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The growing interest in complexity science as a framework for understanding social and economic systems has had, in recent times, an influence on the study of tourism destinations. This paper aims to describe this approach and discuss its theoretical and methodological implications in terms of destination governance.

Traditional research has adopted a reductionist approach to modelling tourist destinations: variables and relationships are embedded in simplified linear models that explain observed phenomena and allow implications for management or forecasting of future behaviours. In comparison, this paper adopts an adaptive management approach. Rather than imposing lines of action to force the evolutionary path of a system, the effect of different management actions are modelled, producing experimental results that provide information about the system that is being managed, and used to refine strategies and governance styles. Complex systems provide a theoretical framework in which this adaptive philosophy is naturally embedded. After a brief overview of the complexity framework, the paper discusses its validity and applicability to the study of tourism systems by using a set of network analysis methods and numerical simulations.

This paper discusses a new perspective useful for the study of tourism destination governance, providing insights into its organisational structure and dynamic behaviour.

The paper proposes a philosophy and practical toolset to analyse and understand a tourism destination and the relationships between its stakeholders. It discusses the implications of this new approach with regard to the governance methods.

The purpose of this paper is to identify primary and secondary stakeholders for the development of community‐type destinations and to analyse how the difference in power characterizes them with regards to how they value specific rules and how they estimate trust and control in the destinations. From this analysis it is possible to draw useful indicators for the definition of the destination governance.

The paper takes the form of a literature review and field research. The literature review considers network approach and stakeholder approach in order to analyse the actors involved in the tourist offer (size of the network and characteristics of the nodes) and their influence reputation for identifying primary and secondary stakeholders within the destination. The field research is carried out in two community‐type destinations in the Alps. In both destinations, tourism is the main economic activity, as it involves a multiplicity of public and private stakeholders; the two destinations do differ for some important factors, like the kind of DMOs and the path of tourism development.

The research identifies and investigates primary and secondary stakeholders within community‐type destinations and their opinions about the involvement of public and private actors for the development of the destinations and their judgements regarding trust and control.

Results are limited to two community‐type destinations.

The research adopts an innovative methodology to identify primary and secondary stakeholder of community‐type destinations and highlights some indicators for the definition of the destination governance (e.g. level of community participations, role of private and public actors, influence of trust and control).

This study aims to study different native languages as proxy for cultural differences in travel behaviour in multilingual Switzerland. Differences in travel behaviour between tourists from different nations (implying different cultural backgrounds) have been investigated in several studies. However, most studies do not reveal the potential confounding effects associated with cross-nation studies, such as differences in the economic, legal/regulatory or subcultural contexts of their residents. This exploratory study tries to overcome this gap by investigating differences in travel behaviour between language groups within one country: Switzerland. By holding potential confounding effects constant, our results reveal differences in travel behaviour associated with language, including travel motivation, choice of destination, choice of type of accommodation, duration of trip and travel expenses.

The study is based on data from one of the most comprehensive outbound travel behaviour survey: Travel Market Switzerland.

By holding potential confounding effects constant, our results reveal differences in travel behaviour associated with language, including choice of destination, choice of type of accommodation, duration of trip and travel expenses.

Differences in travel behaviour between tourists from different nations (implying different cultural backgrounds) have been investigated in several studies. However, most studies do not reveal the potential confounding effects associated with cross-nation studies, such as differences in the economic, legal/regulatory or subcultural contexts of their residents. This exploratory study tries to overcome this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the variety of relations existing in tourism networks, identified as complex and mutable entities, where a vast range of stakeholders coexist.

After a deep review on stakeholder theory, the research applies techniques of network analysis to a case study. Specifically, the analysis focuses on 354 hospitality firms acting in Molise Region (Italy). Each operator was asked to judge the importance to collaborate with other stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness of their management and marketing activities. The answers highlight the degree of preference among stakeholders and the resulting information is the level of confidence in the network.

Results confirm the importance of intensifying relationships between tourism companies themselves and between them and policy makers. It appears that public stakeholders are more important for both management and marketing activities than private sector, since they place a much higher position in the scale of preference.

The paper provides a starting‐point for further research about non‐quantitative destination performance measurement, such as trust and commitment between the stakeholders in tourism destination, and the use of network analysis' techniques.

Destination managers and policy‐makers may use techniques of network analysis to elaborate useful information for planning and managing the relationships inside the tourism network.

The paper offers a novel approach for developing network analysis in tourism network literature. It explores non‐quantitative destination performance measurements and uses management and marketing activities to analyze relationships between public and private stakeholders.

The purpose of the paper is to compare visitor perspectives of the governance of two of Canada's largest park systems: the parastatal model of Ontario Provincial Parks and the public and for‐profit combination model of British Columbia Provincial Parks.

The authors developed an electronic survey based on the ten UNDP criteria of governance: strategic vision, accountability, transparency, consensus‐orientation, public participation, efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, equity, and rule of law. The survey was administered to park visitors for both park systems in the summer of 2008 and spring of 2009 (British Columbia Provincial Parks n=112, Ontario Provincial Parks n=255).

Researchers determined that the ten governance sections of the survey actually form 11 governance factors. Data suggested statistically significant differences in regards to the visitors' perceptions between the two park systems. Specifically, visitors to Ontario Parks ranked all 11 criteria of governance higher, closer towards good governance, than did visitors to British Columbia Parks (p<0.001).

These results suggest that the Ontario Parks parastatal model is closer to the ideals of good governance as perceived by the park users, when compared to the British Columbia parks' public and for‐profit combination model. This paper also provides future policy makers with a new understanding of the multiple factors that affect visitors experience and perceptions of protected areas.

This is one of the first studies to investigate visitors' perceptions of two commonly used protected area management models. These research findings contribute to the debate regarding which protected area management model is superior when compared using the UNDP governance criteria.

This introduction to the volume Atmospheric Turn in Culture and Tourism: Place, Design and Process Impacts on Customer Behaviour, Marketing and Branding (Emerald) positions the atmospheric turn in the context of recent paradigmatic turns such as the linguistic turn, iconic turn, cultural turn, spatial turn, mobility turn and design turn. The specific contribution of the atmospheric turn is its profoundly holistic interest in overarching connections which are perceived with all senses and include both matter and idea. With its 22 chapters, this volume sets out to sharpen the atmospheric gaze and perception in research and beyond.

The workshop 3 was directed by Mme Origet du Cluzeau; it aimed to focus the role of the State in the development of sport and tourism and in which way the Public Administration, with private sponsoring, finances the sport events.