Search results

This paper aims to provide an overview of the short-term impact of COVID19 on the new tourism paradigm worldwide, as well imagining how it could influence society’s inclusion. The purpose is thus to share some insight into this unprecedented situation.

This paper uses a practical and empirical approach, based on readings and conversations with international stakeholders, and contrasted with the Creative Tourism Network’s background.

This paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the tourism industry, human values and intangibles and new opportunities for societal inclusion, together with examples of good practices.

The viewpoint is based on observation, analysis and conversations with stakeholders around the world. It also draws on examples and practical cases from the destinations’ members of the Creative Tourism Network.

This paper draws on observation and reflections about the evolution of societal inclusion through new forms of creative and niche tourism, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to motivate hospitality leaders and local festival and special event management to grow their events from simply local events to those that attract tourists and tourists' dollars to the community.

Previous research is discussed but no new research is offered.

This commentary challenges event managers to elevate their local events into attractors bringing tourists and tourist spending to the community.

Festivals and special events should consider growing their events such that they attract new monies to the community, put heads in beds, and generate revenue for tourism providers and other merchants across the local economy. The article offers suggestions to tourism officials for the distribution of public support funding to help local festivals successfully grow their events.

Readers will find the Charleston model discussed herein of value as they consider the politics of funding festivals and special events in their community. The paper offers suggestions and warnings for the growth.

The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of certification and certified hotels on the African continent, and to discuss the implications for mainstreaming sustainable tourism on the continent.

The research design focused on a literature review and an online survey. The survey was used to consult stakeholders on options for incentives, and future interventions, which was distributed to 80 stakeholders from the government, certification bodies, intergovernmental agencies and NGOs. The survey resulted in 41 complete responses from 18 countries.

The study identified nine African certification programs, and nine international certification programs operating in Africa. Collectively, the African and international certification programs have certified at least 715 accommodation facilities in 19 African countries, against their environmental, social and economic criteria. So only a very small proportion of all hotels in Africa have been certified (certainly less than 3.4 per cent) and that these are patchily distributed across the continent. A number of incentives have been used in Africa, including marketing and promotion; interest free loans for new technologies; preferential inclusion in tour itineraries; free or discounted application processes; and technical support. Consultees suggested that hotels were generally motivated to seek certification to: promote their achievements to environmentally conscious clients and avoid negative criticism, and save money by conserving resources. However, hotels do not understand the financial benefits of sustainable practices.

Research limitations include the modest sample size. For the purposes of this research, there was a greater emphasis in targeting a modest number of key respondents who could provide expert opinions on the topic, rather than a more extensive sample size of lower quality.

Practical implications include recommendations of incentives and approaches to mainstream tourism certification in Africa. These include promoting programmes and their returns on investment more broadly, promoting market advantage for certified accommodation (i.e. preferential marketing or concession terms) and the value of integrating sustainability criteria into national and regional quality-rating standards.

This is the first study of its kind to analyse certification on the African continent, which was presented at the Climate Change Summit (COP22) in Morocco in 2016 and the BEST EN Think Tank XVII in June 2017.

Building on new trends in tourism and smart city governance, this study aims to examine the degree of interrelation between stakeholder networks involved in tourism governance and smart city development. A model describing the transition towards smart tourism city governance is proposed.

The proposed model is tested through a multiple case study of seven European cities. This choice of sample makes the study highly representative. Data collection is based on an exhaustive search and analysis of available data on smart city initiatives, destination management organisations and tourism plans. Social network analysis using Gephi software is used to build stakeholder networks.

Analysis of the stakeholder networks that shape tourism governance and smart initiatives in several cities reveals a disconnection between the two types of networks. The results show limited progress towards the expected synergies of true smart tourism city governance.

Theoretically, the study contributes to the debate on new forms of governance for the complex evolution of urban tourism. In practice, the relationship between tourism governance and smart city initiatives needs to be redefined to achieve synergies that increase the inclusiveness and efficiency of urban tourism policies.

This study examines the under-researched topic of the interrelation between tourism governance and smart city initiatives. By comparing the networks of actors resulting from these two processes, it assesses the extent to which this interrelation helps the emergence of new governance models (smart tourism city governance).

This study aims to evaluate the characteristics of climate change in Yunnan minority areas and identify an effective path to promote sustainable livelihoods based on climate change.

Taking Yunnan Province as an example, based on the expansion of the traditional sustainable livelihood framework, the authors constructed a system dynamics (SD) model of sustainable livelihood from the six subsystems of natural, physical, financial, social, human and cultural and tested the accuracy and effectiveness of the model with data from Cangyuan County. By adjusting these parameters, five development paths are designed to simulate the future situation of the livelihood system and determine the optimal path.

Climate change has exacerbated the vulnerability of people’s livelihoods. In future, each of the five development paths will be advantageous for promoting sustainable livelihoods. However, compared with Path I (maintaining the status quo), Path III (path of giving priority to culture) and Path IV (path of giving priority to economic development) have more obvious advantages. Path II (path of giving priority to people’s lives) gradually increases the development rate by promoting people’s endogenous motivation, and Path V (path of coordinated development) is better than the other paths because of its more balanced consideration.

The analytical framework of sustainable livelihoods based on the characteristics of minority areas is broadened. By constructing a SD model of the livelihood system, the limitations of traditional static analysis have been overcome and a development path for promoting sustainable livelihoods through simulation is proposed. This study offers a theoretical framework and reference method for livelihood research against the backdrop of climate change and a decision-making basis for enhancing climate adaptability and realizing sustainable livelihoods.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in home-stay arrangements in Ghana’s cultural city, Kumasi, and further assess NGO intermediation of home-stay from home-stay operators’ and international volunteer tourists’ perspectives.

A mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches is used to target three main stakeholders of volunteer tourism including international volunteer tourists, home-stay operators, and local NGOs.

There are seven major roles played by volunteer NGOs in the home-stay arrangement. However, from operators’ perspective, NGOs may hinder the economic viability of home-stay through inadequate/low payment.

The study highlights the unexplored brokerage role of NGOs in volunteer tourism in home-stay intermediation and its implications for sustainable tourism.

The aim of this research is to foreground information and communication technology (ICT) as an innovative approach for sustainable tourism (ST) development of destinations. ICT is the technology required for information processing which facilitates data processing, information sharing, communication, searching and selection. This paper concentrates on the Abernathy and Clark model and its usefulness in applying ICT as innovative in managing ST.

An online survey was administered to destination managers and to eTourism experts. Destination managers were selected as they were identified as the person responsible for the overall management of a Destination Management Organisation. eTourism experts were identified as someone who possesses special expertise, knowledge and skills on ICT applications to tourism and offered expertise on which ranged from such areas as electronic distribution, recommender systems, user-generated content, online communities, mobile technology, technology acceptance, tourism networks and Web 2.0. This was followed by semi-structured interviews.

These ICT tools were found to be innovative for information management and distribution for critical decision-making. Innovation was fostered through the use of ICT for ST by leading to a better understanding of the tourism product, monitoring, measuring and evaluating, forecasting trends, developing partnerships and engaging and supporting stakeholder relationships. ICT would provide novel ways of approaching marketing, energy monitoring, waste management, and communication for destinations.

This research is important in demonstrating the value that technology can have to ST and further develops the work on tourism innovation theory.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute the advancement of knowledge on food heritage and indigenous entrepreneurship in a non-Western country, specifically in the Persian gardens as the touristic destination for increasing the tourism and food businesses in Iran.

The methodological approach adopted is based on qualitative and quantitative approaches to compare two representative gardens named as Bagh-Chehel-Sotoun and Bagh-Fin, as famous examples of a Persian garden in Iran. The methods supported the research to explain the lack of strategies for improving virtuous cycles in Persian gardens despite their potentials as the main places to attract many tourists.

Regarding local food and the quality of servicing, most of the visitors and tourists (85–90%) had interest to test local and traditional foods around both gardens, but they had no sufficient awareness of Iranian traditional foods. According to the tourists’ interests, the authors concluded the lack of servicing and facilities to present and introduce local and traditional food for tourists.

Despite the limitation of local food services and lack of awareness of tourists about local foods, the implication of the study offers possible avenues to promote local food business.

The results could be useful for cultural heritage and tourism organizations and for investors in the economic sector due to more exploitation of the tourism industry.

The paper is the first work evaluating the Persian garden with a new perspective of local foods in Iran.

This study aims to evaluate the correlation of Chinese philosophy to the process of tourism development. The current Chinese philosophy involves three influential ideologies: Chinese Confucianism, Chinese communism and Western capitalism, which significantly affect people's perspectives, behaviors and importantly, the whole tourism system.

This study conducted 47 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews through field visits, in order to understand people's perspectives and social interactions in the tourism development process. The case study is based on the Hubin Street Project of Hangzhou, China.

The study finds that all three ideologies in Chinese philosophy have strong influences in the decision making processes of tourism development. They result in a relatively centralized decision‐making power centre, and increasing decentralized needs from the society.

This research helps to understand the reasons for social actions in China's tourism development from a different perspective, the philosophy. The study gives implications for other researches to further explore the relationship between ideologies and behavior.

The influences of Chinese philosophy to social actions could be even more complicated. More case studies could reflect different situations and more in‐depth views.

The paper aims to shed new light on the process of value creation and business model innovation resulting from circular economy in the context of smart tourism.

The study embraces a qualitative and exploratory approach related to a single case study. Data have been collected through the integration of web-based desk analysis, interviews and social big data analytics.

Findings are related to Ecobnb, a network-based tourism company, coherent with the principles of value creation and business model innovation in the context of circular economy and smart tourism.

The study allows understanding of how smart tourism and circular economy can represent two important lenses for managing complexity and driving tourism companies and destinations toward sustainable and smart value creation processes.

Practical implications arise for managers and destination makers in terms of innovation of the tourism management and transition of the business models toward a circular configuration.

The study offers social implications by contributing to the dissemination of a culture of sustainability in tourism management and active involvement of local stakeholders in the growth of a tourism destination.

The study provides an original contribution to the debate on tourism by highlighting the obsolescence of traditional models of management in tourism companies and destinations, seen during the recent pandemic emergence, could be solved through the virtuous integration of digital technologies and sustainable approaches.