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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 purpose of this paper is to analyze the tourist landscape as represented in Turisme de Barcelona’s YouTube tourism promotional videos, looking at the landscape’s tangible locations, symbolic and tourist assets and the protagonists in an effort to interpret its storytelling in an overtourism context.

The mixed methodology is based on a visual content analysis of promotional videos posted on the official Barcelona tourism YouTube channel. Quantitative data analysis about the assets and their localization was completed with a qualitative assessment of the way these assets are displayed to unveil the narrative they convey.

The results highlight that Barcelona’s projected image is mainly based on tangible heritage (especially monuments), its recognizable cityscape and its eno-gastronomic assets. This rather conventional image is geographically concentrated on the neighborhoods perceived as tourist neighborhoods.

This analysis provides a critical reflection of the actual strategy of destination management organizations and the storytelling they transmit. The findings can help to orientate their future actions and provide a method of analysis that can be repeated for other destinations.

This paper sheds new light on the use of urban landscapes in nonstatic images both as a narrative subject and as a tangible tourist space in promotional discourse.

This study aims to analyze the visual aspects of transport tourists’ experience of mobility focusing on British cruise and coach tourists’ international travel experiences.

The qualitative data was collected using semi-structured in-depth interviews with coach and cruise tourists and analyzed using thematic analysis.

The visual experience of mobility (demonstrated in the paper by the example of cruises and coach tours) is critical in the formation of transport tourism experiences. The mobile tourist landscapes emerge from the interplay of the subjective experiences of particular modes of mobility (vehicle or vessel) and routes, whereby the two key visual elements are the changing scenery and views of everyday local life as experienced whilst traveling.

The present study focuses particularly on the visual elements of passive transport tourism experiences. It does not account for other tourist activities nor does it study the experiences associated with active transport tourism. Future research could perform a holistic analysis of tourists’ experiences of transport in all its forms.

The findings point to the centrality of the experience of mobility in transport tourism experience. The following two key aspects of the experience emerged: the importance of variation of the scenery that the tourist consumes during their tour and a desire to observe mundane, everyday life elements of the destination, which should be taken into account by the tour operators and service providers in the route design and marketing.

Coach and cruise tourism are rarely analyzed together; this study demonstrates considerable parallels between the two in considering them as transport tourism, a mode of recreational activity where mobility is the central part of the tourist experience and should, therefore, be considered a tourist attraction in and of itself.

This paper will examine the importance of seeing, reading, evaluating and better appreciating the built environment. Creative observation of built environment is fundamental to our day‐to‐day lives as well as to cultural tourism development. As we want to break away from the routine and lack of stimuli of our home work and environment, we travel to foreign places. Our cities are tourist destinations for others. Being aware of one's environment, and being able to read it should be a skill mastered by all. As many become a tourist at some point in their life, cultural tourism is judged essential to society's enrichment and to the personal enhancement of the tourist. Through methods of awareness, this process allows everyone to appreciate the built environment. None of the tourist charters, educational or initiatives adequately training cover these areas of concern. In response, this paper will explore the matters of perception, place and landscape reading, as well as visual or contextual appreciation as the basis for promotion of heritage conservation, cultural identity and sensitization to place specificities and uniqueness of landscapes. How to see and better appreciate these elements is what will progressively promote a conservation ethic in search of promising relationships between visitors and the built environment.

Effective interpretation of Australia’s unique landscapes has the potential to contribute to international tourists’ understanding of natural processes, as well as enhance their perceptions and appreciation of this environment. Research indicates that mystery, familiarity, and comprehension all influence how humans view landscapes and that preferences and perceptions are likely to be culturally determined. This chapter explores human perceptions of landscapes and highlights key differences in Western and Chinese approaches to experiencing and interpreting natural environments. It presents results of a study that used photo-elicitation to explore Chinese students’ perceptions of, and preferences for, six Australian landscapes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications and recommendations for interpreting Australian landscapes for Chinese audiences.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of small river ferries as an under-researched but novel mode of travel which enhances and brings new dimensions to tourist experiences of travelling landscapes.

The study used a mixed methods approach including participant observation, a survey and interviews with ferry users and staff at one river crossing in South West England.

The ferry attracts tourists as a different and practical mode of transport. The river crossing provides an experience of being on water, and the material structure of the ferry significantly shapes on-board interactions whilst providing new perspectives of place.

This article draws on data collected for a study of ferry crossings conducted at three sites in Devon and Cornwall, England, using multiple methods. The material presented in this article focuses on one site and draws on four interviews, twelve reflection cards and observations.

The research highlighted the extent to which the ferry is dependent on tourist use. At the same time, it reveals the extent to which the crossing enriches the tourist experience and celebrates a ferry’s contribution to local place-making.

The majority of research on ferry crossings focuses on commuter experiences, marine crossings and larger passenger vessels. This article makes an original contribution to literature on ferries, as it offers a perspective on tourist experiences of river ferry crossings, reveals how the ferry structure influences interrelations on-board and provides distinctive insights into place through a focus on movement across water.

This study aims to examine the role of authenticity in tourists’ destination selection, analyze the factors that influence tourists to form their initial opinions and explore how tourists construct the authenticity of traditional villages. The authors selected Chengkan village in Huizhou district, Huangshan city, as a case. In the study, the authors constructed an attribute-hardware-software research framework and analyzed tourists’ authentic emic experiences from the perspective of constructivism. The findings of this study suggest that tourists’ destination selection is influenced by authenticity. The destination culture brokers who interact with tourists play an essential role in forming authentic experiences. According to differences in how tourists construct authenticity, the study divided tourists into three types: primitive imagination, aesthetic reality and rational cognition. The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of various viewpoints about authenticity research and contribute to the academic discussion on how to understand the authenticity of unique cultural heritage sites such as traditional villages in the context of tourism development.

This study aims to investigate multilingual representation on public signs in the High City tourist destination in Abha, Saudi Arabia. It also reveals the linguistic strategies used in such representation.

This exploratory qualitative study used purposive sampling to analyze bottom-up public signs collected from the target tourist destination. A preliminary analysis was conducted for a more in-depth qualitative analysis of every sign. An Excel database was used to provide a general description and a preliminary reading of the strategies before using an in-depth analysis of every sign.

The study revealed that monolingualism (Arabic or English) and bilingualism (Arabic and English) represented the High City as a tourist destination where the signs served information and symbolic functions. No single multilingual sign was found. Certain linguistic strategies were used on the public signs, including politeness, transliteration, hybrid representation, personification and fragmentary. Some tourist-oriented strategies, such as the crisis communication strategy, are still missing.

These findings indicate that this tourist destination still targets local and regional visitors, and its linguistic landscape (LL) needs further consideration in terms of internationalization and targeting international visitors. This study implies that bilingual Arabic and English tourist destinations are potential domains for translation students and English language learners.

This study has focused on the LL of a newly established tourist destination in Saudi Arabia. It has shed light on the nuanced representations and strategies used through public signage. It contributes to understanding how linguistic elements can shape tourists’ perceptions and experiences.

This research aims to reveal that accessibility of hotels to major points of attraction in the urban–territorial continuum of Catalonia, with its urban and coastal landscapes, has a direct impact on the dependent variables of customer satisfaction and average room rate.

The study collected data from 84 of 4-star hotel establishments, divided into urban and coastal hotels. Both coastal and urban hotels were differentiated depending on their distance to, the beach and the urban city center, respectively. Customer satisfaction and average room rate data were retrieved from online review platforms.

The study proves that hotels located in the urban–territorial continuum of Catalonia have different behaviors in terms of customer satisfaction and hotel pricing according to the variables of distance and landscape. The study shows that room rate and customer satisfaction are both higher in urban landscapes than in coastal landscapes. Urban hotels present significant differences in their levels of customer satisfaction and room rates depending on their location in the city of Barcelona. However, coastal hotels do not represent significant differences in room rates depending on their location, although they do represent significant differences in terms of customer satisfaction.

The originality of this study is based on how a dynamic urban–territorial model consisting of Barcelona and the Maresme coast, the hotel location and distances to main interest points impact in the variables of customer satisfaction and average room rate.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of developing literary tourism in Coimbra.

This exploratory qualitative research identifies existent resources and development potential of literary tourism. The instruments of data collection were bibliographic research, questionnaires, interviews and participant observation.

There are few literary tourism products in Coimbra, which contrasts with the number of literary places identified, namely, on the left bank of the River Mondego. Tourism development stakeholders in Coimbra have not paid enough attention to the emergence of literary tourism and the opportunities for the development of new sustainable cultural products related with it.

This study is limited by the size and continual renewal of the corpus, which implies a constant updating of data regarding authors and texts.

This study will lead to the production of a database of Coimbra’s literary resources and a digital literary map, allowing any citizen or entity to design and implement literary tourism products.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study reviewing the potential of Coimbra as a literary tourism destination. Moreover, it discusses literary heritage as a source of products and experiences to foster more balanced tourist flows throughout the city.