Sense of place, local ambassadors and place narratives: a resident-guides’ study in a Dutch national landscape

Purpose The purpose of this study is researching into local ambassadors and their sense of place. The connection among these two is established via the place narratives of a group of resident guides. What do these resident guides say about their own place and what are their motivations and backgrounds which make them narrate the place in a specific way? The pursuit of these questions uncovers different types of local ambassadors and how they relate to and promote the place. Thus, questions about guiding and place ambassadorship are unveiled and reframed. Design/methodology/approach A group of volunteer resident guides of the National Park Southwest Friesland, The Netherlands, is studied in-depth via semi-structured interviews and these are processed to find common topics or divergencies. Some observations to understand situational matters round up the fieldwork. Findings Their local ambassadors are classified according to their motivations, types of performance, attachment to the place and how they relate to visitors. Three typologies emerge: the narrating guide, the hosting guide and the visionary guide, each with different goals and motivations - though all belong to the same local network. Practical implications Place marketers and destination organisations have long relied on ambassadors or volunteer guides to promote places. Their work clarifies what can be expected from them and which discourses they may use. For the tourist guiding literature, new visions are offered, based on the conceptual domain of “sense of place”, which may enrich the discussion on guides and their performance. Originality/value This work connects the domains of local ambassadorship and tourist guiding via the analysis of networks of resident guides. Thus, place attachment, ambassadorship motivations and guiding performances are analysed and discussed together. Therefore, the new typology of local ambassadors this paper proposes is of interest to place branding scholars and tourism scholars - as well as to the practitioners of both domains.