AN EXAMINATION OF VISITORS' INTEREST IN TOURIST CARDS AND CULTURAL ROUTES IN THE CASE OF A ROMANIAN DESTINATION.

• Author: Ispas, Ana

1. Introduction

   The development of city-based heritage or cultural tourism offerings is a newer trend for East European urban tourism destinations. Cultural tourism's popularity continues to increase as visitor and local value systems collide (Martin, Sirakaya-Turk and Cho, 2013). To achieve competitive advantage for its tourism industry, a cultural destination must ensure that its overall attractiveness and the tourist experience are superior to those in the many alternative destinations available (Dwyer and Forsyth, 2011).

   Local public administrations play a key role in the management of tourist destinations as they can strengthen the link between different stakeholders. As representatives of public administrations, Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) can be considered as 'a mirror of the organizational aspects of tourism destinations' which should constantly re-engineer and adapt their tourist offer to changing market conditions (Beritelli and Reinhold, 2010, p. 137).

   In areas with significant cultural heritage, DMOs should create cultural routes, aimed at connecting geographically scattered tourism attractions while enhancing collaboration and clustering among tourism stakeholders. Currently, most of the cultural routes and the SMEs involved apply a rather fragmented approach in their product/ service information-delivery strategies. There are no established delivery strategies and/or broad-based actions, mapping target audiences are marginal, and investigation of their preferences and motivations is rare (European Commission and Council of Europe, 2010). While these facts can be regarded as drawbacks in cultural routes' product and service marketing, they also indicate an opportunity for innovative low-cost solutions using modern information technology and marketing tools. Tourist cards can be efficient promotional and placement tools for cultural routes and provide an integrated approach in their implementation. Using the latest information technologies (e.g., mobile applications), tourist cards can create more value for visitors by staying ahead of the evolving needs of consumers, and providing innovative solutions.

   In the Romanian city Sibiu there is a Resource Center which was founded as an antenna of the European Institute of Cultural Routes (EICR) in Luxembourg. The center is a source of information, advice and exchange of best practices as well as a meeting point which welcomes organizations (associations, federation of associations, public institutions, private operators, etc.), who are interested in the European Cultural Routes and who want to put them into practice in their territory. One of the initiatives of this Romanian Resource Center is the promotion of a cultural route dedicated to the Saxon fortified churches in south-eastern Transylvania. The fortified churches from the south of Transylvania are remarkable and unique, but most of them are situated in rural areas.

   The implementation of the cultural route is difficult due to the lack of collaboration between local authorities as the fortified churches are situated in three different counties. We consider that a possible way to solve this problem is to include the cultural route of the Saxon fortified churches in the tourist cards of the main urban destinations in southern Transylvania (Brasov, Sighisoara and Sibiu) in order to retain visitors in the region and increase the average length of stay. Recently, the local DMO in Brasov County has launched the idea of implementing a tourist card. We consider this initiative an excellent opportunity to promote the cultural route of the Saxon fortified churches situated within this region.

   As neither the tourist card nor the cultural route have been implemented so far in the studied destination, the results of our study can assist destination managers in the pre-testing phase of these two concepts. Incorporating cultural routes in the tourist card may increase their attractiveness and stimulate regional networking in the tourism industry.

   Consequently, the main goal of this study is to find information regarding: tourists' interest to purchase a potential Brasov tourist card, the appropriate distribution channels for the tourist card, the types of services and facilities that should be included in the tourist card as well as tourists' interest in cultural routes.

   The paper starts with an overview of the research background focused on the role of cultural routes and tourist cards in destination marketing followed by the methodology used for research. Further on, the main results of the research are presented and discussed, while the final section includes a series of conclusions.

2. Background

   Local authorities play an important role in developing policies to promote and shape the development of tourism in their areas. Place marketing has been a defining entrepreneurial feature of urban governance (Kavarateis, 2004), and it is defined as a management process (Kotler et al., 1999) which encompasses the attempts of place differentiation for competitive advantage over other places. Differentiation occurs with the collaboration of all actors and the enclosure of local activities to meet the demands of targeted consumers (Ashworth and Voogd, 1994). This is a rather new function of public organizations and the public sector is struggling with such tourism-related responsibilities--including city branding and other place-based strategies.

   Tourism administration and policy in a region can be substantially influenced by tourism policy with the import of ideas with respect to innovation, especially the experience economy, as well as place promotion and greater emphasis on tourism marketing than policy capacities in public agencies (Hall and Zapata Campos, 2014).

   Interest in networks and the role of public-private partnerships in tourism has also reflected the changes in theory and practice of governance and shifts in the nature of government intervention in different states. Interests in networks as well as community-based approaches to intervention are also of significance in tourism public administration (Hall, 2000).

   A DMO may best serve to facilitate dialogue among the private sector, public sector, and other stakeholders that may otherwise never collaborate or understand how their decisions reverberate down a destination's long tourism value chain (Stange et al., 2011). DMOs have evolved so that, especially in countries with a high level of economic activity, their role has changed from that of a public administration model to one based on partnerships involving local authorities and the private sector (Hall, 2000). Ideally, the primary role of a DMO is to act as the coordinating body for many public and private sector organizations with an interest in tourism while other key themes include (Pike, 2008): coordination, strategy, stakeholders, economics, marketing, product development, lobbying, information provision, protection, research, and the host communities.

   Flagestad et al. (2005) and Zach and Fesenmaier (2009) believed that a destination management organization (DMO) acts as a link between different actors, plays a decisive role and is an essential function for innovation processes. The public administration literature defines innovation within the framework of a public organization as 'an idea, practice, policy (program), structure, method, product or process perceived as new by an individual or other relevant unit of adoption' (Khovanova apud European Commission and Council of Europe, 2010, p. 48). Generally, innovations in private and public organizations can take different forms. The configuration of separate products and services into coherent packages and offerings with greater added value for consumers is considered an innovation (European Commission and Council of Europe, 2010). Another form of innovation (according to the European Commission and Council of Europe, 2010) is the joining of forces between separate actors either from the public or the private sector, independent of locality (municipality, region) in view of providing better services or support and development actions in tourism destinations. Consequently, we consider that the inclusion of a regional cultural route in a city tourist card might be considered an innovative approach aimed at inducing visitors to visit cultural tourist attractions in the areas surrounding urban destinations.

   Considering these issues, this section of the paper has two purposes: (1) to provide an overview of the main European cultural routes; and (2) to outline the role of tourist cards in destination marketing.

   2.1. An overview of the main European cultural routes

   Due to the fragmented nature of the tourism industry, a substantial degree of coordination and collaboration among the variety of different players in destination marketing is required (Hall, 2000; Roberts and Simpson, 1999; Wang and Fesenmaier, 2007). Tourism suppliers need to understand that they should not compete with each other at the destination level; they should join forces and pool resources to develop and implement comprehensive marketing strategies which could enable them to compete with other destinations. This is a key problem in different cultural destinations, where there are scattered providers with limited resources for promotional purposes. We consider that integrating these cultural and services providers (accommodation, restaurants, artists, artisans, cultural attractions) in cultural routes benefits these stakeholders and increases the destination's attractiveness.

   In tourism terms, a cultural route can be defined as a path or route of historical significance that can be presented as a whole with a common thematic denominator (European Commission and Council of Europe, 2010). It can be also a themed route that has a cultural value or an element of cultural heritage as its focus, and that assigns a key role to cultural attractions (Puczko and...