Place Storytelling as Strategic Communication to Enhance the Competitiveness of Local Tourism Service Systems (LTSS). An Analysis of some Case Studies

Competing in a globalized setting requires new modalities of place communication. Place storytelling is part of these new communication forms. It is the ability of an integrated territorial system to tell stories in which stakeholders can recognize themselves. Although the value of corporate storytelling is generally accepted, the literature on place communication doesn’t give the right attention to this issue. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the role of place/urban storytelling in strategic place communication, and identify the stages of storytelling management. The methodology, VSA and SSME+D, enables considering territory as a Local Tourism Service System (LTSS), allowing to frame place storytelling as strategic communication activity rather than a simply operative tool. By means of the analysis of “Umbria on the Blog”, an innovative project which joins territory and web 2.0, and “Il Mangiastorie”, which tends to promote wine and food and tourism of some Campania internal area, the paper highlights the relevance of conceiving and managing place storytelling as a strategic communication which enables involving stakeholders in place identity building process to enhance place competitiveness. In summary, the paper gives a contribution to place communication literature by means of investigation of the potentiality implied in place storytelling.