This chapter aims to use GIS tool to determine how to promote city by tourism development on the suburban hilly area of Taichung city, Taiwan. For creating the city branding and increasing the satisfaction to the residents or visitors of Taichung city, this chapter proposed tourism potential can be combined into city marketing as a promoting tool. The site criteria in this research for the tourism potential are based on calculating raster cells that are most suitable, and according to regression analysis the required data of site criteria include the layers of elevation variation, slope diversity, proximity to water, accessibility and service facilities for the area. In order to conduct GIS site selection analysis, all the layers were reclassified with ranks from 1~5, and each layer was assigned to relative importance based on site criteria factors. The higher cell value of the area is, the more degree of tourism potential is defined. Branding campaigns by marketing cultural attractions to demonstrate tourism potential is a tool of enhancing tourism competitiveness.
TopIntroduction
In recent years cities are in search for new ways to promote themselves, and the contribution of iconic buildings through their meaning in terms of the image of the city to Quality of Life (QOL) is obviously. City branding is mainly based on three key attributes, which are image, uniqueness and authenticity. Nearly every city has city branding on its agenda in order to promote its image, mainly developed from marketing strategies (Risteski, Kocevskia & Arnaudov, 2012; Riza, Doratli & Fasli, 2012). Thus, marketing a city is to make an effort to discover or create city’s image, uniqueness and authenticity, which distinguish the city from others. It is not only iconic building can market and brand a place but also tourism does the same. Destination is able to facilitate deeper engagement among its visitors by the drawing attraction, and in turn enhance visitor’s sense of identity with the destination or “place” (Hoppen, Brown & Fyall, 2014), and such symbolic meaning and image can be utilized for future, and more sustainable, city branding strategies. Squire (1996) proposed that tourism as a tool of economic growth and places promotion, example for “Anne of Green Gables” changing literary heritage to a tourist resource in Prince Edward Island. The places in a small farming community, associated with “Anne of Green Gables”, became attractions through literary image and facilitated tourism development.
Seaton (1999) presented the successful cases of book towns Hay-on-Wye in Wales, Redu in Belgium, Becherel in Brittany, Montolieu in southwest France, Bredevoort in the Nether-lands, Fjaerland in Norway and Sysma in Finland and their tourism potential in rural areas. These book towns were promoted as the attractions of specialist retail development to motivate visitors to visit rural areas that previously offered no unique drawings to outside tourists, even located in scenic, historic rural areas. Due to the novelty of the book town concept, a diverse program of cultural activities existed in most of the towns, which helped to create the brand of each town and also acted as newsworthy events which attracted publicity. Book towns provide opportunities for regional tourism, which demonstrate the success of tourism in book towns as one of the most crucial branding strategies. This also means that city branding are most likely to prosper by promoting uniquely differentiated local tourism.
To promote city branding by tourism, the work of evaluation of tourism potential is essential. The evaluation of tourism potential is usually based on the clarification of attractions. Attractions consist of all those elements of a “non-home” place that draw discretionary travelers away from their homes. They are the basic elements on which tourism potential is, usually including landscapes to observe, activities to participate in, and experiences to remember. Lew (1987) indicated the most common attraction typologies are general ideographic descriptions of similar attraction types, and the three vertical groupings of categories indicate different levels of ideographic attractions-nature, human-nature interface, and human. Ideographic approaches are the most frequent form of attraction typology encountered in tourism research (Lew, 1987: 554-558). For the evaluation of tourism potential, Lew (1987) also proposed three cross-perspective measures-historical, locational, and valuational measures. Historical measures compare one place at more than one point in time to determine trends and changes. Locational measures make comparisons of advertisements at different locations or regional mapping comparisons. Valuational measures (the numeric rating of attractions) are obtained through preference surveys of tourists, tourists’ attendance and usage rates, guidebook analysis, surveys of experts or professionals in the field, and economic expenditures and income. Whereas some form of valuation determination is included in most attraction research, historical and locational comparisons are limited to the research objectives of a particular study.