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Tourism is one of the world economy pillars. In the last decades, it underwent an evolution related to consumer behaviour and technological progress. Facing this evolution, several efforts were made by companies; for example, some of them looked for new ways to create value. Despite a great number of studies conducted, the literature shows less evidence related to the variables that affect value creation in tourism companies. Hence, the objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework of value creation measurement in tourism through mapping the most frequent indicators in literature. To do so, the authors asked the following research question: what indicators of value creation in tourism were the most mobilized during the last twenty years? Then they performed a meta-analysis based on value creation papers published during the period ranging from 1997 to 2017. Furthermore, based on the NVivo 11 coding method, they processed 747 indicators, of which they considered that 66 were more frequently used as they had been cited at least twice. The main ones are service quality, customer satisfaction, environmental management, and profitability. They grouped these frequent indicators in five categories, namely: customers (10), employees and skills improvement (9), environment and natural resources (6), finance (20), and internal processes (21).

Ethnographic research in communities or nations that are not your own can be ethically troubling projects, where the line between tourism, colonialism, and “legitimate” research is blurred at best, non-existent at worst. Social scientists often engage in these types of projects with good intentions—a desire to help and to use the privilege bestowed upon them by their institutions and granting bodies to do some good in the world despite the growing recognition among academics about the dominance of Eurocentric thoughts and approaches in social research. However, it is sometimes difficult to determine what makes an insider and an outsider, particularly in contested regions where ethnoreligious identity rather than citizenship is the limiting factor. In 2012, I travelled to Israel to conduct critical ethnographic fieldwork. The project was conceived as an exploration of the role of education in the perpetuation of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Drawing on the contention that autoethnography is an inclusive method and a means to decolonize the Eurocentric research practices often associated with field research, in this paper, I aim to disrupt my own perceived insider status, to (un)settle and to (un)learn.

The British colonial imagination portrayed Sri Lanka (or Ceylon) through the themes of garden, paradise, and jungle. These themes have influenced travel narratives about Sri Lanka. Given the hierarchies of the global travel industry and the dominance of the “Western gaze,” countries of the Global South such as Sri Lanka exist in a narrative cycle where they have to create travel content that aligns with the “Western gaze.” However, Western travel narratives now exist alongside those created by Sri Lanka’s travel authorities and vloggers—through the “subaltern gaze.” My paper traces the colonial construction of “Ceylon” as a nation and its influence on the island’s depiction in travel narratives by analyzing the content of early travel films and photographs, modern videos, posters, and articles. I explore how contemporary travel imagery created by Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities and citizens is un-making the entrenched imagery of the island. And as Sri Lanka finds itself between national and geopolitical changes, the “subaltern gaze” will continue to redefine travel images.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the adaptation of the tourism sector to ongoing digitalization. It does so by examining how destination management and governance are being changed with the so-called digital transition of human societies and economies. Whereas the tourism literature tends to address this issue from a techno-centric perspective, embedding research in notions such as smartness or smart tourism destination, a more critical approach is adopted in this study. This is done by confronting extant techno-centric conceptual frameworks with empirical findings regarding the challenges encountered by public and private tourism practitioners involved in the management of the destination Brussels, Belgium. The study results highlight how the challenges posed by digitalization are far from being confined to the field of technology. Indeed, they seem to be deeply intertwined with structural economic, social and environmental issues.

Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach that combines the reflections and efforts of different actors, academics, local stakeholders, and external experts, in order to seek solutions to concrete problems while producing reflections that are applicable in a broader context. This paper hypothesizes that PAR is a relevant research method in rural Mexico and applicable to alternative tourism because of the social transformation potential of participatory processes. The case study conducted in Yokdzonot (Yucatán, Mexico) with the Zaaz Koolen Haa cooperative illustrates this point of view while also highlighting the challenges of such an approach. A five-year project, involving about 100 actors, was carried out in this community and made it possible to experiment with different PAR tools, to achieve short- and medium-term results, including diagnoses, decision making, and organizational changes, and to produce projections for the management of the alternative tourism initiative. Among other things, this PAR project helped to highlight the virtues of learning communities in intercultural contexts. The difficulties encountered are attributed in part to the particular context of the community in its relationship to tourism, but they also make it possible to highlight recurring challenges in the PAR framework.

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the use of narratives in the transformation of historic sites in the polar regions into attractions and consumable tourism products. The analysis is based on a case study of visitation to the airship mooring mast built at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, for the 1926 “Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight” of the airship Norge. The questions addressed in this paper are: How does cultural heritage in the polar regions operate as a tourist attraction? What is the role of tourism narratives in creating a tourism attraction? Direct observations constituted the main research method. Based on Dean MacCannell (1976) and Neil Leiper (1990), a tourism attraction is a system comprising a tourist or human element; a nucleus or central element; and a marker or informative element. Tourism narratives enable the different elements of the tourism attraction system to “click” together into a coherent whole. Through narratives, the mast becomes a place of significance and a symbolic marker of the North Pole and polar exploration. The application of this approach to other sites in Antarctica and Svalbard is discussed.