IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i13p5324-d378922.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating How ‘Smart’ Brașov, Romania Can Be Virtually via a Mobile Application for Cultural Tourism

Author

Listed:
  • Arabela Briciu

    (Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brașov, 500036 Brașov, Romania)

  • Victor-Alexandru Briciu

    (Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brașov, 500036 Brașov, Romania)

  • Androniki Kavoura

    (Economics and Social Sciences, School of Administrative, University of West Attica, 12244 Athens, Greece)

Abstract

Global urbanization brings the urge to identify the most intelligent methods to cope with the challenges arising in the modern society. Sustainable and smart cities are the new target for urban development; their representatives are being forced to identify and develop new strategies to increase their city’s performance and ensure that it endures over time. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) contributes to this purpose. Brașov is one of the cities in Romania for which the process of modernization started years ago, and it is currently developing as a smart city. This paper focuses on the development of the city in terms of cultural tourism solutions by presenting a case study on the use of virtual reality with a mobile application and its evaluation on cultural heritage sites. The original contribution of the paper is to describe and analyze the quality of the mobile application by using a proposed analysis grid to identify the main elements of this app. The main findings suggest that the application may bring authenticity of experience through the lens of heritage preservation for further user engagement and participation in real-time, while suggestions are made for future enhancement. Implications are discussed for a) destination managers, b) for developers to improve the general quality of the mobile application in terms of design and features and to implement changes in the near future, and c) for visitors who engage in real-time and co-create experiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Arabela Briciu & Victor-Alexandru Briciu & Androniki Kavoura, 2020. "Evaluating How ‘Smart’ Brașov, Romania Can Be Virtually via a Mobile Application for Cultural Tourism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-17, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:13:p:5324-:d:378922
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/13/5324/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/13/5324/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Florin Nechita & Catalina-Ionela Rezeanu, 2019. "Augmenting Museum Communication Services to Create Young Audiences," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-18, October.
    2. Kolbe, Richard H & Burnett, Melissa S, 1991. "Content-Analysis Research: An Examination of Applications with Directives for Improving Research Reliability and Objectivity," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(2), pages 243-250, September.
    3. Dimitrios Buhalis & Aditya Amaranggana, 2015. "Smart Tourism Destinations Enhancing Tourism Experience Through Personalisation of Services," Springer Books, in: Iis Tussyadiah & Alessandro Inversini (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2015, edition 127, pages 377-389, Springer.
    4. Dimitrios Buhalis & Aditya Amaranggana, 2013. "Smart Tourism Destinations," Springer Books, in: Zheng Xiang & Iis Tussyadiah (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2014, edition 127, pages 553-564, Springer.
    5. Vicky Katsoni & Thanasis Spyriadis (ed.), 2020. "Cultural and Tourism Innovation in the Digital Era," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-030-36342-0, March.
    6. Renata Paola Dameri & Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014. "Smart City and Value Creation," Progress in IS, in: Renata Paola Dameri & Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux (ed.), Smart City, edition 127, pages 1-12, Springer.
    7. Robert G. Hollands, 2008. "Will the real smart city please stand up?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 303-320, December.
    8. Stefano Comino & Fabio M. Manenti & Franco Mariuzzo, 2019. "Updates management in mobile applications: iTunes versus Google Play," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 392-419, June.
    9. Maria Shehade & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, 2020. "Revisiting Authenticity in the Age of the Digital Transformation of Cultural Tourism," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Vicky Katsoni & Thanasis Spyriadis (ed.), Cultural and Tourism Innovation in the Digital Era, pages 3-16, Springer.
    10. Florin Nechita & Robert Demeter & Victor-Alexandru Briciu & Sotiris Varelas & Androniki Kavoura, 2019. "Projected Destination Images Versus Visitor-Generated Visual Content in Brasov, Transylvania," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Androniki Kavoura & Efstathios Kefallonitis & Apostolos Giovanis (ed.), Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism, pages 613-622, Springer.
    11. Kim Boes & Dimitrios Buhalis & Alessandro Inversini, 2015. "Conceptualising Smart Tourism Destination Dimensions," Springer Books, in: Iis Tussyadiah & Alessandro Inversini (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2015, edition 127, pages 391-403, Springer.
    12. Federico Fontana, 2014. "The Smart City and the Creation of Local Public Value," Progress in IS, in: Renata Paola Dameri & Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux (ed.), Smart City, edition 127, pages 117-137, Springer.
    13. Magdalena Florek, 2011. "Online City Branding," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Keith Dinnie (ed.), City Branding, chapter 0, pages 82-90, Palgrave Macmillan.
    14. Ben Letaifa, Soumaya, 2015. "How to strategize smart cities: Revealing the SMART model," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1414-1419.
    15. Vito Albino & Umberto Berardi & Rosa Maria Dangelico, 2015. "Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 3-21, January.
    16. Victor-Alexandru Briciu & Robert Demeter & Florin Nechita & Androniki Kavoura & Arabela Briciu, 2019. "A Proposed Online Platform for Ranking Place Brands Identity Characteristics of Official Tourism Websites," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Androniki Kavoura & Efstathios Kefallonitis & Apostolos Giovanis (ed.), Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism, pages 755-762, Springer.
    17. Annalisa Cocchia, 2014. "Smart and Digital City: A Systematic Literature Review," Progress in IS, in: Renata Paola Dameri & Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux (ed.), Smart City, edition 127, pages 13-43, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bianca Mitrică & Paul-Răzvan Şerban & Irena Mocanu & Nicoleta Damian & Ines Grigorescu & Monica Dumitraşcu & Cristina Dumitrică, 2021. "Developing an Indicator-Based Framework to Measure Sustainable Tourism in Romania. A Territorial Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-19, March.
    2. Natalia Rubio & Nieves Villaseñor & MªJesús Yagüe, 2020. "Sustainable Co-Creation Behavior in a Virtual Community: Antecedents and Moderating Effect of Participant’s Perception of Own Expertise," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-19, October.
    3. Cătălina Ancuța & Ioan Sebastian Jucu, 2023. "Sustainable Rural Development through Local Cultural Heritage Capitalization—Analyzing the Cultural Tourism Potential in Rural Romanian Areas: A Case Study of Hărman Commune of Brașov Region in Romani," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-31, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parul Gupta & Sumedha Chauhan & M. P. Jaiswal, 2019. "Classification of Smart City Research - a Descriptive Literature Review and Future Research Agenda," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 661-685, June.
    2. Li Zhao & Zhi-ying Tang & Xin Zou, 2019. "Mapping the Knowledge Domain of Smart-City Research: A Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-28, November.
    3. Anthony Simonofski & Estefanía Serral Asensio & Johannes Smedt & Monique Snoeck, 2019. "Hearing the Voice of Citizens in Smart City Design: The CitiVoice Framework," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 61(6), pages 665-678, December.
    4. Schiavone, Francesco & Paolone, Francesco & Mancini, Daniela, 2019. "Business model innovation for urban smartization," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 210-219.
    5. Ruben Sánchez-Corcuera & Adrián Nuñez-Marcos & Jesus Sesma-Solance & Aritz Bilbao-Jayo & Rubén Mulero & Unai Zulaika & Gorka Azkune & Aitor Almeida, 2019. "Smart cities survey: Technologies, application domains and challenges for the cities of the future," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 15(6), pages 15501477198, June.
    6. Gabriel Puron-Cid & J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, 2022. "Are Smart Cities Too Expensive in the Long Term? Analyzing the Effects of ICT Infrastructure on Municipal Financial Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-23, May.
    7. Mora, Luca & Deakin, Mark & Reid, Alasdair, 2019. "Strategic principles for smart city development: A multiple case study analysis of European best practices," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 70-97.
    8. Olga Bogdanov & Veljko Jeremiæ & Sandra Jednak & Mladen Èudanov, 2019. "Scrutinizing the Smart City Index: a multivariate statistical approach," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 37(2), pages 777-799.
    9. Vu, Khuong & Hartley, Kris, 2018. "Promoting smart cities in developing countries: Policy insights from Vietnam," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 845-859.
    10. Johannes Stübinger & Lucas Schneider, 2020. "Understanding Smart City—A Data-Driven Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-23, October.
    11. Inessa Tyan & Mariemma I. Yagüe & Antonio Guevara-Plaza, 2020. "Blockchain Technology for Smart Tourism Destinations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-11, November.
    12. Renata Biadacz & Marek Biadacz, 2021. "Implementation of “Smart” Solutions and An Attempt to Measure Them: A Case Study of Czestochowa, Poland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-28, September.
    13. Nemanja Backovi? & Vesna Mili?evi? & Adam Sofronijevi?, 2015. "Managing European Sustainable Cities," Proceedings of International Academic Conferences 1003969, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    14. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2018. "Measuring the Performance in Creative Cities: Proposal of a Multidimensional Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-21, November.
    15. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2020. "Measuring the urban sustainable development in cities through a Composite Index: The case of Portugal," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 507-520, July.
    16. Guido Perboli & Mariangela Rosano, 2020. "A Taxonomic Analysis of Smart City Projects in North America and Europe," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-23, September.
    17. Pevcin Primož, 2019. "The Evolution of City Labelling in the Literature," Economics and Culture, Sciendo, vol. 16(1), pages 40-45, June.
    18. Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy, 2018. "Entrepreneurial urbanism and technological panacea: Why Smart City planning needs to go beyond corporate visioning?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 330-339.
    19. Flavia Michelotto & Luiz Antonio Joia, 2023. "Unveiling the Smart City Concept: Perspectives from an Emerging Market via the Social Representation Theory," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-16, May.
    20. Adalberto Santos-Júnior & Fernando Almeida-García & Paulo Morgado & Luiz Mendes-Filho, 2020. "Residents’ Quality of Life in Smart Tourism Destinations: A Theoretical Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-24, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:13:p:5324-:d:378922. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.