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The purpose of this paper is to question the extent to which Sub-Saharan African cities are progressing towards promoting pro-poor economies through pro-poor tourism (PPT). It specifically examines how African cities are resilient towards attaining sustainable urban tourism destinations in light of high urbanization.

The methodological framework is interpretive in nature and qualitative in an operational form. It uses meta-synthesis to evaluate the causal relationships observed within Sub-Saharan African pro-poor economies to enhance PPT approaches, using Accra, Ghana, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Harare, Zimbabwe, as case studies.

Tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been dominantly underpinned by neoliberal development strategies which threaten the sustainability of tourism in African cities.

The study is limited to three Sub-Saharan African countries. Further studies may need to be done in other developing countries.

It argues for good governance through sustainability institutionalization which strengthens the regulative mechanisms, processes and organizational culture. Inclusive tourism approaches that are resilient-centered have the potential to promote urban tourism in Sub-Saharan African cities. These findings contribute to the building of strong and inclusive Institutions for Sustainable Development in the Sub-Saharan African cities to alleviate poverty.

These findings contribute to the building of strong and inclusive institutions for sustainable development in the Sub-Saharan African cities to alleviate poverty.

The “poor” are always within the communities, and it takes a community to minimise the impact of poverty among the populace. The study is conducted at a pertinent time when most African government’s development policies are pro-poor driven. Though African cities provide opportunities of growth, they are regarded as centres of high inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of inclusive tourism in a small-island tourism economy of the Caribbean. Dubbed the “One Happy Island” in the Caribbean, the operationalization and development of direct and indirect channels of inclusive tourism are studied and discussed to foster policy guidance and future studies.

Based on an in-depth case study of Aruba, the findings yield significant insights on the unfolding of inclusive tourism within the context of a maturing small-island tourism economy in Aruba. A mix of historical socioeconomic analysis in conjunction with community resident perspectives provides an expanded framing of small-island inclusive tourism development.

In mature, small-island tourism economies such as Aruba, social and ecological disparities are particularly evident and over an extended period have exceeded direct economic contribution. The case study reveals an Aruban community experiencing significant negative socioecological impacts and subsequent diminishing economic contribution and well-being. Concerns about environmental pollution and destruction, the loss of quality of life and income equality, in addition to over construction and crowding, indicate a growing animosity toward tourism and further tourism growth.

Based on previous studies, this study provides an extended framing of small-island inclusive tourism, which opens opportunities for further testing and validation across other small-island tourism economies. It provides a conceptual critique of classical tourism growth maxims in small-island developing states.

The paper provides rich historical insights using an in-depth case study approach that extends the concept and evolution of inclusive tourism in mature, small-island tourism destinations, especially in the Caribbean, thus providing a contemporary framing of inclusive tourism.

At a time when tourism is embarking on the path to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, this paper aims to put forward a set of principles guiding the development of tourism to enable global society to become more inclusive and sustainable.

This paper adopted a descriptive design using views and data mainly published by 11 international organisations and specialised agencies between March and mid-June 2020. Content analysis was carried out to enable the research to identify features and the presence of challenges for tourism within international organisations’ documents and leaders’ speeches to compare them.

The results revealed that there are five key principles that may have a significant impact on tourism development, suggesting that these could be adopted for building a more inclusive and sustainable economy, while mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

Adopting the five key principles recommended in this paper can help tourism to emerge stronger and in a more sustainable way from COVID-19 or other future crises. Equally, this can incite changes in policies, business practices and consumers’ and locals’ behaviours with a view to building a truly sustainable sector.

This study helps to reconfirm existing knowledge in the COVID-19 context by highlighting five guiding principles that can help tourism players to respond to this crisis disruption and future ones via transformative innovation. In doing so, these will also be contributing to the achievement of the ideals and aims of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This chapter seeks to examine the roles of child rights in fostering inclusive sustainable tourism development in Kenyan context. Specifically, it examines the importance of protective, participatory and provision rights of children in tourism sector in African context. The chapter adopts an interdisciplinary content analysis approach to determine themes and relationships between child rights and inclusive sustainable tourism development studies. Theoretical discussion on the contested ideologies on child rights brings out the varied multi-disciplinary perspectives on child rights that continue to create differences in views about the roles of children in tourism especially in African context. The chapter findings show that child right approach is required in the development of a more integrated, inclusive and sustainable tourism sector. Further, a framework for child centered integrated rights approach to Sustainable Tourism is proposed and the study examines the parameters toward advancing the child rights approach. In order to address the vulnerabilities, negative impacts and marginalization of children in tourism development and planning discourse in African context, there is need to design and build safeguards that reduce the exposure of children in African context by focusing on children-centric tourism development strategies and policies for the sector.

‘Tourism for all’ is a way to consider tourism activities and services inclusive, involving all people, guests and residents, in the same activities and creating the dialogue, peace and human development.

This tourism is able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in two ways: first, it implements human rights, respecting the possibilities of everyone and second, it activates the process of development from the local to global impacts for sustainable development, thus eradicating the poor in the local level.

These are ambitious goals; on the one hand they are certainly difficult to achieve, but on the other hand they are necessary to implement in order to make tourism a more and more sustainable economic activity, given its international spread. Certain sustainable development is ambiguous ground but in the tourism activities it is very pressing for the negative impacts of the classical tourism model.

These assumptions are useful to analyze the costs and benefits of inclusive tourism, thanks to the pyramid of accessibility. This study will in fact make it possible to determine, on the basis of the resources present in the territory, the opportunities and limits of this type of tourism.

In European destinations, above all, in Italy, the openness to inclusive tourism can constitute a new cycle of tourism product such as to activate that interest and curiosity that drives tourists to visit the destination. This chapter describes at first the criteria for the planning of tourism for all, and finally, in the second part, it will deal with the international policies for the realization of tourism for all.

The traditional model of tourist destination is characterized by tourist attractions and related infrastructure, often avoiding the local people. The resort or tourist villages are born to entertain tourists, but they did not involve local people. Nowadays the tourism and the resorts are changing, and so a lot of destinations are involving a new idea of tourism with the accomplishment of the local people that can support the persons with specials needs to live an independent travel as inhabitans.

It is therefore necessary to look for new models in tourism that can create a dialogue, peace and fruitful encounter between guests and the local community. This involvement, in fact, can be activated directly or indirectly – with or without the presence of the local community in all activities of tours – but always in accordance with the need of each other. Tourism for all is a new idea but is the future of tourism for different reasons: the first is that the needs of people, especially those with differences or disabilities, are increased in all parts of the world and they required the solution immediately and tailor-made; the second consists in the hypothesis that if guests can have more economic and especially technological potential, they can support and transfer their know-how to all those who suffer from that particular disorder, providing this benefit; and the third gives sustainability using the appropriate resources to enhance tourist activities.

In this new vision, the World Tourism Organization has attributed to tourism for all a broader vision than accessible tourism alone, combining sustainable and social tourism in a single form of tourism, including every person regardless of gender or other forms of diversity.

In the innovative strategy of inclusive tourism, it should be pointed out that destinations will have to develop plans and appropriate policies for sustainability and accessibility. This form of tourism, which certainly has social aims, could also be conflicting if, for example, accessibility makes use of very invasive technologies or not too much in line with the efficiency and protection of the environment. Tourism for all, therefore, becomes an ambitious project to be implemented at the local level to create a model, so valid to the global level.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the contributions made by the writing team for this theme issue and to present the main ideas, lines of action and implications for a model of inclusive tourism.

A content analysis of the papers selected for this issue was performed so as to identify the most relevant contributions made by the authors.

From the analysis of the papers in this theme issue, it is clear that destinations need to reflect on and work towards a new model of tourism – more sustainable, innovative, responsible and supportive – adding value to the tourism ecosystem.

The papers in this theme issue shed light on the importance for tourist destinations of adopting a more inclusive approach. All tourist actors need to maintain their commitment to work together to promote universal accessibility and inclusiveness and this can be characterized via a new model of positive tourism.

The purpose of this paper is to devise an experimental lab like infrastructure in the higher education connecting social innovation with sustainable tourism.

In order to model a laboratory of social innovation and sustainable tourism lab (SISTOUR-LAB), the method of agile research was employed. This method involves the creation of successive and accumulative prototypes of four kinds: conceptual, relational, functional and transferable. Thus, agile research enables the integration of different social perspectives into the same prototype in a recursive manner.

The SISTOUR-LAB is a work-based learning strategy that allows for the development of a mapping process on tourism vulnerabilities (linked to opportunities for social innovation); the development of experimental training in prototyping social innovations on sustainable tourism; the design of hybrid social innovation business models linked to sustainable tourism; and the development of a relational model of evaluation linking together social innovation competencies with processes of transition toward sustainable tourism.

The SISTOUR-LAB is a prototypical lab that combines social innovation and sustainable tourism in an experimental setting. The SISTOUR-LAB has been modeled based on the agile research method, but it will be necessary to test it empirically to stabilize the model. Once stabilized, the model shall lead to a better understanding of the relationship between work-based learning, social innovation and sustainable tourism in the area of higher education.

The SISTOUR-LAB has four implications: teachers: the SISTOUR-LAB provides teachers with a setting for the development of experimental education models that connect the problems of conventional tourism with social innovation in order to foster new learning environments oriented toward sustainable tourism; students: the SISTOUR-LAB enhances the employability of students since it connects them with agents and demands of touristic transition, while also fostering entrepreneurial development by means of improving the acquisition of social entrepreneurship competences for sustainable tourism; organizations: the SISTOUR-LAB provides an experimental setting for the prototyping of social innovations so as to assist organizations in the formulation of models, prototypes and evaluations that facilitate the transition toward sustainable tourism; policymaking: the SISTOUR-LAB promotes the design of evidence-based public policies, which fosters inclusive models of innovation and the regional monitoring of transitions toward sustainable tourism.

There exist little reference to the link between social innovation and sustainable tourism in the academic and institutional literature. The SISTOUR-LAB is a work-based learning strategy that fosters the structuring of experimental relations between social innovation and sustainable tourism by integrating touristic organizations to the development of competencies in higher education. The SISTOUR-LAB has programmatic and prospective value. It can be considered as a guide for the development of generative competencies, i.e. competencies that generate social innovations that impact chain triggers transitions toward sustainable tourism.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the level of alignment of tourism investment in Jamaica with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts on the country.

This study is interpretive, combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods. This comprises primary data; collected from interviews of tourism policy makers and experts; and analysis of secondary research data on tourism investments made by government agencies and other organizations that generate and/or provide official statistical data. Interviews are conducted in a semi-structured, open-ended format that enable respondents to provide insights and expound on ideas shared.

The findings reveal that some SDGs have greater alignment with some of the targets of the SDGs than others. The results proffer a possible reason for this; this could be owing to the priorities of the Ministry of Tourism as it relates to investment in tourism development – investment in improved infrastructure is high on the priority of the Ministry, and therefore reflects better alignment to SDG 9, which relates to infrastructure.

This study provides a backdrop from which to assess Jamaica’s investment activities in furtherance of inclusive and sustainable tourism. The findings also inform decision makers – whether they continue on the current trajectory, or in facilitating adjustments to enable tourism investments to better align with the SDGs. The main limitation lies in the fact that the research findings may only be transferable and generalized to the extent that other jurisdictions bear similar macroeconomic characteristics to Jamaica.

This study lends itself to opportunities for future research in other similar small island developing states. It also contributes to the body of knowledge on investments that work to further the aims of the SDGs and provides a base from which to conduct further research.

The social implications of tourism investment closely align with SDGs including tourism that is more inclusive and sustainable; that reduces income inequalities; that is beneficial to all Jamaicans, whether directly or indirectly; and that contributes to the development of human capital.

This study evaluates investment alignment with the SDGs in relation to Destination Jamaica. No previous work has been done to explore this relationship; hence, this research is pivotal in informing decision makers and continuing research in this area.

This paper identifies and discusses the best possible solutions for regenerating cities, with the aim of creating inclusive, pleasant and sustainable cities and more developed and inclusive societies. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate debate about how to use tourism to regenerate cities.

Drawing on background experience in civil engineering and territory planning, this viewpoint discusses the role of tourism in regenerating cities.

The paper identifies possible ways to take advantage of the enormous potential of tourism in the transition towards more pleasant and sustainable cities and more developed and inclusive societies.

This paper advocates a role for tourism in the creation of environments conducive to the launch of high quality, global, urban operations.

The paper offers ten measures whose implementation could contribute to building more dynamic, pleasant, sustainable and inclusive cities. These measures constitute a “roadmap for change” in urban development.

This study aims to explore the latent potential of alternative-responsible tourism and ecotourism leadership in sustainable tourism and the sustenance of rural communities in Musina Municipality in Limpopo Province, South Africa. It also sought to compare this potential with other African pastoral areas and to integrate it with various rural sites elsewhere abroad.

Narrative literature, document reviews, interviews and focus group discussions were used to garner relevant data and were analyzed through cross-tabulation analysis and manually. On this account, probable climate change-bound environmental consequences, rural, tourism, farming and ecological administration issues came to the forefront.

The examination correlates the potential position of proper ecotourism exercises and responsible tourism as an agreeable path to promote sustainability in rural localities. Subsequently, upon apparent countryside products, ecotourism and farming exercises glimpsed in the study area, environmental degradation poses a conceivable hazard to natural resource governance. Hereafter, it aggravates the possibilities for climate change effects and poor subsistence.

The rich biodiversity in the study area provides platforms for sustainable rural tourism enterprises and addresses any pertinent concerns. Thus, the study has manifested a demand for a creative tourism approach and innovations against environmental change outcomes and to capacitate Musina Municipality residents and probably others elsewhere on the continent to engage in ethical tourism initiatives and sustainable livelihoods.