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This proposal represents four main advantages: the immediate availability of the relevant information to the local manager; its potential application to any municipality regardless of its size; its reduced economic cost both in terms of information and calculation; and the possibility of obtaining information for very short periods (monthly or even daily) which is very important in areas where the population varies significantly throughout the year.

The authors present an indirect estimation method based on extrapolating the equivalent tourist population from the monthly variations in the production of solid urban waste.

It would also be desirable to compare the estimates made by using other indirect indicators such as electricity or water consumption, which could also provide relevant information on the degree of use of second homes.

These advantages turn this indicator into a practical and accessible estimation tool, which can be directly applied to the planning and management of all types of services and facilities provided by municipalities.

The present paper aims to analyze how the performance of hotels located on the Spanish Mediterranean coast (peninsular and Balearic) and Canary coast is affected by the degree of business agglomeration in tourist districts. If agglomeration affects hotels positively, then the externalities generated in tourist districts will be relevant when locating an establishment. Otherwise, the reason why hotels group together geographically would be more related to the suitability of beaches as a tourist destination. The study also analyzes the impact that regions or autonomous communities have on hotel performance.

The hypotheses are tested by multiple linear regression in which hotel profitability acts as the dependent variable which can be explained by independent variables such as the greater or lesser agglomeration of tourist companies at the destination and the autonomous region where the hotel is located.

The results show that hotels situated at destinations with a higher degree of agglomeration are less profitable, probably due to the greater rivalry that exists among nearby competitors. However, in accordance with the theory of tourist districts, one could expect hotels located at destinations with a higher degree of agglomeration to be more profitable because of the greater externalities generated within the district. In this sense, it is possible that hotel location decisions were based more on the natural advantage model, where firms look for specialized inputs like beach or climate, than on production externalities models.

It was necessary to work with secondary information sources which contain no data about RevPar (revenue per available room) or GopPar (gross operating profit per available room), the hotel profitability measures most often used in research studies.

The paper could be useful for hotel companies, when they are deciding on a location, and for public administrations.

The present paper is original for several reasons. First, it is one of the first studies which applies the theory of industrial districts to the tourism sector, a line of research which is still in its early stages of development. Furthermore, the ISTAT methodology is applied for the first time to the identification of Spanish tourist districts. Also, various studies relate the degree of agglomeration to hotel profitability, but none so far have used the degree of company agglomeration within a tourist district, linking it to profitability.

The particularly ambitious law of 28 December 2016 aims to protect and bolster economic vitality in mountain regions. As such, it puts the emphasis on supporting and promoting tourism activities. This analysis offers an opportunity to highlight certain particularly innovative provisions that have genuine legal and practical impact.

This paper is based on a detailed analysis of the Mountain Act 2 taking into account the point of view of customers and tourism promoters.

The feelings as to how much Mountain Act 2 will benefit the tourism industry remain mixed. The legislators have tried to provide answers to the new problems and issues faced by mountain communities, but at the same time, many measures are leaving tourism development promoters somewhat disappointed.

This paper discusses the implications of the Mountain Act 2 taking into account the point of view of customers and tourism promoters.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodology with which it is possible to perform analysis of the environmental situation of a given municipality.

The methodology is referred to as municipal environmental diagnosis (MED). MED uses methodologies of various authors such as Mota, Santos amongst others, public and private institutions such as the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil and the United Nations Development Program. The proposed model has, as objectives, the creation and application of techniques for environmental auditing and their analysis for planning in a designated area; in this case the Municipality of Inhambane in Mozambique was used as an area of study.

This methodology is applicable and gives support to environmental planning and management and, subsequently, could serve as a diagnostic base for environmental components in other Mozambican municipalities and around the world.

These techniques will fundamentally support environmental and tourism strategies focused within a theoretical understanding of practical actions related to planning and environmental management, with the aim of increasing the sustainability of the municipality.

The methodology will help to improve the living conditions of local people and visitors so that after its application they can develop their activities in concordance with the environmental plan and within set parameters.

This work is relevant for Mozambican municipalities specifically and to all world municipalities in general that do not have tools for environmental management. This work introduces a methodology for environmental diagnosis which allows municipalities to change their environmental situation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if citizens’ searches on the internet coincide with the services that municipal websites offer. In addition, the authors examine municipal webpage rankings in search engines and the factors explaining them.

The empirical study, conducted through a sample of Spanish city councils, contrasted if the information that can be found on a municipal website fits with citizens’ demands. This has been done by comparing the most-searched keywords with the contents of municipal websites.

A positive relationship between the supply and demand of municipal information on the internet has been found, but much can still be improved. Analysed administrations rank the basic data of the organisation, as well as some of the fundamental competences thereof, at the top in search engines, but the results are not entirely effective with some keywords still highly demanded by citizens, such as those related to employment or tourism. Factors explaining internet ranking include the number of pages of the municipal website, its presence in social networks and an indicator designed to measure the difficulty of ranking the municipal place-name.

The results obtained from this study provide valuable information for municipal managers. Municipal websites should not only include information in which citizens are interested, but achieve accessibility standards, have a responsive web design, and follow the rules of web usability. Additionally, they should be findable, which also requires improvement in terms of the design of the municipal website thinking in search engines, particularly in terms of certain technical characteristics that improve findability. A municipal website that wants to have a good positioning should increase its contents and attain the maximum degree possible of visibility in social networks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent contracting out practices has led to perceived resource cuts in the Swedish park and road sectors.

E-survey sent to managers in park and technical departments in the municipalities. Response rate: 39.7 percent.

Decreased costs were found in 25 percent of the responding road departments, in 20 percent of park departments. 49 percent of the road departments responded “no change” or “increase” (48 percent parks). Findings indicate that tendering practices tend to be most commonly centered in Swedish municipalities situated in the three metropolitan regions (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö with suburbs), while such practices are not as common in mid-sized and rural municipalities. In addition, contracting out practices correspond with higher per capita budgets, not with smaller.

The research implications are that contracting out tend to occur “where the resources are,” while poorer municipalities either have to contract even if it is more expensive, or, contracting out is combined with other provision models. The limitation of the data are that it based on managers’ perceptions, while hard data have been impossible to map.

The uniform assumption that contracting out saves public resources need to be conditioned with context, and initial resources at hand. Contracting out is one option among several possible strategies, especially for mid-sized and smaller municipalities with small budgets.

The rationalities of local government procurements are bounded by the local market situations and local the budget capacities.

This is the first study of manager’s perceptions in the Swedish park and road contexts.

By merging good countryside and rural capitals frameworks, a model for reimagining the island's development is formulated, which is then applied to the female perspective to provide valuable insights from a group that is often marginalized in rural areas. As Croatian islands are highly tourism-oriented, this study finds it important to explore possibilities for future island development that can provide balanced and vibrant settlements on the islands.

The present paper synthesizes Shucksmith's (2018) model of a good countryside, which serves as a goal, with Gkartzios et al.'s (2022) capitals framework, which is viewed as a means of attaining a good countryside, specifically a good island. The research is delimited to the island of Brac, Croatia. By conducting interviews with female respondents, this study aims to capture the female perspective on envisioning potential futures of “good” island living, a perspective that is frequently underestimated despite its significant contributions to the creation of an ideal locale.

The results demonstrate that there is a substantial amount of socio-cultural rural capital that is leveraged to strengthen relatedness and rights as development objectives. However, low levels of economic, built and land-based rural capital pose challenges to achieving repair and re-enchantment, which are crucial for settlements that rely on tourism.

These findings bear immense implications for policymakers and planners, underscoring the imperative to account for the perspectives and needs of diverse social groups, including women, in the design and implementation of development strategies for islands. By doing so, a sustainable and equitable future, rich in tourism potential, can be cultivated on the island.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate how Tourism2vec, an adaptation of a natural language processing technique Word2vec, can serve as a tool to investigate tourism spatio-temporal behavior and quantifying tourism dynamics.

Tourism2vec, the proposed destination-tourist embedding model that learns from tourist spatio-temporal behavior is introduced, assessed and applied. Mobile positioning data from international tourists visiting Tuscany are used to construct travel itineraries, which are subsequently analyzed by applying the proposed algorithm. Locations and tourist types are then clustered according to travel patterns.

Municipalities that are similar in terms of their scores of their neural embeddings tend to have a greater number of attractions than those geographically close. Moreover, clusters of municipalities obtained from the K-means algorithm do not entirely align with the provincial administrative segmentation.

This study aims to assess the online presence of three Portuguese low-density territories and analyze the communication strategies employed by public and private entities within each municipality. The alignment between public and private entities within each municipality is also examined as a potential factor that could impact the effectiveness of digital communication strategies.

A qualitative methodology that employed content analysis and interviews to gather data from selected public and private entities in each of the municipalities under study was used.

Despite the widespread availability of digital communication tools, the municipalities under study are yet to fully exploit their potential to promote and publicize their offerings. This could be attributed to several factors such as a lack of knowledge and/or resources and a defective strategic approach to digital communication.

The major obstacle in maximizing the potential of digital communication tools in low-density destinations was not solely a result of restricted access. Rather, it was largely due to insufficient knowledge and resources required for their effective utilization, coupled with a lack of aligned vision among various stakeholders.

The competitive landscape in which tourist actors operate has transformed significantly because of the widespread adoption of digital communication led by social networks. However, studies exploring digital communication in low-density territories are still scarce. This study adds new insights into the main factors that hinder the efficient use of digital communication in these regions.