Erasmus Students’ Experiences as Cultural Visitors: Lessons in Destination Management

Abstract

Destination management is an important instrument in promoting tourism as a factor of economic development. Its usefulness in planning and developing infrastructures and services especially dedicated to tourism, such as holidays, sports, or balneal resorts, is well established. In the context of increasing the mobility of people at a national and international level, the flows of visitors whose trips are related to jobs, business, studies, conferences have constantly increased, and—as a result—the importance of large cities among tourist destinations is increasing. The management of destinations must also contribute in such cases to the creation of a greater attractiveness for potential visitors, the facilitation of their activities, and the production of culturally enriched and pleasant experiences. There is still a need to better understand how big cities are perceived as a destination by visitors, especially when it comes to longer stays. As a result, this paper proposes an approach to explore the visitors’ perception of their own experiences with the destination city. The subjects of the study are Erasmus students, while the destinations considered are university cities where the mobility programs were carried out. The aim of the research carried out by the focus-group method was to identify the elements that contributed to the coagulation of the experience associated with a certain destination city, in the sense of a more favorable or less favorable image of the destination in question. The results highlight that where visitors interact for a longer period of time and at deeper levels with the host community, they share the conditions of local life. The more pleasant these conditions are for the residents, the more open and welcoming they are to foreigners, and the more appreciated one’s personal experience of that city is.