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The case was developed from two 2-h interviews with the Chief Operating Officer of A-Basin, Alan Henceroth; there is no CEO of A-Basin. The second interview was recorded on a Zoom call to provide accuracy of quotations and information. A variety of secondary sources were used in terms of better understanding the current state of the ski industry, as well as its history.

Arapahoe Basin (A-Basin) is a historic, moderately sized, ski area with proximity to metropolitan Denver, Colorado. For over 20 years A-Basin partnered with Vail, allowing skiers to use the Vail Epic Pass, for which A-Basin received some revenue from Vail for each skier visit. The Epic Pass allowed pass holders unlimited days of skiing at A-Basin. More and more skiers were buying the Epic Pass, thus increasing the customer traffic to A-Basin. However, the skier experience was compromised due inadequate parking, long lift lines and crowded restaurants. The renewal of the contract with Vail was coming due, and A-Basin had to consider whether to renew the contract with Vail. The case is framed primarily as a strategic marketing case. The authors use Porter’s five forces model to assess the external environment of A-Basin, and the authors use the resource-based view and the VRIO tool to assess A-Basin’s internal strengths. Both frameworks provide useful analysis in terms of deciding whether to continue A-Basin’s arrangement with Vail or end the contract and pursue a different strategy. In 2019, after consultation with the Canadian parent company Dream, A-Basin made the decision to disassociate itself from the Epic Pass and Vail to restore a quality ski experience for A-Basin’s customers. No other partner had ever left its relationship with Vail. An epilogue details some of A-Basin’s actions, as well as the outcomes for the ski area. Generally A-Basin’s decision produced positive results and solidified its competitive position among competitors. Other ski areas have since adopted a similar strategy as A-Basin. A-Basin’s success is reflected in a pending offer from Alterra, Inc., to purchase the ski area.

The A-Basin case can be used in both undergraduate and graduate strategic (or marketing) management courses. It is probably best considered during the middle of an academic term, as the case requires students to apply many of the theoretical concepts of strategy. One of the best books to enable students to use Porter’s five forces is Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). Magretta was a colleague of Porter for many years and was an Editor of the Harvard Business Review. For a discussion of the VRIN/VRIO concept, see Chapter 4 of Essentials of Strategic Management by Gamble, Peteraf and Thompson (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2019).

Industrial heritage works within a world of contradictions, contentions and scalar liminality. Archaeologists and historians focus upon oral histories and discourses of tangible and intangible memory and heritage while planners and economists see industrial World Heritage, in particular, as a marketing ploy to redevelop deindustrialized spaces. Within this liminality, we explore the potential for geographical perspectives to solder such contradictions into transdisciplinary heritage assessments and tourism contexts. How might the spatial tools of landscape and scalar analyses expose alternative and sustainable futures within broader patterns of industrial heritage management and consumption?

Using three comparative cases, interview and landscape methods and conducting discourse analysis within a spatial and scalar framework, we explore the increasing presence of industrial World Heritage.

We present both an institutional reflection upon the complexities of heritage discourse across complex spatial configurations and the intersectional historical, cultural, political, environmental and economic geographies that guide and emerge out of World Heritage Designations. Framed scalarly and spatially, we highlight common interpretation, tourism and heritage management styles and concerns found across industrial World Heritage. We point out trans-scalar considerations for future municipalities and regions looking to utilize their industrial landscapes and narratives.

We believe that more theoretical groundings in space and scale may lead to both the flexibility and the applicability needed to assess and, in turn, manage trans-scalar and trans-spatial complex heritage sites. These perspectives may be uniquely poised to assess the complex geographies of industrial, particularly mining, World Heritage Sites.

Space tourism is currently experiencing significant attention because of its rapid and burgeoning development in the present era. This surge has resulted in an unprecedented growth in publications dedicated to unravelling the intricacies of space tourism. However, there is a conspicuous absence of a large-scale bibliometric analysis focusing on space tourism research from 1993 to 2022. Therefore, the aim of this study is to fill this research gap by examining and mapping the scholarly output published across the world in the spectrum of space tourism over the past 30 years (1993–2022).

A corpus of 7,438 publications pertaining to space tourism published from 1993 to 2022 was gathered from the Web of Science Core Collection. Accordingly, bibliometrix package in R and VOSviewer software were used to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis.

The current study highlights a significant surge in publications related to space tourism, indicating a heightened scholarly interest and a significant paradigm shift in its exploration. Scott M. Smith, affiliated with National Aeronautics Space Administration Johnson Space Center, emerges as the most prolific author. Leading journals in disseminating space tourism research are Acta Astronautica and Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine. Keyword analysis revealed hotspots such as “space flight”, “simulated microgravity”, “weightlessness” and “stress”, while research gaps include “skylab”, “shuttle”, “cartilage”, “herpes virus” and “herniation”, offering potential avenues for exploration.

This study’s implications empower stakeholders with actionable insights and deepen the understanding of the evolving landscape of space tourism research, fostering an environment conducive to continuous exploration and innovation in this burgeoning field.

This study enriches the understanding of global space tourism research and offers valuable insights applicable to a diverse audience, including researchers, policymakers and industry stakeholders. The broad applicability of the study’s findings underscores its significance, serving as a guide for strategic decision-making and shaping research agendas in the dynamic realm of space tourism.