Ricerc@Sapienza

The contribution considers – among others - the socio-economic dimension of ten European
historical Capitals through the lens of @ - branding applied to the tourism sector.
Starting from Anderson’s Theory (1983) and continuing with the definitions and key concepts of
brand identity (Aaker, 1996) and brand image (Keller, 1998; Cai, 2002) for a destination’s
successful branding, here we propose a re-interpretation of “destination branding” (Morrison &
Anderson, 2002) in terms of “destination@-branding” by considering the city destination through
Internet not only as an object of perception but also, more comprehensively, as an object of
representation (Vanolo, 2010) in light of the Social Representations Theory (Moscovici,
1961/1976).
In particular, among various Internet environments, the contribution focuses on exploring two
commercial tourism websites: Booking.com and TripWolf.
The data selected from Booking.com highlight the main motivations of users to visit historical
cities. In this research are considered the following cities: Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon,
London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Warsaw and Vienna in the context of a broader research project
conducted on ten European historical Capitals, initiated by de Rosa in the 1980s (de Rosa, 1995a,
1997, 2006, 2013c; de Rosa, Antonelli & Calogero, 1995; Bocci, de RosaDryjanska, 2017, among
others). The analysis shows that the main motivations for visiting the ten European Capitals are:
shopping, museums, culture, monuments, food etc. These different aspects fall into a broader
categorization proposed by de Rosa (1995, 2013) aimed at encouraging the reconstruction of the
social representations of the cities in the twofold perspective of tourists and residents, including
among others: Cultural, Aesthetic Artistic-Architectural Dimension, Economic Dimension, Socio-
Interpersonal Dimension.
This categorization was also used in the analysis of the guides created by Tripwolf users. These
particular users are not only "customers" of the tourism enterprise but they are real actors who
actively contribute to creating and sharing representations and images of the European Capitals,
what in literature is referred to brand image.
The goal is therefore to capture the brand image of the cities through the analysis of the commercial
websites, after having also studied the institutional and institutional tourism websites, for
highlighting the brand identity (de Rosa, Bocci & Picone, 2013; de Rosa & Bocci, 2014; de Rosa,
Dryjanska & Bocci, 2017).
The results, as shown in detail in the contribution, valorise the historical capitals in the different
characterizing dimensions, indicating the @ - branding as an engine of development not only in the
economic perspective, but also in that of identity.
Pursuing policies aimed at "quality tourism" would also contribute to reconciling economic
development and social identity with the themes of social cohesion and relationship between host
and hosted.