Report on the 6th Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places

Photographer: Ian Southerin, Location Photography
Photographer: Ian Southerin, Location Photography

by Dr Heather Skinner

We have recently said goodbye to all the delegates who attended this year’s 6th Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places. What am amazing group of people, all inspired to discuss various aspects of place management and marketing.

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The Symposium was officially opened with a welcome to delegates from the Mayor of Corfu Mr Konstantinos Nikolouzos

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and Corfu’s Vice Mayor for Tourism Mr Vasilis Kavadias.

This truly international Symposium attracted papers authored by 61 academics from 35 institutions in China, Cyprus, Finland, France, Ghana, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, the UK, and USA.

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In addition, delegates were treated to two keynote speeches, the first from Institute of Place Management Director, Dr Steve Millington who talked about the role of football in place,

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the second keynote was delivered by Frantz Dhers, French CEO of Original’s, the consulting firm which helps companies to respect and promote local host cultures under their influence, through the concept of “Corporate Cultural Responsibility”.

There was also a great interactive special session led by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Dr Brendan Keegan, who took delegates on an “Ethno-Archaeological Review of Social Networking”, that also involved a live demo of the Mentimeter interactive feedback app, in the form of a pub quiz about social media.

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As this year’s Symposium Theme was Connecting Places  we ensured our delegates had plenty of opportunity to connect with Corfu as we took them on the move, spending two full days away from our base, and seeing some of the island’s sites of interest with presentations on those days also delivered off-site. You can read more about our visit to Danilia Village and the Grecotel’s Kommeno Peninsular Luxury Resorts in this blog post Out and About in Corfu on the Trail of James Bond and The Durrells, and more about our trip to Achilleion Palace and Archontiko Restaurant in our blog post Corfu’s Beautiful South.

The prize for Best Paper was awarded by Symposium Chair Dr Heather Skinner to Costas Theodoridis and Oliver Kayas, from Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK for their paper “Connecting place managers to places: The challenge of moving beyond tacit knowledge informed placemaking decisions in the UK”. Many congratulations to both authors.

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After a very busy 4 days drew to a close, our delegates enjoyed the fabulous hospitality of Ambelonas Vineyard for our Gala Dinner.

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This will be our last Symposium in Corfu for the time being, but the Institute of Place Management will continue to bring this amazing academic and practitioner community together at future events.

Please join us in Adelaide in November 2019 for the 5th Biennial Conference of the Institute of Place Management on Transforming Place – exploring processes and practice that shape the relationship between people and the place they live. You can find out more about the conference and the call for papers here.