Napoleon Bonaparte
France is the most popular tourist destination of the world, thanks to its massive cultural patrimony, more than 3,000 heritage sites open to the public. Its position is however challenged in a constantly evolving tourism industry. This is why ODIT France has been created, its mission is to analyze the tourism market and help French institutions and corporations to better fulfill its demands. Here is a summary of the presentation ‘How to make culture and leisure work together?’ that ODIT France presented at the International Heritage show held in the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris. I found the subject fascinating because it mixes the most commercial marketing methodologies with very important cultural considerations.
Corinne Lespinasse-Taraba presented a very interesting example of how to elaborate a cultural offer, a ‘Napoleon‘ offer in this case. Tourists from emerging countries such as China, Brazil and Russia are an important new market. How to attract them with new French offers? Marketing studies revealed that they are aware of the name ‘Napoleon’ that they associated with France. This cultural ‘brand‘ has been somehow neglected but has the potential to introduce them to the French cultural offer. ‘Napoleon’ is a brand that can be used as a ‘mise en scene’, a stage of the French culture. French heritage sites having a link with Napoleon have then be indexed and classified by distance, cost, and facilities. ‘Napoleon’ tours have been designed in function of the expectation, time and budget of the Chinese, Brazilian and Russian tourists.
This business case leads to a lot of questions. Those tourists will hear more of Napoleon not because of his importance in the French history, but because of their attitude to that ‘brand’ beforehand. This could lead easily to a distorted cultural representation of France; if applied without carefulness. But maybe history has always been a distortion. The only difference in this case is that it is lead by commercial / marketing considerations, playing the same role than religious, aristocratic or bourgeoisie considerations that wrote history in the past. Is this marketing approach different?
Another interesting aspect is the parallel between Napoleon and a brand. A corporation is marketed with a story board (its success story), brands and key advertising messages. History is in a way the marketing communication of the humanity organization. But what does it sells and to whom?
Example: the National gallery shop in London
Christophe de Chassey then explained how to choose the right strategy for a shop implantation on a heritage site. Opposite to the popular belief, a shop’s aim is not always to provide new streams of revenues. A shop extends the cultural experience by providing to visitors objects related to their visits. It can this way reinforce the brand of the cultural site, providing that the range of products is chosen carefully to be relevant to the site’s theme. Souvenirs are in fact free ads that promote effectively the site. Only for sites having more than 150,000 the shop can become a source of revenues (with a rough average of 2 Euros spent per visitor on a historic site).
The example of heritage site shops shows very clearly that shopping is a media in itself. Products have a cultural, informative value which can be exchanged. It blurs the artificial separation between commerce and culture. What is the cultural message conveyed by the products of high street shops? How could we compare a heritage site with a shopping mall site?
Those subjects are perfect examples for anyone interested in studying the relation between culture, art, knowledge and practical viability, profitability. Answering those questions goes much further than the promotion of French tourism.
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