Cultural Realms - Rossitza Ohridska-Olson's blog about the business of cultural tourism

Country Branding From A Global Cultural Tourism Perspective

A comparison between different countries based on Future Brand Country Branding Index (CBI) and the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index  (NBI)

Finally my (im)patience is generously rewarded: the Country Brand Index of Future Brand is here. That, on the top of the 2009 edition Nation Brands Index (NBI) by Anholt-GfK Roper, made me jump of joy. They encompass information, which will be my  “food for thought” for the weeks to come. You might say that I am partial to the CBI, since I was one of the experts for the 2009 edition. In fact, I will try to prove that I see objectively both Indexes as sources of very valuable information. This combined  “sea of knowledge” for professionals like me, is precious when it comes to create strategies for tourism development and destination management.

Both in NBI and CBI confirmed that the undisputed winner is the United States of America, thanks to its charismatic President Barack Obama. As per the geographies of the top 10 countries, in both indexes the winners are the European Countries: five out of 10 countries in the CBI are in Europe, and 6 out of these taking the highest positions in the NBI.

Otherwise the two Indexes vastly differ in their methodology, results and approach. Nevertheless, I am happy because in spite of their dissimilarity, they have one goal in common: to serve as a departing point for increasing countries’ brand equities. Both Indexes are the most valuable resource for policy makers, DMOs and travel companies in their efforts to convert their countries in more profitable destinations. I will continue to post my views and analysis from the global cultural tourism perspective on this blog. For the moment, I have in mind 6 parts, which are:

Part Two: Economy and Country Branding
Part Three: History, Arts & Culture and Country Branding
Part Four: Countries Tourism Brand Aspects
Part Five: Country Brand Trends – detected common trends and differences
Part Six: Conclusion: The overall value of the Country Brand Index and Nation Brands Index for cultural tourism strategists, destination management and travel practitioners

The information used in this reports comes from copyrighted materials by Future Brand and Anholt-GfK Roper.

To download the Country Brand Index Executive Summary, please click here or visit the official Index website.

To download the Nation Brands Index, please click here or visit the official website of Simon Anholt

The Oldest European Civilization

Or winners and losers in the race to exploit their country's past for cultural tourism promotion

The Lost World of Old Europe, one of the most interesting prehistoric art exhibitions, was inaugurated On November 11, 2009 in New York City. Magnificent articles in Epoch Times , Discover Magazine, and the Science Magazine accompanied the news about the event. Some days later, the New York Times published a great article about the exhibition and the oldest European culture.

The first paragraph of the NYT article summarize the importance of the people, who created this civilization: “Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.”

For a museum that is not the Metropolitan, Getty, or the Smithsonian, the exhibition received great coverage in the US press – online and offline. You would think that the three countries, from where the artifacts came (Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania), would use this event for busting their cultural tourism destinations and promote their heritage as part of their tourism branding based on rich history and arts. Wrong. Except for Romania, nobody moved a finger.

 The biggest loser, of course, is Bulgaria, since the oldest gold in the world of Varna Museum of Archaeology is the star of the exhibition. What happened, so the Bulgarian embassies in New York, Washington DC, the Bulgarian press in English (except for the novinite.com and balkantravelers.com) didn’t mention anything about the event? Neither did the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria on their website (in English or Bulgarian), the Foreign Affairs Ministry or the Embassy of Bulgaria in the UN, NYC. After a short interview with the Cultural Attaché in the Bulgarian embassy in DC, I understood that he didn’t know anything about the exhibition – nobody from Bulgaria informed him about this event.

Seeing that the official governmental organizations didn’t do anything to promote the country through this exhibition, I was still hoping that Varna municipality would use the event to boost the tourism to their city, one of the most visited places in Bulgaria both for cultural and beach tourism. Well, I was wrong again. Not only this, but even the Varna Archaeological Museum of doesn’t mention the event on their website. Local exhibitions were much better promoted that this international one.

OK, I said. This is because governments in the former communist countries were never good in branding and advertising – see the results of the country brand index positions and you will understand that except for the Check Republic, the rest of Eastern Europe still remains under informational iron curtain. Are the tour operators, publishing houses and other media from Bulgaria taking advantage of the exhibitions to increase their business? I hoped this would be the case. Very few of them and only copy-pasting the news, without linking it with their related cultural tourism products.

Moldova has an excuse to not post any news about the exhibition on their US embassy website (the entire place is occupied with news regarding the recent elections) and Romania is doing everything to capitalize on the exhibition. The posting on the Romanian embassy website even calls the exhibition ”Romanian exhibition”, totally discarding the remaining 2 countries participating with precious artifacts in the event.

In the meantime, Bulgaria doesn’t have any excuse or reason to not be profiting of the great exposure the country would have if the event was properly advertised. Even the lack of experience is not an excuse, since the Thracian Gold exhibitions were widely publicized months before and after of their showing in Japan, France and Switzerland.

What happened? I still don’t understand. But whatever is the mistake behind this information gap, is bad for the country, its cultural heritage and its cultural tourism.

Photography credit: Varna Gold, the oldest gold in the world, Varna Museum of Archaeology. Photography: Rossitza Ohridska-Olson

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The Good, the Bad and the Unusual: the new Strategic Plan for Cultural Tourism Development in Bulgaria

As a consultant on cultural tourism for the travel industry and a macro-strategist in this field, I always applaud when governments are thinking strategically about this industry. That is why I was extremely excited when during the last month the Bulgarian parliament approved the Strategic Plan for Cultural Tourism Development: Стратегически план за развитието на културния туризъм в България (you can download the original version of the Executive Summary, if you read Bulgarian).

Only the fact that the country spent more than $1.2 million (!) of dollars and three years to elaborate a document of 300+ pages is admirable. For the moment (or for the last 3 years) there is not an English version online, so here I will summarize the Executive Summary of Strategic with my comments.

Please note that this is not a scientific paper – I might write one on a later date. The purpose of this analysis is to help my clients – tour operators and other consulting firms, who contact me when they have to deal with Bulgarian cultural tourism issues. Needless to say that this is my personal opinion and doesn’t reflect any governmental or institutional position on this matter.

For fast viewing, here are the 4 sections of my analysis (click on the link below to go directly to the page) :

The good
The bad
The unusual
Conclusions

The INTELLECT Institute

When I came up with the idea of creating an organization aimed to contribute with new technologies and marketing to the field of culture, my idea was that this institution should be in a form of public-private partnership. More than a year trying to involve governmental bodies showed great interest and little action. That is why we (friends and business partners) created an international private non-for-profit organization. The name is The INTELLECT Institute, which stands for Institute for New Technologies, Intelligence and Communications of Culture.

The mission of the Intellect Institute is to research, preserve, enhance experience and promote culture through scientific research, high technology solutions, best business practices, sound marketing and communications systems, and international tourism.

The INTELLECT Institute primary goal is to assist disadvantaged communities, organizations and individuals involved in research, preservation and promotion of the cultural heritage and living cultures, enhancing their capacity for productive and sustainable business operations.

Before the INTELLECT Institute has its own website and blog, I will use the Cultural Realms blog to post updates. All comments and suggestions are welcomed. You can start by reading the document, which outlines the mission, goals, strategies and structure of the INTELLECT Institute and add your ideas. Until the membership structure is defined by the Executive Board, everybody is welcome to join, as long as he or she shares the mission and is willing to contribute time and dedication to achieving the organization's goals.

Cultural Tourism Trends: Exotic destinations are first choice in ideal situations

When I created a Linkedin.com poll with a question: “Cultural & Creative Tourism: If you have unlimited amount of money and time, which type of destination you will choose?” I expected very different answers from what I obtained. I assumed that more people would prefer to spend their time and money on cultural trips in their own country. Then, less people would prefer well-established cultural tourism destinations outside of their country and the least amount of responders would choose emerging destinations and the most exotic cultural experiences. If we add the fact established by a CIA study that 80% of the world population is born, lives and dies in a 50 miles radius, I assumed much more conservative answers. Well, as you can see, I was completely wrong (click on the image below to enlarge it or visit the poll results page ) :

Now, there are also drastic differences if we analyze in depth the results. Women are bigger risk-takers, probably because they are always dreaming about the exotic cultures and novel-inspired cultural exchanges. There is a difference of 11 percent (48% for women and 37% for man, respectively) between the genders, when it comes to choose an exotic cultural tourism destination. On the other side, women who prefer to not travel at all, given unlimited time and money, are twice more than men (4% versus 2 % ).

Age differences were totally predictable: the majority of the youngest age group  - 18 to 24 years old – prefer to explore the most exotic destinations: 67% and the emerging travel destination countries (33%). The biggest responder group is between 35 and 54 years old, coinciding with the biggest number of population in all countries(55% of all responders) also prefer the exotic destinations(47%). This is also the only group that includes domestic cultural and creative tourism travel.

Emerging cultural and creative tourism destinations win positions with employees of medium enterprises (50%), academics and product development professionals

Domestic travel (33%) and well-established destinations (67%) are favorite for the HR professionals, while 100% of the consultants want to go wild in the cultural jungles of unexplored destinations.

As a conclusion: I believe that on one side, this was a legitimate poll as goals. It provided information of what would be the dream destinations for my linkedin.com quittances. On the other side, I am sure that the results would be very different if I asked the question: “To what destination was your cultural trip the last year?” Should I make a poll like this? You tell me.

The Thracian Civilization without Dr. Kitov

Or In Memoriam – One Year Later

One year after the death of Dr. Geogri Kitov, the state of the Bulgarian archaeology is in many cases unchanged and in the same time, transformed. Here is the overview of these events:

What is the same?

The TEMP Expedition (Thracian Expedition for Burial Mounts Research), created and managed in the past by Dr. Kitov, continues to make sensational discoveries. In August 2009, a very rich burial mound with gold wreath and other precious objects were found near Sliven by Diana Dimitrova, the spouse of Dr. Kitov and his colleague in the Temp expedition.  Under her management, the expedition continues to perform the best research in the Valley of the Thracian Kings.

Other archeological discoveries of great importance for the research of the Thracian Civilization were made by archeologists in Bulgaria. Dr. Gergana Kabakchieva discovered a unique stelae near Montana with inscriptions revealing vast amount of information about the customs and traditions of the Thracians. Dr. Diana Gergova discovered a spectacular sanctuary of the Thracians in the mountains near Velingrad -  a site so big and interesting that is rivaling only Perperikon.

What is different?

The new Bulgarian government appointed an archaeologist and renowned fighter against the illicit trade of antiquities, Dr. Todor Chobanov, as Deputy Minister of Culture. With his help, and the newly changed Law for Cultural Heritage Preservation in Bulgaria, the illicit digging and looting of Thracian archaeological sites will be way more difficult for the treasure hunters than it was before – a cause to which Dr. Kitov was totally dedicated.

The Alexandrovo Tomb (UNESCO Tentative List), discovered by Dr. Georgi Kitov has a new museum and a copy. Thanks to the Bulgarian and Japanese governments, and Haskovo Municipality, another gem of the Thracian civilization is accessible to the public.

A spectacular selection of Thracian treasures from the Bojkov Collection was exhibited with enormous success in the Museum of the East, Moscow, Russia. In the same time, the exhibition of Thracian Gold from the Bulgarian museums, which was visiting Tokyo, Japan, came back to Bulgaria after a year of very successful showing in the country of the rising sun.

Many of these events wouldn’t be possible without Dr. Kitov’s passionate dedication to the Thracian civilization. That is why many of them were dedicated to his memory. Let’s join all organizations and individuals in remembering the achievements of this larger than life man and brilliant archaeologist.

Cultural and creative tourism are the choice in tough economic times?

Analyzing the results from a linkedin.com poll I created months ago, these two types of tourism prevail among the 690 people polled in the period between January 2009 and now. I am bogging these results for those of you who don’t have a linkedin.com account. For those who have it, you are welcome to answer the questions here and to see the results.

Overall results from the poll:

As you can see from the chart above, cultural and creative tourism are the chosen among the polled people. As demographics, the poll was distributed to 690 people from who 47% were US citizens/residents, 35%  - from the European Community. 106 people responded to the poll. 17 persons added comment in addition to choosing one of the options. The following charts represent the gender and age distribution among the 106 people who responded to the poll.

 Currently, I am collecting data for a new poll here which aims to establish the travel preferences, given the condition that the respondents would have unlimited time and money. Everybody is welcome to participate.

Stakeholders's role in tourism and the effect of travel industry on them

This is something I prepared for a new book. The “Main stakeholders in the formation of tourism products and services: Their role and the tourism effects on their development.” is a simplified visualization of the relationships from the process of formation of tourism product and services to their effect on the society. All comments and suggestions are welcome. As a base, I have chosen the cultural tourism, but I believe that this entire summary can be applied to all types of tourism. If you have any questions, please post them as a comment and I will respond to them. To view online a bigger picture, please click on the small image. To download the file, please click here.

© 2009 Rossitza Ohridska-Olson

The Thracian Civilization – the best of cultural tourism country branding for Bulgaria

Laying on a crossroads between the East and West, the South and North, Bulgaria was always considered a multicultural country. Seven civilizations - the Thracian, the Greek (Hellenic), the Hellenistic, the Roman, the Byzantine, the Bulgarian and the Ottoman left magnificent monuments, sites and treasures visible in every corner of the country.

From these civilizations, the Thracian one represents the most stunning cultural discovery for foreigners visiting Bulgaria. No country in the world has more monuments and treasures left from this mysterious culture and people, who occupied the modern lands in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Northern Greece, Turkey up to Moldova and Ukraine during millennia.

The Valley of the Thracian Kings, the gold and silver treasures from Vulchetrun, Rogozen, Kosmatka, and Panagyurishte, monuments, sites and other artifacts, are witnesses of glory of kingdoms, mystic rites and fierce wars. They are also the biggest attractions for tourists.

Yet, the country struggles and encounters difficulties to “find itself”, its own image, its own line of positioning. See why I believe that the cultural tourism branding for Bulgaria should be focused on the cultural heritage of the Thracian Civilization.

Future of the travel industry

The most famous country brand firm, Future Brand invited me to be part of the expert panel discussing different aspects of country branding for their Country Brand Index 2009. Without reveling the content and the findings of their index (Download Cbi-2008), I decided to post my vision on the travel industry development for the upcoming years. In spite of economic crisis, pandemic threats and terrorism fears, I believe the travel industry will continue to strive, although some business models will shift. The profile of the traveler will continue to shape towards a real global citizen and this will drive greater tourism demand. See what are the five trends I believe will constitute the essence of this future.

On the photo: Stara Zagora Regional Museum of History new building. Photo credit: Rossitza Ohridska-Olson 2008