City Hospitality pays off … not only in economic values
City Hospitality creates value. Hospitality experience leads to attractiveness, liveability and a business climate with opportunities. The welcoming city contributes to the liveability and lovability of a destination. City hospitality generates not only economic value but also impacts social and ecological values.
The value pyramid demonstrates the relationships. The elements of the city hospitality performance (city offerings in terms of ‘hardware’, atmosphere and hospitable behaviour) are experienced by stakeholders,
A highly positive hospitality experience leads to delight, engagement and loyalty of visitors, residents and businesses. And it impacts attitude and behaviour that can be measured by indicators as the ‘willingness to return and recommend’, the ‘proudness to be a resident’, the ‘entrepreneurial climate’.
This is a huge field of research. In the chair’s work it is narrowed down wherein different relationships are investigated. For example:
- How can meaningful encounters contribute to hospitable welcoming communities?
- How can the practices of socio-cognitive mindfulness influence tourist experiences at a city destination and affect the encounter between tourists and residents?
- How can tourism be a catalyst for social cohesion: which encounters between residents and tourists are experienced as meaningful and potentially contribute to hospitable, sustainable communities?
- How can hotels contribute to the local community? How does local community contribution conflict or align with business strategy and KPIs
And some outcomes
- Hospitable behaviour of theatre staff leads to an increase of the Net Promoter Score of visitors from 9 – 30 . <Source: The cultural hospitality business case>
- Hospitality in the open space provided by Amsterdam city hosts, make a significant difference in the destination experience of a broad range of visitors, 70 % of the tourists change visiting plans due to recommendations of the hosts.
Wiegerink, Karoline; Huizing, Jan, 2020, Resident-Driven City Hospitality Design and Delivery, in: Dixit, S.K. (ed.), 2020, The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Experience Management and Marketing (RHTEMM), Taylor & Francis Group
