patterns in destination marketing and place branding.” The paper analyses how Twitter is utilized by five prominent American destination marketing projects (Illinois, San Francisco, Idaho, Texas, and Milwaukee) in an attempt to understand the overall trends and usage patterns of micro-blogging, and the relation of social media ecology and place branding. The findings of this research have practical and theoretical implications. On the practical side, the research sheds light on how Twitter is utilized, and produces recommendations on how destination marketing projects can widen the broadcasting of messages in order to reach target audiences. On the theoretical side, the research tests the explanatory powers of Kavaratzis’ influential city branding framework, which is used to frame the research.

Finally, in our “Place in Practice” paper, “Symbiosis: integrating tourism and Mediterranean landscapes” Thomas Doxiadis and Dionysia Liveri examine the role of landscape in relation to tourism and place branding. He reviews examples where the relationship between tourism, the landscape and the location brand have been very destructive, such as Costa Brava in Spain. Through an examination of emerging practice, he proposes approaches that are more sustainable and more positive:

This new thinking involves studying and assessing the landscape; understanding its role in the local destination brand; formulating strategies that protect or enhance this role; designing projects that integrate into the existing landscape rather than degrading it; removing past elements which degrade the landscape; developing location brands that recognize and enhance this relationship to the landscape; and providing the institutional framework to ensure that the feedback loop between tourism and landscape becomes a positive one.

The results presented should inspire more positive practice in the integration of landscape and tourism, of the type explored in this article.

Gareth Roberts