Mobile Web Strategy for Cultural Heritage Tourism: a Study on Italian Opera Houses

Italian Opera is renowned the world over. It has recently been proposed for nomination to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and still, though confronted with sustainability issues, cooperates in typifying Italy as a cultural tourism destination. This paper focuses on Italian Opera Houses, comparing their mobile web strategies, in terms of the mobile friendliness of their websites and their m-commerce models, in the frame of a global and generational competition. Besides, availability of English content for an international audience is specifically considered. Results confirm some general trends in web communication and marketing – namely a predominance of responsiveness within technical solutions, and outsourcing among e-commerce policies – and highlight weak points. The study was based on a systematic process and free web tools, that can be used for other sorts of cultural heritage institutions, like theatres, museums, art collections, or historic sites.