City Hospitality

Cities are experienced by their welcome.  Next to the importance of the hospitable climate towards visitors and tourists, also including multiple stakeholders, such as; residents, entrepreneurs and businesses are crucial.  Attention in city hospitality development is shifting from attracting and welcoming tourists who stay longer, spend more money, and come back more often to a well-balanced community.  

City Hospitality research focuses on hospitable encounters between host and guest and their experiences. The impact of hospitable behaviour  of stakeholders on meaningful experiences and its contribution to welcoming communities through human orientation and cohesion. Connecting and engaging, dedicated to enriching lives with hospitality.  

Especially how to create social sustainable interaction between residents and visitors is a special field of research of the chair leading to attractiveness and liveability. The phenomena of city hosts, meaningful  and mindful  city  encounters  contribute to the over-tourism debate and – in these times – to reinvent tourism initiatives.   

The  Chair's work is dedicated to contributing to the UNSDG goal 11, Sustainable Cities and  Communities.  

PLEASE FIND AT THIS SITE SOME the HOSPITALITY MODELS AND TOOLS (WORK IN PROGRESS) 

 Karoline Wiegerink    

Karoline Wiegerink (PhD MSc)  holds The Chair in City Hospitality and City Marketing at Hotelschool The Hague and is the director of a Community Platform for Customer Centricity Professionals. During her professional carer, she has always combined academic and practical work. As an economist and marketeer, she gained special experience in the field of live communication and event marketing and shared that knowledge as a director at Erasmus Centre of Event Marketing (ECBM) and lecturer at Erasmus School of Economics and worked as a part-time associate professor at Nyenrode Business University. As a consultant, co-creator and keynote speaker she focuses on creating customer value through hospitality experience. Focus areas are cities, urban spaces and neighbourhoods wherein different dimensions of hospitality contribute to liveability and lovability. 

Jan Huizing

Jan Huizing MSc is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy Management & Marketing and a Research Fellow at Hotelschool The Hague. He received his Master's degree in Business Administration from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (NL).  He has taken an active role in the development and implementation of the new curriculum, and in Hotelschool’s strategy development process. With a team of students, he initiated Hotelschool’s first SlowFood conference ever. Before joining Hotelschool The Hague Mr Huizing held senior marketing and management positions in leading service and knowledge companies.

He was a Project manager at Foundation JCI Water Toolkit and a Manager Expertise Centre at ADP Nederland BV. As a marketing coordinator at ANWB (a leading provider of services in the areas of recreation, tourism and mobility) he helped the company to move towards a stronger commercial and customer-centred business orientation. His motivation is to create a dialogue and valuable interaction with customers and other stakeholders. Mr Huizing is an honorary member of Junior Chamber International, a leading global network of young professionals and active citizens.

His research interest includes strategic management, change processes, marketing, service design, city hospitality and customer journey experience.

Yasemin Oruc         

Yasemin Oruc, (MSc. MBA) is a research fellow in City Hospitality and senior lecturer in Marketing Innovation at Hotelschool The Hague. She currently works on her PhD. - reinventing city tourism. Yasemin has a background in marketing in the international hospitality industry (e.g. Mandarin Oriental New York, Four Seasons Istanbul at the Bosphorus, PPHE Hotel Group). As mindful marketing, she likes to co-create meaningful experiences and working towards value creation for stakeholders involved.

City hospitality is defined as a long-term process aimed at maintaining and enhancing the different stakeholders’ experience of feeling welcome in the city or destination, based on a vision of hospitality that creates added value for the city, with an orchestrated strategy and aligned tools that facilitate and support hospitality (Wiegerink, 2014). 

In urban development, the aspect of hospitality is increasingly seen as an added value (Bell, 2007).  From this perspective, a different form of hospitality is needed for urban stakeholders, each with their own divergent interests, comprising visitors as well as residents and entrepreneurs. 

Attention in tourism development is shifting from branding and marketing towards an orientation for all stakeholders’ wellbeing. Long-term sustainable tourism requires understanding, integrating, and engaging local communities to balance the interests of all stakeholders. The competitiveness and sustainability of destinations are related to a harmonious relationship between the residents and visitors (UNWTO 2019). 

 Source: Wiegerink, based on Hartman et al. (2020)

Source: Van Prooijen, Wiegerink (2012)

A city offers its welcoming behaviour, hardware and atmosphere to fulfil the needs of multiple stakeholders: visitors, residents and businesses (Wiegerink, 2014). According to the City Hospitality Experience Model, the synergy between the city’s offerings, needs, motives and expectations of different stakeholders is what creates experiences. 

The welcoming behaviour relates to all encounters between guest and host during the entire journey, as experienced by the different stakeholders/guests. This Welcoming Behaviour manifests itself in hospitable (e.g. guest-oriented, friendly, empathetic) human-to-human interactions at various touchpoints of the ‘guest journey’ (e.g. in restaurants and shops, with residents, in public transport etc.)

The Hardware entails tangibles like landmarks, the natural environment, shopping areas, buildings etc., that contribute to the experience, meeting spots of social interaction. The Atmosphere concerns intangibles that contribute to the sensory perception, scenery, architecture, colours, flavour, sound, the ease of finding one’s way and being able to understand the information provided about the place.

The left side of the model refers to the stakeholders within a city.  How do different target groups experience the welcoming city in the urban consumption spaces, shared spaces where living, working, consuming and recreation take place simultaneously and together

Within a city, businesses and residents are both guests and hosts:

they are the heart of the community.

Source: Wiegerink, based on Hartman et al (2020)