Tourists′ local buses ridership and pandemic resilience: a smart card data analysis in Southern Catalonia

The Zanzibar tourism sector has been one of the most affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The restrictions on mobility and closures of companies in the global economy, either totally or partially in the 2020-2022 period, have had a significant negative effect on the tourism sector performance. The paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the main tourism sector systems, areas and activities in Zanzibar. The paper uses a policy model articulating effects of COVID-19 on socio-economic human developments as cascading across economic entities, sectors and activities. This policy research employed several independent but complementary research methods, approaches and collected primary data and information using stakeholder’s consultations and in-depth interviews with key informants. The paper finds that half of the consulted stakeholders had the view that the COVID-19 had high negative effects on the performances of the Zanzibar tourism sector activities and areas. A quarter, considered that COVID-19 had moderate effects and another quarter, considered that COVID-19 had low effects on the performances of the tourism sector activities and areas. The safety and security, foreign exchange earnings, the accommodation sector, and income/revenues were perceived as mostly negatively affected the tourism industry and its counterpart sector areas. The effects of COVID-19 pandemic were less and insignificant in some few tourism activities and areas such as the tourism infrastructure sector, the environment tourism sector and the domestic tourism in Zanzibar. The paper recommends that Zanzibar continue envisioning being one of the top tourism destinations of the Indian Ocean, offering an up market and high quality product across the board. The current tourism sustainable development policy objectives aim at controlling and improving safety and security, optimal foreign exchange earnings systems; modern tourism accommodation systems and efficient income/revenue flows from the tourism sector and industry. The tourism sector is a vital socio-economic development factor; empowering the people of Zanzibar to successfully own, manage and operate their life and thus simultaneously develop, plan, own, manage and promote national economic systems, activities and areas.

Climate change, unsustainable water use by the tourism sector, and short-term-based decisions by policymakers create additional stress on limited water resources in arid and semi-arid tourism destinations. Non-conventional water resources are playing an important role in making additional water available for these destinations, and the use of desalination plants has gradually increased. However, they can create additional externalities on the environment that can compromise the sustainability of the tourist destination. The decisions of key stakeholders and cooperation among them hold vital importance for the sustainability of tourism and the availability of water resources. Mykonos Island (Greece) is a globally recognized tourist destination in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The island has suffered significant water-scarcity problems in recent years, in particular during the peak tourist season, and desalination plants are being built to reduce stress on the water supply. The first objective of this work was to analyze the perceptions of hospitality stakeholders regarding water shortages and climate change in Mykonos. A second objective was to assess whether the same hospitality stakeholders feel that desalination plants are the solution to water scarcity in island-tourism destinations such as Mykonos. The results show that (i) hospitality stakeholders have significant awareness regarding water-scarcity problems and the impacts of climate change on tourism activity, (ii) they do not view desalination plants as the only solution to water scarcity, and (iii) they perceive a significant lack of coordination among actors who participate in the decision-making process. These results provide clues regarding the importance of awareness, coordination, and cooperation of each actor involved in the decision-making process and can be of interest to policymakers and public authorities in tourism destinations facing water-scarcity problems.

Examining public transport usage by older adults with smart card data: A longitudinal study in Japan

The outbreak of COVID-19 has made a profound impact on mobility, especially for public transport users. Extensive research has been conducted on the change of travel patterns in major cities where public transport systems have been well developed and heavily used. However, in small cities, the public transport network is relatively sparse, especially in suburban areas, which makes the corresponding travel patterns differ from those in major cities. Therefore, proper investigation of the public transport usage in such small cities is still needed, especially under the COVID-19 impact. This paper aims to reveal the change of public transport users' travel patterns based on a comparative study of public transport usage Pre-COVID and during the COVID-19 period. The Illawarra, a coastal region close to Sydney in Australia is used as a case study. Smart card data is used to reveal relevant changes in both intraregion (in the Illawarra) and inter-region (between the Illawarra and Sydney) travels in consideration of heterogeneous user groups. The results show a significant decrease (around 47 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">%</sup> ) in public transport ridership by both train and bus. However, compared to intra-region ridership, the inter-region trips by train drop much more (around 62%). Moreover, heterogeneous age group passengers show different changes after the COVID-19 outbreak. The research findings are expected to provide valuable suggestions for policy making and public transport service adjustment when a similar crisis occurs again.

Securing public transportation ridership is critical for developing a sustainable urban future. However, many modern and growing cities are facing declines in public transport usage. Existing systems for analyzing and identifying weaknesses in public transport connections face major limitations. In cities, origin-destination (OD) matrices--which measure the flow of people between different geographical regions--are often generated using household surveys, which are time consuming and lack spatial and temporal accuracy. Focus in more recent research has been drawn towards using cellphones to overcome these limitations. In this article, we show that urban mobility patterns and transport mode choices can be derived from cellphone call detail records coupled with public transport data recorded from smart cards. Specifically, we present new methods to determine the spatial and temporal variability of public and private transportation usage and transport mode preferences across the dense, metropolitan city-state of Singapore.The cellphone dataset consists of location data of 3.4 million anonymized users of SingTel, Singapore's largest telecommunications company with a market share of 45.3%. The data were recorded during a two-month period from mid-March to mid-May 2011. A call detail record (CDR) includes the location (spatial resolution of 400 m) of the cell tower each cellphone connects to and was created in the case of following network events:• a phone call was initiated or received (at the beginning and at the end of the call).• a short message was sent or received.• the cellphone user accessed the data network (for example, to open a website or retrieve emails).By applying a clustering detection algorithm to these call detail records, we detect individual trips and extrapolate the overall mobility of people between the 55 administrative districts of Singapore (taking into account the market share of SingTel and the cellphone penetration of 144 %). The mode share of private transport usage is then derived by computing the difference between the estimated overall mobility and the traces of 4.4 million public transportation smart card users during the same time period.We validate out data mining approach using the results from Singapore's Household Interview Travel Survey (HITS): Our results revealed that there are 3.5 million (HITS: 3.5 million) inter-district trips by public transport and 4.3 million (HITS: 4.4 million) inter-district trips by private transport (including taxis). Private transport usage dominates in regions without access to a subway line (see Figure 1). Along with classifying which transportation connections are weak or underserved---where people prefer to take private rather than public transport---the analysis shows that the mode share of public transport increases from 38% in the morning to 44% around mid-day and 52% in the evening.The value of deriving such patterns using cellphone call detail records have important implications not only for urban and transportation planning, but also for other domains such as disease control in cities. As humans serve as the primary and secondary vectors of many infectious diseases, understanding from where people arrive and depart and by which transportation modes people are traveling, we have the potential to model how and where diseases might be spreading and from where they might originate.

The article considers the issues of further development of the conceptual apparatus of such a direction as recreation and tourism and the question of determining the various directions and components of recreation and tourism economy. The purpose of this work is to identify the main components of recreational and tourist activity as an integral part of the inter-sectoral complex. It is stressed that tourism activity can be viewed from the standpoint of the economy, because it has all the features of the economy, although this approach is not widespread. It is also possible to study the recreation and tourism sector as a type of economic activity. Recreational and tourist activity is considered as a service market, both as a social system and as an economic system. It was emphasized that in geography and regional economy, recreational and tourist activity is considered as an inter-sectoral complex. A pivotal problem is the definition of objects and entities in systemic relations, where, depending on the nature of the system, tourists can act as objects and subjects. It was established that the formation of the subject area of recreational and tourist activity is based on geographical concepts, including the concept of «touristdestination», the concept of territorial organization of the population and economy, the concept of territorial recreational systems. The position of geographers in the development of the subject area of tourism enhances resource orientation of tourism activity; we note that the resource is both population and tourist destinations. In the article we considered the Ukrainian taxonomy of types of economic activities, which are directly involved in tourism and recreation. It is determined that tourism and recreation sector occupy a special place in the sphere of services. In essence, tourist services are multi–component, and the tourist product itself combines the result of the activities of enterprises that carry out completely different activities. The schematically structured recreation and tourism complex by types of activities indicates the formation of areas of economic activity and industry directly related to recreation and tourism, such as mass recreation of the population – unorganized and organized, and tourism, the sphere of recreation. Thus, the representation ofrecreation and tourism activity as an inter-branch complex offers new possibilities for forecasting its development and formation of new directions of use of recreational and tourist resources.

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has changed travel behaviour and reduced the use of public transport throughout the world, but the reduction has not been uniform. In this study we analyse the propensity to stop travelling by public transport during COVID-19 for the holders of 1.8 million smart cards in Stockholm, Sweden, for the spring and autumn of 2020. We suggest two binomial logit models for explaining the change in travel pattern, linking socioeconomic data per area and travel data with the probability to stop travelling.Modelled variablesThe first model investigates the impact of the socioeconomic factors: age; income; education level; gender; housing type; population density; country of origin; and employment level. The results show that decreases in public transport use are linked to all these factors.The second model groups the investigated areas into five distinct clusters based on the socioeconomic data, showing the impacts for different socioeconomic groups. During the autumn the differences between the groups diminished, and especially Cluster 1 (with the lowest education levels, lowest income and highest share of immigrants) reduced their public transport use to a similar level as the more affluent clusters.ResultsThe results show that socioeconomic status affect the change in behaviour during the pandemic and that exposure to the virus is determined by citizens’ socioeconomic class. Furthermore, the results can guide policy into tailoring public transport supply to where the need is, instead of assuming that e.g. crowding is equally distributed within the public transport system in the event of a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed travel behaviour and reduced the use of public transport throughout the world, but the reduction has not been uniform. In this study we analyse the propensity to stop traveling by public transport during COVID-19 for the holders of 1.8 million smart cards in Stockholm, Sweden, for the spring and autumn of 2020. We suggest two models for explaining the change in travel pattern, linking socioeconomic data per area and travel data with the probability to stop traveling. The first model analyses the impact of the socioeconomic factors: age; income; education level; gender; housing type; population density; country of origin; and employment level. The results show that decreases in public transport use are linked to areas with a population of high socioeconomic status (e.g. income levels, owned houses and high employment levels). The second model groups the investigated areas into five distinct clusters based on the socioeconomic data: Rural, Working Class, Impoverished, Garden Suburbs and Central. During spring, residents in the Rural group were most likely to continue traveling, followed by the Impoverished, Working Class, Garden Suburbs and Central. During fall the differences between the groups diminished, and especially the Impoverished group reduced their public transport use to a similar level as the Garden Suburbs group. The results show that socioeconomic status affect the change in behaviour during the pandemic and that exposure to the virus is determined by citizens’ socioeconomic class. Furthermore, the results can guide policy into tailoring public transport supply to where the need is, instead of assuming that e.g. crowding is equally distributed within the public transport system in the event of a pandemic.

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted urban life, including long-lasting changes in public transportation usage patterns. This study investigates how behavioral shifts in public transport ridership after the pandemic have influenced urban air quality. Materials and Methods The research analyzed data from eight major European cities: Paris, Berlin, Athens, Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Istanbul, and London. A Public Transport Usage Index (PTUI) was developed based on five key behavioral factors affecting public transport use post-COVID. The relationship between this index and air quality was statistically examined by calculating the correlation between PTUI and the post-pandemic Air Quality Index (AQI). Results A strong negative correlation (r = -0.9304) was identified between the PTUI and AQI, indicating that increased public transport use is associated with improved air quality. All cities showed this trend, except Berlin, where the pattern deviated. Notably, cities with higher PTUI scores experienced more significant reductions in pollution indicators such as PM2.5 and NO2. Discussion These results underscore the role of sustainable public transport usage in mitigating urban air pollution. The findings align with existing literature emphasizing modal shift as a key strategy in urban environmental improvement. However, the study is limited by potential variations in data reporting standards across cities and by short-term observational scope. Conclusion This study demonstrates that post-pandemic behavioral changes in public transport usage have had a measurable impact on urban air quality. The findings offer valuable insight for urban planners and policymakers seeking to design resilient, health-conscious transportation systems that support long-term environmental sustainability.

From an economic point of view, the tourism sector is one of the most important in the world with religious tourism, such as pilgrimages, being a growth area. Tourism activities also make a significant contribution to CO2 emissions (roughly 8% of the world's carbon emissions). In this framework, the main objective of this research is to develop an integrated sustainable model by assessing the impact of pilgrimages to the Camino Lebaniego (Lebaniego Way) in the Cantabrian region, which is one of the most popular routes in northern Spain. To do this, it is necessary to quantify the environmental impacts of this activity since this is a key element in establishing appropriate and effective environmental management programmes. This study uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, focused on the Carbon Footprint (CF) impact category, to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of this activity considering ‘a pilgrim who completes the route in three days’ as the selected functional unit (FU). In addition, the sub-sectors of accommodation, food and beverages, and waste management are taken into account. Following this route generated a total of 13.69 kg CO2 eq./FU, of which accommodation and the services offered there contributed almost 71.47%, food was 17.08%, and waste management 11.45%. The evening meal and propane consumption were the hotspots in the hostel, accounting for almost 74% of the total impact, so alternatives were proposed to reduce the impacts associated with these. In terms of transport, it was found that for the same destination, it was better to use a car rather than a plane, because the associated CO2 emissions were lower. Finally, these aspects are discussed and improvement measures for reducing GHG emissions are proposed, involving the introduction of good practices and environmental commitments from the pilgrims themselves, as well as enterprises and local communities. Ecolabels and environmental certifications should become a key tool for sending this signal to the market as should the use of public transport to the destination, among other actions. Ultimately, religious and nature tourism seems to be on the upturn, and it is likely that pilgrimage routes could be the next post-COVID travel trend.

Profiling tourists' use of public transport through smart travel card data

Spatial spillovers of tourism activity on housing markets: the case of Croatia

Bogor is popular for its tourist destinations among visitors. With the increasing number of domestic tourist arrivals, especially from the surrounding areas and Bogor itself, the availability of adequate public transportation is a must to support the tourism industry in the city. However, tourists prefer to use private vehicles for a visit that contributes to the increasingly severe traffic jams, especially in tourist destinations. This study aims to identify the preferences of tourist groups of public transport users and find out what factors drive them to use public transport in tourist areas. This study took place in Bogor Botanical Gardens and collected questionnaires from 401 respondents, meanwhile statistical analysis used was non-parametric chi-square test and confirmatory factor analysis. The result shows demographic factors affect the preferences of the use of public transportation, the difference in the level of satisfaction of tourists group of public transport users (regular users, infrequent users, and low users) to public transportation services in Bogor, and the similarity of main factors driving each group of tourists to use public transportation to do tourist activities in Bogor.

Bogor is popular for its tourist destinations among visitors. With the increasing number of domestic tourist arrivals, especially from the surrounding areas and Bogor itself, the availability of adequate public transportation is a must to support the tourism industry in the city. However, tourists prefer to use private vehicles for a visit that contributes to the increasingly severe traffic jams, especially in tourist destinations. This study aims to identify the preferences of tourist groups of public transport users and find out what factors drive them to use public transport in tourist areas. This study took place in Bogor Botanical Gardens and collected questionnaires from 401 respondents, meanwhile statistical analysis used was non-parametric chi-square test and confirmatory factor analysis. The result shows demographic factors affect the preferences of the use of public transportation, the difference in the level of satisfaction of tourists group of public transport users (regular users, infrequent users, and low users) to public transportation services in Bogor, and the similarity of main factors driving each group of tourists to use public transportation to do tourist activities in Bogor.

Tourism development is the key to the success of Mojokerto Regency as a developing city, which is able to transform Mojokerto Regency as a tourism destination as well as a tourist destination. The development strategy in Mojokerto district which was developed based on tourism destinations is closely related to the concept of defense economics so that it places the community as the main actor. The problem that then arises is that tourism development has implications for the welfare of the people of Mojokerto Regency. The trend of increasing local original income over the last five years has enabled the potential of the Mojokerto Regency tourism sector as an alternative for alleviating poverty as well as increasing community welfare. The research aims to analyze new tourism objects in Mojokerto Regency as well as increasing new economic sectors through tourism activities in each sub-district in the Mojokerto City area. The research used qualitative methods through interviews and observations at Mojokerto Regency Government levels as a tourist destination as well as group discussions with residents. The research results show that the tourism sector contributes to the welfare of Mojokerto Regency, especially equal distribution of income as well as regional cash income, however the facilities and infrastructure as well as tourism infrastructure still need to continue to be improved so as to attract more visitors to Mojokerto Regency.