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This study attempts to answer how values and holiday preferences were shaped by the pandemic, how travellers view the future of tourism and how they are willing to contribute to potential changes. Furthermore, it examines the impact of socio-structural background factors, basic values and holiday preferences, and pandemic-related factors on the views of post-pandemic tourism.

A longitudinal online survey was conducted in which 155 frequent travellers were interviewed both before and during the pandemic about their values and holiday preferences, attitudes towards travelling during the pandemic, and their prospective views regarding tourism.

The findings revealed that values remained rather stable, but nature experiences, heritage tourism and beach offers gained more relevance when it came to holiday preferences. Concerning travellers’ expectations of future tourism, environmental concern was ranked higher than economic profit. However, those striving for self-direction, stimulation and city tourism offers stated to be less willing to restrict their travel behaviour in the future.

Although our study is just based on a convenience sample, the authors were still able to address notable research gaps. First, because a longitudinal design was selected, it was possible to investigate any potential transitions in basic values and travel style and trace these changes back to the pandemic. Second, thanks to a sophisticated online survey, all concepts could be measured with well-developed scales, which increased the quality of the measurements and led to stable results. Third, young travellers can be considered proponents of future travel styles. Their way of acting and thinking about future tourism could significantly impact the prospective direction of tourism.

This study makes a valuable contribution to changing holiday preferences and provides useful insights for the tourism industry about travellers’ willingness to change their travel behaviour.

Since this study primarily considers human values and socio-structural factors, the findings are of particular interest from a sociological perspective and are also interpreted from this viewpoint.

This study is one of only a few longitudinal studies focusing on holiday preferences and shifting values during COVID-19 and attempting to detect crucial drivers of potential tourism transformations in terms of perceptions from the demand side.

Drawing insights from the ecological theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore social determinants related to pathways to high-risk sexual behaviors of international travelers across their life span.

Data were collected from 45 international travelers in Houston, a critical transit point frequented by international visitors.

Overall, several ecological settings (individuals, interpersonal, institutional and contextual) related to two typologies of international travelers (risk takers vs non-risk takers) and their inclination to engage in high-risk sexual practices in an international or/and local context were identified.

This research calls for the need to assess high-risk sexual behaviors from the ecological perspective to better understand the dynamics of disease transmission among frequent international travelers from diverse backgrounds/life styles and age cohorts.

Prevention and treatment programs developed for at-risk international travelers should target both distal and proximal social factors that predispose travelers to vulnerable situations. To build a reliable health surveillance network, policy makers, health practitioners and educators must focus not only on individual-level determinants but also on other ecological determinants that branch out beyond the personal level (e.g. interpersonal, institutional and contextual levels). Multi-level formal and informal social networks can be developed to promote a global social climate and environment that encourage safe sex and safety precautions.

To raise awareness, the public must be constantly reminded that outbreaks of potentially health hazards can lead to unpredictable morbidity/mortality and security risks that place a burden on our nation’s economic growth, emergency responsiveness and homeland security infrastructure.

The study is one of very few to address international travelers’ health risk, while abroad, from an ecological lens across the life course.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it highlights the emergence of Generation Z and the interface of its members with the tourism system. Second, by way of a theoretical model, the paper provides a more holistic approach to understanding Generation Z travel experiences in which the emphasis is shifted from the destination to the traveller. This is in keeping with the trend which lays more emphasis on people rather than landscape.

This is qualitative research founded on an interpretive (constructivist) paradigm. Selecting Generation Z as the subject locates this study under generational theory and assumes prima facie a socially constructed reality. The paper is based on research conducted in New Zealand aimed at understanding the travel experiences of inbound Generation Z travellers. Data were collected from 12 semi-structured interviews lasting about 30 min each and from 5 blogs. Nvivo 11 programme was used in analysing data and developing themes. Core categories and related themes were generated forming building blocks of a theoretical model.

Findings revealed interplay of multiple factors in Generation Z’s travel experiences at a destination. The factors are global in nature, destination centric and those which are immediate or proximate to the individual. To fully grasp the notion of experience requires the gestalt of the three as well as pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip factors.

The impact of significant events upon participants is assumed. A specific analysis of the events and the magnitude of their influence on the individual participants may be necessary.

Destination marketers tend to concentrate on psychological aspects to appeal to the traveller. The focus, in this case, is creating an attractive image in the mind of travellers to get them to come to the destination. This research suggests shifting the focus to understanding the evolving traveller.

Governments and tourism purveyors may require an ever-increasing budget to map out strategies to meet the continuously morphing needs of the future traveller. The constantly evolving global environment necessitates greater flexibility in institutional framework with less bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Generation Z is a relatively new entrant into the tourism market which makes this research relevant and timely. The paucity of academic literature on a generation which is contemporaneously in its “highly influenceable” period of life and entering adulthood in an increasingly changing world is further credence for this research. A more holistic theoretical model to understanding Generation Z travel experience is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the backpacker label by reconstructing it using the historical antecedent of drifting. Following the deconstruction of backpacking’s near past, the author build a clearer conceptual foundation for backpacking’s future.

The study is framed by scenario planning, which demands a critical review of the backpacking and an appreciation of its history in order to understand its future.

Backpacking, ever evolving, remains difficult to articulate and challenges researchers to “keep up” with its complexity and heterogeneity. This paper argues that researchers must learn more about how backpacking “works” by opening a dialogue with its past, before engaging in further research. The paper finds that a poor conceptualisation of backpacking has led to a codification of backpacker criteria.

Backpacking remains a research topic which draws disparate researchers using criteria that produces disparate results and deviations. By understanding its past, researchers will be better placed to explore the emancipatory impulses that drive backpackers today and in the future.

This papers’ value lies in the retrospection process which explores backpacking’s near past so as to “make sense” of present research and present scenarios for it is the immediate future. The paper re-anchors backpacking by investigating the major historical, social and cultural events leading up to its emergence.

Backpackers can be found all over the world, especially in urban areas where the main enclaves are established. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the operationalisation of the term “backpacker” and present a proposal to conceptualise backpackers and backpackers’ segments based on the operational criteria available in literature to avoid incongruities among researchers.

Based on a literature review, this study provides a critical review of the backpacker conceptualisation and operationalisation using a methodology divided into three phases, a quantitative analysis based on the Scopus database and a bibliometric analysis coupled with a manual analysis of documents (content analysis).

Substantial heterogeneity and complexity regarding the conceptualisation of backpacker tourism and its diversified subsegments were evident. For this reason, this paper argues that backpacker tourism can and should continue to be analysed from different perspectives, suitably framed in the theoretical instrument constructed to identify and distinguish the different subsegments through its operationalisation features.

This study provides a practical contribution to all researchers interested in the topic of backpackers proposing the operationalisation of the term backpacker and it subsegments to avoid disparate results and deviations. This contribution will enable the correct and objective assessment of the operationalisation of this concept for researchers, managers and destination management organisations, identifying exactly what phenomenon is to be studied.

Contemporary service and marketing research on value co-creation and value co-destruction assume a one-dimensional view on value, ranging from positive value co-creation, alignment and high value to negative value co-destruction, misalignment and low value. This limitation has recently led researchers to conceptually develop more dynamic spatial-temporal models of how value is formed during the interaction, e.g. in terms of different relationships between practice elements (procedures, understandings and engagements) both within and between actors in “value formation spaces”. However, much of this research awaits validation and is in need of more details. This study aims to address this limitation with the purpose of detailing how and why the mechanisms in such spaces are formed.

Two different and interlinked typologies were analytically derived from previous research and applied on ethnographically-inspired multi-perspective empirical data from a service combining health care and transport service ecosystems, using a combination of interviews, observations and service design methodologies. The design in combination with a practice theory perspective was used to articulate crucial aspects related to understanding the dynamics of value co-formation for elaborative and illustrative purposes.

The study contributes to service theory by conceptualizing as follows: a typology consisting of nine different configurations of practice elements (within and between such elements) and eight possible directions that value formation can take, suggesting a theory that explains value co-creation, value co-destruction and mixed cases.

Although the findings have been developed in a specific empirical context, they articulate a conceptualization applicable to many other service and marketing value co-formation settings.

The typologies are conceptual tools to be used in identifying and measuring the alignment/misalignment of practice elements in complex organizations. The empirical findings uncover service problems faced by disabled customers.

The suggested typologies can guide research and practitioners in understanding and analysing value co-formation mechanisms in complex service settings.

The concept of hinterland is changing with a globalized economy, new needs between airports, stakeholders and the tourist destination challenge new dimensions of operation in the territory. Identifying new factors and actors in the influence zone of the hinterland will allow us to stage the importance of airports in the regional economy and the positive effects derived from these. The aim of this paper is to analyse the hinterland of Málaga Costa del Sol airport and its territorial and economic dimensions. Moreover, to provide an updated and clearer definition of hinterland, assuming future implications for airport operators, management of tourist destination by destination marketing organizations and scholars and practitioners interested in this topic. The results revealed that Málaga’s airport is modifying the hinterland of airport and its area of influence in economic and urban development terms.

This study aims to examine the process of value co-creation (VCC) on digital ecotourism platforms and the role of perceived platform usefulness and user participation behavior in that process. The study also seeks to determine the extent to which the typology of the ecotourist moderates VCC.

A total of 420 users of a digital ecotourism platform participated in a study analyzing the factors that influence VCC. A mediation, moderation and conditional process analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses. A K-means cluster analysis was also used to classify the ecotourists into four groups.

The results show that perceived platform usefulness has a strong influence on the generation of VCC and also on user participation behavior. In turn, user participation behavior is an important driver of VCC. This study also highlights the moderating role of the ecotourist typology in the formation of VCC on these digital platforms.

This study offers managers of digital ecotourism platforms a means to identify and motivate those ecotourists with the necessary skills and characteristics to become true co-creators of value.

This study contributes to the existing knowledge on how value is co-created on digital ecotourism platforms, confirming the important antecedent role of perceived platform usefulness and user participation behavior, as well as the moderating role of ecotourist typology.

El propósito de este estudio es examinar el proceso de co-creación de valor (VCC) en las plataformas digitales de ecoturismo y el papel de la utilidad percibida de la plataforma y el comportamiento de participación de los usuarios. El estudio también pretende determinar en qué medida la tipología del ecoturista modera la VCC.

420 usuarios de una plataforma digital de ecoturismo participaron en un estudio que analizaba los factores que influyen en la co-creación de valor. Se utilizó un análisis de mediación, moderación y proceso condicional para probar las hipótesis propuestas. También se utilizó un análisis de conglomerados K-means para clasificar a los ecoturistas en 4 grupos.

Los resultados muestran que la utilidad percibida de la plataforma tiene una fuerte influencia en la generación de VCC y también en el comportamiento de participación del usuario. A su vez, el comportamiento de participación del usuario es un importante impulsor de la VCC. El estudio también destaca el papel moderador de la tipología ecoturística en la formación de VCC en estas plataformas digitales.

El estudio ofrece a los gestores de plataformas digitales de ecoturismo un medio para identificar y motivar a aquellos ecoturistas con las habilidades y características necesarias para convertirse en verdaderos co-creadores de valor.

Este estudio contribuye al conocimiento existente sobre cómo se co-crea valor en las plataformas digitales de ecoturismo, confirmando el importante papel antecedente de la utilidad percibida de la plataforma y el comportamiento de participación de los usuarios, así como el papel moderador de la tipología del ecoturista.

本研究的主要目的是考察数字生态旅游平台上的价值共同创造（VCC）过程, 以及感知平台有用性和用户参与行为在该过程中的作用。该研究还试图确定生态旅游者的类型在多大程度上调节了VCC。

一个数字生态旅游平台的420名用户参与了一项研究, 分析影响价值共同创造的因素。使用调解、调节和条件过程分析来检验所提出的假设。还使用了K-均值聚类分析, 将生态旅游者分为4组。

结果显示, 感知的平台有用性对VCC的产生有很大影响, 也对用户的参与行为有很大影响。反过来, 用户参与行为也是VCC的一个重要驱动因素。该研究还强调了生态旅游者类型学在这些数字平台上形成VCC的调节作用。

该研究为数字生态旅游平台的管理者提供了一种识别和激励那些具有必要技能和特征的生态旅游者成为真正的价值共同创造者的手段。

本研究对数字生态旅游平台上如何共同创造价值的现有知识做出了贡献, 证实了感知平台有用性和用户参与行为的重要前因作用, 以及生态旅游者类型学的调节作用。