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Ecotourism has emerged as a new hope of the tourism sector and is expected to overcome past pitfalls of mass tourism. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the potentials and challenges of ecotourism development in the historic and sacred sites of North Shewa Zone, Ethiopia.

Data were collected through interview, household questionnaire, field observation and focused group discussion. The collected data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 23) and Excel.

Based on household’s perception, churches and monasteries were mentioned as the main (17.58%) ecotourism attractions that have crucial role in ecotourism development in the area followed by biodiversity resources (17.23%) and Holy Water (16.01%). These existing ecotourism potentials and opportunities were discussed on the basis of five dimensions, i.e. historical and sacred attractions, biological attractions, cultural attractions, infrastructures and institutional potentials. The mean score values of a five-point Likert scale level of agreement or disagreement of respondents were between 2 and 4.5, implying overall responses of respondents spread between agree and strongly agree.

The findings reveal that although the historic and sacred sites of the area have potential ecotourism opportunities, different anthropogenic activities are affecting its development. The researchers recommended awareness creation programs, promotion of sites, development of infrastructures, employments of well-trained professionals and allocation of sufficient budgets as a mechanism to use the ecotourism potential and solving the existing challenges.

Spiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many spiritual destinations where some of this life's essences can be sought to enjoy harmony and peace. The study aims to prioritize motivators driving the intentions of the tourists to visit the spiritual destination.

The current study applied the analytical hierarchical process, a multi-criteria decision-making technique, on the sample of visitors from all the six spiritual destinations to rank the motivational factors that drive the intentions of the tourist to visit a spiritual destination.

The study's results postulated that spiritual fulfillment motives and destination atmosphere are the top prioritized motivations, while destination attributes and secular motives emerged as the least prioritized.

The research study provides valuable insights to the spiritual tourism industry stakeholders to target the tourists' highly prioritized motivations to augment the visits to a particular spiritual destination.

Previous research has explored the motivations and modeled their relationships with tourists' satisfaction and intentions. But, the present study has applied a multi-criteria decision-making technique to add value to the existing knowledge base.

This study aims to focus on assessing the psychometric properties necessary to validate the internal structure of the TOURQUAL scale.

A quantitative research study was conducted in collaboration with the Brazilian Network of Tourism Observatories, comprising 927 respondents surveyed between October 2021 and May 2022. The data analysis involved the application of descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis, in alignment with the principles outlined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing 2014 to validate the scale.

The findings of this study validate the TOURQUAL scale as a robust tool for assessing the perceived quality of tourist services, with results demonstrating one-dimensionality and replicability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to assess the psychometric properties for validating the internal structure of the TOURQUAL scale.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opportunities of development of the accommodation establishments by accepting the current shifting in travellers' needs and the possibilities of reducing the impact on nature.

The Drucker's approach is used to investigate the opportunities of development for the accommodation establishments. The case study method is used to confirm the possibility to develop hospitality in a discovered way.

Accommodation establishments located in the natural space can supply the nature-based accommodation services simultaneously providing the eco-friendly activities. On the other side, the accommodation establishment that is not located in the natural space can also accept the provision of nature-based accommodation services as an opportunity for development.

The current shift in the guests' needs prompts accommodation establishments to enlarge supplying of the nature-based services. However, if these services are supplied by hospitality facilities located in natural space, the threats to nature also grow. On the other hand, if the hospitality infrastructure is not located in natural space, hoteliers accept current needs of guests as threats to their business. The paper presents the possibility of solution of this contradiction and shows the opportunities for moving forward in the field of environmental sustainability in the hospitality industry.

The sharing economy enables apartment owners to generate income from their assets. “Agoda Homes” is an online travel agent (OTA) that directly competes with Airbnb. A destination has to discover its competitiveness, but few studies have provided an overview of accommodation attributes in each destination, which are crucial to shaping its brand image. This paper aims to illustrate firm-generated content or attributes that apartment owners list about their properties on an OTA platform to comprehend factual information about apartments in each destination with various star ratings and user ratings and to formulate a research model for future studies.

Informational content and accommodation attributes for apartments are automatically collected using a Web scraping tool (the Data Miner). Descriptive statistics and text analysis (word cloud and word frequency) are used to analyze data.

Findings reveal the primary location, facilities, cleanliness and safety attributes for all apartments in each destination, along with star ratings and user ratings. A research framework for scholars is also suggested. Guidelines for stakeholders in the tourism industry are additionally furnished.

This work concentrates on apartments, which have received less attention in the tourism literature. The study gathers factual data from a website to mitigate respondent bias issues inherent in the traditional survey methods.

This study aims to examine the relationship between sustainability initiatives and student satisfaction in accommodation services at the University of Northampton.

Four main sustainability factors, including energy consumption, waste management, environmental responsibility and green infrastructure, are explored in relation to their impact on student satisfaction. A quantitative research approach was used, using a structured questionnaire distributed to 224 students. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to assess the associations and predictive power of the sustainability factors on student satisfaction.

The findings underscore the pivotal role of sustainable initiatives in shaping student satisfaction with accommodation services. Particularly, energy consumption, environmental responsibility and green infrastructure emerged as significant factors influencing higher levels of student satisfaction. These outcomes align with the core principles of sustainability and emphasize the importance of implementing effective strategies in these domains to enhance student experiences. Existing literature supports these findings, indicating that sustainable practices significantly contribute to enhanced satisfaction levels. It is crucial to acknowledge that this study focused on a specific context, namely, the University of Northampton, and caution should be exercised when generalizing these findings to other settings.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the specific sustainability factors that influence student satisfaction in university accommodation. Findings offer valuable guidance for universities and accommodation providers in developing and implementing sustainable practices to create a conducive living environment for students.

This study aims to explore the use of time series analyses to examine changes in travelers’ preferences in accommodation features by disentangling seasonal, trend and the COVID-19 pandemic’s once-off disruptive effects.

Longitudinal data are retrieved by online traveler reviews (n = 519,200) from the Canary Islands, Spain, over a period of seven years (2015 to 2022). A time series analysis decomposes the seasonal, trend and disruptive effects of six prominent accommodation features (view, terrace, pool, shop, location and room).

Single accommodation features reveal different seasonal patterns. Trend analyses indicate long-term trend effects and short-term disruption effects caused by Covid-19. In contrast, no long-term effect of the pandemic was found.

The findings stress the need to address seasonality at the single accommodation feature level. Beyond targeting specific features at different guest groups, new approaches could allow dynamic price optimization. Real-time insight can be used for the targeted marketing of platform providers and accommodation owners.

A novel application of a time series perspective reveals trends and seasonal changes in travelers’ accommodation feature preferences. The findings help better address travelers’ needs in P2P offerings.

Applying the value-attitude-behavior (VAB) model, this study investigated how perceived utilitarian and hedonic values (i.e. novelty and emotion) affect individuals' attitudes toward medical hotels and how these attitudes, in turn, influence their intentions to stay at medical hotels. The current study also explored the moderating impact of overall health status on the relationships between perceived utilitarian, novelty and emotional values and attitudes toward medical hotels.

The data collected from 351 individuals who spent a night in a hospital to undergo medical treatment was used in conducting structural equation modeling to evaluate the research model and test the study hypotheses.

The study results revealed that perceived utilitarian, novelty and emotional values exerted a positive influence on individuals’ attitudes toward medical hotels, consequently enhancing their intention to stay. Additionally, significant moderating impacts of overall health status on the associations between perceived utilitarian, novelty and emotional values and attitudes toward medical hotels were observed.

The study findings provide useful guidance for professionals, such as operators, marketers and managers in medical hotels. These insights can improve operational and marketing strategies, benefiting both the industry and healthcare accommodation seekers.

This study is among the first to empirically assess a theoretical model that explored the influence of individuals' value perceptions within the realm of medical hotel establishments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has induced tourism destinations to reconsider organisational aspects related to health safety measures, as perceptions of health safety may have become particularly important for tourists. Using data from summer 2020, the period immediately after the outbreak of the pandemic, we investigate the factors that affected tourist perceptions of health safety.

Data come from a survey of tourist-card holders in Trentino, an Italian mountain destination. Through regressions, we assess the conditional correlation between health safety measure evaluations following a holiday and a set of covariates related to the features of the tourist area and the tourists themselves, as well as COVID-19 incidence in their province of residence in the months before the holiday.

Tourist-related features seem not to impact on perceived health safety, whereas some destination- and accommodation-related elements do. In particular, the number of tourist beds affects it negatively, and staying at a hotel does it in a positive way. COVID-19 incidence in one’s home province does not affect perceptions of health safety measures, which suggests a possible sample selection effect and/or the need for more fine-grained data.

This paper is one of the few on the immediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic using data from a large sample of actual tourists. Our findings point out the importance of the intrinsic features of some places and accommodation in influencing perceptions of safety. We discuss implications for scholars and destination managers.

Health tourism is a relatively new branch of international tourism that has developed more rapidly than other tourism sectors in recent years. This study aimed to investigate the effect of government supports on health tourism development by considering the mediating role of internal and external infrastructures.

The study population consisted of all experts of two hospitals in Iran, which are frequently visited by foreign tourists (N = 151). A questionnaire, developed by combining standard and researcher-made questionnaires, was used to collect the data. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model was developed in SmartPLS 3 to test the hypotheses.

The main hypothesis test results indicated that government supports positively affect the development of health tourism. Internal and external infrastructures were also found to mediate the relationship between government supports and health tourism development. In addition, the sub-hypothesis test results showed that internal and external infrastructures are positively affected by government supports, which puts forth the development of health tourism. As the results explained, the most important aspects of internal infrastructures affected by government support were health service quality, cost of health services and applying advanced medical technologies, respectively. Also, different aspects of external infrastructures affected by government supports are as follows: economic, infrastructures and cultural factors.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of both medical and non-medical factors on health tourism and signifies the crucial role of governments in the development of health tourism.