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This paper applies information dissemination theory, consumer information behavior theory, signaling theory, and value co-creation theory to investigate the effects of companies' online platform operations from a tourism company perspective. We gathered data from 51 listed tourism companies in China between 1992 and 2022 to test these impacts. Results showed that using online platforms could improve listed tourism companies' performance, but not all platforms played the same role. Of the three online platforms we tested, official websites and WeChat accounts had significant positive influences on listed tourism companies' performance; Weibo had no effect. Group research revealed that online platforms most effectively enhanced hotels' performance, followed by comprehensive tourism companies. Resource tourism companies received no obvious impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 21st century has seen tourists from various source markets significantly impacted by non-communicable diseases, including mental disorders. Yet, research and practice frequently overlook tourists with mental disorders. Building on Buckley's discussion in the Journal of Travel Research about tourism and mental health, this study examines the travel eligibility of tourists diagnosed with four prevalent mental disorders: major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), schizophrenia, and dementia. We present preliminary recommendations for accommodating these tourists and highlight the urgent need for collaborative efforts between stakeholders in tourism, hospitality, and medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformative tourism experiences are powerful life moments with the capacity to elevate individuals' well-being. With the rise of transformative tourism and the growing attention to well-being, theoretical research is needed to outline the underlying processes that connect transformative tourism experiences with individual well-being. This study employed grounded theory to critically analyze a set of travel blogs that narrate individual tourists' transformative tourism experiences. Specifically, we explored how sets of activities during transformative tourism (e.g., backpacker tourism, volunteer tourism, and study tours) contributed to travelers' hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. We took psychological needs as processes of well-being realization to construct an integrated "activities–needs–well-being" conceptual framework to demonstrate how transformative tourism contributes to travelers' hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current geologic era—the Anthropocene—is defined by human-driven transformation of landscapes and seascapes that has profoundly altered Earth's climate and other life-support systems. This letter advocates for a landscape-scale regenerative tourism management strategy aimed at transforming coastal destinations into carbon sinks (meaning they sequester more carbon than they release). Specifically, coastal destinations can transform product offerings into a network of restoration projects that collectively seek the landscape-scale restoration of blue carbon ecosystems such as marshes, mangroves, and seagrass meadows. Restoration of blue-carbon ecosystems is a cost-effective way to mitigate the effects of climate change. Tourism has potential to overcome obstacles in large-scale restoration of blue carbon ecosystems and can play a foundational role by providing a long-term presence at restoration sites, logistical and human resources, and a business model dependent on restored ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the theoretical framework of the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) was applied in the context of a host country promoting its tourism to new or underdeveloped markets. The host country's perceived Warmth, Competence and Status were each relevant to an understanding of the attitude toward the country itself and as a tourism destination. However, in both instances, the influence of perceived Status was found to be direct and not, as existing SCM theory suggests, via Competence. The findings support Status being a primary dimension of human perception alongside Warmth and Competence within SCM theory. Warmth evaluations also dominated the prediction of Tourism Attitude but not Country Attitude, again contrary to established thinking. The influence on Tourism Attitude of both Uncertainty Avoidance and Individualism/Collectivism were moderated by the perceived Warmth and Status of the host country. Thus, the SCM requires adaptation to the context of tourism in underdeveloped markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using dynamic capabilities (DCs) and the disaster/crisis management cycle (DMC) as the theoretical lens, this study explores how different types of DCs build and sustain organizational resilience of tourism firms during COVID-19. Taking a processual view, the study advances theorization of the relationship between DCs and organizational resilience in tourism studies. A qualitative study of 30 owners and senior managers of tourism and hospitality firms in Bangladesh reveals that threats and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic activated 10 different types of DCs (replicating, integrating, reconfiguring, creating, developing, assimilating, renewing, adaptive, innovative, and regenerative) across the pre, response (short-term) and future recovery intentions (long-term) stages. DCs activated different resilience facets (networks and relationships, leadership and culture, and change ready), highlighting the criticality of achieving planned and adaptive resilience for tourism firms during COVID-19. Response and recovery implications for tourism firms during disruptive events are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospect theory has been an essential theoretical foundation for behavioral economics, as recognized with the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2002. The growing interest in behavioral economics among tourism researchers necessitates a systematic assessment of prospect theory and its application in tourism research to critically examine the current status of tourism decision-making studies. This study therefore clarifies the theoretical background of prospect theory and analyzes 93 published studies to examine how prospect theory has performed in explaining tourism decision-making. The study also evaluates the application of prospect theory in tourism research and provides future research directions with respect to under-researched dimensions, reference points, dynamic decision-making processes, and the logical continuity and systemization of prospect theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the association between climate policy uncertainty (CPU) and corporate investment using U.S. data on tourism and hospitality firms over the period 2001–2020. We find that the aggregate country-level CPU is significantly negatively associated with capital investment, with the impact extending at least 4 years into the future. In particular, we find that CPU has an influence on firms' capital investment that is incremental to economic policy uncertainty (EPU). By contrast, we document that CPU is unrelated to R&D investment. Our main findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including an instrumental variable approach and sub-industry analyses. Overall, our findings highlighting the impact of CPU on capital investment have significant implications for academics, managers, and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical gardens offer ample cultural and natural landscapes for visitors to appreciate. Taking the tourist gaze as a theoretical lens, this study assumes a netnographic approach and conducts narrative analysis on travel blogs to explore visitors' experiences at Chinese classical gardens. Findings revealed key domains of the gaze object (i.e., macro-level structural design and micro-level elements) and the way of gaze (i.e., spatial and temporal), which formed the Chinese gaze in the tourism context. Results further showed how gaze contributed to Yijing development, a unique Chinese aesthetic concept. This study enriches the tourism and aesthetics literature by positioning a classical aesthetic concept (Yijing) within a modern tourism practice (gaze). Practical implications for tourism development and destination marketing are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the moderating effect of social globalization on the relationship between international tourism and economic growth using a dataset of 143 economies from 1995 to 2017. Social globalization is broadly defined as the sharing of cultures and beliefs which facilitates the flow of ideas and knowledge. Our results show that social globalization affects economic growth directly and indirectly through enhancing international tourism. However, we find that the direct effect of international tourism on growth is not statistically significant for developing economies. On the other hand, tourism-dependent developing economies can benefit from growth as social globalization increases. This implies that policymakers can promote growth by developing institutions and infrastructure to enhance social globalization, such as implementing visa-free travel and the construction of international airports, to enhance the growth-gains from international tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the recent immortalization project of Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe at Enugu. Historicizing his achievements and legacies, the paper studied the roles he played in ensuring that independent Africa is attained and why he continues to be remembered even after his death. The research method is qualitative and descriptive. Secondary data such as newspapers, books, journals and online materials are used to enrich the work. The result shows that the inauguration of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Centre and other previous projects that immortalized him were as a result of his outstanding and selfless services to Africa and Nigeria in particular. The paper discovered that the new Nnamdi Azikiwe Centre was his renovated residential lodge which richly embodies his political history and career years, thoughts, ideology, and philosophy. The findings of this research will help government officials, historians, tourists, and students in making decisions on good governance, consulting material in education, and tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular culture tourism encompasses a range of expressive practices that attract fans traveling to destinations associated with their fandom pursuit. However, scholarship on this multifaceted phenomenon is today over-fragmented and obscured by separate disciplinary agendas and priorities. We argue that the scope and breadth of popular culture tourism calls for its interdisciplinary treatment as a distinct field. Through a scoping literature review, this paper identifies the foundational elements of its conceptual and ontological roots, extracting key insights and discursive themes that can help establish a comprehensive perspective on the study and management of popular culture tourism. Our inquiry builds common ground that can shed light on the complexity of popular culture expressions and enable their strategic role as a destination placemaking tool. Thematic areas of convergence resulting in the emergent configuration of the field are delineated, and primary research questions for the comprehensive study of popular culture tourism are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of tourism on poverty alleviation using a new panel quantile fixed effects method that allows regressors to affect the entire conditional distribution of the dependent variable providing substantial information gains. Our results show statistically significant negative marginal effects of tourism on both absolute poverty measures and Gini income inequality across all quantiles, including the poorest 10%. We also find evidence that international tourism can mitigate the slow improvement in domestic income level for poverty reduction. From a policy perspective, our findings can provide insights into developing targeted tourism policies and strategies to achieve better solutions on poverty alleviation. We also call for special attention to policymakers in developing countries to continue working on tourism product differentiation and targeting a smaller but reachable market in the post COVID-19 recovery era, to prevent the adverse effect of the worldwide income growth stagnation on their poverty rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 effectively stopped tourism mobilities for a time. Theoretically, this qualitative study draws on the notion of responsibility, as in responsibility to act and responsibility to Otherness. We explore how, during the pandemic, Norwegian tourists dealt with infection preventive measures, how they changed travel habits and how the pandemic transformed their thinking on tourism and climate change. The tourists were loyal citizens adhering to the authorities' measures and refrained from international holidays, thereby taking responsibility for the governmentally enforced dugnad (collective efforts). This temporal change in travel habits, however, was not expected to become the new normal, as warmer, southern destinations were still desired. Culturally embedded neoliberal values of freedom of movement were, for most of these tourists, stronger than the threat of climate crisis. Fatalistically, we conclude that COVID-19 did not have the power to transform their mind-sets regarding responsible tourism futures and free them from neoliberal shackles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism and globalization are considered as drivers of economic growth since they boost income, job opportunities, infrastructural development, international trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, and technological diffusion. However, the economic benefits of tourism and globalization could occur at the expense of increased energy consumption (from fossil fuels) and other pollution-intensive activities that worsen environmental degradation, especially in countries with lax institutions and environmental standards. The roles of tourism, globalization, and their interaction term on environmental degradation have not been thoroughly investigated. Hence, this study analyzes the moderating role of globalization on the impact of tourism on environmental degradation (carbon emissions and ecological footprint) in 31 African countries using different dimensions of tourism and globalization. It uncovers the marginal effect of tourism on environmental degradation at different levels of globalization. It utilizes strategies that account for cointegration, dynamism, endogeneity, heterogeneity, cross sectional dependency, and causality. Evidence from this study shows that globalization and its dimensions play favorable moderating roles on the impact of tourism on carbon emissions. The marginal effect of tourism on carbon emissions decreases as globalization increases, suggesting that a simultaneous increase in tourism and globalization can mitigate carbon emissions. However, no evidence to show that globalization can mitigate the environmental impact of tourism on ecological footprint. The findings differ probably because carbon emissions and ecological footprint measure different aspects of environmental degradation. This analysis emphasizes the need for countries to consider the interaction between tourism and globalization in their quest to ensure environmental sustainability. JEL Classification: F64, Q53, Z32 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generation Z (Gen Z) has emerged as the largest and most challenging consumer group for destination marketers. This study investigates the varying effects of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) on Gen Z travel behaviors. A comparative analysis approach between Gen Z and other generations was used to assess the attributes of SMMAs and their role in tourism destination visits. Gen Z tourists were more susceptible to the four traits of SMMAs (entertainment, trendiness, interaction, and word-of-mouth) when choosing destinations and were more likely to pay a premium for visiting than their generational counterparts. Gen Z females were more likely to be influenced by SMMA customization and word-of-mouth features, while Gen Z males were more sensitive to the entertainment features of SMMAs. These findings deepens marketers' understanding of Gen Z travelers' preferences and behaviors so that they provide constructive directions for marketers to implement effective SMMAs strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Florida developed as an urban gambling resort center that posed both cultural and political challenges to the traditional southern values that animated the state's approach to regulating vice. This article examines the conflicts over vice tourism in South Florida by focusing on the relationship between Governor Spessard Holland and former Miami Beach Mayor Louis "Snet" Snedigar. Snedigar became Holland's undercover informant when the governor cracked down on illegal gambling as part of his effort to fund the state's old-age pension program by taxing bets placed at horse tracks in South Florida. By exploring the entanglement between a conservative southern state and a "liberal" urban outpost, this article illustrates how the southern approach to urban development forestalled the emergence of South Florida as a recreational gambling resort comparable to Las Vegas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the moderating effects of various distance measures on the relationship between relative pandemic severity and bilateral tourism demand. After confirming its validity using actual hotel and air demand measures, we leveraged data from Google Destination Insights to understand daily bilateral tourism demand between 148 origin countries and 109 destination countries. Specifically, we estimated a series of fixed-effects panel data gravity models based on the year-over-year change in daily demand. Results show that a 10% increase in seven-day smoothed COVID-19 cases led to a 0.0658% decline in year-over-year demand change. The moderating distance measures include geographic, cultural, economic, social, and political distance. Results show that long-haul tourism demand was less affected by a destination's pandemic severity relative to tourists' place of origin. The moderating effect of national cultural dimensions indulgence versus constraints was also confirmed. Lastly, a discussion and implications for international destination marketing are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a globalized environment, a major shock or event can reverberate across tourism interdependent countries over time. This paper aims to empirically examine how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) emanating from a large country may influence inbound and outbound tourism in other countries. Using Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) model and two alternative measures of EPU, the study finds the modeled effects of EPU are dependent on the source of EPU measures, level of internationalization, and type of trade-weights used. Notably, the results show the "decline-rebound-overshoot" effect of EPU shock on tourism demand, and capture the link between capital flight and outbound travel from China in times of surge in EPU. This research highlights that GVAR is able to capture previously unobserved empirical insights because assessing the international impact of shocks such as economic crises, pandemics, and political instability necessitates accounting for cross-sectional interdependence in tourism flows between many countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the precarity of tourism in viral pandemic times through an analysis of animal-human relations in China's panda and valley tourism at Dajiuzhai. Drawing on a tour to Dajiuzhai to see giant pandas and the valleys of Jiuzhai, which was disrupted midway by increased viral infections, we trace ethnographically how disruptions in tourism emerge in the micro-setting of a single viral-hit tour and highlight the roles of natural agents, pandas, valleys and virus play, alongside humans in tourism's fluid assemblages. Desire/wish to encounter pandas motivated the formation of a fluid constellation of tourism objects, species and humans, which was aligned towards the goal of a stable tourism experience but persistently disturbed. Animal-human relation-based tourism assemblage at Dajiuzhai was found to be a fluid spatiality that coped with Covid-19 disruptions through responses at attractions involving health checks and declarations but remained precarious despite its transformational potentialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online reviews have been found very useful in decision-making. It is important to design and implement accurate systems to analyze the reviews and, based on textual information, predict their ratings. Given the different sources, languages and evaluating systems, intelligent systems are needed to use textual and numerical reviews to better understand the evaluation of the tourist experience and derive useful information to improve the offer. This paper aims to present an eXplainable Artificial Intelligence framework that contributes to the discussion on numerical and textual evaluations of the hospitality experience. It combines sentiment analysis and machine learning to accurately model and explain the evaluation of the tourist experience. The main findings are that review ratings should be used with caution and accompanied by a sentiment evaluation and explainability plays a central role in identifying which are the key concepts of positive or negative ratings, providing invaluable intelligence about the tourist experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality (VR) has been designated as the 'ultimate empathy machine' due to its alleged ability to powerfully immerse users in another's perspective. As VR has attracted growing attention, criticism of its alleged 'empathic superpowers' has also gained strength. Critics have recently argued that the empathic VR vision is ethically flawed since it is misleading and denies non-communicable aspects of the Other. Moreover, several scholars argue that VR empathy rhetoric in fact exploits the marginalised targets of empathy, turning them to objects 'identity tourism' for the privileged. The paper revisits these claims, arguing that they rely on empathy notions that are dominant in traditional art-media, while overlooking VR's unique experiential affordances. Drawing on psychophysiological evidence, it argues that the ethical significance of VR lies in the unique ways in which it manipulates the user's body scheme via multisensory stimulation. These manipulations result in unprecedented empathy-related perceptual and conceptual transformations whose ethical implications require new ethical framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participants saw that preferred future as follows: Infrastructure for agriculture development and beyond Kazakhstan is the leading trendsetter in the consumption of agriculture products. As the local start-up landscape strengthens and private sector activities expand, Kazakhstan could benefit greatly from expanding the application of futures and foresight thinking. Smart city applications to treat waste Kazakhstan has the best waste-recycling technologies, hosts a global waste-trading platform, and launches a "one waste one corridor initiative." It was a scenario where advanced agriculture value changed production and the Kazakhstan brand was strengthened through rural-urban links. [Extracted from the article]

It is customary for writers to focus their attention on criticising the Chinese government and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and their roles in manipulating Chinese mass media which tends to be self-evident. I Brand China in the Media: Transformation of Identities i (hereafter: I Brand China in the Media i ), is a ground-breaking study that examines the complex relationship between China's identities, self-representation and China's own representation in the mass media. Compared with previous studies concerning the images of China in the mass media that are bound and influenced by the Western media's narrative discourse, viewing contemporary China more as a "China Threat", whilst the Chinese media as being dominated and manipulated by the Chinese government that is fundamentally different from the western world's free press, and 'how China uses the news media as a weapon in its propaganda war against the West' ([7]), I Brand China in the Media i offers readers a fresh perspective by highlighting the growing role of non-state actors ( I i.e. i online media in China, the proliferating Chinese middle-class and cinematic (re) representations of "Chineseness" in films) and their influence on contemporary China which often tend to be neglected and thus, worthy of consideration. [Extracted from the article]

The current research extends the current literature of halal tourism by applying information seeking models to analyze the halal culinary marketing strategies. It aims at identifying the halal marketing strategies from the official tourism providers' perspective (the supply side) by extending and validating the halal culinary framework of Yousaf and Xiucheng. A content analysis of the government websites of the top Muslim inbound destinations among non-Islamic nations (as a vital source of information) is employed. The results of the content analysis revealed that several non-Islamic destinations did not pay attention in their official tourism offerings to promote the interests of the unique requirements of Muslims. It is found that only three destinations; New Zealand, Singapore, and Australia promote halal strategies on their government websites. Nevertheless, they could not promote all aspects of halal tourism requirements on their official websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the definition of landscape offered in the European Landscape Convention, this study explores the various facets of the term and the many ways in which the perception of landscape by different people can be influenced by different factors, such as socioterritorial belonging and tourism promotion. The study aims to analyze and understand the perspectives of insiders and outsiders on the same territorial area. Analysis of questionnaires, qualitative interviews, and visual images reveals a different significance of the landscape and its natural and human elements. The study concludes with some reflections about the meanings that insiders and outsiders assign to different elements by virtue of the symbolic-cultural system of the community they belong to or the influence of the destination image proposed by tourist promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of countries have introduced noncontributory pension to guarantee a minimum income for disadvantaged seniors. The current state of knowledge does not inform us how this change has impacted senior tourism demand and industry. Additional pension income may relax budget constraints and provide an opportunity to fulfill a desired level of tourism. For disadvantaged elderly, however, its impact on tourism choice is not clear because of consumption needs for other necessities and limited mobility. This study examines a recent social pension reform in South Korea to study the impact of old-age income security on tourism demand. We find that a doubling of public pension benefits is associated with an average of 23–59.5% increase in travel frequency and 52–96% rise in travel spending among benefit-eligible seniors. These results suggest that pension reforms aiming to improve old-age income security will have a positive influence on the tourism and hospitality industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of business confidence index (which is a measure of company managers' optimism and pessimism toward their near-future business performance) on demand for international business travels. The model is empirically tested for 40 countries from 2004 to 2016. Using the first-difference generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method, the results show that when managers of local businesses become more optimistic about their business performance, they travel more to other countries to search for more business opportunities in international markets. We also find that business confidence has a positive impact on outgoing business tourism expenditures. Our findings provide some important implications for tourism authorities and operators, macroeconomic policy makers, and airline managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growing body of research on the interface and relationship between transport and tourism, this research area remains undeveloped. Using Switzerland as a case study, the present study aims to investigate the level of integration between public transport and tourism companies, the enablers of their long-term cooperative relationship and outstanding performance, seen from the perspective of the public transport companies. A mixed methods approach is used to provide greater insights into how these companies cooperate with each other. Our findings suggest that public transport companies adopt different cooperative strategies with different types of partners. They are able to maintain long-term cooperative relationships due to strong cooperation in sales, a long tradition of cooperation, a high degree of involvement in national public organizations, and their central focus on the customer. Type of partner, sales, product design and pricing, and service provision have statistically significant effects on cooperative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referring to current phenomena and consumer behaviour in tourism, this article develops the concept of conspicuous non-consumption. It addresses the deliberate avoidance of (over)spending during holidays and states that this behaviour may be just as conspicuous and provide social signals that are just as strong as those connected to the consumption of expensive luxury goods. The conceptual development is based on a combination of the two dichotomies of 'consumption versus non-consumption' and 'conspicuous versus inconspicuous', resulting in four conceptually distinctive categories of behaviour: conspicuous consumption, conspicuous non-consumption, inconspicuous non-consumption and conspicuous non-consumption. The latter, conspicuous non-consumption, is of special interest in this article, exemplified through personal vignettes. Explorative readings of travel blogs lead to the identification of five themes that characterize conspicuous non-consumption in tourism: 'identity building', 'recycling, upcycling and repurposing', 'spiritualizing', 'retreating and detoxing' and 'slowing down'. Usually, tourism innovation policies are characterized by a ritual growth compulsion, and do not celebrate non-consumption, which is found to be synonymous with non-innovation. This is a paradox for the timely modernizing of tourist services and destinations. Increasingly, there is a need to reorient innovation and to give consideration to how the innovation of 'nothing' can also undergo a distinctive progression and even contribute positively to tourism economies. This article highlights the entry points for innovation at the tourism business and destination levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of the digital age seems to have displaced brick-and-mortar travel agencies. This implies that to be competitive, traditional travel agencies must reconfigure their business processes. Using the resource-based view as a theoretical paradigm predicting performance differentials, this article investigates the impact of dynamic capabilities on operational capabilities, and the way network resources, generally deriving from interfirm connections, moderate this relationship. The empirical research design uses a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis approach on a sample of traditional travel agencies. The findings, corroborated by a subsequent qualitative analysis, suggest that the dynamic capabilities unfolding from shifting the business processes from the outgoing to the incoming market segment, and from retailing to packaging tourism products, boost the competitiveness of brick-and-mortar travel agencies. However, while network resources positively support the shift from outgoing to incoming processes, they may hinder the shift from retailing to packaging processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International long-haul travel represents a distinct market segment with great potential. Yet, empirical studies on the stopover destination visits are limited. The current research is based on a web survey conducted among residents in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which are three of the world's top spenders and long-haul travel source markets. In this work, we examine tourist intentions to trade leisure time at a long-haul destination for a visit to a stopover destination. In particular, tourist preferences are analyzed as a function of traveler price sensitivity toward long-haul destinations, travel personality, activity engagement, motivation, travel profile, and demographic characteristics. Results provide insights into the under-researched topic of stopover tourism and guide aviation mega-cities toward an enhanced understanding of the potential demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a diagnostic tool to identify destinations "at risk" as a result of markets' interest or lack thereof in a place. "At risk" is used in a similar manner to the medical profession's use of the term "patients at risk" to identify those patients at risk of deterioration in order to trigger early intervention. Two situations are identified: market indifference, where markets as a whole show little interest in a destination, and destination dependence/market irrelevance, where destinations are overly reliant on markets that in the larger scheme of outbound travel show little interest in the destination. The study analyzed 162 destinations using UNWTO data. Almost 80 are affected potentially by one of these conditions. Most at-risk destinations are either small island countries, micro states, or countries with an underdeveloped tourism sector. Interestingly, no differences were found in the contribution tourism makes to GDP between seemingly at risk and not at risk places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customer resistance is the greatest risk to innovation for the entrepreneur. The aim of this exploratory study is to provide insights into this underdeveloped area in the tourism innovation literature. A qualitative approach is adopted to understand the resistance experienced by 57 entrepreneurs when introducing their innovations into the market, the causes and the actions taken to minimize resistance. Findings indicate that most entrepreneurs often encounter resistance from sceptical customers, satisfied with their status quo and with no or low appetites for innovation. The analysis reveals two main sources of resistance: the association of the innovations with particular risks, and the customers' lack of understanding of the innovation value. Communication strategies are crucial to decrease the associated risks and for trust building. The article provides a critical perspective on the challenges faced by innovators, challenges that are often overlooked given the near-iconic status of innovation in studies of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing number of critical events happening at tourism destinations, travelers engage in different strategies to reduce travel risks, and travel insurance purchase is one of these. However, little is known about travel insurance purchase behavior despite its relevance in the modern context of travelers' heightened alert induced by potential or actual risks of critical events. The present study applies an Integrated Choice and Latent Variable (ICLV) model to investigate individual insurance purchase decisions in a leisure travel context. A mix of sociodemographic covariates, travel-related behaviors, and psychological variables is adopted in the model. Personality traits are crucial for the purchase of products that are strongly related to the psychological dimension of individuals' choice behavior. The results show that personality traits of conscientiousness and neuroticism contribute to the determination of travel insurance purchase behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides empirical evidence of how tourism triggers economic growth from a meso-level structural perspective. It introduces a novel shift-share approach in accordance with the Lewis hypothesis to analyze the spillover effect of tourism on economic restructuring and sectoral labor productivity. The study demonstrates a hump-shaped positive structural spillover effect exerted by tourism onto economic growth and identifies the emergence of a new tourism-related industrialization in the showcased destination, the Zhangjiajie city in China. The study captures the interactions between tourism and the other sectors of the economy and contributes to an in-depth understanding of tourism's contribution to overall economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are acknowledged as an important information source that influences tourists' travel choices. However, qualitative studies that take an inductive approach to identify the roles of social media by investigating how social media affect travel choices are limited. By interviewing 21 tourists who had recently taken trips, this article aimed to identify the roles that social media played in the tourists' choices of six travel components (destination, transportation, accommodation, food and dining activities, attractions, as well as shopping and leisure activities). Four roles have been identified: Need Generator, Supporter, Guider and Approver. Theoretical and practical implications along with future research suggestions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invented traditions are worldmaking devices that mobilise places for tourism consumption. They are regularly used to project a tourist sense of otherness. However, they can also be sites of resistance and transgression in tourism. This article explores the transgressive potential of invented traditions as a locus of cultural change that challenges processes of othering in tourism. It reflects on the disruption of alterity with a case study of La Mucada, an invented rural tradition in Mallorca, which problematises the romantic categories through which the island is consumed by tourists. Invented traditions are reconsidered in relational terms as progressive spaces that can generate more partial, fluid or unfixed identifications. A performative understanding of transgression is proposed, emphasising the banal tourist ways in which epistemologies of difference are disrupted. Ludic transgressions also target other dichotomies, including stable notions of sexuality and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook is a popular social media platform used by both the demand and the supply sides of the tourism industry. Since there is a huge amount of information on the Internet, which can lead to information overload, individuals tend to apply the principle of least effort in attempting to obtain useful information as quickly and easily as possible. One of the easiest ways to retrieve travel information is by visiting the Facebook pages of destinations. This study investigates the foundations of the usefulness of Facebook Statistics: in particular of likes on DMO Facebook pages as a potential predictor of tourism demand, in addition to previous arrival numbers. In- and out-of-sample results show that the DMOs of Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and Vienna can already utilize likes as an expedient leading indicator for demand, albeit not the only one. These findings are recommended to be incorporated into the DMOs' marketing efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is one of the sectors of the economy that is most dependent on climate, creating multiple vulnerabilities and new opportunities arising with changing climate. Even though the links between tourism and climate have been well researched, this scientific knowledge has not percolated into policies and the ability to act. This disconnect between scientific knowledge and practices is frequently blamed on inadequate climate change communication to the public in mass media. We studied the mass media framing of climate change and tourism by analyzing English newspaper publications worldwide over the past 30 years. The paper presents a Big Data analysis of the content, geographical patterns, and temporal changes in newspapers' publications on climate change and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism productivity measures are quite diverse, not always compatible and usually based partly on labor productivity for hotels and restaurants. This article develops a holistic approach that integrates the principles of the growth accounting framework and tourism satellite account to measure multifactor productivity, labor productivity and capital productivity for the Australian tourism industry. This study shows that tourism has been identified as a reservoir for other industries through the ebbs and flows of labor demands. Compared with the rest of the economy, the average growth of labor productivity—that is, income per unit of labor—for tourism is stagnant, and has reached an unprecedented low, six times below the market sector average, mainly because of low multifactor productivity. The results are valuable for policy makers and the lobbying groups wanting to identify areas of need for policy changes to ensure the healthy long-term growth of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluctuations in the numbers of visitors directly affect the rates of return on tourism business activities. This article is the first to examine the spillover effects between the rate of change in the numbers of Chinese tourist arrivals and the rate of change in the numbers of international traveler arrivals. The study used daily data from January 1, 2014, to October 31, 2016, with 1,035 observations. The diagonal BEKK model was used to analyze the co-volatility spillover effects between the rate of change in the international travelers and the rate of change in the amount of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan. The empirical findings suggest that Taiwan should abandon its development strategy of focusing only on a single market, namely, China. Moreover, with the reduction in Chinese tour groups visiting Taiwan, and increases in individual travelers, the Taiwan Government should change its previous travel policies of mainly attracting Chinese tour group travelers and actively promote in-depth tourism among international tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on impact range performance analysis and impact asymmetry analysis, this study aims to (1) examine the asymmetric effect of shopping tourism attributes on shopping destination satisfaction from the perspective of Chinese tourists and (2) prioritize attributes by identifying them as frustrators, dissatisfiers, hybrids, satisfiers, and delighters. The asymmetric relationships between shopping tourism attributes and shopping destination satisfaction offer an expanded view of the dynamic effects of attributes, while destination-specific attributes allow the researchers to examine the unexplored roles of government promotions and Korean pop culture/media in shopping tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the ways in which, after its successful bid to host the 'mega event' of World Cup 2022, Qatar is branded as a sports tourism destination in the online semioscape and linguascape of sports events. The promotional multimodal digital material that Qatar has already released to launch its ambitious sports-related projects in both its English and Arabic versions is analysed from a critical perspective of multimodal discourse analysis and social semiotics, focusing on image making. This includes the strategic use of symbolic and material markers that construct Qatar as a distinctive destination offering its visitors high quality sports while also being good value for money as it brings the world to its visitors through sports, inter alia. Finally, the argument put forward is that Qatar constructs a politically appealing and distinctive campaign, oscillating between tradition-driven utopia and the remarkably transformed modern landscape of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) designation affects tourists' evaluation of the local destination hosting the site, building on a large sample of about 0.8 million tourists who visited Italy over the period 1997–2015. We find that the inscription onto the UNESCO World Heritage List exerts surprisingly a negative effect on the overall evaluation of the destination and also on the evaluation of its artistic assets though the magnitude of the latter is lower. The effect is heterogeneous across visitors, depending on evaluation levels, as well as origin/destinations and demographics. Nonetheless, the presence of multiple WHSs in the same destination tends to increase evaluation, suggesting that destination stakeholders with previous experience in dealing with WHS designations are better equipped to manage the complicated relationship between tourism and preservation. Managerial and policy-making implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), precisely the one of eradicating extreme poverty at the end of 2030, it is important to understand factors that can reduce poverty. This article examines the effects of tourism development on poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries. Because of the possibility of an endogeneity problem arising from a reverse causation that might exist between poverty and the explanatory variables, the system Generalized Method of Moments (system GMM) estimation technique was deployed. The findings showed that tourism development contributes to poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In other words, the results obtained provided ample support for the workability of a pro-poor tourism policy agenda. As a result, policies that are targeted at increasing the attractiveness and awareness of the existing SSA tourism sites in order to increase international tourism receipts and arrivals should be promoted since such interventions have considerable poverty reduction potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airbnb has gained popularity as an alternative to hotels, with the authenticity of the consumption experience being a critical differentiating factor. However, the hospitality and tourism literature has not fully explored how Airbnb and traditional hotel brands are facilitating authentic travel experiences and the impact of these experiences on brand love and brand loyalty. In this study, we explore three elements of consumption authenticity and examine their how they interact in the context of an accommodation brand. Second, we compare the components of consumption authenticity across hotels and Airbnb, and examine their relative impact on brand love for these two segments of the accommodations industry. We found that hotels and Airbnb draw upon different sources of authenticity to create brand-loving customers. Our results indicated that Airbnb leverages brand, existential, and intrapersonal authenticity in creating brand-loving and brand-loyal customers, while hotels utilize only brand authenticity. Thus, the keys to creating customers who love and are loyal to the brand differ between hotels and Airbnb. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and areas of future research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine whether decomposed search engine data can be used to improve the forecasting accuracy of tourism demand. The methodology was applied to predict monthly tourist arrivals from nine countries to Hong Kong. Search engine data from Google Trends were first decomposed into different components using an ensemble empirical mode decomposition method and then the cyclical components were examined through statistical analysis. Forecasting models with rolling window estimation were implemented to predict the tourist arrivals to Hong Kong. Results indicate the proposed methodology can outperform the benchmark model in the out-of-sample forecasting evaluation of Choi and Varian (2012). The findings also demonstrate that our proposed methodology is superior in forecasting turning points. This study proposes a unique decomposition-based perspective on tourism forecasting using online search engine data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While travel for physical well-being has long been a practice, medical tourism is an emerging phenomenon characterized by medical care combined with holiday-making activities. The medical tourism industry has rapidly grown due to exponential growth in the number of medical tourists worldwide. Despite this upsurge in practice, less research attention has been devoted to exploring the experience and perceptions of medical tourists toward the wide range of services available to them at medical destinations. This article conceptualizes a construct called "medical tourism experience" and develops a scale that measures it. A rigorous scale development procedure is employed, and four studies are conducted. Seven dimensions of this construct are explored, namely, treatment quality, medical service quality, medical tourism expense, medical tourism infrastructure, destination appeal, destination culture, and ease of access. The results reveal considerable opportunity for marketers and policy makers to increase the attractiveness of medical destinations and gain sustainable competitive advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes cruise tourism seasonality in Southern Europe, assessing the seasonal concentration levels by means of the Gini index. The additive decomposition of this index is used to evaluate the contribution of each port to the global seasonal concentration in the regions where they are located. It also allows the estimation of marginal relative effects to identify the most propitious ports for reducing seasonality within the Mediterranean regions. The analysis is complemented by estimating the seasonal patterns of each port. Given the significant heterogeneity revealed in the regions analyzed, a bootstrapped bagged clustering is applied to classify the ports into homogeneous groups according to their seasonal patterns. The techniques used form a methodological framework that serves as a control and monitoring tool for measuring seasonal concentration levels in cruise tourism, allowing for policies against seasonality to be tailored for this segment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]