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This study attempts to demonstrate how a tourism attraction (i.e., museum) could establish its brand equity. It involves a case study on one of the most famous museums in Taiwan which involves an in-depth interview. The results show that the museum under investigation has established a clear brand identification and its brand communications but has a limited interpretation of its brand assets. Recommendations include strengthening its experiential propaganda, organizing large-scale intercity festivals, coordinating with other vendors to sell cultural products, increasing the number of professional exhibitions, and establishing a self-evaluation mechanism.

Satellite images can be a powerful source of data for analyses of conflict dynamics and social movements, but sociology has been slow to develop methods and metadata standards for transforming those images into data. We ask: How can satellite images become useful data? What are the key methodological and ethical considerations for incorporating high-resolution satellite images into conflict research? Why are metadata important in this work? We begin with a review of recent developments in satellite-based social scientific work on conflict, then discuss the technical and epistemological issues raised by machine processing of satellite information into user-ready images. We argue that high-resolution images can be useful analytical tools provided they are used with full awareness of their ethical and technical parameters. To support our analysis, we draw on two novel studies of satellite data research practices during the Syrian war. We conclude with a discussion of specific methodological procedures tried and tested in our ongoing work.

Tourist guides, one of the important service providers of tourism, have effected greatly by smart tourism technology during the COVID-19 period. It is thought that this trend will continue to increase in the future. Also, there are some challenges of smart tourism post pandemic on tour guides. In this context, the study aims to examine the levels of utilization of smart tourism applications by tourist guides, their activities in the COVID-19 period, and the transformation that tour guiding will undergo in the future. Within the scope of the study, existing smart tourism applications used in tours were examined with opportunities and challenges sides. In addition, the reflection of the guided cultural tours in the future was evaluated.

The contribution explores the methodology, strategies and activities of inter-institutional partnership among university, school, territory initiated by the Degree Courses in Primary Education Sciences of the University of L’Aquila. It illustrates the experiences of an active partnership undertaken at the five-year, single-cycle Degree Course after the reform introduced in Italy by the law 249 of September 2010 aimed at encouraging local development in a national and international perspective (Bologna Process, 1999). These activities focus on the need to strengthen the cultural and professional profile of future teachers through curricular and extracurricular activities involving the use of cultural heritage goods, tangible and intangible, of the territory. The aim is to renew methodological approaches to ‘science teaching’ through the use of appropriate technologies that make it possible to realize the process of teaching-learning adequate to provide the multi-lettered of the XXI Century with sets of skills and knowledge more and more updated. The contribution focuses, in particular, on the project titled ‘Museum in … click! – Cognitive processes and new technologies applied to archaeological heritage in museums for cultural fruition qualitatively appreciable’. This project involved University, Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage (SAH) of Abruzzo and local schools in a partnership where teachers and students from schools of the territory were busy in direct training to build educational proposals and multimedia products for their peers to improve the quality of use of cultural goods involved. The project, funded by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism – Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo (MIBACT), provides a good example of practices within a partnership model that feeds a teaching system where the different skills of the stakeholders interact inside a common cultural area pursuing the same goals.

Purpose: This chapter is exploring opportunities out of the coronavirus crisis and investigating how to turn the crisis into a stepping stone for enhancing heritage tourism in Egypt.

Design: A qualitative approach is adopted and thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders about cultural heritage activities before, during, and after COVID-19.

Findings: Main findings of the chapter are divided into management-related (cultural sites carrying capacity, interpretation of cultural heritage attractions, site accessibility, hygiene, and safety) and marketing-related (the limited number of exhibited destinations, using technology and promoting heritage tourism locally) challenges.

Research Limitations/Implications: This study is limited to the Egyptian context. Future research could investigate the challenges and opportunities for heritage tourism in more developed countries. Besides, the use of qualitative methods can be altered to surveys in future research to enrich the body of knowledge in this area.

Practical Implications: The study is suggesting practical steps to tourism authorities related to management and marketing aspects of heritage tourism.

Originality/Value: This study is based on original research that produces new knowledge by using the study approach in collecting data, reports and interprets the findings and discusses possible implications.

The rapid evolution of curation practices today is a response to expanded access to information and knowledge and the dynamic development of intelligent technologies well suited to curatorial practices. This chapter provides an overview of traditional curation theory and practice. It identifies its historical origins of anthropology, ethnography, museum work, and archival practices. The authors note that traditional curatorial practices have been a subset of preservation practices. Today it draws heavily from traditional practices but expands the goal and purpose beyond simple preservation to storytelling, learning, creating new perspectives, interpreting the past and present, and creating new business knowledge. The chapter lays out the emerging spectrum of curation purposes and practices. The widespread access to curatorial tools now opens curatorial work to the general public. More comprehensive access argues for a broader dialog around the new competencies and capabilities these new practices require.

The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN, National Archaeological Museum of Naples) is one of the most important archaeological museums in the world. In 2017, MANN launched several projects, such as Father and Son, the first video game made by an archaeological museum, and Ancient Present (Antico Presente), a series of five short films produced by the museum in five different languages and based on different artworks selected from the museum's permanent collections. The idea behind these projects was to ‘bring the museum outside the museum’, with the assumption that some tools may improve the museum's ability to speak and interact with its audiences, both in the spatial sense (outside its physical perimeter) and the temporal dimension (not only during the visit experience, but also before and after it). We have studied these two MANN projects, as this museum has explicitly targeted audience development as one of its main objectives (MANN, 2016, p. 72) and these projects are important examples of how to use new ‘languages’ (the digital and the cinematographic) to start a dialogue with new audiences and to address museum accessibility in a new way.

Purpose: In March 2020, due to the global emergency ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian government closed all national museums, institutes and places of culture heritage and landscape. The shutdown highlighted the need to develop and implement digital solutions, especially through ICTs, to enhance the cultural heritage worldwide by allowing people to go on admiring it, albeit remotely. Numerous initiatives were promoted, such as virtual experiential tours, online collections and ad hoc social and digital programs, all of which contributed to the rich dialogue between people and culture. Although digital initiatives for using and enjoying the cultural heritage have been successfully developed and implemented, in Italy the process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from being completed. This chapter investigates the development and implementation of digital technologies in the museums located in the Campania Region in Southern Italy throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify and analyse the experiential strategies and initiatives developed through information communication technologies (ICTs) to face the emergency.

Design/Methodology/Approach: By adopting a qualitative methodology, using primary and secondary data sources through a manual content analysis, experiential strategies and initiatives employed by the Campania regional museums when using digital solutions have been identified and categorised.

Findings: Despite the effectiveness of digital initiatives, and the experiences investigated appear both significant and interesting, there is still a need to develop and implement new experiential strategies in this field.

Research Limitations: This study presents several limitations, mostly related to its qualitative explorative nature, but also because its results cannot be generalised.

Practical Implications: These first results outline the need to further develop innovative strategies and initiatives within the museums. The process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from completion, potentially providing wide margins of further evolution by means of further investments in technology innovation, to rethink and redesign the traditional management models for enhancing the cultural heritage through digital technology.

Originality: This study provides a portrait of museum experiences supported by digital technologies in a country which plays a crucial role in the field of international cultural heritage. The analysis can also usefully contribute to the existing literature due to the qualitative technique employed for carrying out the multiple case study.

This chapter uses a dataset of heights calculated from the femurs of skeletal remains to explore the development of stature in England across the last two millennia. We find that heights increased during the Roman period and then steadily fell during the “Dark Ages” in the early medieval period. At the turn of the first millennium, heights grew rapidly, but after 1200 they started to decline coinciding with the agricultural depression, the Great Famine, and the Black Death. Then they recovered to reach a plateau which they maintained for almost 300 years, before falling on the eve of industrialization. The data show that average heights in England in the early nineteenth century were comparable to those in Roman times, and that average heights reported between 1400 and 1700 were similar to those of the twentieth century. This chapter also discusses the association of heights across time with some potential determinants and correlates (real wages, inequality, food supply, climate change, and expectation of life), showing that in the long run heights change with these variables, and that in certain periods, notably the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the associations are observable over the shorter run as well. We also examine potential biases surrounding the use of skeletal remains.

This chapter focusses on the importance of using technology in tourism. This chapter also comprehensively highlights technologies that are impacting the tourism industry as well as the constraints the industry is facing. Many research studies have been conducted which outline the contributions and importance of technology in tourism in general. In recent years, various research studies, ranging from tourism management to geography, have increasingly explored the opportunities to use cutting-edge information and communication technologies (ICTs), implemented at different scales, in order to improve tourists’ experiences. Among several technology-driven solutions, augmented reality (AR) is usually regarded as a useful tool for tourism. AR has become an area of significant interest and investment in recent times. The present study focusses on case studies where AR-based smart tourism applications have been developed. In tourist destinations, visitors exhibit a great interest in learning while travelling. Curiosity plays a significant role for visitors buying trips for their families and they are willing to pay slightly more for a unique experience. The findings offer several contributions to the literature by providing new theoretical insights into the intersection of AR and tourism in Italian heritage sites, especially in Sicily.