Keywords

1 Setting the Scene

Tourism is undergoing fundamental changes with regard to market, industry structure and the product itself; changes driven by an even more fundamental transition to ‘post-modern’ patterns of consumption making tourism one of the benchmarks of the modes of production and consumption in the knowledge economy (Frochot and Batat 2013). Traditional models of tourism management and planning are rapidly adapting themselves to a new reality in which tourism plays, quantitatively and qualitatively, an unprecedented role in shaping economic development.

This book conducts a critical discussion of the interconnections between tourism and the city from a policy-oriented research standpoint. In fact, tourism penetrates and increasingly influences policy decisions in all fields of city development: land-use, site development, building regulations, infrastructures, innovation, environmental quality, social inclusion, entrepreneurship, urban governance, etc. This makes it urgent (and not only for scholars) to include tourism perspectives in the models implemented to face urban issues and challenges. Tourism may support cities in building their reputation, in promoting their relational capital in the global arena, and in proposing and supporting a quality model of urban development.

Furthermore, urban tourism is in itself a multi-faceted phenomenon. A variety of travellers come to a city for very different purposes, and their multiple interactions with the residents and with the city’s attractions and infrastructures give rise to a variety of tourisms. Hence a wide range of overlapping tourism models (and business models) must coexist.

Throughout its chapters, this book assumes that tourism is an essential function of contemporary urban contexts. It therefore tests the potential and the limitations of integrating tourism into urban policies. This is done by a multifaceted and multidisciplinary range of contributions. From different perspectives, they discuss how the pursuit of tourism performance may contribute to urban quality and to the well-being of local communities (quality spaces, employment, accessibility, innovation and learning), but may also generate risks, tensions and conflicts, as testified by the rise of anti-tourism movements in reaction to cultural commodification and tourism-induced gentrification. In this regard, as will be further discussed in the conclusions, the integration of tourism into the urban agenda is the condition (both intellectual and political) for critically and positively approaching the asymmetries produced by the city tourism phenomenon. Are these asymmetries leading to a (manageable?) trade-off between the interests of the residents and those of tourists or do they (and under what conditions?) trigger a positive-sum game for the well-being of both permanent and temporary residents?

From this critical perspective, this book provides:

  • an updated account and analyses of the urban tourism phenomenon in contemporary cities;

  • research-based analyses offering managerial considerations and policy implications;

  • a rich array of cases showing practices and policies in diverse urban contexts.

This book is the first result of the joint work of a network of scholars who met for the first time on the occasion of an international workshop held at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) in L’Aquila, Italy, in June 2015. The GSSI is a young doctoral school that was established by the Italian government in 2012 in L’Aquila, with the support of the OECD, as part of the strategy for the city’s reconstruction following the disastrous earthquake of 2009. The GSSI includes a doctoral programme in urban studies and regional science and a research unit in social sciences that focuses on policy-oriented research concerning the long-term development trajectories of territorial and urban systems and that provides the intellectual and organisational framework for the new network and for that workshop in particular. Testifying to the growing interest in the topic proposed and the need for dedicated research and discussion, the call for papers brought 68 applications from all over Europe, and the selection process allowed wide geographical coverage with case studies and conceptual contributions from both Northern and Southern Europe.

A resurgence of interest in the urban tourism phenomenon has to be connected with a variety of factors of both a contingent and structural nature. Certainly, tourism has been growing and diversifying over the past decade; and in a rapidly changing global context, the travel industry has been transforming. Estimates suggest that the number of international tourist arrivals will increase by 3.3 % yearly on average until 2030 (UNWTO 2012), while, according to the World Economic Forum (2015), the travel and tourism sector is forecast to keep growing by 4 % per year, at a higher speed than other economic sectors such as manufacturing, transport and financial services. Besides the growing trends, the diversification and overall transformation of the tourism phenomenon have started to be observed and questioned. As Hall and Williams (2008) put it, four types of innovation should be brought under scrutiny as summarising the fields in which novelty and emerging trajectories can be sought: niche innovation focusing on the opening of new market opportunities through the use of technologies; regular innovation following historical patterns of incremental change; revolutionary innovation, which derives from intensive use of technologies in specific products or services, yet not involving the entire tourism industry; and finally architectural innovation impacting on the tourism industry as a whole. One of current challenges in the tourism research domain consists in the identification of tourism innovations and in the analysis of their social, economic and cultural effects, as well as of their capacity profoundly to change the way in which travellers, on the one hand, and tourism supply players on the other, engage with tourism development.

As this book intends to show, tourism is a ‘situated’ phenomenon; and throughout its evolution in global society, it has definitely not been a negligible factor in cities’ evolving trajectories. And yet urban tourism seems to persist at the margin of the debate on cities. It is rarely studied as part of an urban economy, being mostly confined to treatment as an ‘agent’ of gentrification and as a direct (and almost taken for granted) result of culture-led regeneration processes. What are the reasons for tourism’s marginalisation in urban studies? As we shall see below, this has partly to do with an intellectual history that relegated tourism to playing the role of the ‘easy’ alternative for lagging peripheral regions that had remained outside industrialisation processes.

Two ideal-types have been proposed: “urbanisation tourism” and “tourism urbanisation” (Hall et al. 2015). Both are meant to signal the embeddedness of tourism in urbanisation processes. The latter (tourism urbanisation) identifies tourism as the main driver of the physical, social and economic shaping of the city: urban tourism and leisure play a predominant role in place production. According to the former (i.e. urbanisation tourism), instead, tourism does not prevail in the urban economy, and it is one of the many dimensions on which to focus in order to explain the evolutionary trajectory of cities. There is growing awareness in the global tourism discourse about the need to converge on a sustainable tourism path that seems to coincide with the ‘urbanisation tourism’ rationale, where tourism does not take a lead in the local economy but contributes to urban diversity, leisure and culture consumption atmospherics. The sustainable urban tourism conceptualisation is the main response to the negative effects that rapid urban tourism growth has been provoking. However, significant research efforts should address urbanisation tourism, how it takes shape, the policies and practices characterising it, its effects and limits. In investigating the role of tourism in the formation of the social, economic and physical fabric of cities, there is a need to dig deeper into the many in-between forms that tourism takes in urban contexts.

Global tourism development, in fact, is closely intertwined with the trajectories of urban transformation and urbanisation. The growth of the urban population will be combined with that of a temporary and oscillating population of visitors, impacting on the urban physical and socio-economic fabric. The disproportionate growth in numbers, increasing revenues, and the expanding presence of tourists in various urban settings beyond central tourism districts, as analysed by neighbourhood studies (Novy 2011), urge treatment of tourism as significant urban fact. Cities, then, are not only the main destinations or major focal points of travellers’ itineraries; they are also the origins of most global travellers (Ashworth 1989; Ashworth and Page 2011), since 80 % of tourists are generated from cities (Terzibasoglu 2015).

This is a key reason for reconsideration of tourism as a crucial factor in city development, as stated by the 2012 Istanbul Declaration promoted by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the United Nations agency in charge of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism promotion. Several countries agreed that “tourism is a key resource for cities and local residents” because it may contribute to local income as well as to the maintenance of urban infrastructures and the provision of public services (UNWTO 2012). The Declaration described tourism as the world’s biggest industry, creating positive economic benefits and promoting culture and well-being as well as social cohesion and heritage preservation. The UNWTO also stressed the importance of public policies boosting the positive impacts of city tourism, while preventing or mitigating the negative effects. That is, if most tourism policies have to date been conceived as stand-alone marketing and promotion strategies, the time has come to conduct structured reflection on integrated urban policies. The crucial question is, however, how and to what extent academia can help substantiate these statements and guide the debate towards defining theoretically-based and empirically-grounded action for a responsible, sustainable and accessible tourism.

Various international observers have endorsed a positive, often over-optimistic, representation of tourism. A good example of the strongly positive representation of tourism’s economic impact is provided by the following statement commenting on the tourism scenario that emerged from the Mastercard 2014 Global Destination Cities Index report:

The impacts of travel on destination cities that receive visitors are very significant from the business, social, and cultural perspectives. International visitors’ spending constitutes an increasingly important source of business revenue in a destination city, encompassing the hospitality, retail, transport, sports, and cultural industries, among many others. In many instances, it is a major economic engine for employment and income generation for the city in question. Along with the flow of visitors comes the flow of new ideas and experiences that benefits both the visitors and the destination cities, which are just as important as the flow of spending. As a result, the more connected a destination city is to other cities, the more vibrant and dynamic it becomes. (Hedrick-Wong and Choong 2014, p. 2).

If, on the one hand, tourism is represented as a Panglossian panacea for many (in some cases even all) development problems (as a source of revenue, ideas, employment, connection and dynamism, according to the above quotation), on the other hand, awareness of tourism’s many negative effects has nourished increasingly critical interpretations of its impacts and role in urban areas, marking the end of the cities’ “honeymoon” with urban tourism (Novy 2014), with the emergence of anti-tourism movements re-claiming the dwellers’ right to the city. Various streams in the literature argue the inequitable effects of rent increase and displacement induced by urban dynamics associated with tourism, leisure and consumption, with consequent implications of social, economic, and political exclusion (Novy 2011).

Urban tourism remains an immature field of research, and simplistic descriptions of the city tourism phenomenon are the result. Yet (once again) why do “those studying tourism neglect cities while those studying cities neglect tourism”? (Ashworth and Page 2011, p. 2). Evidently, there has been a kind of implicit consensus on the negligibility of tourism in the process of urban and economic development.

The immaturity of city tourism as analytical domain has historical roots. Until the 1980s the academic literature on urban tourism was very limited (Darcy and Small 2008). Thereafter, urban tourism started to become an integral part of tourism studies, albeit as a quite “distinct phenomenon and area of research” (Edwards et al. 2008). A deep “rural bias” continued to characterise tourism for a long time (Ashworth 1989). Even an “anti-urban bias” (Ashworth and Page 2011) characterised especially the Anglo-American context, where tourism was primarily linked to the idea of outdoor recreation in the countryside where direct contact with nature could be experienced. In contrast, in line with an industrialist vision, cities were conceived as places for hard work, for the “serious tasks of work, trade and government” (Ashworth and Page 2011, p. 3).

Since the 1980s the interest in urban tourism has grown rapidly, in parallel with the increasing attention paid to the need to regulate and counteract the negative externalities of tourism in historic cities (Darcy and Small 2008). As Valls et al. (2014) put it, the “seaside holidays in the sun” model that arose in the 1960s started to diminish, while city tourism has been growing. This trend has been boosted by the emergence and strengthening of low-cost air transport, together with an improvement of European cities’ connectivity. The liberalisation of air transportation in the European Union has meant a revolution in tourism, since it impacts strongly on travellers’ flows both quantitatively and qualitatively. Low-cost carriers (LCCs) have been moving travellers outside traditional routes, creating new destinations (Iniguez et al. 2014; Ivanovic et al. 2014). ‘Emerging’ destinations are often small cities and towns, generally not already famous, where low-cost carriers pay lower airport fees and taxes (Olipra 2012). The enthusiasm for a dramatically changing tourism scenario has led to the conception of LCCs as an opportunity not only to expand the geography of tourism but also to reposition well-established destinations. In 2006 the government of Malta, for instance, offered incentives to cheap flight carriers in an attempt to favour short city-breaks and expand cultural/heritage tourism at the expense of the ‘sun and beach’ model. The result was an increase in the number of arrivals, even though no structural changes in tourism demand occurred (Smith 2009).

At the same time, LCCs have triggered a new wave of discussion on the contribution of tourism to local development. It has been argued that higher tourists flows, like those made possible by LCCs, do not always mean local tourism development, and that, in LCC nodes, tourism destination business models are needed that maximise the benefits while mitigating the negative externalities. The need to reduce or, somehow, balance an overdependence on low-cost carriers has emerged. LCCs, in fact, have the power to decide where, when, and how many visitors will arrive, as well as the power to stop the flows with dramatic consequences on local tourism. This occurred, for instance, in Morocco in 2012 when Ryanair decided to close 34 weekly flights, with the consequent loss of 100,000 visitors annually. This was termed a “Ryanair effect in reverse” (ATW Online 2012).

What are the borders of the urban tourism phenomenon? As this book will show, it is not easy to define detailed and precise contours of the phenomenon because of the multifaceted spatial, cultural, social, economic and political elements that may be argued to be manifestations of city tourism (the following chapters will give an account of this plurality).

A basic definition suggests that city tourism corresponds to those trips to cities (or, more generally, to places of high population density) usually characterised by short stays (UNWTO 2012). Low-cost flights make short city-breaks at affordable prices possible for a growing amount of visitors that choose cities for their weekends or for short vacations. Recent analyses of global travel trends show a rise in city-breaks by 47 % in the period 2009–2013, suggesting that, in numbers, duration is an important aspect for a substantial part of what today is recorded as city tourism (IPK International 2013).

Besides duration, other features distinguish urban tourism (Edwards et al. 2008). Having a wide range of primary and secondary attractions, the urban destination is chosen for a variety of reasons, including leisure, business, shopping, conference attendance, etc. In history, as exemplified by the Grand Tour of Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, cities have always been visited for a “multiplicity of things to see and do”—said Karski in 1990 (Hayllar et al. 2008), suggesting a relationship between variety and length of stay. Thus the traditional criterion of short duration may be too narrow in its focus.

Another aspect qualifying city tourism relates to the fact that, in urban contexts, tourism tends to be only one among economic activities (or one among many economic and social forces), with consequent dynamics of competition for resources between tourism and coexisting urban realities. Tourism is necessarily intertwined to some extent with other socio-economic realities within the urban context because it shares space, skills and, generally, resources with them. There is a “necessary engagement between tourism and the multiplicity of public and commercial organisations with varying levels of involvement with tourism in urban areas” (Edwards et al. 2008, p. 1033). This too, however, is a criterion that is not universally valid, e.g. when we think of resort cities or tourist cities characterised by reducing or simplifying urban functions (this is the case of the tourism urbanisation mentioned above). Urban tourism development must therefore deal with imperative restraints pertaining to the realms of cultural heritage preservation and, on the other hand, to residential needs, which are usually more significant than in other tourist contexts.

In a sense, a keyword with which to explain part of city tourism’s essence is the exceptional role of choice understood in two senses. First, choice is to be understood as ‘opportunity cost’, that is, the potential value loss of other alternative land and resource uses when the tourism alternative is chosen in a context that is ‘populated’ by multiple functions, industries and networks. Secondly, choice concerns the alternative spaces and people that benefit from the value (both symbolic and economic) created by tourism in the city—as this book will amply discuss.

Ashworth and Page, in their literature review based on the identification of paradoxes in the field, remarked that urban tourism has remained a poorly defined and vague concept due to the extraordinarily little attention paid by scholars—in both urban and tourism studies—to tourism “urbanicity” (2011, p. 3) and hence to the distinctive characteristics of those cities that participate in the urban tourism(s) phenomenon. Urban tourism is defined by these authors according to (a) the multi-purpose nature of city visits in a multifunctional context; (b) visitors’ use of urban facilities that are not necessarily built for visitors (as Ashworth and Page put it, “if tourists make use of almost all urban features, they make an exclusive use of almost none. Therefore understanding urban tourism is dependent upon a prior understanding of the urban context in which it is embedded”, p. 3); (c) the diversity of the urban economy in which tourism takes part. The co-presence of multiple economies in the urban context is fundamental for city tourism, so that cities with the largest and most varied economy will gain the highest benefits from tourism (Ashworth and Page 2011). This sounds like an invitation to reduce the emphasis on the tourist city and consider the tourist function as embedded in a network of socio-economic realities.

1.1 City Tourism: An Overview of the Global Context

Much emphasis has been put on the magnitude of city tourism as a global phenomenon. For both scholars and policy makers, ‘quantity’ has often been a source of legitimisation. Numbers have been, in fact, growing very rapidly and are expected to increase steadily at least over the next fifteen years. Global tourism growth is often represented as local opportunity, even though there is increasing awareness of the problems caused by excessive tourism for many ‘mature’ city destinations (Bremner 2016). The following estimates have been made for global tourism trends by 2030: international arrivals will reach 1.81 billion (Fig. 1), with an annual average growth of 4.4 % (which almost parallels the annual average growth of 4 % in global air passengers according to IATA, Terzibasoglu 2015), world GDP generation of 9.6 % by 2030, and the creation of 300 million direct jobs in a much less concentrated market where new destinations rapidly ‘pop up’ (UNWTO 2014a).

Fig. 1
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International and domestic tourist arrivals, 2005–2030. Source: Authors’ elaboration on Hall et al. (2015)

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The World Economic Forum international organisation has started reflecting on the resilience of tourism systems to health, terrorism and economic shocks that might impact on ongoing trends. What has emerged so far is that recovery times are shortening compared to the near past, as a consequence of the implementation of disaster recovery programmes and risk management procedures helping key tourism sectors, e.g. the hotel industry, to be more resilient, but also as a consequence of regional and domestic travellers who, differently from international travellers, are less sensitive to shocks when planning their journeys (World Economic Forum 2015). There are, however, concerns about possible declining arrivals in some specific cities, even though updated data are necessary to evaluate the actual impact of contemporary global phenomena (Bremner 2016). Further and in-depth analysis of the response of tourism systems to shocks would be welcome, particularly in regard to capital cities in the contemporary global economic and geopolitical context.

Speaking of numbers, it is necessary also to mention that mobile booking and online intermediation have been playing an increasing role. By 2014 they had become a mainstream channel (USD 96 billion) accounting for 12.5 % of global online travel sales (World Travel Market 2015). Intermediary bookings have instead recorded a limited increase (from 1.4 % growth in 2013 to 0.3 % in 2015) mirroring a general tendency of consumers’ preferences for direct online purchasing (World Travel Market 2015). This trend is paralleled by the boom in new hospitality providers, with the spread of private rental opportunities brokered through ‘sharing economy’ platforms like Airbnb. This website has provided travel accommodation to over 30 million guests since its foundation in 2008, impacting negatively on local hotel room revenues and thereby changing consumption patterns, as sustained by Zervas et al. (2016) in the case of the Austin and Texas tourism market.

City tourism recorded significant growth (+58 %) between 2010 and 2014, and it represents 20 % of international tourism (Terzibasoglu 2015). IPK International reports +47 % in the period 2009–2013 (UNWTO 2014a), a much higher percentage than that of other tourism segments such as touring holidays (+27 %), sun and beach holidays (+12 %), and countryside holidays (−10 %). According to data, city tourism is not only important per se but is also a proxy for country/regional tourism because cities are hubs from where visitors start their journeys to surrounding areas. Hence there are two reasons for maintaining that cities are key players in the tourism domain (UNWTO 2014a), since they are both final destinations and ‘gateway’ ones.

The growth of tourism flows is paralleled by tourism expenditure on international travel. Emerging economies have pushed up growth rates in international tourism expenditure, compensating for traditional source markets—mostly from the European continent and Western countries generally—which are experiencing a slowdown (UNWTO 2014b). According to the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index report, monitoring 132 destinations around the globe, the top destinations have been London (18.69 million visitors in 2014, +27 % in the period 2010–2014), Bangkok (16.42 millions in 2014, +57 % in 2010–2014) and Paris (15.57 millions in 2014, +17 % in 2010–2014) (Hedrick-Wong and Choong 2014, p. 4). With the exception of first and third positions, which, as said, are occupied by two European capitals, Asian cities and mega-cities such as Singapore, Kuala Lampur, Hong Kong and Seoul lead the ranking. This report also gives information on the total expenditure estimated for the sample analysed. Among the European cities, Barcelona occupies seventh place in the ranking: with 7.3 million visitors, it records growing spend and visitor flows, notwithstanding the many questions raised about the city’s tourism model which this book will treat in more detail.

More interestingly, Hedrick-Wong and Choong (2014), on discussing the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index, drew attention to the pressure that tourism inflows put on the urban system by calculating the ratio of visitors’ per resident (Fig. 2). According to their analysis, pressure was evidently growing in the period 2009–2014; yet further insight and in-depth studies would explain how and the extent to which this growth impacted on urban quality and costs. The same report also shows arrivals’ expenditure per city residents, spanning from 561 USD in the case of New York City to 3863 USD in the case of Dubai, considering the top ten city destinations. Also in this case, further insight would be necessary to understand who benefits most from tourism expenditure and how these monetary flows trickle down into different parts of local communities. There is also room for exploring who is instead excluded from the ‘wealth’ created by tourist arrivals—an issue that will also be treated in this book.

Fig. 2
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Destinations by overnight visitor arrivals per city resident, 2009 and 2014 and International Overnight Visitor Average Spend (‘000, USD), 2014. Source: Authors’ elaboration from Hedrick-Wong and Choong (2014)

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The few data presented above direct the attention to the importance of measuring urban tourism, but also to the difficulty of producing data effectively supporting knowledge creation in the field: that is, data able to give a sense of orientation to effective policy-making. The figures outlined above are of a raw nature and certainly suggest that rough measures of tourism ‘quantity’ are not enough to determine the impact of city tourism and its role in local development and well-being. The need to measure and analyse tourism has been clearly defined in recent times, under the impetus of the UNWTO, which in 2012 initiated the Cities Project and then converged on a set of priorities sealed by the Istanbul Declaration. This was signed during the 1st UNWTO Global Conference on City Tourism in 2012 (UNWTO 2014a), which officially signalled the resurgence of institutions’ interest in city tourism. In this context, the importance of going beyond economic performance measurement to encompass the monitoring of impacts on well-being in a broad sense clearly emerged, with advocacy of evidence-based decision-making amongst both public and private stakeholders.

Accordingly, the Cities Impact Measurement Project promoted by the World Tourism Organisation, which is a global forum for tourism policy debate and a source of analysis on practices and tourism know-how, drew attention to several fundamental points. First, subnational measurements are required by local stakeholders, given their evident need to rely on these in their everyday activities. Secondly, subnational tourism has to be considered a phenomenon different from regional and national tourism, and it is not possible to ‘re-use’ national data at a subnational scale. From this derives the need to consider city tourism as a distinct field for statistical engagement. Granularity and disaggregation of data responding to city tourism’s multifaceted nature are directly connected to the capacity of cities to achieve and maintain their competitiveness over time (UNWTO 2014a).

The World Tourism Organisation also recommended and promoted the standardised production of a set of data and data collection at subnational level so that comparability and benchmarking will be possible across all cities participating in the project. In 2014 a scorecard was proposed to kick off the process of measurement standardisation and harmonisation by providing guidelines for organisations in charge of the monitoring process. The scorecard is composed of three sections: (1) key indicators measuring the economic contribution of tourism in terms of employment and GDP; (2) tourism economic indicators including arrivals, expenditure, jobs per status and seasonality; (3) impact indicators including environmental impacts, tourism pressure counted as number of tourists per day per 100 residents, residents’ satisfaction, tourists’ use of essential services, congestion and intrusion due to visitors (UNWTO 2014a). The third section emphasises the interconnections between residents’ and visitors’ terrains in order to highlight complementarities (e.g. use of urban services and the deriving economies of scale), tensions and potential conflicts over spaces, services and resources.

The story of the evolution of monitoring and measuring procedures and tools in city tourism is still in its infancy. Table 1 summarises the initiatives that have made this field progress in recent times.

Table 1 City benchmarking initiatives
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1.2 The European Context

City tourism has been deemed the most dynamic segment of European tourism. It features the highest growth rates among the various tourism segments, with a dominant role of key source countries such as Germany, United States and United Kingdom, followed by Spain and Italy, which show, however, a slowing trend (European Cities Marketing, ECM 2014). According to the ECM report, which covers 113 cities in Europe including “outstanding cities” (national capitals and power centres) and “core cities” (culturally and economically important destinations), BRIC countries are fast emerging as key source markets. Over the period 2010–2014, while as an aggregate the total number of bednights increased by +20 % in the ECM cities, in the EU28 it did so by +8.9 %. A total of 509 million bednights were estimated in 2014 in the ECM cities; 64 % of them were international bednights (de Delàs 2015). Two different rankings are provided in Table 2, and Fig. 3 gives an overview of the evolution of European cities in terms of international overnight visitors.

Table 2 European Top 10 City Destinations by bednights volume and international overnight visitors
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Fig. 3
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European Top 5 Destination Cities by International Overnight Visitors, 2010–2014. Source: Authors’ elaboration on Hedrick-Wong and Choong (2014)

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The ECM report of 2014 also stressed that smaller European cities may have significant opportunities. Beside the “European Premier League” cities, where city tourism is still growing but may arguably have reached a maturity stage, “Second division” cities (i.e. medium and smaller cities), especially in Eastern Europe, are said to have high potential in the medium-long run and are expected to increase their importance in the urban tourism domain. In terms of city tourism potential to be unlocked, worth mentioning is the World Economic Forum (2015), which, on elaborating the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report at country level, stressed the outstanding tourism potential of European countries, but it also highlighted differences in terms of realistic tourism development. According to this report, on the one hand, this is due to diverse efforts in tourism promotion, which for some countries is a priority while for others it is a domain for improvisation. On the other hand, it is due to different business environments, which are usually more effective in Northern and Central Europe than in Southern and Eastern Europe.

2 A European Perspective: Tourism Policy in EU

As shown by the previous section, city tourism and tourism more widely are of great importance for Europe, since they directly employ 13.9 million people (3.6 % of total employment; tourism is estimated to indirectly support 32.2 million jobs, 9 % of total employment in Europe)—a number that is growing faster than in other economic sectors according to the European Commission (2010)—and it directly produces 3.4 % and 9.2 % of EU GDP considering connected sectors (World Travel and Tourism Council 2015). Accordingly, the European Commission published in 2010 a communication outlining a new political framework for tourism in Europe, which is celebrated in the running title of the document as “the world’s No. 1 tourist destination”. Following the Treaty of Lisbon, this document sealed a “new phase” for the European system that, through a process that boosted growing awareness of the importance of tourism in Europe since the 1980s, formally recognised the European tourism policy domain and the EU’s competences in this field, which had been the prerogative of Member States (Estol and Font 2016). This communication stated that “European tourism policy needs a new impetus” (p. 14) and recalled that the importance of tourism was defined by the Lisbon Treaty so that the European Union has the capacity to “support, coordinate and complement the action by the Member States” (p. 4) by favouring cooperation and good practice exchange among the States and promoting the integration of tourism into the other EU policies. Action is required because of the new constraints that European tourism has to face. According to this communication, the main challenges are increasing global competition, an ageing population whose travel preferences must be satisfied, since, together with other overlooked segments, e.g. reduced mobility travellers, this represents a significant market potential. Then climate change, scarcity of water, and pressure on biodiversity are presented as key issues. Climate change was likely to boost a restructuring of travel modalities with an impact mostly on a defined set of destinations.

The European Union proposed a “sustainable competitiveness” and stressed the need for a constant updating of the competitiveness variables to be conjugated with the conclusions of the Madrid Declaration for a “socially responsible tourism model”. Member States, under the Spanish Presidency of the European Union in April 2010, declared their willingness to participate in the implementation of the EU tourism policy framework, to promote “responsible and ethical tourism and, especially, social, environmental, cultural and economic sustainability of tourism”, and agreed on the need to raise awareness of the importance of knowledge, innovation, and new technologies in tourism development and management (Spanish EU Presidency 2010, p. 4).

It seems from the cited documents—which are of key importance for the foundation of a EU tourism policy (for an exhaustive review of the European tourism policy-making process and system, see Estol and Font 2016)—that urban tourism plays a secondary role, while rural and mountain areas, coastal regions, and islands seem to be at the core of the tourism vision in Europe. This has two likely explanations. First, it derived from the process of European tourism policy development that, since the 1980s, was based on an interpretation of tourism as promoting the Internal Market and, through an integration with European cohesion policy, as reducing divergences across regions: rural tourism was, accordingly, identified as a key domain for fostering entrepreneurship and networking in lagging areas (Estol and Font 2016). That is, tourism is supposed to play a specific role in peripheral and backward regions to revitalise their economic development. Secondly, this is also likely to be linked to a historical lack of engagement with, and competence on, the ‘urban question’ at the European level (something that, as we shall see, has been rapidly changing in recent times).

Besides EU engagement with the development of a policy framework dedicated to tourism, various non-dedicated EU programmes have guaranteed the opportunity to finance tourism-related initiatives in the Member States, such as programmes in the policy domains of cohesion, environment, agriculture, marine and fisheries, culture and education, employment and research, innovation and competitiveness (European Commission 2015c).

For a review of the programmes and types of tourism-related actions that are eligible for funding in the period 2014–2020, it is suggested to read the Guide on EU Funding For the Tourism Sector, available at the European Commission web portal. Here some examples are provided that may be of particular relevance to cities and towns and reveal the European rationale for implementing tourism policies. The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) aims to strengthen economic and social cohesion by removing imbalances amongst regions, and it may support actions improving regional and local competitiveness with an especial focus on industrial and rural declining areas and on urban regeneration. In this frame, tourism-related actions concern innovation, clustering, energy efficiency and entrepreneurship; and, for the period 2014–2020, only small-scale tourism infrastructures can be financed. An example from the previous programming period is the C-Mine project in Genk, Belgium, which was completed in 2011 thanks to 317 million euros from the EU (57 % EU funding on total investment) where a coal-mining site was transformed into a place for creative and cultural economy activities (European Commission 2015c). It will be important to monitor future EU investments in tourism projects to see what projects will be financed for tourism development and if any changes will occur.

Furthermore, Horizon 2020, which is the EU framework programme for research and innovation, is an opportunity to fund tourism-related actions under the Industrial Leadership section, including the Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies and the Innovation SMEs sub-sections. There is a close focus on ICT solutions for cultural and creative sectors with high commercial and innovation potential. One example of a project financed by the Seventh Framework Programme (then replaced by Horizon 2020) is CHESS (Cultural Heritage Experiences through socio-personal interactions and storytelling) funded by the EU in the period 2011–2014 with 2.8 million euros. It developed devices for delivering personalised interactive stories through the use of various technologies including an augmented reality interface, and it was tested in different cultural venues. The Horizon 2020 Expert Group for Cultural Heritage has recently published a report stressing the economic benefits of cultural heritage as an innovative trigger of employment and growth in a variety of sectors, also beyond tourism and generally in urban contexts; and a heritage-led urban regeneration model was recommended (European Commission 2015b). This was accompanied by the announcement of 100 million euros for research and innovation in the cultural heritage field in 2016–2017 under the Horizon 2020 schemes, to support demonstration projects showcasing the potential of cultural heritage for urban and rural regeneration in Europe.Footnote 1

To conclude, perhaps the most popular EU scheme for towns and cities is the Creative Europe Programme, which is designed to support cultural and creative sectors. One of the strands for tourism-related actions is the European Capital of Culture, in the form of an award assigned to one city in two Member States each year. The candidate cities have to develop a cultural programme aimed to emphasise and leverage on the diversity and richness of European cultures. The present chapter and the book will draw further attention to the European Capital of Culture.

2.1 Tourism in the EU Urban Portal

Let us now focus on the urban dimension in the EU’s tourism policy. As said above, city tourism does not emerge strongly from the EU framework, which is keener to define a role for tourism as an economic alternative for lagging areas where other economic engines have been historically weak. And, as we shall now see, when dealing with economic development visions for cities, tourism issues do not seem to play a key role despite being mentioned in different documents and in different ways. The lack of a dedicated and focused effort on framing city tourism and its importance in urban settings is certainly connected to the fact that European policy competence does not include urban planning per se, although this has rapidly attracted increasing attention due to recognition of a strong urban dimension in economic, social and territorial cohesion. This is instead a core competence of the European policy-making. As a matter of fact, “the European Union does not have a direct policy competence in urban and territorial development, but the last two decades have witnessed an increasing importance of the European level in both urban and territorial development” (European Union 2011, p. 12).

If, as stated in the Cities of Tomorrow report published in 2011, the “European model of the city” is based on advanced social progress, democracy, cultural dialogue and diversity, green, ecological and environmental regeneration, what is the role that city tourism should play, and at what kind of tourism development should cities aim? As shown above, city tourism has, in fact, a significant and—to a certain extent—growing social, cultural, physical and economic weight in contemporary cities. Hence the topic is no longer avoidable. The Cities of Tomorrow report mentions tourism and puts it alongside knowledge-industry business and skilled and creative labour as supposedly attracted by the “European Cities of Tomorrow”.

Accordingly, now conducted is a review of the documents archived under the Urban Portal of the European Commission.Footnote 2 The purpose is to provide a synopsis of a selection of sections called “Urban issues”—Green Cities, Resilient Cities, Innovative Cities and Creative Cities (see Table 3)—so that the profile(s) of tourism can emerge. As said, a vision for tourism development in the urban domain is at present largely absent, while some sort of “rural bias” (Ashworth 1989) seems to emerge. Attention, in fact, is paid to tourism in that part of the Urban Portal referring to urban-rural linkages. It is said that rural-urban partnerships may benefit peripheral areas both in terms of increased accessibility to urban infrastructures and in terms of an upgraded use of cultural assets and landscapes for tourism and recreation through the sharing of a sustainable development vision and marketing strategies (Artmann et al. 2012). Studies categorising the projects arising from urban-rural partnerships have frequently highlighted tourism and cultural heritage as a key field for collaboration. However, the evidence on the effective benefits for rural areas (e.g. in terms of rural employment and housing conditions) is rather uncertain (Artmann et al. 2012).

Table 3 Urban issues in the EU Urban Portal: how is tourism represented?
Full size table

From the Green Cities perspective, the key challenge identified is mobility, whose inefficiencies provoke congestion, pollution, traffic and accidents. This is a major issue considering that yearly 1 % of the EU’s GDP (100 billion euros) is lost because of congestion, and that urban traffic produces 40 % of CO2 emissions (European Commission 2007). Tourism is mentioned in this regard because travellers are a key group of transport users with needs, patterns and preferences representing pressure factors on the urban transport system (European Commission 2007). For this reason, CIVITAS, which is an initiative for Cleaner and Better Transport in Cities, has supported a variety of sustainable mobility projects in city tourism. One example is the development of new mobility services for tourists in Burgos, Belgium, which provide information, itineraries and guidance on public transport and bicycle access, as well as incentives for collective and cleaner forms of transport, by involving a broad network of hoteliers, taxi drivers and travel agencies.

Not surprisingly, the ‘green city’ is considered an asset for tourism development in European cities. The European Green Capital Award promoted by the European Commission works as a branding platform yielding advantages in terms of increased tourism, at least according to the dedicated webpage.Footnote 3 Although there is no scientific evidence of this positive impact, the green capitals certainly utilise their green profiles to promote tourism, as in the case of Ljubljana, Slovenia, which, as the European Green Capital in 2016, offers ‘green’ itineraries and a series of dedicated events (http://www.greenljubljana.com). This topic will be further developed in Part III of this book.

From the Resilient Cities perspective, the challenge consists in adaptation to climate change, since warmer temperatures and extreme weather events demonstrate the vulnerability of urban systems in coastal zones as well as in other regions. Tourism is a particularly vulnerable sector because climate change is evidently impacting on European regions by increasing summer tourism in Northern Europe while, for example, decreasing summer tourism and probably changing seasonality in Mediterranean coastal cities (this book will deal with this issue). The Innovative Cities perspective draws attention to the need for tourism’s integration into the wider smart city, and for smart community planning based on a strategic use of information, communication, infrastructure and services (EIP-SCC 2013). The ‘innovative’ and ‘green’ city agendas overlap—as proliferating experiences of smart systems for traffic and public transport (e.g. real-time applications) demonstrate—to improve tourism destination competitiveness (World Travel Market 2015).

Finally, the Creative Cities perspective intersects with city tourism particularly in the case of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) scheme based on culture as a trigger of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The programme has been recently strengthened by embedding it more firmly in the overall urban cultural strategy, in order to widen and extend the local legacy of the European Capital of Culture (European Commission 2015a). In this framework, sustainable tourism is viewed as the natural result of the ECoC project. On the other hand, tourism supply—including hospitality, transports and soft skills—is considered a success factor of candidate cities (European Commission 2014). However, it is explicitly stated that tourism development is not to be the goal of this framework, which must not be understood and translated into a dedicated programme supporting tourism. It is declared, in fact, that the ECoC is “not a tourism-led project”, while the aim is the well-being of citizens and the local population (European Commission 2014). At the same time, however, the guide published for cities preparing to bid in the period 2020–2033 also states that “one of the objectives of the programme is to raise the international profile of a city through culture” (European Commission 2014, p. 7).

2.1.1 What Is ‘Urban’?

Section 1 drew attention to the (controversial) definition of urban tourism, whose borders are not easily defined. After describing the European context as regards city tourism numbers and policy framework, it is time to reflect on the notion of ‘urban’ that, mostly in line with the European definition, will be used in this book, Parts II and III of which will propose a set of case analyses—all of the cases being cities and towns in Europe where multifaceted types of urban tourism are manifest and under scrutiny.

The growth of interest in the ‘urban’, beyond the lack of formal competence of the European Union mentioned above, has been justified by the figures: over 60 % of the European population lives in urban areas, and approximately 85 % of the EU’s GDP is produced in urban areas, so that towns and cities play a driving role in the European economy (European Commission 2007). It was the already-mentioned report Cities of Tomorrow that, in attempting to outline a “European model of the city”, acknowledged a lack—at first sight paradoxical—of common definitions of ‘urban’ and ‘cities’ informing the proposed urban ‘model’ (European Union 2011). In the same pragmatic fashion as the Cities of Tomorrow report, this book defines a city as an “urban agglomeration in general”, although it is aware that an urban policy perspective necessarily includes a range of scales extending from the neighbourhood to the administrative city or to the functional urban areas and beyond (European Union 2011). The same report considers an urban agglomeration to be any entity with more than 5000 inhabitants. To be borne in mind is that urban agglomerations in Europe have a total of 350 million inhabitants, which means 70 % of the European population.

The European urban system mostly consists of small and medium-sized cities and towns with between 5000 and 100,000 inhabitants; that is, 56 % of the European urban population, corresponding to about 38 % of the total European population, lives in small and medium cities, while only 7 % of the EU population lives in metropolises of above 5 million dwellers (European Union 2011). This suggests that the European system is polycentric and relatively dispersed, with smaller cities having to play a role in producing wealth and boosting well-being not only for their own inhabitants but also for the surrounding rural areas—as the Cities of Tomorrow report stated.

Turning to city tourism, it is evident that “cities of all sizes can be competitive” destinations (UNWTO 2014a, p. 10). In the UK, there has been much debate and effort to redefine the tourist offerings in smaller urban centres. Most of the actions have been based on digitalisation and hi-tech solutions to attract visitors and enhance travellers’ experiences, denoting a specific reliance on new technologies to boost smaller cities’ competitiveness in the tourism field (World Travel Market 2015). The cases analysed in the book will provide further arguments for a ‘loose’ definition of ‘the urban’ where size seems to be of secondary importance when predicting the degree of competitiveness and sophistication of urban tourism models.

3 The Book’s Structure

The book provides wide theoretical, empirical and methodological coverage of the urban tourism field of research. It is composed of three parts. While Part I is mostly devoted to reviewing the current debate and to introducing key themes in disentangling the urban tourism phenomenon, Parts II and III analyse a wide range of urban agglomerations and their experiences of tourism development. The geographical scope of this book consists in European and Mediterranean cities, as shown by the rich empirical array of cases analysed.

Part I outlines the research scene and sketches a set of key issues in city tourism. The first chapter by Pasquinelli outlines the frontiers of the city tourism debate by making a range of analytical issues explicitly emerge. Four distinct yet closely interrelated domains of analysis are presented: travellers’ needs, preferences and tastes; city tourism in the urban fabric; the political economy of urban tourism; and city branding. Throughout the treatment, the core argument states an expanding research agenda in urban tourism both conceptually (because what analysts refer to as tourism in the urban context is expanding) and spatially (encompassing, yet going beyond, conventional tourist hotspots and giving specific meaning to temporary spatialities). The scene is then widened by Uğur, who discusses how sustainability goes in parallel with inclusion. In order to disentangle this overused concept, she analytically deploys the notion of integrated access across economic, spatial and institutional spheres. This chapter serves as an introduction to city tourism as sustainable tourism by “recognising the necessity to establish enhanced linkages between urban tourism development and urban planning”.

The focus is on the relationship between residents and tourists and a balance between their needs, either explaining a need for equity and equitable access or suggesting a fruitful search for complementarities. These are two different readings of tensions, conflicts and trade-offs which will be examined in more detail in Part III of the book. Research on transport and accessibility is a key field for theoretically and empirically testing growing tensions between local well-being and tourism development which, according to Gronau’s contribution to this book, should be further studied without forgetting that tourists’ and residents’ everyday practices grow increasingly blurred. As also stated above, transport and the related issues are crucial for urban development and as such should be understood as playing a key role in urban tourism development. Amid a general lack of research and, especially, empirical inquiry, this chapter sets the scene for future transport research in city tourism. On the other hand, the technological domain is inevitably part of the smart city frame (or, more broadly, the innovative city as defined by the European discourse mentioned above). In a sense, access to heritage and cultural assets is mediated and even enabled by new technologies that co-produce cultural tourism and cultural consumption. This is the theme addressed by Garau, who shows how cultural tourism is today enhanced and re-envisioned in forms of a smart tourism and smart cultural consumption.

The relationship between residents and tourists is then considered through the lens of place branding. In this regard, Kavaratzis presents a holistic framework of brand formation interpreted as a negotiation process harmonising residents’ internal perspectives with tourism and outward-looking branding actions. The chapter proposes a participatory place-branding process for an interactive destination brand. At issue is whether place brand building works as a platform for tourism destination planning by providing a space for the involvement of local stakeholders and external audiences. Sevin’s chapter adds a further perspective on branding by discussing a “new communicative space” in which cities are immersed. In particular, social media enable one-to-one communication amongst residents and visitors whose interactions are boosted in favour of the city’s reputation.

Khiat and Montargot further investigate the visitor/resident relationship in city tourism by addressing the important theme of human capital and labour market in tourism development. They focus on professionalism in hospitality as playing a significant role in improving visitors’ satisfaction. Taking the case of Oran, Algeria, as an example, the authors argue that the volume of students of tourism and hospitality is widely insufficient to meet local needs, while hospitality tends to be left to individuals’ welcoming skills. The authors argue that this is a “cultural question” because they find that the culture of service is “delicate and historically sensitive” in Oran, where locals perceive service as form of submission. This contribution to the book opens an important discussion on tourism as a labour market too often overlooked or regarded as unproblematic.

Finally, the theme of measuring and monitoring urban tourism is developed in two chapters that close this first part of the book. Two contributions address this theme from two different perspectives, i.e. the ‘macro’ dimension and the ‘micro’ dimension of urban tourism measurement. Lanquar puts the case for monitoring the impacts of climate change on urban coastal tourism and introduces the terms of an ongoing discussion for establishing a system of indicators to be used in decision-making by urban planners and local authorities. Andersson draws attention to the need to produce knowledge about visitors’ segments beyond monolithic market categories by obtaining insight into what visitors really do and where they go. The ‘visitor stream’ concept is proposed, and it introduces a wider discussion on the use of statistics to measure, monitor, and assess the actual value of urban tourisms.

Parts II and III comprise two different streams of inquiry. In particular, these two sections of the book conduct case analyses in order to expand the discussion through empirical inquiry. Part II focuses on the role of culture, creativity, and heritage in the construction of city tourism destinations. It starts with Čamprag’s contribution presenting the case of the modernisation of Frankfurt’s Altstadt followed by the (re)production of the destroyed medieval city. This draws attention to the ‘museumification’ of urban centres boosted by tourism-led image making processes. How should this urban trajectory be interpreted? The chapter disentangles a multi-layered context by making a plurality of research perspectives emerge.

Della Lucia, Trunfio and Go then reflect on heritage and its pivotal role in urban regeneration and value creation though various forms of “cultural legacy hybridisation”. Differences emerge among three Italian cities analysed by the authors where substantially different urban tourism models are apparent; from traditional forms of cultural tourism, through combinations of traditional cultural tourism and creative tourism, to innovative forms of tourism generated by processes of cross-fertilisation and creativity. A further urban tourism model emerges from the case of Košice, Slovakia, presented by Borseková, Vaňová and Vitálišová. The city was awarded the title of European Capital of Culture in 2013 as part of a transformative process with an impact on the shape and quality of the urban space, on cultural life, attractiveness, and entrepreneurship. An Italian case, the city of Florence, then draws attention to the intertwining of the “city of art”, the “creative city” and the “manufacturing and symbolic fashion city”, as presented by Lazzeretti, Capone and Casadei. The authors argue that the re-emergence of Florence as a fashion city is based on thick synergies between the artistic and cultural urban heritage and the local fashion industry. These engender significant tourism niches, ranging among shopping tourism, fashion museum, and fashion itineraries. Interestingly, this happens without any orchestration by local authorities, yet significant potential seems to be untapped.

Moreover, events and their role in the construction of urban destinations are scrutinised by two contributions in this book, one focusing on recurrent events, the other on itinerant ones. Caroli and Valentino propose six cases of European music festivals where the effects of recurrent events on national and international tourist flows, as well as on demand differentiation, are discussed. Ferrucci, Sarti, Splendiani and Cordente Rodrìguez instead focus on itinerant events, underlining their innovative use for the promotion of regional tourism and image making.

Finally, Rabbiosi and Giovanardi conclude this second part of the book by discussing the role of tourism in the urban policy framework of two Italian coastal cities where mass seaside tourism has reached a maturity stage, while the ‘cultural city’ has started being narrated as an innovative path for change and progress. It seems from the authors’ analysis that the urban centre may work as an ‘adaptive spatiality’ through a culture-led regeneration process. This is because, owing to a variety of physical and symbolic resources, the urban centre is a platform for either tourism diversification or the rejuvenation of the local tourism model through a recombination of old and emerging (i.e. previously not selected nor taken into account) cultural factors.

Part III reconsiders and develops the theme of the relationship between tourists and residents, inclusiveness and access, introduced in the Part I. These chapters scrutinise the tensions, risks and potential trade-offs among tourism, tourism system performance, and urban well-being. Minoia presents an iconic case in the tourism debate—the city of Venice—by casting novel light on the role of tourism in changing the historical city through the introduction and sedimentation of forms of cosmopolitan consumption. Not just tourists but also new residents, i.e. super-rich activists of philanthropic associations and intellectuals, participate in the tourism gentrification and simplification of Venice’s urban multifunctionality. Rapid and unbalanced tourism growth in the Czech capital city, Prague, is then analysed by Dumbrovskà. This chapter discusses the evolution of the historic centre into a ‘tourist ghetto’, by drawing attention to what can be read as residents’ practices of resilience to the pressure of tourism development. Another iconic case in the tourism debate, i.e. Barcelona, is then developed by Fava and Palau Rubio. The chapter analyses the city’s Strategic Tourism Plan launched in 2008. Recent political developments and the newly designed actions to correct the excesses of tourism and boost decongestion confirm this city as a ‘hot case’ for the urban tourism debate.

Besides the evident tensions and conflicts emerging from urban tourism contexts and which have recently transformed into anti-tourism movements, there is room to reflect upon what (and in what urban contexts) tourism may work as a catalyst for the production of forms of added value benefiting tourists and residents alike. In this regard, and adding further insight into the relation between tourism performance and urban well-being, Maćkiewicz and Konecka-Szydłowska introduce the theme of urban green tourism as responding to the commonly sustained “need (…) to make a city enjoyable to all”, tourists and citizens alike. The authors consider ecotourism in urban centres through analysis of the Cittaslow movement. In particular, they analyse the green tourism offering developed by diverse towns and cities belonging to the Polish Cittaslow Network.

Wise and Perić, then propose the case of Medulin, Croatia, to ground a discussion on the social impacts of sport tourism-led regeneration and on the extent to which sport tourism developments provide local communities with benefits. This is a research perspective rarely adopted in the sport tourism development debate. Finally, Mugnano and Carnelli close the section with their contribution on the interaction between tourism and disasters, casting light on the path of reconfiguration of a “new normality” for residents and tourists in post-disaster contexts. It is argued that a form of disaster tourism may even provide tools for developing “a sense of hereness” that may furnish cultural, social and economic means with which to face a disaster’s aftermath.