From Mining to Tourism: Assessing the Destination’s Image, as Revealed by Travel-Oriented Social Networks

Sanda Nicola and Serge Schmitz ()
Additional contact information
Sanda Nicola: Laplec (UR SPHERES), Department of Geography, University of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium
Serge Schmitz: Laplec (UR SPHERES), Department of Geography, University of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium

Tourism and Hospitality, 2024, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Mining communities often rely on tourism as a vehicle for post-mining territorial development. Sometimes, these expectations of the locals are justified by the natural setting and/or the well-preserved industrial heritage; however, these potential tourist destinations are disadvantaged primarily by their image, often associated with decay in the perception of travellers. In this paper, we treat travellers as stakeholders, able to decisively influence the image of a destination by uploading content (photos, reviews and ratings) on Google Maps and TripAdvisor, and we emphasise that user-generated content should be considered when shaping the tourism development strategies. Taking as case studies three former mining regions trying to capitalise on their tourist potential—Jiu Valley and Ștei, in Romania and La Louvière, in Belgium—this article proposes a method for assessing the image of the destination, also aiming to identify those aspects that require improvement.

Keywords: tourism destination; destination image; social networks; post-mining area; Google Maps; content analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z3 Z30 Z31 Z32 Z33 Z38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-5768/5/2/25/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-5768/5/2/25/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jtourh:v:5:y:2024:i:2:p:25-415:d:1393369

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism and Hospitality is currently edited by Mr. Philip Li

More articles in Tourism and Hospitality from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().