Sustainable cultural tourism:
Digital Perspectives

Today's tourists are more experienced travelers, more sophisticated, more technology-savvy and more demanding than ever before - and also more educated! For the castles, palaces and residences in the Inn-Salzach-Danube region, too, the bar is set by the classic top spots Alhambra, Uffizi, Louvre, Guggenheim as well as current best practices in the Messner Mountain museums, in top-class national park centres, but also in Disney World, Universal Studios and the like. All these internationally renowned museums and leisure facilities increase the expectations of visitors towards regional cultural institutions such as castles and fortifications. At the same time, the trend towards digitisation represents both a great opportunity and a considerable challenge for cultural heritage sites. How can castles, palaces and residences create sustainable IT-supported cultural tourism offerings?

As an independent institute, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH researches information technologies and, as a project partner in ViSIT, developed a concept for sustainable cultural tourism in the area of castles, palaces and residences:

Dr. Markus Lassnig; Petra Stabauer, BSc Msc; Luisa Friebel, BA: Business model concept for sustainable IT-supported cultural tourism offers of castles, palaces and residences. Volume 9 of the series "Innovation Research Lab Arbeitsberichte", published by the Research Unit Innovation Research Lab of Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH.

The publication helps to understand the current trends in cultural tourism - especially in the context of digitisation. The analysed stakeholder requirements for the digital valorisation of cultural heritage result in concrete recommendations on how IT-supported cultural tourism offers can be created as promisingly and sustainably as possible.

Among other things, the following research projects were implemented:

•     Analysis of trends in cultural tourism and evaluation or allocation of these to existing and expected visitor strata of the castles, palaces and residences in Passau, Burghausen, Tittmoning, Kufstein, Salzburg, Golling and so on (including existing regional tourism strategy plans as well as the latest findings of relevant trend research etc.). (Chapter 2)
•     Research and stakeholder workshop to analyse and evaluate the requirements of stakeholders (cultural institutions, tourism associations, destination management organisations, local authorities from the places involved, etc.) for the valorisation of cultural heritage and comparison with corresponding needs from the visitors' point of view. (Chapter 3)
•     Development of a business model concept for the ViSIT system and SWOT analysis of a scalable digital ViSIT business model for potentially all castles and palaces in the Inn-Salzach-Danube region. (Chapter 4)

The publication can be obtained from

•     Book on Demand, Norderstedt: ISBN 978-3-749479-77-1
•     or as a free download at the address:
  https://www.salzburgresearch.at/publikation/geschaeftsmodell-konzept-fuer-nachhaltige-it-unterstuetzte-kulturtouristische-angebote/