Places – not Destinations

Screenshot from an article in a mainstream UK newspaper

by Prof Ares Kalandides

Forest fires devastate large areas on the Mediterranean every year, some of them – such as the 2018 fire in Mati, Greece which cost 100 people their lives – with numerous casualties. These are places, built over decades or centuries, where people live the year round, with or without visitors. It is with growing horror that I read – year after year – media outlets referring to these places as “holiday islands” (or “Ferieninsel” in German). Admittedly, for many Brits and Germans, this is what most of these islands are, and the local population is just a folklore backdrop for their holiday spending. But, even if we see it just from the journalist’s viewpoint: what exactly would the article (s. screenshot above) miss in terms of information if its title were “Wildfires hit Greek island” omitting the attribute “holiday”? Continue reading “Places – not Destinations”

Reflections on the 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places

corfu
Photographer: Ian Southerin

By Dr Heather Skinner*

The 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places took place 18-21 April 2016 at the Corfu Mare Boutique Hotel. The Institute of Place Management(IPM) once again provided formal accreditation for the Symposium. The Institute’s links with the Journal of Place Management and Development, with its focus on communicating with academics, practitioners, policy makers and local government, is also a driving factor behind the balance between academic and practitioner input into this event, and there is a current call for papers based on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Corfu Symposia. The theme of this year’s Symposium, ‘thinking and re-thinking about places’ reflected current developments in both the theory and practice of place management and marketing with places and spaces being contested, formed and re-formed, and the symposium considered the way places are theorised differently in various academic disciplines, and what this means for the practice of managing and marketing places. Continue reading “Reflections on the 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places”