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Drawing upon Baudrillard’s concept of sign-value, this study aims to investigate consumer behavior and sign perception in visitor attractions.

By adopting netnography, 133 customer-to-customer reviews sourced from TripAdvisor were analyzed regarding visitors’ online post-visit impressions.

The findings reveal that netnography contributes to a deeper understanding of sign consumption and sign promotion and examines how visitors attribute symbolic meanings to their experience in Titanic Belfast.

The findings show that the co-creation and reevaluation of the visitor experience through consumers’ online reviews should be taken into account by both managers and marketers. Furthermore, advertising should avoid creating excessive expectations to visitors to decrease the possibility of negative disconfirmation, which can be easily and instantly spread online. Another implication concerns the winning awards of visitor attractions, hotels and restaurants of a destination which may be used as a basis of co-branding marketing campaigns to enhance destination brand image.

This study continues the debate on the commodification of the visitor experience and the commercialization of visitor attractions.

This paper provides better understanding of sign-value, sign consumption and sign promotion in the visitor attraction sector.

Artist residencies comprise a unique accommodation type and a form of cultural entrepreneurship which remains overlooked from a hospitality perspective. This exploratory study aims to examine the phenomenon of artist residencies as specialist accommodation, as well as their operators’ motives as cultural entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Creation theory is used to explore how artist residency operators create entrepreneurial opportunities.

Asynchronous email interviews were conducted with 20 artist residency operators from 18 countries. Purposive sampling was used to select interviewees and thematic analysis to analyze the primary data.

The results showed that with few exceptions, artist residencies address all criteria of specialist accommodation, and that social interactions among artists and operators are fundamental in running an artist residency. From a cultural entrepreneurship perspective, most of the operators declared that their priorities were to promote artistic creativity and cultural knowledge exchange, confirming the main elements of creation theory.

Managerial implications are discussed to enhance the resilience of artist residencies and strengthen their financial viability, as well as to support them to overcome the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study extends the hospitality literature by adding the artist residencies to the existing types of specialist accommodation. It also examines creation theory and concludes that artistic creativity and cultural networks are prominent in artist residency entrepreneurial activities.