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This paper explores the potential influence and consequences of corpora te branding on mountain resort destinations. It examines the extent to which corporations emphasize “placefulness” in the branding of their tourism products and services, as well as the degree to which they intentionally match their brands with values held by other destination stakeholders. “Placefulness” refers to the relative extent to which corporate branding strategies reinforce a destination's “sense of place” The findings suggest that a corporate as opposed to a community approach to branding is emerging in many tourism destinations. This has resulted in some significant redefinition of destination identities to reflect the changing needs of markets and corporations. Probably the most apparent identity shift in mountain communities brought on by corporate influence has involved the repositioning of many areas from being ski resorts to becoming four season destination resorts.

This paper aims to examine tourists’ preferences for package holidays offering different bundles of activities at a winter mountain destination. A winter mountain destination is usually chosen for snow sports, particularly skiing, but increasingly more tourists want to fully exploit their holiday opportunity with an authentic and comprehensive experience of the place. After collecting qualitative data on how tourists spend their typical day, quantitative research is conducted to segment the demand on the basis of tourists’ preferences for bundles of activities undertaken during a winter mountain holiday.

The study uses a mixed method. Two focus groups are included to understand how tourists spend their time at a winter destination; results are then used to identify the components of the holiday, which are then combined in eight packages using an orthogonal array. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 273 tourists at a well-known mountain destination to measure their preference for different packages. Results are analyzed using factor analysis, conjoint analysis and cluster analysis.

The most significant findings are as follows: winter mountain holidaying is a highly segmented market. Even at a mountain destination strongly associated with skiing, there are many tourists who do not ski and spend their time doing something else; food and beverage, and all their related activities, are at the top of all tourists’ interests, and passionate skiers very highly rate the experience of tasting, eating, understanding and buying local food; and there are four segments of winter mountain holiday tourists who show very differentiated interests for the different activities that can be experienced at a mountain location.

This paper considers what lies beyond sport at winter mountain destinations, and it reveals new possibilities for configuring bundles of activities to attract different segments of tourists.

This paper aims to offer some key summary points drawn from the collection of articles gathered in this theme issue as to how Alpine destinations can manage tourism sustainability.

The paper summarizes the contribution made by different articles published in this issue and discusses their connection to the strategic issue of tourism sustainability.

The paper presents four key points that contribute to the debate on tourism sustainability: the sharing economy geared for winter mountain destinations; marketing perspectives on sustainability in winter mountain destinations; sustainability and transportation; and the institutional, legal and socio-economic aspects of sustainability.

Drawing on indicators of tourists’ behavior and from the findings of the articles published in this issue, this concluding study identifies the challenges that winter mountain destinations will have to address in the future. The originality and value of this issue lies in the multidisciplinary approach that was adopted – most research on sustainability tends to focus on a single academic stream. Moreover, the focus is on mountain areas with a cross-border perspective, whereas most research on sustainability is designed for a single country, and wider applicability is bounded by constraints.

The purpose of this paper is to explore domestic experiential travel by Chinese millennials, a group of consumers who will increasingly influence the global travel and tourism industry.

A qualitative research method was adopted to explore motivations and memorable experiences of Chinese millennials who successfully mountain biked the Qinghai–Tibet Highway in China.

For Chinese millennial mountain bikers in Tibet, experiential travel motivations and experiences are important. During the trip, they challenged their mental and physical abilities, enjoyed nature, bonded with friends and perceived a warm welcome by Tibetan families. This study adds to existing knowledge on experiential travel, as it was found that transformation was perceived as important outcome of the trip. Participants perceived personal change in attitude and behaviour, which will help them face everyday life challenges.

Further research could focus on gaining insight into other types of Chinese adventure tourists, on comparing wishes and demands of Chinese with other mountain bikers and on developments in transformative travel.

Adventure tourism organisations could adjust their tourism product range to cater more for Chinese millennials who aim to improve their physical and mental skills.

In-depth research into motivations and experiences of Chinese millennials is scarce. The influence of Chinese millennials on the tourism market is already large and will continue to increase.

The purpose of this study adopts a news media narrative approach to Yield insights on aspects of the COVID-19 impact.

This study adopts a news media narrative approach as this method can yield insights on aspects of the COVID-19 impact.

In the post-COVID-19 lockdown context, second-home tourism and mountain tourism could play the role of placebo. The dual dimension of second-home tourism and mountain tourism reflect the Janus-faced character of the tourism industry. Beyond the fact that this study has highlighted the placebo role that both forms of tourism are probably going to play, it makes the connection between mountain tourism and second-home tourism; highlights the Janus-faced character of both forms of tourism; and highlights the mutation impacts of COVID-19 on tourism trends.

COVID-19 is the current concern, and this paper offers a timely perspective on a topic of significant interest.

The purpose of this viewpoint paper is to discuss whether children can play a role in the sustainability of the tourism industry as a whole.

The paper is based on a literature review of key terms: sustainable tourism; mountain tourism; children; and empowerment.

Children could potentially play a role in the sustainability of tourism if they are empowered to do so. mini-clubs in mountain resorts could, for instance, contribute to their social empowerment using a catalytic strategy.

Practitioners involved in the sustainability of the tourism industry should investigate ways to make the sustainability endeavour of the industry more inclusive. As for academics, they should devote time for research on children, as they are an important stakeholder group for the industry.

This paper focusses on children in the tourism industry. There is a dearth of research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that condition decision making by entrepreneurs in the tourism sector. Specifically, the authors consider whether the decisions related to seasonal closure are conditioned by non-economic factors related to quality of life.

The study uses data from a survey of entrepreneurs in two highly seasonal tourist locations in Spain: one coastal destination and one mountain destination. The information provided by the survey was used to determine the factors that condition the decision to close for part of the year and to analyze the way in which entrepreneurs evaluate the costs and benefits associated with the period of closure.

The results show that entrepreneurs acknowledge the cost of shutting down during the off-peak season. However, although they recognize this cost, other elements are important in their decision making such as the quality of life of the entrepreneur, the presence of a more profitable secondary activity in a different destination and the tenure regime of the business. Entrepreneurs attach great importance to factors that justify the closure of establishments for several months a year. This, in turn, means that public policies designed to reduce the intensity of seasonality lose effectiveness.

This paper sheds light on whether there are underlying non-economic motives that lead to a shutdown during the off-peak season. There are no previous studies that analyze the influence of the decision to close and which consider aspects related to the quality of life of entrepreneurs. Therefore, the study presents the first analysis of entrepreneurs’ assessments of the costs and benefits of a seasonal resting period.

The systemic nature of tourism products generates the need for a broad involvement of destination stakeholders in the destination management organization's (DMO) activities and makes destination governance, defined as the setting up and developing of rules and mechanisms for business strategies by involving stakeholders (Beritelli et al.), an interesting topic. Over the last seven years the authors have conducted an in‐depth study of governance and performance of 13 European tourism destinations – three mountain and two seaside destinations, four urban cities and four small heritage cities (Sainaghi; d'Angella; De Carlo and Dubini) – which represent an interesting sample to study this topic. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

A qualitative methodology is adopted; applying a theoretical model (Airoldi et al.) to the sample, the authors analyzed the governance structure of the selected destinations in terms of typologies of stakeholders involved, contributions provided, rewards obtained, decision‐making processes and mechanisms which link these four components.

The clinical cases (Yin; Eisenhardt) reported in the paper reveal several archetypes in destination governance structures defined according to different variables: destination manager characteristics; amount (absolute and relative) of financial contributions managed by the destination manager; financial model (firms and public bodies participation in destination manager annual budget); number of actors participating in the governance structure; number of actors participating in permanent meta‐management activities.

The empirical analysis offers interesting implications for both the academic debate and practitioners. From an academic point of view, this categorization enriches the academic contributions on destination governance, which are often descriptive. Moreover, the model allows identifying key variables and relationships in order to analyze and assess destination governance structures. At the same time, this framework offers interesting insights for destination managers responsible for the design and management of the governance structure.

This paper proposes a model originally projected to analyze firms' governance for the analysis of DMOs governance. The authors decided to apply this model because it offers a new perspective to study destination governance, which considers the complexity of the environment and the different kinds of relationships between stakeholders.

The aim of this paper is to profile the World Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue “Tourism sustainability in the Alpine region: What are the major trends and challenges?” with reference to the experience of the theme editors and writing team.

This paper uses 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.

It draws on a multidisciplinary approach to identify some key components of sustainable tourism for the French and Italian Alps. It reflects on research and stakeholder interaction that helped to shape the current and future thinking about how Alpine mountain resorts can enhance sustainability in relation to the destination offer, accommodation, transport and mobility and institutional, legal and socio-economic aspects.

The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore, and they reinforce the value of WHATT’s approach to collaborative working and writing.

The work reported in this theme issue provides research-based evidence of the need for rapid adaptation to sustainable tourism development for resorts in the French and Italian Alps. Traditionally designed to facilitate skiing and snow sports, the impact of climate change is forcing a rethink to safeguard Alpine tourism – a vital economic activity to these and most mountain tourism destinations.

This paper aims to review two micro-trends influencing the landscape of adventure tourism activities in Nepal. In spite of being a popular adventure tourism destination for more than half a century, the offer of adventure tourism activities in Nepal remained limited until recently.

This study underpinned by interpretive epistemology used netnographic methods of data collection. As such, 15 stakeholderss’ interviews were conducted, and 25 grey literature sources were collected.

The findings suggest that a bottom-up approach to the development of emerging adventure sports and the upsurge of domestic adventure tourism are the micro-trends influencing the adventure tourism landscape in Nepal. This paper discusses skiing and mountain biking as emerging land-based adventure activities. One distinguishing feature is that those initiatives are driven by locals passionate about this sport. Furthermore, skiing and mountain biking are promoted for both international and domestic tourists. Overall, the findings highlight the growth of the domestic adventure tourism market in Nepal.

This study recommends shifting attention from focussing merely on international visitors and to establish domestic adventure tourism market. For practitioners, including tourism agencies and wider industry stakeholders, it might be important to explore the demand in adventure tourism and create products for domestic adventure tourism.

Creating and expanding adventure tourism activities for locals would not only provide economic benefit but also contribute to well-being and recreation opportunities for Nepali.

To date, research on adventure tourism activities in Nepal other than mountaineering remains scant. This paper contributes towards understanding the micro-trends influencing the landscape of adventure tourism activities in Nepal and for the first time, explores the trends of Nepal’s domestic adventure tourism market.