Netnographic analysis of tourists' cittaslow experience components: Suggestions for candidate destinations

The Cittaslow movement first emerged in 1999 in the Orvieto theater of the town of Greve in the Chianti region of Italy, under the leadership of the mayors of four small towns that adopted the slow food philosophy (Greve in Chanti, Orvieto, Bra, Positano) and the leader of the slow food movement, Carlo Petrini. In Turkey, it started in 2009 when Izmir's Seferihisar district joined the cittaslow Cities network. Today, quiet cities have significant popularity in the tourism sector. Destinations with the title "slow city" offer peaceful environments where tourists have the opportunity to relax and recharge themselves away from the stress of daily life. This research aims to investigate the fundamental elements of the cittaslow city visitor experience through a netnographic analysis and provide recommendations for future cittaslow city locations. In this research, netnography analysis, one of the qualitative analysis methods, was used. Netnography is widely used to study online communities on the internet. In this context, the comments of tourists who visited 22 cities in Turkey from the dates they received the "Cittaslow" title on the official website of Cittaslow Turkey through the TripAdvisor application were coded and examined. The MAXQDA Program was used to analyze the coded data and analyses of word frequency, coding statistics, code distribution, slow cities, and tourist experience components were carried out. As a result, the most common tourist experience components in Cittaslow cities are hedonism (pleasure, entertainment and relaxation), local culture (gastronomic culture and local people), regeneration (revival and relaxation) and participation (participation in events), while the least common components are meaningfulness (individual achievements and personal development), knowledge (intellectual development, cultural development and new information), innovation (escape from routine, excitement and adventure, reducing boredom) and complaints as negative experience. Additionally, it has been discovered that visitors frequently suggest cittaslow cities.