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This study aims to analyze the existing empirical literature on regional and business competitiveness in tourism to identify and classify the main themes in this knowledge domain and suggest a future research agenda.

The authors identified the main themes in the existing research and research gaps through a systematic review of 62 empirical studies from 1980 to 2020.

The literature review allowed the authors to identify three main themes: cooperation networks, business strategies and regional development. A conceptual model is developed based on this typology, and a future research agenda is proposed.

Despite the diverse contributions of the literature on the value of tourism for destinations' competitiveness, there is a lack of empirical evidence of companies’ competitiveness in the tourism sector and tourist destinations. The present study contributes to the systematic evidence of these practices and identifies relevant factors for policy making to improve tourist destinations’ competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of energy efficiency improvement of Iran building sector and develop strategies based on them and finally prioritize these strategies according to experts’ judgments. This SWOT analysis is developed based on a detailed study in Iran energy market along with consulting with several energy specialists and has not been conducted before.

Since SWOT analysis is not capable to rank the developed strategies, analytical network process method is applied to prioritize them according to experts’ judgments. Results are compared with the results of the hierarchical network process (AHP).

Numerical results show that modification of the energy tariff system is the most important strategy. Besides this strategy, four other ones are related to the role of government in Iran energy market, while the remaining ones can be accomplished by domestic or international companies. They are about worn out appliances, inefficient buildings and inefficient lighting systems.

The SWOT analysis and the developed strategies can provide an insight into the improvement of buildings’ energy efficiency in Iran and some similar countries. All the developed strategies have two sides. One is the regulatory and supporting role of the government and the other is about the investment and implementation considerations. As most of the required rules have been established, the ground is prepared for domestic or international investors to start or develop their energy-related businesses in Iran market.

The competitive nature of the hotel industry has given the impetus to practitioners and researchers to invest in Customer Retention strategies and research. Although numerous studies have investigated Customer Retention in the hotel industry, there is still uncertainty regarding Customer Retention in emerging markets. This study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge by exploring Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey of 873 customers of 56 hotels in four regional capitals located in the southern part of Ghana. Findings indicate that service Tangible and Reliability indirectly relates hotel Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market.

Tourism product designing is a process of integrating all the components of a tourism product, i.e., the 5 A's: Attraction, Accommodation, Accessibility, Amenities, and Activities. The lack of awareness and unaccountability of mass tourism has demanded the need for “Responsible and Accountable Tourism, calling for better places to live and visit.” However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on mass travel, “Mother Earth” got the opportunity of environmental restoration. The tourism business was badly hit by the pandemic and created an introspection phase for the tourism stakeholders to control and check their activities for a better global recovery. The responsible tourism product development in this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world needs controlled planning and a duty-bound PPP (Public–Private Partnership) model. A scoping review was done to analyze the planning process of the responsible sustainable tourism product. It was observed that all the stakeholders involved in tourism product development need to understand their accountability. Local host communities and tourists visiting the destinations should be culturally and environmentally sensitive. They should be involved in decision-making during the tourism product development and be pride bearers. The responsibility of the various tourism agencies, organizations, and individuals toward minimizing the impact of carbon footprints is evident from various research.

The search for luxurious hospitality experiences increasingly coincides with the imperative to mitigate negative impacts in the pursuit of greater sustainability. This is a task often understood as being complex particularly in the context of luxury hospitality which often resonates with conspicuous consumption. This chapter uses a case study approach to analyze the complex relationship between luxury tourism and sustainability. The study focuses on the development of “luxury” from a materialistic perspective toward an experience economy and relates this to the concept of sustainability and agreements relevant to the tourism industry. The environmental impact of luxury hospitality is then discussed. The case study on properties in Costa Rica, South Africa, the Maldives, Vietnam, and French Polynesia focuses on philosophy, facilities, energy and waste consumption, food and beverage, conservational and educational activities, and alignment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The focus is on the properties and shows limitations in that it is not applicable to the whole tourist journey and experience. All properties understand luxury as based on experiences and involvement in nature. Measures to mitigate environmental impact and foster conservational and educational activities are mainstream practices. Comparing the cases with academic literature on luxury, sustainability, ecotourism, and environmental policies underline that sustainability-driven luxury hospitality shows valuable steps toward a more sustainable product but is ultimately faced with the dilemma of taking into consideration and ultimately mitigating the impacts of the entire travel value chain.

An important sector that presents continuous growth year after year and one of the most notable economic sectors worldwide is hospitality and tourism (H&T). For this reason, many enterprises have been created and developed. Each journey could face several challenges, such as economic, social, political, environmental, and technological. This study examines research and case studies about H&T entrepreneurship and provides new insights into the current industry about all aspects that affect entrepreneurship development. Additionally, the impacts of the spread of COVID-19 in the current industry and the changes in the awareness of tourists to enjoy more sustainable tourism that protects the planet during their daily operations are addressed; this being a new opportunity for business so that entrepreneurs can compete in a hypercompetitive market.

The aim of the present study is to perform bibliometric analysis on available literature on the subject of cultural diversity in the tourism sector. The Scopus database is used to retrieve the research article data and 133 articles were fetched over a period of 33 years (1988–2021). The further analysis is performed using and Biblioshiny tool package of R programming language and VOSviewer. The findings for study not only reveal the trends of publications but also produced the information on most influential authors, journals, and universities which are actively contributing to the subject of cultural diversity in tourism. Various network graphs are also generated using software to draw meaningful conclusions. The present study will not only aid future investigators in understanding the past developments on the subject of cultural diversity in tourism but also help industry professionals in formulating better strategies and tactics keeping in mind the cultural dimension of tourism. The present study is a maiden attempt to perform the bibliometric analysis on the subject of cultural diversity in tourism.