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This study aims to examine nature-based tourists’ experiences in tree houses using user-generated content in Web reviews. The research objectives were to identify the main dimensions of tree house experiences and test whether these dimensions vary according to different traveller-type market segments.

A sample of 722 Web reviews was analysed using mixed content analysis methods. Leximancer software provided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis that identified the main themes, after which further qualitative analysis identified the key narratives associated with experiences.

The results reveal that tourists are extremely satisfied with their stays in tree houses. The main themes that encompass the dominant narratives are tree house, Costa Rica, staff, morning, walk, wildlife, rainforest, opportunity to learn, trip, experience and recommendation. The narratives vary according to type of traveller.

The valuable insights gained emphasise the advantages of using user-generated content in tourism studies. The results also offer a better understanding of the key dimensions of this type of nature-based tourism, including a graphic representation of the main themes and concepts in guests’ narratives. In addition, the findings emphasise that nature-based tourists are not a homogeneous group and that they can be segmented according to type of traveller.

Originally conceptualised as an innovative strategy for environmental conservation, ecotourism is now considered as one of the fastest growing segments of tourism. Although many definitions of ecotourism have been provided over the years, the application of the concept is still inconsistent, shifting its focus from purely nature-based towards more sustainable and conservative activities. Research on ecotourism reveals that ecotourism marketing initiatives are mainly driven by the supply-side or government/environmentalist organisations’ perspective, without taking into account the demand side, i.e., individuals’ motivations for ecotourism. This chapter will provide recognition of the different definitions of the ecotourism concept in order to distinguish it from other similar forms of tourism, e.g., nature-based tourism, and will review the research to build an understanding of the various motivations pushing individuals to choose ecotourism offerings. It will also function as the basis for the development of an appropriate protocol to investigate a sample of ecotourism providers and the congruency of their marketing initiatives with established consumer motivations.

Travel motivation has received considerable attention in the tourism literature. Although motivation is only one variable explaining tourist behaviour, it is regarded as one of the most important. Hence, nature‐based tourism resources as non‐market goods or destination goods have their own economic value, which is frequently neglected. This paper seeks to examine this issue.

The Delphi study among tourism experts attempts to quantify the value and significance of nature and landscape for tourists’ travel motivation for vacations in the Tirol at present and in the future.

The survey shows that particularly in the summer season Nature/Landscape is the most important theme for summer vacation in the Tirol today and will be even more in 2020. Therefore, it clearly is one of the most essential travel motives in the eyes of the experts. Nature‐based vacation has a strong significance and value for the Tirol, with Nature ranging among the top three strengths in the Delphi survey.

The Tirol provides very good prerequisites with regard to nature and experts see high importance in natural resources in 2020 in winter and summer alike. This indicates that tourist providers have to continue producing nature‐based products, offers and attractions in order to meet the challenges of the market.

The current findings add to a growing body of literature on travel motivation and the findings will enhance the understanding of the significance and value of non‐market goods for travel decisions.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

This chapter analyzes the tourism industry from national and regional perspectives, in order to understand the past and current trends in Costa Rica’s positioning and branding attributes and strategies for tourism development. The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive comprehensive literature review of academic research on country branding; and so it is by all means a case study as it describes the evolution of the tourism industry in Costa Rica – including the transformative stages the country went through since the 1980s – as planned tourism national management programs evolved toward reaching the target of creating a nature-based tourism brand. The medical industry and then medical tourism industries are analyzed in a global basis and the US market is examined in detail because of its potential to develop a new complementary niche for Costa Rica’s tourism industry. The chapter intends to asses Costa Rica’s potential to become a country brand in medical tourism, leveraged on its natural tourism destination branding status quo.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of end consumer’s value creation in the context of Finnish nature-based tourism from the viewpoint of the customer-dominant logic (CD logic) of service.

Existing research on the CD logic of service and value creation, consumer value and value creation as a hierarchical process is reviewed. The exploratory research design was applied. The data were constituted of 40 end consumers’ interviews. Based on the means-end chain model, a laddering interview was applied.

The findings indicated that end consumer’s value created in a nature-based tourism service included five final value categories. Those categories were related to emotions and feelings, enjoyment, fun and even lifetime memories. They indicated long-term characteristics of value, individually created value, collective experience and shared value.

The findings increased understanding of end consumer’s value creation as a process. The paper provided ideas for developing better nature-based tourism service offerings, value propositions and insights into end consumer’s value creation in terms of individual and shared value. The findings are valuable for nature-based tourism researchers and stakeholders.

New knowledge on end consumer’s value creation process was created by presenting the hierarchical value maps. The five final value categories indicated the value-in-use. The final value categories emphasised either individual or shared value, which included the end consumer’s life and previous experiences. The preliminary findings will help to develop hypotheses and research problems for future research.

This paper aims to address lack in destination leadership and to propose a new typology of approaches. Frequently, rural tourism is suggested as a remedy that should enhance the local economy, create new jobs, strengthen the regional identity and finance the infrastructure.

Case study analysis shows that regions, communities, tourism organizations and managers use different strategies to strengthen their tourism offers or to develop new ones. The paper analyzes different development approaches among destinations and discusses their respective leadership structure.

The typology of tourism development models makes the different development options transparent and easy to understand. This may aid a community to support tourism development with spatial planning and avoid conflicts with other forms of land uses. Overall, leadership for rural tourism development should lead to a strategic cooperation between tourism businesses and other organizations based on a commitment to destination coherence.

The chosen research approach is based on the analysis of Central European case studies. Therefore, researchers of other geographical backgrounds are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The presented typology illustrated four distinct options of coherent development strategies, which can support communities/regions to find a long-term decision frame.

The presented typology facilitates collaborative planning, helps operationalize rural tourism development policies and provides the foundation for spatial planning, all of which furthers the linkages between tourism and other sectors in the rural economy.

The essence of the demand for nature‐based tourism is an important issue seen from both an academic and practitioner's perspective. One approach to understanding it is to examine the relationship between tourists' travel motivations and activities. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to conduct an empirical study of the links between travel motivations and travel activities within the nature‐based tourism context.

Performing a series of logistic regression analyses, the authors have adopted this approach to empirically investigate the travel motivations and activities (participated/planned to participate) of a sample of nature‐based tourists in Northern Norway.

The study clearly confirms the strong link between travel motivations and activities. More specifically, the study findings are moderated by the fact that “Novelty”, “Prestige”, and “Physical activity” are the main sources of motivation for participating in whale safaris, fishing and hiking respectively. Furthermore, the findings show that non‐Norwegian tourists are considerably more likely than Norwegians to participate in these nature‐based activities. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also provided.

The survey was conducted in a limited geographical area, and the results should accordingly be tested in several places. Analysis of other motives and activities will provide further information.

Knowledge about factors motivating tourists to participate (or not) in certain nature‐based activities is of value to the industry, both in marketing and providing service to the customers.

The paper adds useful knowledge to the relationship between nature‐based tourists' travel motivations and activities.

While the number of tourists worldwide is expected to reach 1.8 billion people by 2030, tourism destinations try to meet demand for increasing tourism. However, some tourism destinations are experiencing a maturity period of destination life cycle intensively. During these mature periods, while they meet the demand above their tourism carrying capacity, they encounter some problematic issues. In tourist destinations such as Venice, Barcelona and Paris, the negative feelings developed by the local people towards overtourism or tourists result in serious problems like negative destination images, tourism phobia, etc. In these destinations, to prevent the negative consequences of overtourism, destination stakeholders should develop solutions to these problems. There are many solution techniques for the problems which cause overtourism. One of them is the different tourism types which have been developed as an alternative to mass tourism. These alternative tourism types can be handled as a method for solving problems revealed through excess demand in tourism destinations at risk. For example, some tourism destinations which have both beach tourism and nature-based tourism types can bring nature-based tourism activities to the forefront with promotion and marketing activities and therefore, the tourism demand could be balanced between these tourism types. In this context, firstly, comprehensive literature review of overtourism and alternative tourism will be conducted in this study. And then the different types of tourism such as ecotourism, cultural tourism and responsible tourism will be discussed in detail and their relation in reducing the negative consequences of overtourism will be investigated theoretically via secondary data. Therefore, alternative tourism potentials will be investigated and tried to present the managerial suggestions for the development of different alternative types of tourism. As a result, it has been seen that, alternative tourism not only contributes to the growth of tourism in both popular and remote destinations but also makes sure that destinations get their fair share in income distribution of the country.

This study examines the direct and indirect impact of environmental belief, nature-based destination image and time perspective on tourist attitude towards ecotourism.

Data was collected through a structured questionnaire survey conducted in Vietnam. The dataset consists of 479 valid responses by Vietnamese tourists. Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to test the causal relationships among time perspective, environmental belief, nature-based destination and ecotourism attitude. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is conducted to verify the reliability and validity of each latent construct, and to evaluate the discriminant validity, convergent validity, composition reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) for the latent constructs.

This study finds statistically significant and positive effects of time perspective, environmental belief and nature-based destination image on ecotourism attitude. The results also indicate that environmental belief is found to have statistically significant effects both direct and indirect on ecotourism attitude; its indirect effect is transmitted through nature-based destination image. Our findings demonstrate empirically that tourists are mainly attracted by natural environment sites and that tourists having environmental beliefs are likely to engage in ecotourism than other types of tourism by first influencing their attitude.

One limitation is associated with our measurement method, which relies on respondents’ self-ratings of their activities. Second, our study is based on internal consistency assessments for establishing construct reliability and validity, which might be the problem of measurement misspecification in tourism research and hinder us to adequately capture the dynamic nature of the variables and the underlying relationships. Third, the survey is conducted in one specific ecotourism nation like Vietnam, and thus, the findings must also be explained in this case.

Policymakers need to pay careful attention to the planning and conservation of local resources, as well as infrastructure, for ecotourism development. Moreover, the management of eco-site needs to maintain ecology properly, provide an authentic ecotourism experience to improve ecotourism destination. Otherwise, ecotourism operators should focus on marketing strategies to increase traditional and natural values and promote eco-friendly social standards for fostering demand.

This study examines an integrated model analyzing the impact of time perspective, environmental belief and nature-based destination on tourist attitude towards ecotourism. This study reveals the understanding of how individuals’ view towards belief in environment and location image, influences their attitude to engage in ecotourism. The study provides several implications for practice.