Abstracts for Session 29

City tourism development – challenges and possibilities of mobile future

 

 

 

Title: Swedish Civil Society sector as organizer and producer of City Festivals: Example the Persian Fire festival

Author: Saeid Abbasian

Affiliation: Södertörn University

 

In 1981 several enthusiastic Iranian students started the Caspian Sport Association in northern Stockholm and organized a common celebration of the Fire Festival for the members and their families. Five years later, an even bigger organization called House of Iran was established and took over the celebration arrangement with better resources and support from Sundbyberg Municipality. In 1994 the Iranian National Federation in Sweden (INF) was established and they gradually became the organizer of the celebration in Stockholm. After 2009 the Swedish National Turing Theatre (Riksteatern) became an actor in organization and celebration of the festival in Stockholm’s downtown. While during the first 25 years the festival was strongly delimited to the northern suburbs and was locally known, the arrangement by Riksteatern since 2009 contributed to huge attention to the festival in the city, in the country and later in the whole world. 

Sweden is a country with a strong civil society sector and rich tradition of associations and non-profit organizations (Voluntarius.com). One of the areas the civil society is strong in is the production of urban festivals (Andersson et al., 2009). The aim of this research is to describe the historical evolution of the Fire Festival in Stockholm from a perspective of Swedish Civil Society sector and thereby analyze the success factors over the years. Initially, a qualitative method consisting of primary and secondary sources has been employed. 


 

Title: Psychosocial wellbeing as the outcome of the City festival celebration 

Author:Saeid Abbasian

Affiliation: Södertörn University

 

Multicultural festivals contribute to strengthen multicultural societies through positive psychosocial, social and cultural benefits for individuals, groups and communities/societies (Lee et al., 2012). Especially, these includes positive feelings and emotions that are created with attendees in the festival (Kim et al, 2016). 

The purpose of this descriptive research is to get an understanding of the Persian Fire Festival’s visitors in Stockholm and their subjective reasoning around the feelings and emotions that are created through their celebration. 280 visitors/attendees answered to the question “What emotions does it evoke to celebrate the Fire Festival with you?” that was included in an online questionnaire. Excepting a few irrelevant answers, the predominant majority gave clear examples of positive feelings and emotions and some of them mentioned up to six feelings. Happy/happiness has been the most expressed feeling. The other frequent feelings have been: welcome the spring and the new year; pride/proud; community; belonging and togetherness; nostalgy; and home feeling. A very few people also mentioned sad feelings such as homesickness and missing family. The results show an overall positive impact of the festival celebration on the visitors’ psychosocial well-being. They also give rise to the question how such festival arrangements through increased positive feeling can contribute to stronger feelings of identity, belonging and community and thereby results in better socio-cultural integration of these people into the society.

 

 

Title: City festival arena and its impact on the attendees’ overall satisfaction

Author: Saeid Abbasian

Affiliation: Södertörn University

 

Places as social constructions create meaning, identity, emotions and attachment for individuals (Knox and Marston, 2016; Massey, 1995). This can also be applied for festival arenas as well (e.g. Davis and Martin, 2014; Kim, 2017). Authors (e.g. Lee et ala., 2008) emphasize that the choice of festival arena has a significance for the visitors/attendees’ overall satisfaction with the festival in issue. 

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the Skansen arena in Stockholm, that has a high symbolic value for all Swedes, is assessed by the attendees of Persian Fire Festival in March 2019. An online questionnaire with qualitative and quantitative questions was used during April 2019 and resulted in 280 completed questionnaires by attendees from several ethnic groups. The results indicate high level of satisfaction with the arena that gives the attendees positive emotions, meanings, place attachment, place identity and a sense of place. The high status of the arena that gives pride and dignity; security and safety of the arena; its size; and its natural beauty have been the most contributing factors. Lack of accessibility and sufficient public transport have been the most negative factors. This paper gives a contribution to existing literature on festival arena and its importance for the attendees. Such symbolic arenas create stronger identity for immigrant groups and may become platforms for mutual cultural interaction with the host society. 

 


Title: ”Visit attractive sustainable cities - Visit functional supply and visitor experience demand in a city destination”

Authors: Göran Andersson

Affiliation: Södertörn university

 

Today there is a discussion how urban areas can be developed in the future compared with the number of residents, public sector and industry in Sweden. The city regions are also very attractive for visitors (Maitland & Ritchie, 2009). However, will the Corona pandemic demand more local sustainable products with reduced transports?

In Stockholm destination there are eight regional city centres and also a large peri-urban area (Stockholm county council, 2018). 

The tourism industry influence strongly on the development of cities with their suburbs through innovation, entrepreneurship etc. (Bellini & Pasquinelli, 2017). The companies have to consider to develop new attractiveness concept which is even more important after the pandemic, such as new hybrid products and local product packages based on visitor streams.

The destination character is a base for the supply and its matching image. Some suburb environment are associated with negative image, but still they have a great potential (Andersson & Abbasian, 2018).

The research purpose is to investigate the visitor attractive functional supply in a regional city and its image, and how it can be related to visitors experience demand.

The visit functional supply is investigated by in-depth interviews of tourist experts, and the visitor experiences by semi-structured interviews and a quantitative investigation using the Analytical Hierarchical Process.

Typical visit functional supply based on visitor streams in regional city centre, and typical experience demand for various visitor categories are identified and developed into a model of smart city centres. In addition, attractive image aspects of city and regional centres, and transformed city tourism products with new destination actors.