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During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, museums, as public gathering places for citizens, have encountered unprecedented difficulties due to limitations to operate as usual for their traditional exhibitions and curations. Thus, museums made corresponding emergency attempts to accelerate digital resource and service platform constructions. Such difficulties aroused many potential problems with the applicability of electronic resources and the mismatch between user expectations and museum services. This study investigates the challenges faced by Hong Kong museums under COVID-19, emergency responses and deliberate practices of Hong Kong museums from the perspective of both museum staff and visitors, and COVID-19's influence on the roles and functions of Hong Kong museums.

Qualitative interviews with museum staff and visitors were conducted to collect opinions and experiences in the construction and maintenance of museums during the pandemic. Further thematic analyses of museum websites, evaluations, and suggestions were formulated guided by the PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) and AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) models.

Findings revealed many online interactions and offline renovations, but the perceptions of visitors and staff differed considerably. While online resources and virtual museums were expanded and well received, long-term prohibitions and repressions drove physical visit desire. Participants emphasized finding a balance between user expectations and realistic practices.

Scant studies focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural industry, especially in East Asia. This study also highlights new practices of digitalization and the challenges of functional transformation. The authors' findings and suggestions provide hints to optimize the curation of information resources and improve museum service quality in the new digital era. This study also serves as a reliable and meaningful record of COVID-19 impacts on Hong Kong museums.

A significant sector of the international tourism industry focusses on the natural and cultural attributes of target destinations and sites. The more natural and unusual the attraction the greater the value to the industry and hence the greater the promotion of the venue. However, this pattern of exploitation could prove to be a short cut to actually degrading the object of attraction and hence its pulling power.

A destination's ability to attract tourists is associated with the visitor experience and, in recent years, visitors have increasingly used virtual environments and digital innovation, such as social media platforms, to communicate their experience of tourist destinations. A positive well-communicated tourist experience improves the reputation of the destination and has relevant consequences for both the destination's attractiveness and its competitive advantage. On the contrary, when the destination's reputation is negatively affected by visitors' experiences, comments and reviews, such destination might compromise its ability to attract new visitors. Studies in this field agree alike that the tourist experience is negatively affected by overcrowding and overflows phenomena occurring around the visited city attractions. The present research, merging the aforementioned observations, investigates whether visitor density affects the online reputation of the Uffizi Gallery, estimated by extracting visitors' opinions and feedbacks on the city's main attractions from TripAdvisor ratings and from Twitter posts, by applying sentiment analysis to evaluate whether the text is positive, negative, or neutral. The city of Florence is an ideal case study, as the city records almost 16 million tourist overnight stays per year hence highly exposed to the risk of tourist overcrowding and overflows. The research findings reveal that Uffizi Gallery experiences and mood are influenced by the number of visitors insisting and if tourists live a negative experience, this is further exacerbated by the growing density of visitors themselves. We find that, if tourists have a negative experience, this is exacerbated by the density of visitors to the Uffizi Gallery. The results reveal also that tourists' experiences are even more influenced by any general dissatisfaction they experience in the city of Florence in a broader way. Practical implications and theoretical contributions are discussed.

The purpose of the paper is to explore how the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will influence the development of revenue management practice in the visitor attractions sector.

This viewpoint paper builds on the argument that tracking previous patterns of behaviour and trends can be used to predict future actions and developments.

The paper identifies how historically the development of revenue management practice has been driven by major external trigger points often linked to sudden increases in competitive pressures, such as the deregulation of the airline industry, and expands on this to argue that the pandemic is one such trigger point that has fundamentally changed the approach to revenue management through a refocusing on key principles to manage demand and that this could potentially accelerate its development within the visitor attraction sector.

Pre-COVID, the practice of revenue management in the visitor attraction sector was underdeveloped, and the opportunities to develop revenue management had not been discussed in the academic literature. This paper suggests that the challenges of the pandemic that forced visitor attractions to focus on visitor demand management can now begin to be extended to incorporate the management of revenue and will consequently be of value for academics and practitioners.

One of the major changes recently noted in the evolution of world tourism demand seems to be represented by the shift from “sun and beach” holidays to more active and special interest ones. This trend will affect some destinations more than others. There will be losers and winners.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the mechanisms of conflict between residents and tourists and to propose a conceptual model to assess the impact of such conflicts on city tourism and to suggest a framework to develop strategies to deal with such conflicts and mitigate negative impacts.

Based on desk research a conceptual model was developed which describes the drivers of conflicts between residents and visitors. Building blocks of the model are visitors and their attributes, residents and their attributes, conflict mechanisms and critical encounters between residents and visitors, and indicators of the quality and quantity of tourist facilities. Subsequently the model was used to analyse the situation in Hamburg. For this analysis concentration values were calculated based on supply data of hotels and AirBnB, app-data, and expert consultations.

The study shows that in Hamburg there are two key mechanisms that stimulate conflicts: (1) the number of tourists in relation to the number of residents and its distribution in time and space; (2) the behaviour of visitors measured in the norms that they pose onto themselves and others (indecent behaviour of tourists).

The model that was developed is a conceptual model, not a model with which hypotheses can be tested statistically. Refinement of the model needs further study.

Based on the outcomes of the study concrete strategies were proposed with which Hamburg could manage and control the balance of tourism.

City tourism has been growing in the last decades, in some cases dramatically. As a consequence, conflicts between tourists, tourism suppliers and inhabitants can occur. The rise of the so-called sharing economy has recently added an additional facet to the discussion. The ability to assess and deal with such conflicts is of importance for the way city tourism can develop in the future. This study is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of the mechanism behind and the nature of those conflicts, and the way they can be managed and controlled. Besides it illustrates how data generated by social media (apps) can be used for such purposes.

Applying the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory in a wine museum context, this paper aims to examine how and why experience design characteristics influence visitor satisfaction, particularly investigating the role of epistemic (learning) and hedonic (having fun) values as the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.

The authors collected field survey data from 652 visitors at a world-leading wine museum. The authors tested the research model on ten modules of the museum using path analysis and a bootstrap approach; the authors further conducted mediation analyses to test how the design of the museum’s modules influenced perceived value and satisfaction.

Content comprehensibility and surprise, as well as interactivity and ease of use, are core design characteristics that drive visitor satisfaction. More significantly, hedonic and epistemic values play a significant mediating role in influencing the relationship between design characteristics and visitor satisfaction.

The authors provide clear and actionable recommendations to help managers design museums that provide educational, entertaining and satisfying visitor experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply the S-O-R theory in a wine museum context. The significance of this study lies in demonstrating how and why experience design characteristics support the creation of an edutainment visitor experience that drives visitor satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to provide a series of indicators to determine the limits to urban tourism growth, tourism gentrification and overtourism. The study addresses overtourism within the frame of urban liveability through a proxy analysis of tourism-relevant indicators for major European tourist cities.

Based on the various indicators, a composite overtourism indicator is derived. The following dimensions are considered for the composite indicator: total number of overnight stays per relevant tourist area in km²; number of museum visitors per population; average annual change in total nights between 2009 and 2017; and foreign nights per population.

Based on the results, Venice is the city with the highest degree of overtourism, followed by Florence, Seville and Lisbon. The remaining cities have a lower than average overtourism potential as indicated by the negative z-score.

This study and the composite overtourism indicators are only a starting point that can lead to further research in the field. Recommendations for further studies include the assessment of visitor flow and overtourism at different times of the year and to expand the study to other European urban destinations.

The paper suggests that policymakers should use these indicators when managing urban tourism development and monitoring visitor growth. Furthermore, they can be a starting point from which to assess the impact of tourism on the quality of life of local residents.

This study provides a starting point from which to assess the causes for social unrest tied to overtourism. If the city under study is found to have a lower than average overtourism potential, this indicates that there may be other social or psychological issues at play apart from sheer overcrowding.

To date, there has been no composite indicator that considered the different numerical aspects of overtourism altogether. This study provides a set of key indicators and a composite overtourism indicator to provide a preliminary appraisal of overtourism as a demand-side phenomenon with evidence from a range of established European urban destinations.