Sustainable Marketing of Heritage Tourism: Promoting Resilience and Moral Selving

Dear Colleagues, 

Many countries across the globe have used cultural heritage as a platform for urban renewal, economic viability, and for building a shared sense of identity among host communities [1–4]. However, heritage for the purpose of tourism can be a double-edged sword [5]. On one hand, exponential demand can provide the political and economic base for securing government and fiscal support to expand conservation-friendly activities. On the other hand, issues such as increase in visitation and overuse and inappropriate use of cultural assets threaten the survival of fragile assets [2,6,7]. Sustainable marketing strategies are required to promote responsible consumption of heritage resources. Xiang, Pan, and Fesemaier [8] suggest a system design titled ‘SMART search’ which is capable of opening diverse heritage selections and promotes social inclusion instead of societal amnesia [9,10]. It is no surprise, then, that the smart sustainable marketing of heritage tourism has become a crucial management function and area of academic inquiry [2,7,11]. This need is driven by the custodians and consumers of heritage in addition to other stakeholders of heritage tourism (such as the government, lodging and restaurants, destination marketing organizations, and the public sector) and the current pandemic.

A contemporary heritage marketing agenda needs to mix intelligent online and offline heritage ecosystems by strengthening horizontal/vertical heritage supply chains and co-creation/coopetition strategies to optimize both online and offline showcasing of heritage [12–17]. Furthermore, there is a need to design effective instruments that hold the potential to promote ethical selving and moral maturity with the help of diverse informing/knowledge dissemination strategies [12,13,18,19], particularly during intra- and post-pandemic times. This Special Issue of the Tourism and Hospitality journal invites conceptual, empirical, and theoretical explorations to identify and engage with different perspectives/paradigms that examine/test sustainable marketing strategies for intra- and post-pandemic times. This call is open to multifaceted and multidisciplinary research initiatives, and the intent is to feature both case study-specific and theoretical research papers. Innovative papers are invited that attempt to critically address the key emerging areas related to resilient and sustainable marketing of heritage tourism based on (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Sustainable marketing models for proximate heritage tourism during intra- and post-pandemic times;
• Smart marketing for ethical consumption of heritage resources;
• Demarketing for sustainability;
• Authenticity and sustainable marketing models that promote authenticity of heritage resources;
• Promoting ethical consumption and/or moral selving through sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
• Value-based supply chain models for smart marketing of heritage tourism;
• Smart marketing to forge/strengthen horizontal/vertical coordination between heritage tourism stakeholders;
• Role of government and public sector in supporting sustainable marketing strategies;
• Smart marketing theories in the context of heritage tourism during times of crisis;
• Brand authenticity and digital marketing of heritage tourism;
• Social marketing of heritage tourism to change behaviors and promote moral selving;
• Virtual sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
• Strategizing digitalization in sustainable marketing of heritage tourism;
• Promoting resilience in communities through a sustainable marketing agenda.

References

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8. Xiang, Z.; Pan, B.; Fesenmaier, D. Developing SMART-Search: A Search Engine to Support the Long Tail in Destination Marketing. Travel and Tourism Research Association Conference: Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2008.
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13. Chhabra, D. Strategic Marketing in Hospitality and Tourism: Building a 'Smart' Online Agenda. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.: Hauppauge, NY, USA, 2015.
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16. McCamley, C.; Gilmore, A. Exploring Entrepreneurial Networking: A Case Study of Coopetition in Heritage Tourism Marketing. In Global Research Symposium on Marketing and Entrepreneurship, San Francisco, USA, 8–10^th August 2017.
17. Ritala, P.; Tidstrom, A. Untangling the value-creation and value-appropriation elements of coopetition strategy: A longitudinal analysis on the firm and relational levels. J. Manag. 2014, 30, 498–515.
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19. Truong, V.; Hall, M. Corporate social marketing in tourism: to sleep or not to sleep with the enemy? J. Tour. 2017, 25, 884–902.

Dr. Deepak Chhabra
Guest Editor

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