The role of travel blogs in European Capital of Culture destinations becoming “good places”

Abstract

The aim of the research, following the theoretical clarification of the concept of "good place", was to investigate whether the ECoC cities of 2022 and 2023 can be classified as "good places", i.e. recommended destinations in the international travel blogosphere, and to what extent their perception is influenced by their general tourist offer and by their European Capital of Culture title. A detailed analysis of blog contents was performed for the ECoC2022 cities. Based on the findings, we concluded that although these destinations are little known on a global level, those who visited them clearly perceived them as "good places" based on their tourist milieu. Although it was possible to discover marked differences in the character of each city, the defining elements of the tourist milieu proved to be similar: historical heritage, visuality, dominant landscape features and the relationship established with the local population. The ECoC title primarily generated expectations regarding the popularity of the destination, the actual impact of the programme series and the developments has so far only appeared sporadically in the blog posts.