BU Research Blog

Dr Svetla Stoyanova-Bozhkova was invited to speak at the SCoT Webinar Volume 57 this week, organised and moderated by Prof. Jafar Jafari and Prof. Kazem Vafadari.

The SCoT Webinar series is a joint initiative of APU Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan), t-FORUM The Tourism Intelligence Forum, NC State University and iCAPt International Center for Asia Pacific Tourism.

The topic of the webinar was PROMOTING TRANSFORMATIONAL TOURISM THROUGH NARRATIVE ART: Destination Brand Stories. The art of storytelling is inextricably linked with tourism development and management. Significantly, every place or destination tells its own story. Storytellers make space into place and places into stories. Tourism research focuses on tourists’ stories to understand their experiences, and this is highly important in the digital age built on social media, immersive technologies,AI, User-generated content, and conversational marketing supported by Web 2.0. Nonetheless, this modernity has also leveraged the capacity of destination brands to make promotional videos embedding the principles of storytelling.

The discussion focused on the link between tourism destinations and storytelling and how the latter helps destination brands promote transformational and responsible tourism, enriching tourist experiences and contributing to the UN SDGs.

The recording of the webinar is accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCG4B74ti8k.