This document summarizes a study on the mobile web strategies of 13 major Italian opera houses. The study analyzed the mobile-friendliness and usability of the opera houses' websites, as well as their e-commerce models for ticket sales. It found that only 10 of the 13 websites were mobile-friendly, and many had usability issues when viewed on mobile. Most opera houses outsourced their ticket sales to third-party platforms. The study concluded the opera houses have not fully embraced mobile strategies and its findings could help them improve their mobile web presence to better promote opera as a cultural tourism attraction.

1. Luisa Mich, University of Trento, Italy
Roberto Peretta, University of Bergamo, Italy
Vancouver, Canada, 9 - 14 July 2017
HCI Interna;onal 2017 - 4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Mobile web strategy
for cultural heritage tourism:
a study on Italian Opera Houses

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
The study
• As part of a larger study, whose goal is to
explore how Italian Opera Houses use the
Internet and the Web (their web presence
strategy), the goal of the study is to
inves;gate the mobile web strategies of
Italian Opera Houses focusing on the mobile-
friendliness of the official B2C websites and
on their m-commerce models

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Mobile web strategy
• The importance of mobile web technology in
cultural heritage tourism has been recognized
since its very incep;on: it opens new
scenarios by changing customers’ behaviours
and operators’ business models and services
• In 2014, mobile has exceeded PC Internet
usage worldwide and will account for 75% in
2017

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Opera as cultural aKrac;on
• Many Italian ci;es and places are known as
cultural tourism des=na=ons and are visited
for their cultural heritage
• Among the intangible cultural a>rac=ons,
Italian Opera is renowned the world over and
has been proposed for nomina;on for the
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage lists

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Italian Opera Houses
• In 2010 Italian Opera Houses the historical
En; lirici (literally Opera ins;tu;ons) have
been recognized as such and turned into
(private) founda;ons or Fondazioni Lirico-
Sinfoniche
• We considered, 13 Italian Opera Houses,
including milestones in the world history of
theatres like La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in
Venice, and the Arena di Verona

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
flickr/Miguel Mendez

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Problems faced by Opera Houses
• Opera is “an art form in which singers and
musicians perform a drama;c work combining
text (libreKo) and musical score, usually in a
theatrical sebng”
• Opera involves a large number of people, an
average of two hundred for a single
performance and high costs. From a tourist
point of view, Opera is (mostly) an eli=st
cultural product

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Business challenges faced
by Italian Opera Houses
• Common problems are related to:
– economic sustainability, that is reduc;on of public
funding and difficulty to get private (dona;ons and
sponsorship are not adequately supported by the Italian
law)
– the need of a genera=onal change aKrac;ng young
spectators as spectators are older than those of other
performing arts
– in many cases, a local branding and promo=on of the
Opera seasons (in 2016, foreign spectators were 11% at La
Scala; 13% in Rom)

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
• The technological evolu=on has not improved
produc;vity, nor reduced costs (Baumol
effect)
• The Web and the mobile Web offer new ways
to address promo;on and marke;ng
problems and in turns to help to addressing all
the business challenges

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Mobile web strategies of Italian
Opera Houses
• Mobile-friendliness as a “necessary
condi;ons” for a good web presence strategy
suppor;ng a wider audience and the
promo;on of Opera as a tourism aKrac;on
• e-commerce models
• Availability of English versions of the B2C
websites

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Mobile friendliness
• Tested with the Google Mobile-Friendly Test,
MFT and Pingdom tracking up;me, down;me
and performances of the websites
• The MFT established that three out of thirteen
Italian Opera Houses websites were not
mobile-friendly (August 2016): Teatro
Comunale di Bologna, Teatro San Carlo
di Napoli, Teatro Regio di Torino

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
• Only two of the mobile-friendly websites –
those by La Scala and Arena – were found to
be 100% compliant
• All the mobile-friendly websites adopted a
responsive approach, which is client side and
allows desktop webpages to be viewed in
response to the size of the device (vs. an
adap;ve, or server side approach)

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
• Analy;cal data collected through Pingdom
substan;ally confirmed the overall results
from Google: however download ;mes tested
from different con;nents suggested that no
specific policies were adopted by none of the
iden;fied Italian Opera Houses as far as
Content Delivery Networks (CDN) were
concerned

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
e-commerce: Ticket-selling
• Three solu;ons:
– the home page of a ;cket-selling plamorm, with
no further indica;ons
– a specific page of a ;cket-selling plamorm, with
the plamorm’s look-and-feel
– a specific page of a ;cket-selling plamorm, with
the Opera House’s look-and-feel

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
• The Opera Houses from Bari, Cagliari and
Genoa did not provide e-commerce func;ons
at all
• Ten out of the thirteen Opera Houses allow to
buy ;ckets online, and an outsourcing model
is adopted – that is the transac;on is
supported by an external plamorm – but only
three of the e-commerce carts found keep
their Opera website’s look-and-feel

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Usability
• Interac=ve plans of the theatre, which Opera
websites frequently make available to choose
where to sit showed usability issues when
navigated through mobile devices as content
was not sized to viewport
• Concerning the languages used, eight out of
the thirteen Opera Houses provide an English
version, but the Italian content was not
always en;rely translated

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Conclusion
• Unsa;sfactory situa;on as none of the Opera
Houses fully embraced a mobile web strategy
• Even for mobile-friendly websites there were
usability problems raised by mobile-first
approaches (e.g., the horizontal naviga;on
adopted by La Scala website in its HP)

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
• The results of the study can be used to
improve the mobile web strategy of Italian
Opera Houses
• The systema;c process and free web tools
used for the study can be applied for other
sorts of cultural heritage ins;tu;ons, like
theatres, museums, art collec;ons, or historic
sites

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
Future Work
• Analyze dedicated apps produced by Italian
Opera Houses, in rela;onship with their web
presence strategies
• Extend the study to the “Teatri di
tradizione” (25), where Opera is also
performed even not on a regular basis
• Iden;fy best prac=ces to promote Opera as a
cultural aKrac;on through mobile devices

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Luisa Mich, Roberto PereKa - Vancouver, July 12-14 2017
4th Interna;onal Conference on HCI in Business, Government and Organiza;ons
References
• Mich L, Kiyavitskaya N (2011) Mapping the web
presences of tourism des;na;ons: an analysis of
the European countries. In R Law, Fuchs M, Ricci
F (eds) Informa;on and Communica;on
Technologies in Tourism. Springer, 379-390
• Mich L, PereKa R (2016) Italian flagship
museums: web presence and mobile-
friendliness. hKp://ertr.tamu.edu/files/2016/01/
ENTER2016_submission_119.pdf