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This paper aims to analyse how leisure boat tourism impacts are perceived by local communities in coastal areas. For this purpose, a review of the literature on nautical and leisure boat tourism, together with residents’ attitudes, is presented. On that basis, authors consider economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts, together with general development and future policies of nautical tourism, and cluster the coastal community according to their attitudes towards leisure boat tourism.

Primary data are collected among residents of coastal municipalities in the north part of the Adriatic Sea. Within the theoretical framework of social representation, a cluster analysis is performed on 233 valid questionnaires, collected during winter 2013.

Interviewed residents believe that leisure boating has a long tradition and has offered improvements to the municipalities as tourism destinations. They consider leisure boat tourism as a catalyst for tourism development and international tourists’ attraction. The cluster analysis reveals the existence of three homogeneous groups of residents labelled as supporters (51 per cent), cautious (29 per cent) and sceptics (20 per cent).

Practical implications are derived for destination managers and destination management organizations (DMOs) in addressing internal marketing and larger advertisement of the positive impacts leisure boat tourism has over the local community.

The paper enriches the discussion on residents’ perceptions on nautical tourism and specifically on leisure boat tourism in coastal areas. Limitations are linked to the exploratory nature of the research paper, the sample and the geographical connotation of the study area. Further research will enlarge the data collection to a wider number of coastal communities and integrate results with qualitative analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the “motivation-satisfaction-loyalty” framework. Through a structural equation model (SEM), it is possible to disentangle attitudinal and behavioral loyalty as a multifaceted latent variable.

The empirical analysis is based on data collected in wineries located in two important wine destinations: Trentino and South Tyrol (Italy). Notably, the motivation–satisfaction relationship is confirmed, and the SEM has also assessed the importance of winery services in affecting loyalty, expressed in terms of “visit other cellars,” “repeat a wine vacation” and “recommend wine routes.”

Destination managers should consider the wine-related “relaxation” as the main push motivation, while the interactions experience are important pull motivations to drive wine tourists’ satisfaction. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that more proactive policies are needed to enhance local wines loyalty.

The novelty of this study is to explore loyalty. In this respect, a multifaceted latent variable is expressed as follows: “buy local wines,” “visit other cellars,” “repeat a wine vacation” as behavioral attitudinal stated loyalty and “recommend wine routes” as attitudinal stated loyalty.

The purpose of this study is to assess the role of animals in creating a satisfactory experience at a natural park by investigating the impact on visitors of the exposure to, or absence of, fauna, towards the visitors’ overall experience.

The work is based on a quantitative data collection of tourists visiting a nature park. Altogether, 532 valid questionnaires were collected and used for the analysis. A series of factor analyses was conducted on pull and push factors for animal encounters. The resulting factor domains (FDs) were used as independent variables in ordinal logistic regression models to describe customer satisfaction.

The results of this study show that important FDs characterize the main visitor characteristics. Although human–animal encounters are an important factor for some visitors, the encounters should be encouraged in the most natural manner possible and not in captivity. This brings us to the concept of “Interpretation”, where guides and guided tours can help with the encounters. Information given prior to and during the visit can ensure visitors are aware that animal encounters are subject to nature and cannot be guaranteed.

The presence of areas where a number of animals are in captivity and can be viewed by visitors is an important decision for national parks and protected areas, as animals represent a potential attraction for visitors. Nevertheless, this decision creates an ethical dilemma in relation to the exploitation of animals, exacerbated by recent and increasing pressure on sustainable management. This study provides valuable results for guiding park managers in making reasoned decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the perception of tourists towards positive and negative landscape features. Its objective is to classify rural tourists into homogenous groups according to their sensitivity towards specific landscape characteristics.

The work is based on quantitative data collection among tourists spending a vacation at agritourism farms. Altogether, 378 valid questionnaires were collected. A K-mean cluster analysis is conducted to group respondents into homogenous groups.

The research revealed that tourists particularly enjoy the presence of a landscape comprising orchards, flowery/grassy meadows and vineyards. In contrast, tourists find landscapes that reflects a neglected environment, views of factories and congested roads to be particularly unpleasant. This work has also identified the presence of three different clusters with distinct sensitivity towards landscape attributes: there are tourists who are highly sensitive to both positive and negative attributes, tourists who are highly sensitive to positive attributes but less sensitive to the negative attributes and tourists who are less sensitive to both the positive and the negative attributes.

When discussing issues related to the landscape, the question arises as to how and who should preserve and enhance the landscape for tourism reasons. The results of this research demonstrate that preserving and caring for the environment is imperative to the success of rural tourism.

The destination as the area of movement of guests during their stay often leads to a cooperation among different tourism organizations and destinations: on the one hand, the co‐operation is necessary to be able to offer the products demanded by different guests, on the other hand, it is necessary to be able to guarantee a sensible appearance to the market. With an empirical research carried out in 1999 and 2000, the European Academy Bolzano took the Italian regional and sub‐regional tourism organizations into consideration to evaluate the progress in managing the destination Italy. Rigidity of the organizational structures, little cooperation and integration as well as insufficient market resources are some of the main results. Further developments in change management, stakeholder management, branding, and the setting of clear and measurable goals are some of the issues analyzed. In consideration of an analysis of the Italian regions with regard to their actual politics of destination development the paper concludes with the proposal of a new model of tourism organizational structure based on networks and on the distinction between territorializable basic tasks and deterritorializable product/market tasks. This paper is a conceptional work relevant for traditional destinations and valid as a case study.

The stronger competition and the necessity of innovating the offer ask for a strategic management of the human resources of a tourism organisation. This kind of management has to take care of the overall development and the constraints in the field of tourism and the situation of the vocational training in the concerned region. Furthermore, the management of the personal is also a function of the development of the tourism organisation which has to adapt itself to the new market situation.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the impacts of tourism are perceived by a local population and which factors affect the relationship between impacts and perceptions' formation, with specific consideration of the framework in a mountain resort. For this purpose, the paper explores the existing literature on issues related to host perceptions and attitudes and involves a primary data collection in the mountain community of Folgaria in Northern Italy.

The number and quality of the questionnaires collected allowed a quantitative analysis of the hosts' perceptions and attitudes to be performed, and a cluster analysis has demonstrated the existence of different groups within which members have common features and similar perceptions and attitudes.

In general, this research work has revealed a recognition by the residents of the positive economic impacts of tourism. Also, the social and cultural impacts are recognized to be positive, but at a lower degree. In terms of the future tourism polices, the different groups identified in the cluster analysis exert different positions.

The paper presents the first study of residents' perceptions and attitudes applied to a small mountain community.

In this paper, the authors assume that the matter of a good quality of air will grow in importance in the future, and that it could be a noticeable part of a quality system to be used for communication purposes. The authors propose some synthetic indicators for air quality and discuss them in-depth to provide robust indexes suitable for ranking a set of alpine destinations.

The authors use locally based data on three pollutants with reference to 25 alpine touristic destinations. Starting from hourly data for 62 days of the 2014 summer season for each pollutant, the authors end with a single synthetic air quality index for any locality. The aggregation methodologies are at the core of the paper; in particular, the authors propose a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) function – a well-known tool in Economics – to aggregate the pollutants the authors deal with. Because the degree of substitution among them is unknown, the authors simulate two extreme cases and an intermediate one to rank the localities on the bases of the synthetic air quality index.

All the Alpine destinations the authors considered have – or had in summer 2014 – an excellent open-air quality, and this was a permanent trait of that period. Ranks look robust (stable), as they do not depend significantly on the available options of the techniques the authors used.

The originality of the paper is inherent first in the idea that high quality air can be an issue of interest for touristic goals, especially in the case of mountain destinations, which have all proven to offer an excellent open-air quality. Second, from a methodological perspective, the paper frames dispersed and sectorial approaches into a single flexible one which has the property of being theoretically grounded into the economics mainstream and, at meantime, suitable to deal with some lack of information and research.

Profiles the WHATT theme issue: “Tourism sustainability in natural, residential and mountain locations: What are the current issues and questions?” with reference to the experiences of the theme editors and writing team.

The author has used structured questions to enable the theme editors to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting-point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

This paper identifies some of the key challenge for sustainable tourism in natural spaces and mountain areas with reference to the issues that impede sustainability and possible solutions.

The theme issue outcomes provide indicators and action points for tourism industry stakeholders and for teaching and research in sustainable tourism development.

This paper draws on discussion and applies research to identify and assess the scope and scale of action needed to address tourism sustainability in a diverse range of locations, with particular reference to Europe. Taken together, the theme issue collection of articles provides a rich picture of the changes that are needed and key actions for the future.