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This study aims to explore the good crowding effect among Indian domestic travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the city destination. This study uses the framework of social motivation theory to achieve the objective.

This study adopted a qualitative research design by taking the case of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents, and themes were drawn manually.

The analysis found four themes that create a good crowding effect among domestic tourists, namely, convenience and price; familiarity and place attachment; social affiliation; and safety. The themes indicated that despite the pandemic, and constant occurrences of new variants, Indian domestic tourists’ on-site attitude towards crowding was favourable.

Firstly, the good crowding effect during the pandemic could have been better understood using empirical data. Secondly, the results cannot be generalized, specifically for developed economies.

This study offers practical implications to destination managers and local administrative bodies for whom achieving sustainability in urban tourism has always been concerning. These include developing infrastructural facilities, encouraging cultural activities in city centres and improving the perception of safety to sustain the good crowding effect.

The affective dimension involved in making a travelling decision played a significant role in the post-pandemic phase. While suppliers needed survival, tourists needed social affiliation and escape from the mandated home isolation due to multiple phases of COVID-19 lockdown in India. This study adds value to society by emphasising that the need for social affiliation among travellers remains intact, and the tourism industry should embrace this transformation.

While most of the pandemic-related studies criticised crowd and tourists’ crowd averting behaviour, this study reported that the good crowding effect could also be an outcome owing to different factors. Therefore, this study offers distinctive nuance of tourists’ behaviour in the post-COVID-19 phase, allowing destination managers and tourism stakeholders to re-think their strategies.

This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of research in the Indian tourism and hospitality domain from 1976 to 2021. By employing the bibliometric and systematic literature review, the chapter highlights the prominent authors, institutions, methods, emerging and explored research themes in the tourism and hospitality field. Accordingly, the authors collected 458 articles from core tourism and hospitality related journals using PRISMA and evaluated them using VOSViewer. The findings revealed an emic perspective of research contribution in Indian tourism and hospitality. While some topics such as religious tourism, sustainability, cultural and heritage tourism products have attained more attention, topics such as tourism entrepreneurship, technology and human resource development failed to seek attention in the eyes of journals and researchers. Although the literature has expanded significantly, there is a need to build global academic networks to examine the state of Indian tourism and hospitality. The chapters suggest that future research should critically evaluate the schemes and initiatives undertaken by the government to promote Indian tourism, expand research to western and eastern parts of the country, and follow the mixed-method research to contribute holistically to the topic.

This study aims to highlight the post-COVID-19 trends in tourism education within the context of Transformational Learning Theory (TLT). This theory represents a transition in an individual's consciousness and the world beliefs and is usually applied in traditional educational system context. As the current educational system is altering and moving from traditional to digital classrooms, this chapter will explore the 10 phases of the transformative learning process in the upcoming educational trends. The study is conceptual and suggests that reformation of tourism education be adopted from the existing norms of TLT.

COVID-19 impacted the tourism sector, and its ripple effect is equally evident in tourism academia at all levels. Since innovation in tourism pedagogy is considered an epicentre of quality education, this study proposes an integrated model to identify the degree of pedagogical innovation adapted by tourism educators. The model is an amalgamation of innovation indicators in teaching practices developed by Sigala (2021), a futurist model developed by Wassler and Fan (2021) and a model of innovation developed by Brooker and Joppe (2014).

The study is exploratory, and an online qualitative survey was used to collect data. Data were analysed using the Nvivo 12 software and three themes were drawn: Painters, Artists and Artisans.

The study found that the majority of the tourism educators are painters as they adopted minor changes in their pedagogy. They follow the conventional methods of teaching by incorporating ICT into their pedagogy. Whereas a smaller group of tourism educators introduced innovative tools to encourage and equip students with professional skills (artists/artisans).

The study suggests practical implications for tourism educators to embrace and innovate their pedagogy to become ‘artists/artisans’. The support of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and industry professionals are equally crucial for bringing innovation in tourism pedagogy and academia, in general, artisans.

Given that tourism education has scantly been discussed following the breakout of COVID-19 (Sigala, 2020), the study addresses that resurrection of tourism pedagogy through an integrated model.

As the consumer-centric approach is evolving in the 21st century, especially in the post-COVID-19 era, people seek unique experiences. Adopting co-creation in promoting a destination implies involving tourists, stakeholders and organisers in creating value for a product or service. The innovative strategy of co-creating experiences encourages tourists' engagement, leading to destination promotion. Some notable examples of co-creation in tourism are gastronomic tours, virtual tours and travel guides. This chapter aims at the significance of co-creating experiences at events that lead to destination promotion. Co-creation of experiences at events brings the spotlight from the stage to the audience and is considered the future of the experience economy. The study presents a case study of Jal Mahotsav in Madhya Pradesh, India. The study highlights the multi-stakeholder approach adopted by the authorities to co-create the event experience.

This chapter relies on descriptive case studies from various regions around the world to better explain critical elements for the effective marketing of destinations. The authors put forward a theoretical framework, entitled the destination marketing triangle (DMT), that sheds light on the complex relationships and on the interconnectedness of three dimensions of destination marketing. Their model suggests that destination leaders ought to work closely with tourism service providers and to continuously engage with tourists through traditional and digital media. This way, they can improve the experiences of their visitors and prospects. At the same time, they could build a solid brand identity for their destination.

This chapter aims to assess the scope of India's gastronomic tourism post-COVID-19 and discuss the utilisation of vlogs to promote India as a gastronomic destination. First, the evolution of gastronomic tourism is reviewed. Next, opportunities and challenges associated with India's gastronomic offerings, both from international and domestic tourism perspectives, are discussed. Then, the role of vlogging to position and promote India as a gastronomic destination is established. The chapter suggests recommendations for the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India on utilising vlogging to promote gastronomic tourism.

This chapter challenges the urban bias in studies on the middle class in India and underlines the need to focus on the significant role rural middle class plays in economic diversification. Given that more than 23% of the upper middle class are located in rural India, it is surprising to note that their contribution in supporting experience economy remains under-researched. Thus, this chapter fills a key gap in existing studies on rural tourism in India by underlining how rural middle-class has triggered a huge demand for travel within the country itself for rural cultural programmes and different schemes to promote rural heritage sights.