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Regionalism as a cognitive paradigm, explains the essence and principles of cooperation between the country (national) and global (supranational) levels of organization of world space. In tourism development the modern concept of regionalism processes of the formation of large multi-dimensional spaces and other territorial groupings (e.g. regional intra-state communities) that have a common cultural code, seeking the most effective use of internal and external factors of tourism development. This may be achieved by constructing a polycentric regional tourism architecture, reorganizing as well as boosting regional tourism and investment patterns being the vital challenge. In this paper analysis is focused on designing a polycentric network of regional tourism destinations related to Silk Road cultural heritage, where interregional tourism alliances will connect regions through entrepreneurial connectivity, based on the notion of polycentricity. Polycentricity indicates the connection of neighboring centres that have common characteristics, and their integration in wider spatial networks. Τhe interest is focused on cross-border linkages among polycentric regional networks of Silk Road cultural heritage destinations, creating tourism development entrepreneurial networks that could take advantage of historically cumulative relations. These polycentric tourism networks may emerge due to a number of factors falling under the rubric of Silk Road regionalisation and its attendant tourism dimensions. The potential for building an interregional Black Sea Silk Road tourism cooperation polycentric network focusing on active societies engaging in new types of cultural tourism experiences is being put in place.

Cultural heritage, considered as a tool for sustainable tourism development and place branding, makes a destination appealing to visitors, hence, cultural heritage tourism can be a driving force for economic growth in cities and regions. Polycentricity is a useful multi-scalar concept in spatial theory that describes how adjacent urban centers can interact with each other, creating synergies and generating broader spatial networks. Cultural heritage and tourism, perceived as important factors of integration in a polycentric spatial structure, can further promote regional branding strategies. In this paper, a polycentricity index is introduced as a methodological tool for networking cultural heritage destinations, with an application to the Silk Road heritage. Silk Road cultural assets traced on the historical Silk Road routes linking East and West, can serve as tourist attraction poles and as an essential component for branding destinations through networking at various spatial scales. The Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece, endowed with a plethora of Silk Road cultural assets, most of which are still untapped, is used to highlight the proposed methodology. The ultimate objective is the designation of polycentric destination networks based on Silk Road assets, in order to build regional branding opportunities over the Region.

Hebei province is a one of the most typically representative cultural destinations in China with abundant high-quality cultural heritage resources rooting from its more than 4000-year history. However, Hebei has still not evolved into a distinctive cultural brand in the tourism market even though lots of funds have been allocated and invested in tourism. The question thus is how to gradually build a successful cultural tourism brand vital to Hebei province. This paper first extracts the successful components from previous studies, and using France as the most celebrated cultural destination with the largest international tourism arrivals, comparisons are then made with Hebei from the perspective of destination branding of cultural tourism. Finally, given the practical conditions of Hebei and actual tourism needs of segment market, the paper proposes a conceptual brand-building model of Hebei cultural tourism.

The aim of this article is to develop a tourism (Carrying Capacity Indicator) for protected areas that could assist regional planners and park managers to promote an equitable form of the spatial distribution of visitors environmentally sensitive area, various indicators have been proposed, with regard to ecologically sustainable tourism. In this paper, we examine the unequal distribution of visitors to a protected area that causes significant additional environmental pressure on some sub-areas. This additional pressure, which may exceed the landscape's carrying capacity, cannot be measured by the commonly used indices that represent an average for the whole area. Our objective is to depict the variability of pressure intensity within a protected area. For this purpose we introduce an indicator adjusted to the Gini co-efficient resulting from the Lorenz curve, used by economists to measure the unequal distribution of income. The proposed indicator is applied to the Mount Olympus National Park, Gr...

Decentralisation is a complex, yet basic feature of health care systems in many countries entailing the transfer of authority or dispersal of power in public planning, management and decision making from higher to lower levels of government. This paper describes the attempts made in Greece from 1923 until today to decentralise its highly centralised health care system, drawing on a thorough documentary analysis of legislative acts and official reports regarding regional health policy. The analysis shows that, although decentralisation has been attempted on several occasions, in the end it was abandoned every time. The first ever implementation of a decentralised system of governance in 2001 was also curtailed, resulting in only minor decentralisation of authority and real powers. It is suggested that decentralisation has been impeded by many factors, especially obstruction by opposition from key interest groups, absence of policy continuity between governments, the inability to tackle the bureaucratic and highly centralised system and lack of political will.

As the most important component, tourist destination quality is the key to success in tourism development. Now, with the fast development of tourism, people are increasingly aware of the irreplaceable roles of marketing and management in improving the quality of tourist destination. However, few studies focus on the relations between the two elements which are vital to the sustainable development of tourism destination. Actually, there is a close relation between the tourist destination marketing and tourist destination management due to the basic facts: (1) intrinsic need for cooperation; (2) similar challenges and purposes. Specifically, the relations can be summarized into nine types: form and content; media and object; tool and aim; prelude and extension; for popularity and for reputation; on tourist and on destination; out driving force and inner driving force; superficial decoration and fundamental core; part and system. Meanwhile, four factors cannot be ignored in studying these relations, namely, life cycle, attributes of destination, tourist's characteristics, and development orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of revitalized historic urban waterfronts as potential creative milieus attracting creative tourists. Waterfront redevelopment raises issues concerning an extensive range of urban planning and management perspectives, extending from space design to economic, environmental, cultural, and tourism considerations. The paper first reviews the ways in which the relationship between waterfronts and urban functions of port-cities has evolved over time, before turning to the examination of historic waterfronts’ redevelopment as creative milieus to host creative industries. The agglomeration of creative industries, cultural organizations and venues, and recreational facilities in urban spaces is widely recognized to generate a dynamic urban culture attracting a new wave of “creative tourists”, which do not fit to the mainstream cultural tourism behavior, and prefer to visit lively creative spaces based, not only on heritage, but also on contemporary culture. In this paper, the analysis focuses on how historic revitalized waterfronts can act as creative milieus, based on port-cities’ genius loci as cosmopolitan places of intercultural communication, offering a new alternative approach to urban cultural tourism and hopefully functioning as a spin wheel for the regeneration of the urban economy.

Insular regions, whether they are large islands or complexes of small islands, being strictly bounded regions have geographical characteristics that differentiate them from mainland regions: land discontinuity, distance from the mainland and sparse location at sea. These characteristics constitute factors of spatial inequality, which increases in relation to the insular problems.

Cultural events such as festivals are emerging worldwide as a dynamic sector of the tourism and leisure industries with significant economic, social, cultural and political impacts on the destination area. Their economic importance stems from the expenditure of the attendants that filters through the local economy of the host community. This paper seeks to explore the degree to which economic benefits generated by film festivals are spread out evenly around the festival venues within the host community. The paper uses a business survey technique to assess the direct economic impact of a film festival on the local leisure business sector. The 2008 Thessaloniki International Film Festival is used as a case study in order to provide empirical evidence for an uneven economic impact over space. The paper makes use of primary data to determine the spatial extent of the festival’s economic benefits within the Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area.