In Search For New Urban Tourism Niche. Could European Cities Be Destinations For Urban Wellness Providing Food for Body, Mind and Spirit?

Abstract

According to the United Nations Population Fund (2020) , half of the world’s population live in cities, and the number is estimated to rise to 75% by 2050. Although urbanization is seen as a major challenge from a health point of view, the development of urban wellness tourism offering would ideally benefit both tourists and locals. The growth rate of wellness tourism during the years 2015–2017 was almost twice as fast as global economic growth. Holistic wellness refers to the balanced elements of body, mind and spirit. This study argues that many European city destinations could provide the holistic wellness elements to their visitors. Tourism destinations continue competing with each other in a globalised marketplace, even more post-Covid-19. As a result, cities will invest considerable resources in their marketing activities and place branding. By recognizing and highlighting wellness tourism offering in their marketing, some urban Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) could stand out in this growing competition and get their share of wellness tourism growth. This study examines, which elements contributing to holistic wellness are currently being displayed on the visit.com websites of selected urban DMOs ( N = 32) in the European Union. This is done using qualitative content analysis methodology. The findings indicate that there are several European cities that already display elements of urban wellness in their marketing. The practical implication for the DMOs in question could be to actively start developing their place brands towards urban wellness tourism niche by highlighting the supply of urban wellness they already have, for example, at their visit.com sites.

Influencers in Tourism Digital Marketing: A Comprehensive Literature Review

“…Overall, the next two years saw no significant change in the number of (directly) related studies on the topic, but the number rose significantly in 2022 when the need to meet the challenge in the advancement of technology and the post-COVID recovery faced by tourism sectors both in the developed and developing countries were well recognized by businesses around the globe (as shown in Figure 4). Source: prepared and compiled by the authors Figure 4 above depicts that many of the selected articles were published in developed countries such as Russia [15,44], Spain [41,43], Portugal [7,8,40,45], Finland [46], Italy [29], and also United Kingdom [42]. On the other hand, relevant researches on digital marketing and the tourism industry were also conducted in developing countries such as Ukraine [1,40], Greece [6,47], Indonesia [39], Serbia [48], Pakistan [49], and Thailand [12].…”

“…From the list of countries, Spain is the country where the most researches on this topic were carried out, with as many as three articles by Tarazona-Montoya et al [43], Sá nchez-Teba et al [41], and Michael and Fusté -Forné [50]. Whereas in Finland [46], Indonesia [39], Serbia [48], Pakistan [49], Italia [29] and the United Kingdom [42] only one article was published in this subject area. Similarly, the distribution of articles based on the journal where they were published was also varied.…”

Evaluation of Community Recreational Sports Activities at the Jambi City Governor's Office: Improving Quality and Participation

“…In big cities, there are various types of recreational sports that are cheap and accessible to the general public. A cheap tourist destination that is often used as a destination is the city center, where there are various sports and recreation facilities that can be enjoyed at an affordable cost [14]- [16].…”

Ecological niche measurement and high-quality development of "the Belt and Road" core area

“…The concept of the ecological niche comes from ecology, first defined by Joseph Grinell [33] in his study of organisms in nature, and since then foreign scientists have continued to add to its meaning [34,35]. After almost a century of evolution, the notion of the "ecological niche" now exceeds the scope of ecological studies and is being progressively extended to other domains including economic [36][37][38], tourism [39][40][41], cultural [42][43][44], technological [45,46], and industrial [47] niches. The application of ecological niche theory in the field of regional economics is relatively recent, but the model of analogy between regional units and species units has been widely used in the study of regional geography and regional economics [48][49][50][51][52][53].…”