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A case study about the creation of four scenarios that were used to make sense of the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 and the consequences for New Zealand tourism.

Adapting global visitor economy scenarios, a set of New Zealand tourism scenarios were constructed using a “back of house Shell” method and were supplemented with an expert panel to test the reliability and validity of the scenarios.

The four scenarios constructed were based on two critical uncertainties, namely economic recession and the moral dilemma of the consumer. Four scenarios were portrayed using film and TV titles to help participants visualise the scenarios. Crazy Rich Asians: Recovery represented many of the attributes of tourism in New Zealand prior to COVID-19 i.e. a focus on high value tourists from Asia. Contagion: Survival of the Fittest represented the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. This Side of Paradise: ReThinking Tourism focused on rebuilding tourism based upon the principles of sustainability. The Colony: Gated Communities represented fortress destinations trying to keep COVID-19 at bay. Each scenario portrayed several features including a unique narrative, tourism, the tourist, vision, strategy and risks. The paper highlighted the trade-offs and conflicts between the scenarios as COVID-19 unfolded in different directions.

In a fluid situation, the paper reminds readers of the value of scenarios as framing devices to understand the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 when New Zealand was in unchartered waters. Thus, this study highlights how a scenario-planning process builds resilience and foresight to help stakeholders and actors make sense of crisis situations.

The North East of England has entered the global bazaar in which its landscape, once pock marked by the scars of industries like coalmining, shipbuilding and steelmaking, has been cleaned up, beautified, and it has now entered the global competition between post-industrial places for inward investment and the spoils of the ever-expanding UK tourism industry. With this, the North East’s visitor economy now generates around £3.6 billion of expenditure each year, supporting some 54,600 jobs in 2018. The visitor economy is not only important as a stand-alone sector in the North East, but is integral to the whole North East economy, and needs to be a major driver of social change and diversification within it. As the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative says: the twenty first century North East is a place of vibrancy, with a quality of life that makes it a great place to visit, live and work, study and invest – which is a strapline narrative that clearly signals how tourism is indeed both an essential and integrated part of North East life. Brexit may provide the North East tourism industry with a stronger global stage.

This chapter charts the logic of that development and asks: is it a good thing, who benefits and who loses from the sectors development. It asks whose North East are we talking about as we prepare to enter what is anticipated to be a difficult and an uncertain third decade of the twenty-first century?

The investigation of the relationship between the future of humanity and the future of ecology is a pertinent issue. In this context, the study aimed to explore people's travel experience in the Himalayan region of India for transformation and well-being and how transformation induces their involvement in regenerative practices. The authors investigated if transformations contribute to the well-being of all living beings and the environment and induce involvement in regenerative practices?

The authors preferred qualitative research design and selected narrative inquiry as a research approach to bring individuals' life stories to the centre stage for examination. Accordingly, diachronic data was collected, and a paradigmatic type of narrative inquiry was applied that uses paradigmatic analytical procedures to produce thematic categories and taxonomies from the database.

Nine themes were identified and discussed in the light of existing literature. Transformational tourism promotes well-being and reduces mental health anomalies. The study participants used words like calm, compose, stress-free, and compassion, indicating enhanced consciousness. They also reported satisfaction and induced environmentally friendly behaviour after serving the community and environment at tourist destinations situated in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and the Union territory of Ladakh of the Himalayan region of India.

The paper collates evidence to establish a correlation between transformation and regeneration. There is a suggestion that transformative travel leads to participation in regenerative activities. The paper is based on people's experiences described as green workers of the Indian Himalayas and provides empirical conclusions that support the argument of transformational induced regenerative tourism.

This article aims to build on the insights from the systematic reviews included in this special issue (SI) on frontline service employees (FLE) by adding practitioner perspectives. Its purpose is to gauge knowledge, awareness and practices from industry and government regarding topics related to frontline workers and to offer critical and, in places, provocative insights on the relevance of scholarly focus in serving the needs of industry.

Insights were developed through consultation with managers who are responsible for leading frontline employees, who offered insights on the important issues affecting their workforce as well as direct comments on each of the key topics covered in this SI articles. Additional insights were gathered through a review of policy document reviews with relevant government agencies and trade publications, a review of a body of conference topics and speakers and personal reflections developed over decades of consulting work.

This paper presents insights from industry about looming challenges facing managers of frontline service employees, including a forecasted worsening of labor force availability to perform many frontline jobs; growing competition for workers from other sectors; a relatively shallow understanding by industry of academic research topics on workforce in service; the emerging increased cooperation between industry and governments to address these challenges and a clear deficit in necessary frontline skills.

This paper provides rare and direct insights from industry practitioners about current and critical topics investigated by academic researchers and offers opportunities for further collaboration and collective thought on addressing global challenges faced by frontline service employees.

This research uses the experience economy theory and tourism experiences to explore how different types of experiences in theme parks influence visitors' experiential satisfaction and behavioral intention.

The data were collected from visitors of different nationalities at a theme park hotel. The R program and JASP were used to analyze the data of the multinational sampling. JASP was used for the structural equation modeling (SEM) and the R program for the analysis of the measurement invariance.

The results highlight the existence of different visitor behavior in the experience economy, tourism experience and experiential satisfaction among visitors of several nationalities. However, the results highlight the existence of common visitor behavior on behavioral intention among visitors of these nationalities. This study reveals that visitors of different nationalities can have both diverse experiential and cultural motivations.

The results show that managers should apply a plan and strategy according to the differences between the nationalities. By examining visitors from different nationalities, the study was allowed to be interpreted from a wider perspective in terms of academia and industry.

This study makes a difference in the literature in terms of focusing on cross-national differences by examining the experiences of visitors from different nationalities by using experience economy theory and tourism experience elements in the same research model.

The visitor economy is increasingly being recognised by local authorities, governments and destination marketing managers as having a significant effect on local retail precincts. This research note proposes that there is a link between the rise of the sharing economy (notably Airbnb) and the growing awareness and appreciation of the impact of the visitor economy. The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of the marketing efforts of a specific retail precinct to attract visitors engaged in the sharing economy.

The approach taken involves a review of the literature pertaining to the sharing and visitor economies. Using an example from an Australian tourist city – Hobart, Tasmania, this research reviews a collaborative marketing campaign undertaken by retailers in a city precinct designed to appeal to stakeholders in the visitor economy.

Shopping at local stores and retail precincts form an integral part of the travel experience. This research note offers an overview of the nexus between the sharing and visitor economies. In particular, it presents the potential implications of collaborative marketing efforts to attract visitors to a retail precinct. It is suggested that the development of new marketing and branding strategies, specifically retailer-led collaborative efforts, are a positive approach to attract stakeholders involved in the sharing and visitor economies.

This research note is one of the first to recognise the relationship between the rise of the sharing economy and the subsequent conceptualisation of a visitor economy. This note recognises the particular importance of the nexus between the sharing and visitor economies for retail precincts.

This chapter presents a research paper with empirical investigation on tourism experiences specific to heritage attractions. It analyses the five principles of experience economy within the context of heritage attractions. The study aims to find out if heritage attractions are using the principles of experience economy to provide a fulfilling experience for visitors. The principles of the experience economy are having consistent theme, using positive cues, eliminating negative cues, offering memorabilia, and engaging the five senses.

The survey method was used to collect data from three separate heritage attractions in Jamaica. Frequency distribution was used to determine the observations in the sample.

Results of the study reveal that majority of visitors either agree or strongly agree that many of the elements comprising the principles of experience economy are in place. One similar drawback among the attractions is that they all use visual and aural messages which can distract or contradict the theme and consequently visitors’ experience.

A limitation of the study is that it did not take into consideration the relationship between visitors’ experience and their expectations as well as visitor satisfaction.

This study will inform management of heritage attractions of the importance of having implementing the principles of experience economy so as to provide a fulfilling experience for visitors.

This paper aims to explore a complex combination of four realms of the experience economy in formulating memories and satisfaction among festival visitors by using augmented reality (AR), thus engaging visitors in the physical science experience. This study also identifies necessary conditions to achieve desired responses from visitors.

Asymmetrical modelling with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to investigate causal recipes of two configurations of the experience economy and evaluation of experience leading to both high and low scores from visitor engagement. Necessary condition analysis was applied to examine necessary predictors in visitor engagement. The proposed configuration model was tested by using data obtained from visitors to science festivals in the UK.

Five causal recipes explained the complex conditions in which visitors were more likely engaged in AR. Aesthetics, education, entertainment and satisfaction were necessary for high engagement among festival visitors.

The results from fsQCA and analyses of necessary conditions help festival organizers improve visitor satisfaction and engagement in a memorable AR experience.

This empirical study deepens current festival understanding of how visitors experience AR by exploring combinations of complex configurations of the experience economy and evaluations of visitor experience based on memories and satisfaction. Unlike symmetrical approaches, asymmetrical modelling by using fsQCA can explore recipes for both high and low scores of visitor satisfaction and engagement. This is the first empirical study investigating necessary predictors of festival visitor behaviour.