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This study provides a methodological contribution in the analysis of tourists' sustainable behaviour. Traditional methods encounter challenges in addressing the attitude-behaviour gap, prompting the need for new approaches. Using diverse big data sources, the paper introduces a novel methodology for analysing real behaviour patterns, extending Social Network Analysis techniques. The aim is to identify sustainable behaviours that ease overcrowding, distribute visitor flows, and optimize economic diversification. The methodology is valuable for local authorities in monitoring tourist behaviours, aiding in informed decision-making for a more sustainable approach to tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Officially branding local heritage through recognised labels is a strategy that regions can use to promote economic development. Regions increasingly seek more sustainable tourism development, which can be captured by the quality of local tourist service development. This paper examines whether the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) label is associated with local tourism development of a higher quality and offers the first comparative study across European regions. Using TripAdvisor reviews of over 38,000 European locations, our results reveal a positive correlation between WHS labelling and measures of perceived quality and breadth of local tourist services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the tourism sector, sustainability has become a principal goal in destination management to strengthen the competitiveness and attractiveness of destinations. However, when it comes to sustainability, there is no absolute scale to conduct spatial analysis. In this article, we propose regions as a unit of analysis for sustainability assessments. Our empirical approach aims to assign regional variability to national indicators, which would make it possible to achieve a good compromise between data availability and comparability and the value of scaling down to consider local details. This approach would enable combining rich information sets based on existing indicators with the wide availability of quantitative regional indicators freely obtainable from official statistics sources, such as Eurostat. Using the Tourism & Travel Competitiveness Index framework as a starting point, we develop regional sustainability indicators for the 281 NUTS-2 European regions. Therefore, this article contributes to the regionalisation of national indicators, which enables monitoring not only the individual level of destination sustainability but also its standing among all other European regions. Moreover, we develop a practical tool for continuously monitoring and benchmarking EU regions' sustainable development, which can assist stakeholders in their decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disparities, inequalities as well as the different trajectories of social and economic development that still characterize the regions of the EU today demonstrate the importance of a debate on the spatial dimension of European policies. This paper analyses the implications of strengthening the spatial dimension in the different EU programs, highlighting the importance of the concept of territorial cohesion and the role that a strategic sector such as tourism can play in implementing this concept. Therefore, the added value of tourism and the potential of territorial cohesion should play an important role in future European policies and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murano, an island in Venetian Lagoon, is world-renowned for its historical glassmaking industry. In the last decades, similarly to what is happening in central Venice, Murano has seen a significant decrease in its population and a reduction of its traditional activities, both being connected to broader tourism gentrification dynamics. Prompted by this, the authors devised and circulated a wide-ranging questionnaire that aimed to investigate the economic, social, and territorial factors affecting people's quality of life on the island. The questionnaire was completed by almost 15% of Murano's residents and one aspect that it captured was various inhabitants' perceptions of issues concerned with tourism gentrification, which we analysed using Cocola-Gant's (2018) concepts of residential, commercial, and place-based displacement. We found that Muranese residents these dynamics most keenly when they impact their daily life on the island, and they are concerned about the loss of the identity of places they know and live in. We conclude by affirming that this situation is not irreversible, and that policy makers can act to address it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to design effective responses to the complex phenomenon of overtourism, the tourism carrying capacity (TCC) of a destination is an essential reference point. This paper provides in-depth analysis of this correlation through the case study of Dubrovnik. The study applies a TCC calculation model that is able to quantitatively include the main effects of overtourism. The paper illustrates how these results can be used to automate specific decongestion policies by conceptualising a digital response system for real-time intervention to mitigate the undesirable effects of overtourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the precedent set by the Tourism Observatory (TO) run by the European Commission-DG GROW a few years ago, several initiatives have taken place to design and manage tourism observatories at both the transnational and local level. However, these initiatives do not yet seem able to provide adequate operational responses to the challenges that the Commission launched with the original TO. While the opportunities offered by the Web 2.0 still do not seem to have been sufficiently taken advantage of, such initiatives also have not yet developed suitable methodologies to operationally include the tourism industry in the studies and monitoring performed by the TOs. Th is work presents the lesion learnt from the ShapeTourism prototype including two diff erent tools: an observatory with official and unofficial indicators, and a simulation tool to predict diff erent scenarios and diff erent sustainability levels, designed specifically to overcome the aforementioned limits. The prototype was tested in 2017 on the entire eligible area of the 2014-2020 MED Programme covering 52 regions. The potentialities of this tool are shown through the creation on indicators, benchmarking and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of social media and Web 2.0 has a notable impact upon the tasks of destination managers as these platforms have developed into influential mechanisms affecting tourist behaviour. This paper shows how Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) can reap the benefits of the Web 2.0 revolution as it serves as an important source of user-generated information, bringing novel opportunities for data-driven destination management. To test the applicability of user-generated content for destination management, this paper analyses restaurant reviews from five Flemish art cities which were retrieved from the Web 2.0 platform TripAdvisor. Getis-Ord hot spot analysis revealed spatial clusters of frequently ('hot spots') and rarely ('cold spots') reviewed restaurants in four out of the five art cities. By comparing these spatial patterns, the digital footprints of tourists were uncovered and discussed with DMO directors. Found patterns appeared to reflect local policies aimed either at concentrating tourism, as in Bruges, the city with the most prominent hot spot, or spreading tourism over time and space as seen in Antwerp and Ghent where less prominent hot spots were present. The visualization proved to be a valuable input when discussing tourism management and fuelled the sharing of knowledge between the destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overtourism problems, anti-tourist movements and negative externalities of tourism are popular research approaches and are key concepts to better understand the sustainable development of tourism destinations. In many of the overtourism narratives, Venice is considered to be one of the most relevant cases of overtourism and therefore has become a laboratory for studying the different conflicts that emerge when tourism numbers continue to grow and the quality of the tourism flow continues to decline. This article is therefore focusing on Venice and on one of the possible solutions to mitigate the negative impacts of tourism represented by the concept of a tourist carrying capacity (TCC) in an urban destination. The aim of this paper is to discuss alternative methodologies regarding the calculation of the TCC, and to apply a fuzzy instead of a 'crisp' linear programming model to determine the scenarios of a sustainable number of tourists in the cultural destination of Venice, looking for the optimal compromise between, on the one hand, the wish of maximizing the monetary gain by the local tourism sectors and, on the other, the desire to control the undesirable effects that tourism exerts on a destination by the local population. To solve the problems related to tourism statistics and data availability, some uncertainty in the parameters has been included using fuzzy numbers. The fuzziness in the model was introduced on the basis of questionnaires distributed among both tourists and residents. By applying the fuzzy linear programming model to the emblematic case of Venice, it was shown that this approach can indeed help destinations to understand the challenges of sustainable tourism development better, to evaluate the impact of alternative policies of overtourism on the sustainability of tourism, and hence, to help design a strategy to manage tourist flows more adequately [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venice is one of the most famous iconic destinations and one of the most emblematic cases of overtourism affecting a historic city. Here, social movements against tourism have emerged as a reaction to vastly unsustainable tourist flows that have had dramatic and transformational impacts on Venetians' lives. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism transforms the social, cultural, and everyday geographies of the city. The effects of tourism on the historic city are conceived as a process of continuous transformation and repositioning. Taking into consideration the most tangible daily practices of tourists (eating, sleeping, and buying) and the finer dynamics of Venice's tourism problem, we translate data on these practices into a temporal and spatial analysis to better understand how dynamic the texture of the city is in relation to the tourism subsystem. A comparison between 2008 and 2019 is conducted to evaluate the impact of tourism on residential uses of the city and measure the sustainability of growth of the tourism facilities. The investigation highlighted an impressive accommodation's growth, from 8.249 in 2008 to 49.260 in 2019 of bed places (497% growth) in the entire historical city, a similar expansion is also evident in the total number of restaurants that has increased by 160% in all districts and a variations of 4% in shops instead of a population decline of −13% in the same period. In addition, a residents' survey in spring 2019 was conducted to better understand the intensity of these impacts and the motives for depopulation and the anti-tourism movements. We focus on how tourism, if not managed and planned, radically changes the social and urban structures of the city and the lives of local residents. We conclude by presenting some local theoretical and practical insights into the touristic pressure, provided by citizens' associations on one side and policymakers on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]