Search results

In many Third World countries tourism is an economic activity the importance of which can hardly be ignored 1). Thus it is obvious that the governments of those countries, besides paying attention to the usual sectors such as agriculture, industry, mining, transport and communication, public health and hygiene and education, should also engage in sectoral programs with regard to tourism. Since “a sector comprises, for the most part, the producing or operating units in the economy that share a common function or output” 2), tourism lays claim to a sectoral approach. In tourism there clearly exists a common function of activities, comprising both Services and production of goods ‐Pertot speaks of a mixed commodity‐service exchange 3) — for the sake of the tourist. The separate activities together constitute the compound tourist product.

Nowadays it is — to a certain extent — popular to criticize international tourism to third world countries. These criticisms may base on widely divergent aspects of the phenomenon, ranging from for instance the economic impact to the environmental impact or the psychological impact. Without implicitly suggesting that the non‐economic effects of international tourism in developing countries are unimportant we will concentrate in the following on the economic impact. The reason for this is twofold:

International tourism belongs to the so‐called tertiary or service sector. It distinguishes itself from a number of other components of the service sector, such as public administration, health‐care and education, by its export orientation, which it has in common with activities like international air and sea transport and international road transport. Contrary to the latter the so‐called invisible export of tourist services takes place within the exporting country. The international tourist services, apart from the international tourist transport services, do not leave the country of production, but the consumer travels to the country where these services are offered. In this way, the production of international tourist services distinguishes itself fundamentally from all other export oriented production processes.

Tourism research is usually based on quantitative rather than theoretical and conceptual studies. However, as a new discipline this phenomenon needs a more theoretical approach. It could help to find an interdisciplinary consensus on tourism. The authors consider service marketing as an interesting approach from an intradisciplinary perspective. They think that it could be an instrument for a better understanding of tourism.

This paper makes a contribution to the exploration of the travel type “Visiting friends and relatives (VFR)”, which is a relatively new field of research. The demarcation and the differences between VFR and other types of trip are the focus of attention of this study. Thus the research goal is to delineate the linking up of VFR with other travel types. Using data from an extensive and representative travel survey covering 2,000 households and more than 11,000 trips, this study found that about one third of the Swiss VFR travelers use commercial accommodation. Although researchers have found in other studies, that VFR type travelers tend on spending more money on meals and catering this could not be confirmed. It was also found that VFR travelers do not have a higher duration of holidays than other travelers. Besides this study determines that VFR is a truly independent travel type. Therefore it has to be looked at separately and not in connection with other travel types.

Although growth of knowledge about tourism has been tremendous, there are still a number of problem areas opening up a number of questions related to the development and the adaption of different measuring techniques, research instruments and analysis methods. Experience has shown the occurrence of certain problem areas which generate certain types of errors can be attributed to the nature of the population being studied and the insufficient extent to which the research methodology is adapted to this population. Since a relatively small number of authors has dealt with the identification of the entire set of these problems (Ritchie 1975, Dann, Nash, Pearce 1988, Pizam 1987, Smith 1989), there is a need to, first of all systematically identify the research areas being the cause of the greatest number of errors, and to, then suggest the possible approaches, methods or techniques for the reduction of such problems.

The paper aims to propose a method of identifying and evaluating leadership potential of stakeholders in emerging tourist destinations and to verify this method in three Polish destinations. Developing destinations miss well-established networking structures and management experiences. The greatest impact on their success is made by the most active stakeholders who are able to pool and mobilise partners and coordinate their efforts to realise common goals.

The research is based on a stakeholders’ potential analysis and the network approach. To identify destination leadership, the method – adapted from an axiological analysis of regional development participants – is used and verified in rural, coastal and mountain destinations in Poland. An in-depth analysis of stakeholders representing the public, private and non-profit sectors is conducted to assess their leadership potential. Ultimately, 183 interviews were conducted.

Based on literature review, five dimensions of destination leadership were identified, namely, networking capability, analytical abilities, impact capability, economic potential and legitimacy. In emerging destinations, the most influential stakeholders are characterised by strong impact, analytical leadership capabilities and legitimacy.

The paper provides insights into destination leadership discussion and research. The limited number of verification cases and limited qualitative data analysis could be seen as its limitation.

Emerging destinations have incomplete leadership. An imbalanced structure of destination leadership may have serious consequences on stability and development of destinations; it also affects the process of identification of potential leaders.

The paper is original because it proposes an innovative method of identifying destination leadership, especially in emerging destinations.

Die derzeitige Bedeutung des Auslandstourismus für Entwicklungsländer In einer Reihe von Staaten, die allgemein als Entwicklungsländer angesehen werden, ist der Auslandstourismus zu einem gewichtigen Exportsektor geworden, wenn nicht sogar zu einer dominierenden Exportindustrie. Der Tourismus aus den Industriestaaten in die fernen Entwicklungsländer wirft dabei anscheinend kaum mehr ökonomische Fragen auf.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an extremely destructive impact on the tourism and hospitality industry. However, there is a gap in the literature on measuring the economic impact of the pandemic on employees of urban tourism industries by class. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate the perceived economic impact of the COVID-19 by workers of urban tourism-related services in Tehran.

Based on stratified sampling, a Web-based survey was carried out among 383 employees of tourism industries. To measuring the perceived impact and evaluate statistically significant differences, one samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and post hoc test were used.

The study findings revealed that employees of tourism-related services perceived that COVID-19 outbreak has a huge negative impact on the tourism industries in terms of earnings reduction. However, the perceived impact on job losses and reduction of hours of work was non-monotonic.

Identifying the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on city tourism by industries and their subclasses can contribute to more effective interventions to support and recover the tourism industries. In other words, it is essential to prioritize support for different class of services, to fair allocation of bailout monies and to improve their resilience against crises and shocks.