ABSTRACT
Audiovisual promotional material plays a central role in the production of content for the digital marketing of destination brands. As intersemiotic means of meaning-making channelled through various digital media, videos are crucial in the creation and dissemination of compelling and meaningful stories about destinations and their values. Due to its affective power, and because it offers users the opportunity to tour the destination virtually, audiovisual tourism promotional material is fundamental to trigger prospects and returning visitors, and to influence or initiate their customer journey. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global travel restrictions and lockdown measures brought the tourist industry to a halt. While people were physically unable to travel, they spent significantly more time online, virtually exploring places, museums, and attractions made available to them via several websites or social media. By applying a digital marketing professional perspective, grounded in destination branding and social semiotic multimodality, the present chapter seeks to shed further light on the ways and means destinations use to generate an "emotional connection that creates a profound relationship" (Hudson and Brent Ritchie 2009) with prospective visitors, even at a time of crisis. To this aim, it will analyse Ireland's release of an online film on May 1, 2020, to engage online users on different media with a story of resilience, dreams, and hope for a quick return to travelling, encapsulated by the payoff and hashtag #DreamNowTravelLater. Ultimately, the analysis of such content tries to offer a meditation on the heightened significance of content production and storytelling, and the meanings and behaviours they may produce, in the field of digital destination marketing both during the COVID-19 pandemic and in its aftermath. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of goods delivery in urban areas. However, this activity often generates negative environmental impact and several technologies have been proposed in recent years to reduce it, thus forming a complex innovation landscape characterized by different levels of maturity and effects on the City Logistics (CL) system. This complexity causes a deep uncertainty over the future of CL. This paper aims to tackle this uncertainty by forecasting the future of a set of CL technologies. A Delphi survey has been submitted to experts of this field to achieve a stable consensus over 33 projections related to 7 CL technologies for the year 2030. Results show that real-time data collection will help the coordination process between stake-holders, engendering an increased awareness over the value of using logistics data as well as its potential drawbacks. Moreover, experts share a positive attitude towards the expansion of Parcel Lockers, which should be monitored by public authorities to avoid a negative impact on land use. Finally, technologies such as drones and crowd-logistics have drawn the lowest level of consensus due to their lower level of maturity, which arouse the necessity to further explore several issues such as legal and technical barriers.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS - CoV - 2 pathogen, is currently a pandemic. At the moment there is not an available vaccine, so, scientific community is looking for strategies and drugs to implement prevention and prophylaxis. Several compounds are examined for this purpose. Glycyrrhizin, an alkaloid extracted from licorice plant (glycyrriza glabra), is one of the most studied molecules, both for its peculiar biological functions and for its pharmacological effects. This brief review aims to highlight the characteristics of glycyrrhizin for topical use on the nasal and ocular surfaces. The anti-inflammatory activity, the ability to inhibit the accumulation of ROS, the antiviral property, but, above all, the ability to bind the ACE receptor and the SARS - CoV-2 protein S in the extracellular environment make Glycyrrhizzin for topical use a compound with a high prophylactic potential for SARS - CoV - 2 infection, also due to its low cost and the absence of significant side effects.