1. Introduction
Urban tourism resilience has become a major theme of sustainable planning and development policies in the world’s major cities in the post-pandemic era. As old and new urban destinations sought to recover from the period of non-tourism and silent tourism [
1,
2], resilience was adopted as a new paradigm for hospitality recovery and blended with the older, more holistic ‘multi-pillar paradigm of sustainable development’ [
3]. Bucharest has a rich, complex cultural heritage dating back to the Middle Ages, reflecting important radical changes in different historical phases [
4]. The city has become progressively more attractive, increasing its international tourist demand considerably in recent decades [
5] and attracting foreign tourists, unexpectedly during the COVID-19 period, as it hosted mega sporting events [
6].
According to the National Institute of Statistics [
7], the number of inbound tourists increased by 2.5% in December 2023 compared to December 2022, which is evidence of the post-pandemic recovery. This increase was registered due to the gradual lifting of travel restrictions. This makes Bucharest one of the first European capitals to be visited as a tourist destination post-COVID-19.
This fact was also a direct result of the post-communist efforts to rebrand tourism that were undertaken before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the early 1990s, Eastern European destinations sought to highlight cultural leisure attractions as key strategic elements to change tourism perceptions in competition with consecrated European destinations under the new postmodern mobility paradigm [
5], which emphasized the new travel interests of the postmodern leisure traveler demanding “smaller-scale specialized niche marketing” [
8] (p. 427).
A recent study [
9] underscored the importance of sightseeing experiences for contemporary travelers and identified certain heritage objectives in Bucharest (e.g., the Palace of Parliament, the Cotroceni Palace, the Romanian Athenaeum, the Village Museum “Dimitrie Gusti”, the Stavropoleos Church, Herăstrău Park, and the Cişmigiu Gardens) as main attractions for foreign tourist demand. The opinions and evaluations of international visitors as co-creators of tourism products, WOM (word-of-mouth) promoters, and travel influencers play a central role in the overall perception of a destination’s image [
9,
10]. Recent research has therefore emphasized the essential role that travel marketing and social media platforms for digital destination branding, travel blogs, booking sites, and livestreams play in the online image of cultural heritage, promotion, and accessibility of destinations [
11,
12,
13,
14].
In this context, embracing another perspective, our study aims to highlight the main heritage objectives promoted by specialized platforms, booking sites, and/or blogs as the first options for travel and sightseeing in Bucharest. Further advertised through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and social media platforms, these objectives reach, in the end, a gradually wider audience, defining the iconic nature of a destination.
The analysis addresses the following research questions:
RQ1. What are the attractions and landmarks most frequently promoted/mentioned by online sources for tourism in Bucharest?
RQ2. Which main factors/elements determine the attractiveness and selection for the online promotion of attractions and heritage objectives in Bucharest?
The paper is structured as follows: The next section (
Section 2) comprises a literature review on the discussed topic. The third section focuses on the materials and the mixed methods used to conduct the theoretical, empirical analysis of the online exposure of cultural heritage and digital online accessibility of the city of Bucharest. The fourth section presents the main results of the research design and metadata used to highlight the main tourist attractions advertised online for the Romanian capital. The fifth part includes a discussion of the main findings, their implications, possible policy recommendations, and the study’s conclusions.
3. Materials and Methods
As stated in numerous studies, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become “essential in tourism destination management”, as “tourists have become more experienced and digitally literate” [
61] and have gained further access to them via big data, the internet, social media, and the emerging blogging and vlogging phenomena [
62], while influencing travel behavior.
The exploratory aim and research questions of this study, focusing on the overall tourism demand for Bucharest, initially determined the internet research and the selection of data sources and data collection. Travel marketing websites, travel blogs, and even booking or ticketing websites were part of our final list, which included a total of 65 web sources from which the data were extracted (
Table 1). The search was performed from November to December 2024 by using different combinations of keywords in both English and Romanian, such as: ‘
Bucureşti;
turism’, ‘
Bucharest;
tourism’, ‘
sightsee; Bucharest’, ‘
promotion; Bucharest’, ‘
promovare;
Bucureşti’, ‘
tourism attractions; Bucharest’ ‘
rute turistice;
Bucureşti’, ‘
travel blog;
Bucharest’, ‘
visit Bucharest’, ‘
What to do in Bucharest’, ‘
what to see in Bucharest’, ‘
Bucharest; travel tips’, etc. Supplementary searches for Bucharest on booking and ticketing platforms were conducted. Google keyword combination search results revealed numerous sources of marketing and destination promotion for the Romanian capital, including a significant number of blogs (
Table 1). Booking and ticket sales platforms, as well as commercial and general information platforms, were discovered as online information and promotion sources for tourist attractions in Bucharest. Marketing, tourism, booking, and general information platforms belong either to public or private entities (e.g., institutions or associations), while blogs represent individual private sources. The common feature that validated these data sources in our research was the fact that they displayed publicly available information from which our metadata were extracted, and most of all, the websites appeared at the top of the search engine results [
53].
From each source, the first ten landmarks, monuments, and attractive places were extracted in the order in which they were presented by the online web source. The online sources presenting less than ten objectives were eliminated. Even though empirical data extraction is more time-consuming, it was essential for our study because our objective did not require the software analysis and technical steps needed for studies on unstructured texts as in other cases [
63]. Moreover, this was the most convenient method of data collection, taking into consideration the heterogeneity of how web information is displayed (e.g., the presentation of heritage objectives through text or pictures) and the numerous sources, but also the fact that the data volume did not require excessive human resources, nor was it time-consuming.
Our initial research phases consisted of reading and empirically selecting sources that promoted at least ten tourist attractions for the city under study. Then, the first ten tourist objectives advertised on each website were extracted, which allowed us to register their mention order, as both keyword extraction and hierarchical sorting have been validated as important methodological steps in cultural heritage evaluation studies [
64]. To facilitate data mining for further statistics and visualization techniques, the obtained raw data were cleaned and encoded by coding labels that allowed for the transformation of different mentions of monuments and landmarks in Bucharest using shorter uniform labels. Data cleaning and curation were performed in Excel using specific commands and functions to reduce as much as possible the bias resulting from their manual introduction, which could not have been performed otherwise, and further ensured easy software analysis. The comparatively small amount of data allowed for thorough, rigorous verifications that eliminated errors resulting from initial manual encoding and software commands.
Furthermore, quantitative statistics representing the frequency and volume of advertising within the selected sample of the top landmarks and monuments in Bucharest, as well as complementary semantic analyses, were performed using Excel and the Voyant tools, respectively, as adapted available software resources already used in other qualitative data mining studies [
65,
66]. Supplementary graphs underlining statistics on the hierarchical mention of individual monuments were created to highlight the importance of different types and/or groups of monuments that share certain characteristics or common features and elements.
The complementary semantic analyses, which were also performed on selected data from the final sample list of web sources, took advantage of the data mining and cleaning performed beforehand. The final data pool was cleansed of words unnecessary for the current analysis (verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) and helped us to present accurate word cloud images that clearly highlight the types and/or names of monuments and landmarks in Bucharest.
4. Main Results
Considering the popularity of Bucharest’s main heritage objectives and landmarks, the Palace of the Parliament, the second largest building in the world, formerly known as Casa Poporului/House of the People, a sign of the former communist regime and a megalomaniac architectural project realized under Ceauşescu’s regime, is definitely the number one tourist attraction for international tourists. The building is promoted by marketing and booking platforms as well as blogs on eWOM opinions as one of the top ten most important destinations and one of the first three most important landmarks of Bucharest (
Figure 1a,b,
Figure 2 and
Figure 3a). Reference studies [
28] have noted that it represents a controversial legacy of communism, attracting tourist gazes and curiosity in the central area of the city, symbolically associating its significant size and the history of the building with totalitarianism and Ceauşescu’s role in its construction. The building is particularly contested by Romanians, who see it as quite inappropriate for what they wish to represent in light of post-communist achievements and recently won democracy. This is literarily symbolized by the building’s current designation and primary function as the seat of the modern parliament and, thus, the democratic legislature [
28] and is in contrast to their efforts to create and market new positive identitarian images about Romania and to attract inbound tourism and increase related spending [
67]. However, the view of communism remains an important trend, at least among foreign visitors. In online sources, both on marketing platforms and travel blogs, Ceauşescu’s villa is mentioned among the first three options of the top ten list of places to visit in Bucharest (
Figure 1a).
The popularity of heritage objectives reflects a combination of historical, architectural, cultural, religious, and social elements (with reference to the current use of the buildings). In second place among the most promoted monuments in Bucharest on the online sources included in the study’s sample, one finds the Romanian Athenaeum (
Figure 1a,b and
Figure 3b). As a cultural symbol associated with the George Enescu International Festival of classical music, this monument is representative of the 19th-century French-inspired architectural aesthetic that characterized important monuments in the center of Bucharest during the pre-communist Golden era of cultural flourishing and architectural innovation. Another monument from the royal period that commemorates Romania’s victorious past is the Triumphal Arch, which is the first of three monuments in Bucharest included in the city’s top ten landmarks (
Figure 1a,b and
Figure 2).
The ‘Old Town’, or ‘Old Center’, is inevitably one of the most visited areas by both visitors and residents and is recommended by most sources in our sample as a must-see in Bucharest (
Figure 1a,b,
Figure 2 and
Figure 3c). The cityscape is characterized by “a medieval urban fabric (narrow streets) and architecturally valuable buildings (from the 18th and 19th centuries)” [
54] (p. 2360). The historic center of the city is home to numerous important heritage sites (e.g., churches and museums) but also institutions (e.g., the National Bank of Romania) and numerous restaurants and catering establishments, which provided funding for the renovation and preservation of the built heritage, thus ensuring the adaptive reuse and economic sustainability of many buildings [
68] after a long and controversial restitution process that began after the 1989 revolution [
5]. The Stavropoleos Monastery Church, located in the Old Town, is a religious monument associated with the important Greek community in Bucharest and has been preserved over the centuries in contrast to an important inn complex typical of the architecture of the medieval capital that surrounded it and no longer exists. Built in the autochthonous Brâncovenesc style and located in the Old Town, the monument is consistently listed by numerous online sources as one of Bucharest’s top ten tourist attractions (
Figure 2 and
Figure 3e).
Calea Victoriei/Victoriei Avenue is another landmark that is repeatedly mentioned among the top ten tourist attractions not to be missed when visiting Bucharest (
Figure 1a,b,
Figure 2 and
Figure 3d) and can be connected to other important objectives, such as squares (Old Center and Revolution Square (
Figure 3e)), monuments (Romanian Athenaeum), and important museums (National History Museum of Romania and National Art Museum of Romania) (
Figure 2). Victoriei Avenue crosses the Old Center of Bucharest and is one of the oldest streets in the Romanian capital, which once connected the Old Royal Court with other central institutions. Like the Arch of Triumph, its name commemorates Romania’s victory in the War of Independence (1877–1878).
The museums in Bucharest are also among visitors’ favorites, as they reflect the Romanian way of national manifestation in the fields of history, art, and science, which ideally coincides with the restoration of identity through “individuality and difference” from the former common political past of the CEE countries in the post-communist era [
69] (pp. 126–127). Among the ten most important sights in Bucharest, one should also mention the Village Museum. During the communist era, this type of museum was considered part of the promotion of rural heritage among city dwellers as a “strong reminder of their rural roots” [
8] (p. 428) and capitalized on the emotional attachment to place in a complex region from the point of view of urban–rural relations [
70]. With the new tourist development trends promoting sustainable rural tourism in CEE countries and reprocessing the national image from a historical perspective for marketing purposes, this type of museum has been revitalized as a tourist attraction, especially for the demand of foreign tourists [
67].
The parks are also popular tourist attractions for visitors to large urban areas, and large parks near the historic Old Town, such as Cișmigiu, or near other attractive objectives, such as Herăstrau Park near the Village Museum, are named among the top ten places to visit in Bucharest by several different online sources (
Figure 1b and
Figure 3h,i).
In this way, the above graphs reveal the monuments and heritage objectives promoted by current online sources for Bucharest as a travel destination, empirically answering the first research question. The results confirm, 35 years after the revolution, the findings in previous studies that state that, one of the most important heritage attractions tourists ‘gaze into’ and are still invited to visit at present by both tourism platforms and visitors’ blogs is the communist megalomaniac building of the Palace of Parliament, representing a dissonant post-communist institutional symbol of pluralist democracy [
28].
The popularity of the destinations reflects a combination of historical, architectural, cultural, religious, and social elements (with reference to the current use of the buildings) but also advantages in terms of accessibility related to their location close to the city center, on main transport routes (major central boulevards or the main route to the airport), or close to other important popular monuments and tourist attractions. Romania, and Bucharest in particular, as a tourist destination, offers a wide variety of tourist attractions that reflect European cultural influences from the West and the East, as well as a mix of historical attractions that develop a historical perspective. Alongside the quantitative empirical analysis, the complementary qualitative software techniques have synthesized and clearly presented some keywords that denote the main characteristics and types of cultural heritage that have been promoted and found particularly attractive by tourists (
Figure 4).
The first result of the qualitative analysis of the sample texts clearly shows the importance of
Romanian and
national as the main attributes of the advertised institutions and monuments, such as
museums and
palaces, which are objectives with high national heritage value. Other important terms in the word cloud above (
Figure 4) are
church (and the particularly sonorous name of Stavropoleos),
garden (mentioned for the Botanical Garden and some parks, e.g., Cişmigiu gardens),
square (mentioned for Revolution, University, Unirii, or Victoriei squares), and
park (mentioned for Cişmigiu, Herăstrău, and selectively for other examples of parks in Bucharest). In this way, the word cloud highlights elements that reflect national symbols, monumental buildings, cultural institutions of particular importance, places of historical significance, and places of relaxation (e.g., green areas and squares, including shopping areas, restaurants, and hospitality units), underlining the main motivations for cultural visitors potentially attracted to Bucharest as an urban tourism destination.
The nature of advertised cultural heritage in relation to the different types of tourism motivation and the complementary qualitative analysis provided the answer to the second research question.
In addition to a cultural heritage objective’s popularity and fame via its importance for the knowledge of national cultural identity, its location and/or accessibility represent a third factor that determines both the attractiveness and the selection for online promotion and exposure of cultural heritage attractions in Bucharest.
From the point of view of localization and accessibility, the above-mentioned destinations can be divided into and/or linked to the following two main locations:
- –
Attractions and monuments located in the center of Bucharest (e.g., Palace of Parliament, Unirii Square, Old Town, Stavropoleos Church, Victoriei Avenue, Romanian Athenaeum, Revolution Square, Romanian National Museum of Art, and Cişmigiu Park). Most of the advertised tourist attractions are concentrated here.
- –
Those located on the express bus line to Henry Coandă (Otopeni) Airport in the northern part of the city. The attractions in this area are just as significant but less frequented than those in the center. These include Bucharest’s largest park, Herăstrău, which is very popular and visited all year round by both foreign tourists and locals; the Village Museum, which is located near Herăstrău Park and recognized and visited mainly by people/tourists interested in Romanian traditions; and the Ceauşescu Mansion/Palatul Primaverii (Spring Palace), which attracts a large number of tourists, especially people interested in recent history and the dictatorship period. These are usually frequented by tourists passing through the area on their way to the airport or specifically visiting different monuments or Bucharest landmarks.
5. Discussion and Conclusions
Particularly prominent urban tourism destinations in CEE countries, such as Bucharest, face major challenges in the implementation of marketing planning for the development of cultural tourism activities. According to the scientific literature [
18], this sector has been prioritized in this European region in order to create a positive image that reflects the new socio-political realities and is free from any association with the totalitarian communist regimes that shaped its political orientation in the second half of the 20th century. Despite the image projection sought by tourist board managers, administrative authorities, and even residents, the images and texts available online are fraught with obvious contradictions, as sometimes architectural monuments (the Palace of Parliament) or intangible heritage (the figure of Ceauşescu) linked to the communist legacy can be a strong tourist attraction for foreign visitors.
Despite the important online exposure of monuments that are a reminder of the communist period (such as the Palace of Parliament or Ceauşescu’s villa), Bucharest has a rich ecclesiastical architecture, displaying important architectural monuments from the end of the 19th century and the interwar period (e.g., the Romanian Athenaeum, the old Royal Palace that houses the National History Museum of Romania, and the Triumphal Arch). In addition to these interesting architectural monuments, Bucharest is also home to numerous churches and monasteries that are the result of the city’s development in recent decades as the administrative capital of Romania. Today, the city includes modern attractions that offer tourists places to relax, such as parks, squares, thermal baths, shopping centers, libraries, and business complexes.
Beyond their fame or the architectural, historical, and aesthetic values that the monuments have (e.g., size, architectural style, and connection to historical moments or personalities), the location and accessibility of the monuments are important factors that determine their fame and, consequently, the number of visitors. As expected, most visitors, and consequently the most promoted monuments, are located in the central area of Bucharest, while a different group of frequently promoted monuments can be found in the northern area.
The online exposure of these objectives improves their online accessibility and promotion, which, in the long run, can further enhance the attractiveness of the most visible cultural monuments and institutions in Bucharest as part of the new framework paradigm of creative place-making that proposes the creation of stories and images as resources for the sustainable development of destinations [
71].
Many blogs and marketing platforms provide information about sights and monuments that can be visited, as well as restaurants worth visiting, digitally promoting and practically defining the current landscape of virtual Bucharest as a destination, thus influencing and orienting the choice of future visitors. Online promotion, visibility, and heritage accessibility are, therefore, essential elements for the resilience and sustainability of urban tourism today and need to be considered in the future strategic planning of this area by tourism development stakeholders.
Based on the research results in this paper, the following policy recommendations could be made for tourism development in relation to cultural heritage in Bucharest:
- –
Extend the visibility and promotion of cultural heritage through the design and development of tourism products proposing flagship iconic objectives and supplementary associated attractions based on either the theme and/or the location of main tourism attractors (e.g., visits to the National Museum of Contemporary Art hosted by the building of the Palace of Parliament; visits to the Museum of Communism located in the Old Town, associated with visits to the Palace of Parliament or Ceauşescu’s residence; visits to Stavropoleos Church, associated with visits to Sf. Anton Church in the Old Town, located near the ruins of the Old Royal Court of Bucharest or other old churches in the city center).
- –
Extend the visibility and promotion of urban cultural heritage all over Bucharest through the design and development of thematic routes. Starting from the qualitative results in our study and types of heritage that could raise tourist interest, one could see a possible tour of Bucharest’s palaces (e.g., Suţu Palace, part of Bucharest’s Municipality Museum; Cantacuzino Palace, near the National Museum “George Enescu”), churches (in the Old Town and the monasteries around Bucharest), gardens, and famous squares (e.g., Revolution Square, University Square), or a red tourism tour (to be designed and adapted for different target groups).
- –
Digitalization of cultural heritage for both its valorization and better promotion, starting with the implementation of QR codes as a means of information and continuing to the design of adapted specialized applications for different types of users, which may determine immersive cultural tourism experiences.
- –
The design of creative cultural products and adapted events that should value both iconic landmarks and less well-known monuments that could be visited in Bucharest, either on an open access basis or on different occasions.
- –
The association of cultural products and attractions with corporate events and business tourism (e.g., conferences or fairs) that would increase both the visibility and the financial sustainability of cultural heritage preservation and valorization for visiting purposes.
The original analysis performed in our study was based on a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodological approach aiming to obtain suggestive exploratory research results on the online exposure and visibility of the most important elements of cultural heritage in Bucharest. Considering the lack of dedicated studies on this topic for this important urban tourism destination in Romania and the lack of updated marketing and promoting strategies, the contribution of our study could be considered valuable input for both the future scientific literature and future integrated strategies for tourism development. The simple empirical methodological approach makes the results easy to communicate to various types of stakeholders interested in the tourism sector and representing the tourism industry, administrative authorities, cultural institutions, etc. The suggestively illustrated results could encourage practitioners to consider scientific input and public–private multi-stakeholder partnerships as a basis for the design of future integrated policies that are better adapted to the territorial context and its dynamics.
The exploratory character of this study and its pseudo-experimental perspective on the visualization of cultural heritage in Bucharest through simple Google search exercises from the perspective of a normal user, as well as the extraction and computing of data (collected from heterogeneous sources and displayed in various forms, e.g., photos or text), determined the novelty of our research results, which were empirical as well as suggestive and interesting. Despite its simplicity, the methodological approach was appropriate to answer the two research questions and successful at revealing important quantitative aspects of the online promotion of cultural heritage elements in Bucharest through marketing platforms, booking sites, and blogs. They represent valuable, scientifically validated input for the development of future strategies addressing this area, which is particularly promising for Bucharest and has seen increasing trends in international tourism demand in recent years, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regardless of these contributions, this research has some limitations that suggest possible future research directions. One limitation includes the volume and type of data and metadata that did not allow for more complex analysis. The extraction of more complex information (e.g., connected to websites and tourism platforms) that would allow for the application of more complex quantitative and qualitative research methods and the achievement of more sensitive analysis should be a priority for further investigations on this topic. Complementary databases and techniques (e.g., surveys or interviews with tourism development stakeholders) should also be considered for further analysis. Comparative studies and research results for other large cities in Romania or cities within CEE countries could also be considered to extend research on the visibility and online exposure of cultural heritage in the future.
