Historic architecture in tourism consumption

Abstract

Purpose Historic architecture is one of the most prevalent human-made attractions and image attributes that the tourism industry substantially benefits from. Moreover, this attraction creates a critical value in augmenting destination competitiveness. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss historic architecture in relation to guest experience and to find out if historic buildings used as hotels are, physically, elements of attraction. The findings reveal that historic buildings used as hotels have a specific potential in attracting guests, and these buildings are mainly considered positive by guests. Hotel guests are satisfied by the physical – i.e., architectural and atmospheric – features of hotels serving in historic buildings. This paper will help readers rethink how historic architecture plays a key role in tourism consumption. The paper uniquely seeks to delve into the potential of historic hotel buildings as elements of attraction by examining over 9.8 thousand comments of hotel guests.

Historic Hotel Buildings in Istanbul City

“…This study corroborates that the sample hotels have rich historical backgrounds and strong authenticity thereof. Yabanci (2022) found that heritage hotels create special moments of truth among hotel guests, and the impact of such hotels could be increased when these buildings are introduced with the historical backgrounds that would distinguish them from their modern counterparts and would create value in the eyes of hotel guests.…”

“…These historic hotels are the Galata Hotel Istanbul-MGallery, Ciragan Palace Kempinski Istanbul, Four Seasons Istanbul at the Bosporus, W Istanbul, 10 Karakoy Istanbul-A Morgans Original, Pera Palace Hotel, A'jia Hotel, Tomtom Suites, Legacy Ottoman Hotel, Crowne Plaza Istanbul Old City, and Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet. The samples were derived from Yabanci (2022). Figure 1 exhibits the locations of the sample hotels.…”

“…An earlier study by Dincer & Ertugral (2003) indicated that heritage hotels created a high demand and were preferred by relatively high-income and more literate people, and the occupancy rate of such buildings was higher and more stable. A most recent study that examined heritage hotels in relation to tourism consumption revealed that heritage hotels were not a backbone of the lodging industry, yet a niche for consumers who were interested in history, culture, and authenticity (Yabanci, 2022). However, the study also suggested that heritage hotels had a specific potential in attracting guests and were mainly considered positive, i.e., guests were satisfied by the physical features of such buildings.…”

The Impacts of Online Experience on Health and Well-Being: The Overlooked Aesthetic Dimension

“…Those informational environments lure people out of their own everyday settings with the promise of experiencing vastly augmented beauty. The aesthetic aspect, rather than the historical context that is always touted, is what attracts users [106,107]. Recent studies rank the restorative sensory effect from historical architecture to be comparable to that obtained from natural scenery [108].…”

A critique of authenticity: how psychology can help

“…In tourism studies, four literature reviews have been conducted on authenticity (Kim and So, 2022; Olsen, 2002; Rickly and McCabe, 2017; Wang, 1999), as well as one on existential authenticity (Steiner and Reisinger, 2006). Rickly (2022) summarised the tourism literature on authenticity to identify 19 themes, and research topics include customer experience (Cohen, 1979; CoŞKun, 2021; Kim and So, 2022; Pearce and Moscardo, 1986), loyalty (Yin and Dai, 2021), heritage (Kolar and Zabkar, 2010; Park et al , 2019) and architecture (Yabanci, 2022), restaurants (Le et al , 2022) and food (Prayag et al , 2022), dark tourism , (Heuermann and Chhabra, 2014), film tourism (Rittichainuwat et al , 2018) and souvenirs (Li, 2023). By adopting the sociological perspective on authenticity, tourism researchers are implicitly accepting the assumptions upon which it is based.…”