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This report investigates prior experiences and impacts of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) with the aim of informing preparation plans for Leeuwarden and Fryslân to organize the event in 2018. The longterm benefits that the ECoC tend to be both tangible through improvements in facilities, and intangible as self-confidence and pride increase as the result of celebrating the destination, its culture and history.
In this report the concepts services, hospitality and experiences will be discussed. The goal of this report is to provide insight in what is written in literature about services, hospitality and experiences and to help defining the concept hospitality services for the Research Centre of the Saxion Hospitality Business School. Important concepts which are related to hospitality are services and experiences. These three domains are the centre of this report.
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Property sharing is one of the most prominent examples of the rapidly expanding sharing economy. Travelers around the world often opt to stay at a stranger's apartment instead of any other tourism accommodation. Trust is essential in this choice, because staying with, or taking in, strangers can entail great risks. To create trust between users, sharing platforms often promote a sense of community. However, the relation between sense of community and trust in the sharing economy is still largely unknown. To investigate this relation, both hosts and guests of two sharing platforms, namely Airbnb and SabbaticalHomes, were surveyed. The findings indicate that sense of community indeed enhances trust between users. Moreover, the evidence suggests that hosts have a stronger sense of community than guests. Also, a significantly higher sense of community was found on the platform where identification between users is higher. This study shows that affect for the community contributes to the understanding of trust in the sharing economy.
Urban tourism increasingly focuses on the role of hospitality in cities, evolving from a means to strengthen tourism as a ‘product’, towards a focus on tourism as an opportunity for revitalization and transformation of destinations. In this context, cities are considered dynamic communities in which ‘hosts’ (entrepreneurs, residents, municipalities) and ‘guests’ (visitors, tourists) co-habitate and co-create multisensorial experiences. This shift in focus comes hand in hand with increasing awareness of competitiveness and sustainability of destinations, expressed by a harmonious relationship between city residents and visitors and a balanced usage of the city as a shared resource. This is of great importance, given the intense usage of urban spaces – the city center of Amsterdam being an illustrative example – and the multiple purposes that these spaces represent for different stakeholders. This paper presents the outcome of a review study into city hospitality experience indicators. We integrate these indicators as a basis for the development of a new scale for measuring the effectiveness of hospitality interventions in relation to outcome variables such as satisfaction and net promotor score (NPS). We thereby provide an important means for scholars and practitioners to develop sustainable tourism actions inclusive of local community interests, in support of efforts toward more balanced city experiences among all stakeholders.
This research explores commercial friendship within Dutch pubs, focusing on the transition from transactional to personal interactions between bartenders and guests. The study uses semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to reveal that commercial friendship shares many similarities with non-commercial friendship but differs in important aspects. We found six levels of commercial friendship that range from minimal interactions, categorized as 'guest,' to deep, personal connections identified as 'best friend.' We identified three dimensions of commercial friendship quality: activities, self-disclosure, and social support. A critical finding is the 'tipping point'—a stage in the relationship development where interactions shift from professional to personal, characterized by mutual personal disclosure and balanced social support, redefining professional relationships. These findings demonstrate that commercial environments can foster genuine friendships, and provide valuable insights for enhancing interpersonal relationships within the hospitality industry.
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Subjective well-being in host-guest relations has only been considered from the viewpoint of the guest. This study addresses the host perspective and assesses the association between perceived tourism impacts and residents' subjective well-being in a mass tourism destination. Findings indicate that perceived tourism impacts are associated with life satisfaction, the cognitive component, and not with hedonic level of affect, the affective component. The life domains of health, interpersonal relationships, friends, and services and infrastructure, in particular, are positively affected.
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Isabel Löfgren takes us to the Stockholm high-rise suburbs to show us how art projects and transnational media intermingle with the multicultural urban reality. In this book, she discusses the architecture of her project Satellitstaden, where her artistic interventions with the satellite dishes on façades highlight the voices of its inhabitants through participatory and co-generative artistic processes. In these peripheries, satellite subjects emerge, orbiting around multiple identifications, foregrounding the notion of spatial justice, the subaltern and the importance of grassroots movements.The book outlines a philosophy of hospitality in response to the turn in Europe against refugees, which Löfgren considers to be a crisis of hospitality, not a crisis of migration. Löfgren discusses the ethics that govern the relationship between guest and host, the self and Other. Who has the right to belong? On what terms? She argues for a hospitable turn in art, urban planning and media, in which guest-host relationships are performed, mediated and problematized.We urgently need to re-imagine the ethics of hospitality and habitability for the near future. The 2020 pandemic forces us to reassess our philosophy and practice of human contact, re-engineering how we relate to the Other, and what hospitality means in the face of a global halt.Isabel Löfgren is a Swedish-Brazilian artist, researcher and educator based in Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro. She is currently working at the Media and Communication Studies Department at Södertörn University in Sweden, next to her artistic practice. Her research interests include cultural politics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of diaspora in the fields of contemporary art, media philosophy, and media activism.
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As for any other business, our collective challenge to realize sustainable development requires hotels to incorporate the principles of sustainability in their operations and to simultaneously create economic, social and environmental value. Although hotels are increasingly engaged with specific aspects of sustainability, many if not most hospitality professionals still seem to assume that guests are predominantly driven by hedonic and gain motives, view sustainable measures as a threat to their hospitality experience, and are therefore not willing to accept more progressive sustainability measures. This article explores whether this assumption is correct and whether guests are willing and able to focus on sustainability related (normative) values during their stay in a hotel, and thus accept an adjustment to the current host-guest relationship in hotels. By reviewing relevant literature and analysing the results of interviews with hotel guests, this article concludes that as far as the guest is concerned, the host-guest relationship within hotels need not be limited to a purely economic transaction but actually offers room for an open and informed discussion between host and guest on ways to transform this relationship to one that actually supports sustainable development of the hotel sector and wider society. This conclusion will hopefully inform a more mature approach by hotels to the integration of sustainability in their strategy and operations, and a more unreserved and collaborative dialogue with guests about current and future sustainability measures.
