Sierdjan Koster (p), Steven Kema, Harm-Jan Rouwendal

Irene Pinto

The location of a firm is one of its most important strategic assets. Its immediate surroundings and premises have a significant impact on the day-to-day operation of the business and the well-being of its employees. At a broader scale of the city and region, the geographical location of the firm determines the level of access to resources, such as suppliers, consumer markets, and –especially important– suitable employees. Moreover, as documented in the extensive literature on urbanization and localization economies, the relative location of firms to other firms, related or not, plays a major role in shaping the firm's competitiveness and productivity. Finally, firms are influenced by the image of the city and region in which they are situated. Given the strategic role of the location, firms can capitalize on this as part of their organizational branding strategy. The location forms an integral part of a firm's identity, which may be reflected in the way that firms communicate.

We propose a novel data-driven approach to measure the extent in which firms incorporate their location, as part of their branding strategy, in the way they communicate about the organization. Using machine learning techniques, we extract toponyms as well as vernacular and informal place names from a large dataset of Dutch online job vacancy postings. Our analysis then consists of two parts. Firstly, we examine the frequency and context of place names used in vacancy texts. Secondly, we analyze the sentiments (adverbs) used to characterize locations to gain insights into their significance to the organizational identity.

In terms of contributions, our work aims to further the understanding of organizational branding and in particular the relevance of location in organizational brands. At the same time, by assessing regional differences in the use of toponyms and vernacular place names, the study unveils differences in regional images that may inform place branding strategies. Finally, it provides a technical framework to operationalize location sentiment in a data-driven context.

Bogdan-Constantin Ibanescu (p), Gabriela Carmen Pascariu, Alexandru Banica, Ioana Bejenaru

Sierdjan Koster

Cities around the world have been pressured to become smarter and implement smart initiatives to keep up with global trends, especially for the highly dynamic economic activities, such as tourism. The pace of progress varies between countries, and post-communist urban areas face obstacles related to financing, understanding, and stakeholder involvement. Our study focuses on the introduction, evolution, and implementation of the smart city concept in Romanian cities, as well as transparency in smart projects, in relation with tourism development. We found that authorities are increasingly open to integrating smart components into the city profile, particularly in the smart mobility domain, using apps and online platforms. However, there is little information available about smart projects, with discrepancies between statistics and available information. Clarification and harmonized statistics are needed for more effective, evidence-based policies.
Additionally, our study reveals discrepancies in the implementation of smart tourism initiatives. Despite their potential benefits, such as enhancing the visitor experience and increasing revenue, the integration of smart tourism solutions in Romanian cities is still in its early stages. This highlights the need for more concerted efforts to promote smart tourism initiatives and improve their implementation in Romanian cities.
It is important to note, however, that while smart tourism initiatives have been successful in some areas, their applicability is not universal, and careful consideration must be given to the unique characteristics and needs of each city when implementing smart tourism solutions.

Irene Pinto (p)

Bogdan-Constantin Ibanescu

The tourism sector is currently facing the challenges that emerge from the global environmental and social changes of contemporary times. These changes make resilience planning (Davoudi, 2012) emerge as an effective approach to community development, envisaging the semantic drift of the resilience from an ecological to a social setting. As one of the most diffused social practices, tourism is now encompassed within community resilience research. More specifically, community resilience applies to regenerative tourism practices, that by definition aim to increase the regenerative capacity of local communities and ecosystems through fulfilling the potential of tourist destinations to thrive and create net effects (Bellato et al., 2022). Beside the social and environmental changes, the digital revolution can be considered as another crucial driver of change for a territory and for contemporary tourism practices. The paper aims to deepen the potential of digital innovation to create a tourism value chain and to fill social gaps by applying the resilient planning approach to the reappraisal of inner areas through digital innovation tools. The paper will analyze some DMOs of small villages located in inner areas of Calabria region (Unioncamere Calabria, 2019). The analysis will be based on Tripadvisor (TA) data of three Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), for whom the "positioning" (the total number of reviews) and "evaluation" rates will be considered. In some cases, there is a high evaluation but a low positioning rate, indicating that a scarce number of tourists have been attracted to that area, but that they have appreciated it. In this case there is a high potential for a further exploitation of SM to increase the DMO’s internal and external awareness and its attractivity. In other cases, there is a high positioning rate, meaning that a considerable number of tourists have been to the area, but a lower evaluation rate, indicating that the site has already acquired a tourism reputation but there is still room for a further exploitation of digital tools (e.g., AR or VR) to improve the tourist experience. Some guidelines will be finally drafted in order to provide an analytical method to practitioners and policy makers, which could be applicable to other focus areas characterized by similar gaps. The ultimate aim is to help other small villages to develop a more solid digital infrastructure, contributing to make the inhabitants willing to stay and to make them feel involved in this innovation-driven process of reappropriation and reputation building.