Place Hospitality: A Way to Understand and Improve Place Marketing Approaches

Several articles stressed on the necessity for a territory to work on boosting its attractiveness. Welcoming new publics such as tourists, companies, and households would increase its economic development and thereby its reputation. This vision seems too restrictive today to be unique. Indeed, the concept of hospitality sets itself up as the corollary of place attractiveness. To understand the concept of Hospitality, it is necessary to define its context of using. The interest to consider the concept of Place Hospitality arose along with the integration of territorial development into Place marketing strategies. That is why the concept of Territory has been more and more popular for the last 30 years, not only in France but also all over the world. Nowadays, everything is « territory » or territory-based. This proposal first explores the concept of hospitality, as it is presented not only in philosophic literature but also in academic researches dedicated to tourism. Secondly, we present a conceptual framework which includes the place hospitality as its central element. Hospitality represents at the same time one of the objectives of the place marketing and the only way there is to consider the place marketing as a long-term process. We shall end with a proposition of levers of action allowing legal authorities in regions with a measure of autonomy to implement a real hospitality policy.