International Tourism Research Research Articles

THEORETICAL BASICS OF INTERNATIONAL TOURISM RESEARCH

The article is devoted to the study of the theoretical foundations of international tourism research. It is noted that foreign experience can help the tourism industry of other countries to attract foreign investments, create new jobs and improve the quality of tourist services. The essence of the concept of “international tourism” has been defined. The socio-economic prerequisites for the development of international tourism have been studied. It is noted that tourism is one of the most dynamically developing branches of the world economy, which makes a significant contribution to the social, cultural and economic development of countries. Ukraine, as a large Eastern European country, has a powerful tourism potential, but it is not yet fully utilized. The relevance of the study of the development of tourism in Ukraine based on the European experience is the need to evaluate and adapt the best practices of the tourism industry, which are successfully applied in the European Union and other countries. The introduction of European experience can contribute to the effective development of tourism in Ukraine, attracting more foreign tourists, increasing the amount of foreign exchange earnings and raising the standard of living of the population. In this diploma work, we propose to conduct a detailed analysis of the European experience in the field of tourism and explore the possibilities of its implementation in Ukraine. The research is aimed at identifying advanced strategies and tools for tourism development that could be successfully adapted to Ukrainian conditions. The object of research is international tourism. The subject of the study is the experience of the development of international tourism. Consequently, the consequences of globalization and growing international cooperation have become essential for the development of international tourism in EU countries. Socio-economic preconditions play an important role in stimulating and supporting this sector, which has become a key driver of economic growth and cultural exchange in the EU.

Tourism Knowledge Domains of Chinese and International Research

Tourism knowledge domain has always been one of the appealing topics in tourism academic circle. This paper extracted author-selected keywords from 4788 articles published from 2012 to 2021 in four authoritative journals: Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Tribune. These keywords were coded according to “research areas”, “research objects”, “research methods”, and “research disciplines”, and a statistical analysis was carried out regarding the frequency, quantity, average frequency, and frequency variance of each category of the keywords. A total of 3459 Chinese keywords and 9128 English keywords formed the basis of this analysis. According to the findings, China is the most frequently studied geographical region in the international tourism research. The application of qualitative methods in the Chinese tourism research is less frequent than that in the international research, and the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods has become an important trend in tourism research. The international tourism research on certain topics is more in-depth and cutting-edge than the Chinese tourism research.

Impact of comprehensive distance on inbound tourist satisfaction

Purpose Distance is the core concept in tourism. However, previous studies focused on single distance dimensions and generated contradictory findings due to omitted variable biases. This paper aims to introduce the well-established CAGE (cultural, administrative, geographical, and economic) distance framework into international tourism research to measure the comprehensive distance and explore its impact on inbound tourist satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The comprehensive distance was calculated based on the Mahalanobis formula. Combining tourist review data from TripAdvisor, this study used ordinary least square regressions to explore the influence of the comprehensive distance on inbound tourist satisfaction and the mediating role of inbound tourist emotion. Findings Results show that CAGE distance effectively describes the dynamic change in distance. The comprehensive distance also positively impacts tourist satisfaction, and tourist emotion plays a mediating role in this impact. Originality/value This paper advances knowledge about distance in international tourism by introducing the CAGE distance framework and addresses the contradictory findings with specific distance dimensions by the comprehensive distance.

Place production, urban tourism geographies and experiences of Muße

Urban tourism, as a social, cultural, and economic field, has been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a reverse effect of this crisis, however, there is a recent shift away from the dominant logics of performance and efficiency towards mindfulness, serenity, and similar concepts that shape the everyday life of an increasing number of people. All these terms are related to the semantic field of Muße, a word derived from the German language, which is defined as the experience of moments of freedom, indulgence, placidity, and recreation. Following the idea that social phenomena are reflected and reproduced in tourism, the objective is to explore how and where tourists experience Muße in urban tourism. A focus on Muße first enables a better understanding of tourists’ travel behaviour, expectations, and needs. In the same vein, it is possible to examine tourism place-making since the need for Muße produces and transforms individual tourists’ worlds of experiences. Although place-making practices and experiences have been widely studied, their relationship to Muße remains to be explored in urban and tourism research. With the aim to study practices and places of Muße in urban tourism, the presented qualitative content analysis draws upon 84 interviews conducted with tourists in Barcelona, Florence, and Paris in 2019. Findings show that the practice of sitting is relevant for experiences of Muße with a particular impact on place-making. Six categories are suggested to illustrate how Muße can be effective while tourists are sitting. This includes a detailed discussion of the spatial dimensions of Muße. In conclusion, places of Muße are highly individual, intangible, and complex. Insights into the characteristics of Muße and engagement with this new concept in international tourism research can be used as resources to study tourist place-making and support the planning for sustainable tourism development.

Editorial special issue in Dark Tourism

ABSTRACT This special issue of Journal of Heritage Tourism on dark tourism aims to encourage and advance theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research on dark tourism. The call for papers was inspired by the editor’s theoretical and research interest in dark tourism studies. The collection of articles in this special issue provides original, innovative and international tourism research that is embedded in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological thought in the study of dark tourism. Finally, this editorial will address a few lines of future research directions focusing on the experience and emotions of visitors at ‘dark tourism’ sites.

EVOLUCIÓN Y ANÁLISIS BIBLIOMÉTRICO DE LA REVISTA CUADERNOS DE TURISMO (1998-2019)

Los objetivos son analizar los artículos publicados en Cuadernos de Turismo y valorar la evolución de la revista. Se estudian los hitos históricos, la distribución de frecuencias de los artículos y las autorías, el origen geográfico e institucional de las autorías, las temáticas y los territorios investigados, el impacto científico, el origen de las citas recibidas y el destino de las citas emitidas. A pesar de la concentración de autorías de España, la revista ha ganado influencia en Iberoamérica. Las temáticas están globalmente en sintonía con la investigación turística internacional. Entre las causas del creciente impacto de la revista, se encuentra la adaptación a los notables cambios que se han producido durante las dos últimas décadas en el entorno de las publicaciones académicas. The objectives are to analyse the articles published in Cuadernos de Turismo and to assess the journal's evolution. The historical milestones, the frequency distribution of articles and authorships, the geographical and institutional origin of authorships, the subjects and territories researched, the scientific impact, and the main cited and citing publications are studied. Despite the concentration of authorships from Spain, the journal has progressively gained influence in Latin America. The subjects are globally consistent with the international tourism research. Among the causes of the journal’s growing impact, there is the adaption to the remarkable changes that have occurred in the environment of the academic publishing during the last two decades.

Sustainable tourism cannot be harmonised

The international tourism research body overwhelmingly relies on Anglo-Western concepts. Although, the contribution of non-Anglo-Western scholars and concepts has increased dramatically in recent years, further progress is needed in adopting concepts from cultures other than Anglo-Western to alleviate the dominance of Western paradigms in the field. Thus, Weaver et al. (2020) present a timely and valuable experiment in the synthesis of ideas from East and West in an attempt to endogenise sustainable tourism. The study injects certain Chinese cultural norms and expectations into Weaver's (2014) concept of “enlightened mass tourism”. Weaver et al. (2020) might merely aim at using China as a context for a proof-of-concept, however the framing of the paper around overcoming Western dominance suggests the power relations within the concept and the context proposed should be also addressed. Arguably, the paper does not confront the dominant modes of tourism production and consumption, nor the dominant narratives in the context of China. Thus, Weaver et al. (2020) merits a commentary that critiques hegemonies within the proposed concept of enlightened mass tourism and within the context of China, including cultural values and the Xi Jinping thought.

Ontological mingling and mapping: Chinese tourism researchers’ experiences at international conferences

Within tourism studies, the ‘critical turn’ has evoked growing reflective and critical perspectives on the role of the researcher in producing knowledge. This has also led to calls for building an inclusive research community, particularly through including non-Western and non-positivist methodologies. While it is noted that non-Western scholarship has gained more visibility in the international tourism research community through publications in prestigious academic journals, few studies discuss non-Western scholars’ interactions with other scholars in a qualitative and individual manner. Based on in-depth interviews with nineteen Chinese tourism scholars, we explore how their experiences at international conferences have shaped their positionality as ‘Chinese researchers’ in the international scientific community and thus contributed to their knowledge making. A process of mingling and mapping is shown in the narratives, where Chinese scholars attempt to find meanings of being at an academic conference and to understand the relations embedded in the conference space. Dynamics and reflexivity are seen in terms of how one goes around certain constructed binaries, such as ‘Western/non-Western’, ‘male/female’ and ‘junior/senior’. Finally, such a process of mingling and mapping affects the participants’ views on who will make the non-Western knowledge and how. With these voices from Chinese tourism scholars, we therefore contribute to the discourse of non-Western knowledge-making.

Position of Turkey within the International Tourism Research


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 Bilimsel gelişmede ulusal koşullar önemli belirleyicilerdir. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’nin uluslararası turizm araştırmalarındaki yeri, SSCI’de yer alan Türkiye adresli makaleler aracılığı ile incelenmektedir. Bu çerçevede 1989-2018 yıllarında arasında yayınlanmış olan 330 makale tespit edilmiş, ilişkisel ve değerlendirici genel bibliyometrik parametrelerle analiz edilmiştir. Araştırmanın önemli sonuçlarına göre, SSCI’de yer alan Türkiye adresli makalelerin sayısı 2016’dan itibaren hızla artmaya başlamıştır. 330 makalenin yaklaşık yarısı Türkiye’den iki kurum ve 10 araştırmacı tarafından üretilmiştir, 120 makalenin yabancı kurumlardaki yazarlarla ortak üretilmesi, uluslararası işbirliklerinin önemini göstermektedir. Anahtar kelime analizine göre, makalelerin çoğunda Türkiye ve otel, ağırlama, yönetim ve insan kaynakları ile ilgili sözcüklerin kullanıldığı görülmüştür. Son olarak, araştırmaların yaklaşık dörtte üçünde nicel veriye dayalı desenlemeden yararlanıldığı gözlenmektedir.

Two factor model of consumer satisfaction: International tourism research

We applied theories of behavioral economics and conducted a field research on 881 tourists from China visiting Seoul through guided tour programs. We randomly assigned participants to study conditions based on theories of expectation, reciprocity, and peak-end rule. At the end of the tour, participants evaluated various aspects related to tour satisfaction and general impression of the city. A confirmatory factor analysis supported that these variables can be explained by two correlated factors, identified as the Current Satisfaction Factor (CSF) and the Future Behavior Factor (FBF). The multiple indicator multiple causes (MIMIC) model showed that CSF was impacted by expectation and tour season, and FBF by expectation, tour season, and first visit. Our results suggest that providing additional information before each activity can improve tourism satisfaction and non-manipulated variables such as tour season and first visit can be incorporated to further enhance tourism satisfaction.

The “People” Aspect of Destination Attachment in International Tourism

ABSTRACTThe majority of research on place attachment has been conducted within a domestic context where local culture is fairly familiar to the visitor. International tourism research has begun to address destination attachment, but has not yet fully explored the concept where the people and the culture are substantially different. This research used in-depth qualitative interviews with international visitors to Thailand to examine the role of local people in destination attachment. Results show that one of the main attributes of international visitors’ attachment is the Thai people. A follow-on survey confirmed that “people attachment” is an integral part of the measurement of destination attachment.

Проблематика «устойчивого туризма» в науке и образовании в России и за рубежом: сравнительный анализ

This article analyzes the current state and prospects of mainstreaming sustainable tourism in the basic educational programs of Russian universities, as well as identifying obstacles to the expansion of research topics in the field of sustainable tourism in Russia. The overview of Russian works in the field of sustainable tourism demonstrates that the most studied are natural, environmental aspects of sustainable tourism development in terms of long-term interests of society, while the social and economic dimensions of sustainable development of tourism are presented by a limited number of fragmented works. This situation in the domestic tourism science greatly contrasts with the ways of international tourism research in this area, where can be found a more balanced mix of studies, as the share of socio-economic research in the total volume of works on sustainable tourism is much higher.
 A significant lack of research on the socio-economic aspects of sustainable tourism development is established by content analysis of domestic and foreign publications, and by their comparative analysis. Thematic focus of international projects on sustainable tourism in Russia is also analyzed to arrive to some indicative conclusions. The only comprehensive project in the field of sustainable tourism is currently under way between the Russian State University of Tourism and Service and Telemark University College (Norway), and in many ways it is still the first and only one. The main reason for the observed bias in domestic research, according to the author, is a strong starting position of natural sciences in comparison to social onesl. Another reason may be the rigidity of domestic tourism researchers of the humanitarian and economic profile in relation to the issues of sustainability, when Russian economists and specialists in humanities are under the influence of more successful researches in natural science and they underestimate the whole palette of concepts and approaches of socio-economic nature, relevant to the issues of sustainable tourism, and that is the reason why they are mentally limited to just the recognition and enumeration of the most obvious and basic socio-economic aspects of sustainable tourism (such as local employment, infrastructure development, replenishment of local budgets, integration into the world economy), and do no not go further, do not proceed with conducting specific studies within broader and more concrete settings of sustainability issues.
 The issues of sustainable tourism in domestic tourist education are even less represented than in science. Over the past few years, only six Russian universities as part of their basic educational programs offered individual subjects to study sustainable tourism. To this can indirectly be added another dozen or so universities that offer disciplines in eco-tourism, and about two dozen universities offering courses on sustainable development, including some problems of tourism development. And only one university in Russia offers modules in sustainable tourism at the Master level, and that institution delivers three subjrects on sustainable tourism. It seems that the main problem in the Russian tourist education in the context of sustainable tourism is in some sense too "respectful" attitude to the subject of sustainable tourism, when it is believed that students should "grow" up to some level to get acquainted with this concept at a Master degree course of studies. In Europe, the concept of susyainable tourism is more culturaland widespread, and it is brought to bachelors just in more simple words and then at the Master level it is just taught with a higher academic rigor. This approach is in general culturally and professionally more productive. The second advantage of the European way of teaching sustainable tourism is that there is a much greater linkage between the concept and the context of small businesses, in other words sustainable developed not necessarily linked to the context of destination development and planning. Therefore, sustainable tourism is quite often studied in business schools.
 In his publication the author tries to draw the attention of the national scientific community to the problem of conceptual and epistemological backwardness of the Russian tourism science in comparison to the international tourism science when it comes to sustainable tourism issues. Present deficiencies in socio-economic research and educational programs can be eliminated within a few years if the national scientific and educational communities duly appreciate the whole range of issues of sustainable tourism and the promising outlook for research and educational programs in this field.

An estimation of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in tourism sector of China

In 2009, nearly 900 million international tourist arrivals were counted worldwide. A global activity of this scale can be assumed to have a substantial impact on the environment. In this contribution, five major aspects such as the change of LUCC and the use of energy and its associated impacts had been recognized. Recently, the impact of tourism on environment and climate attracts the attention of international organizations and societies in pace with rapid development of tourism industry. Energy consumption and CO2 emissions in tourism sector are becoming a hot spot of international tourism research in recent five years. The use of energy for tourism can be divided according to transport-related purposes (travel to, from and at the destination) and destination-related purposes excluding transports (accommodation, food, tourist activities, etc.). In addition, the transports, accommodation and foods are related to many other industries which are dependent on energy. Thus, the estimations of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in tourism sector have become a worldwide concern. Tourism in China grows rapidly, and the number of domestic tourists was 1902 million in 2009. Energy use and its impact on the environment increase synchronously with China’s tourism. It is necessary to examine the relationship between energy use and CO2 emissions. In this article, a preliminary attempt was applied to estimate the energy consumption and CO2 emissions from China’s tourism sector in 2008. Bottom-up approach, literature research and mathematical statistics technology were also adopted. According to the calculations, Chinese tourism-related may have consumed approximately 428.30 PJ of energy in 2008, or about 0.51% of the total energy consumptions in China. It is estimated that CO2 emissions from tourism sector amounted to 51.34 Mt, accounting for 0.86% of the total in China. The results show that tourism is a low-carbon industry and also a pillar industry coping with global climate change, energy-saving and CO2 emission reduction. Based on this, the authors suggested that tourism should become an important field in low-carbon economic development.

Changing Approaches Towards Open Education, Innovation and Research in Tourism

There is a widely held assumption that the Internet provides opportunities to rethink and reorganise the knowledge interaction and dissemination between industry, education and research. Web 2.0 technologies are emerging as teaching and learning tools, but there is still no striking evidence to support the above-mentioned assumption. Accordingly, the purposes of this article are to, first, discuss the challenges in tourism education and address in brief the declining role of universities as knowledge monopolies and their emerging role as open knowledge mediators. Second, to present open innovation paradigms and address issues of knowledge accumulation and dissemination in tourism and the new role of the university. Third, INNOTOUR, an experimental Web 2.0 innovation hub for tourism, is presented. Preliminary learning experiences using the INNOTOUR platform as an advanced tool for collaborative, open source education in tourism are outlined. Finally, we point out collaborative challenges for international tourism research and teaching. We argue that there is a compelling need to build grounded theory and consolidated practice that will advance the quality and efficiency of tourism education through the use of a wide span of interactive technologies and committed teaching methods, facilitating dynamic, interdisciplinary and international learning experiences.

Roaming Romantics: Solitude-seeking and Self-centredness in Scenic Sightseeing

This account describes results from a study of motor tourists characterized by an individualistic-romantic outlook, utilizing data from the Norwegian Foreign Visitor Survey. In segments of modern-day holiday travel, there seems to be dynamic cultures of individualism. Relating to this discourse, discrimination between individualistic-romantic and collective tourist viewpoints is established. Romantic, nature-oriented tourists are typically characterized by an emphasis on solitude and privacy. The main objective of the paper is to identify motor tourists who prefer to experience landscapes and nature without the presence of other holidaymakers, and to examine these visitors in regard to some essential travel standpoints and activities. The study contributes to international tourism research by utilizing an empirical approach to the comprehension of tourists' frames of mind previously discussed in conceptual or theoretical studies. In the summer of 2000, about 60% of the foreign motorists in Northern Norway agreed that they generally prefer to experience nature without the presence of other tourists, while only 10% disagreed. Some 31% neither agreed nor disagreed in this statement. The individualistic-romantic motorists mostly had offbeat places or larger geographical areas as their main destinations. In conclusion, the article puts forward an alternative, empirically based perspective of self-perceptions among individualistic-romantic and solitude-seeking motorists in Northern Scandinavia.

The purest of human pleasures: the characteristics and motivations of garden visitors in Great Britain

The practice of visiting gardens has received little research attention in the international tourism research literature, compared with other types of attraction. Globally, garden visiting is a widespread activity, as suggested by the existence of garden visiting schemes, the popularity of garden visiting-based holidays, and the promotion of gardens in local, regional and national tourism development strategies. Great Britain, where garden visits amount to about 16 million each year, is characterised as a nation of garden lovers, and the garden visiting sector is significant in terms of the continued growth in recorded visitor numbers since the 1970s. In an attempt to redress the paucity of research on garden visiting and to highlight the significance and complexities of the sector, the findings of a survey on garden visitors are reported. The paper presents the characteristics, behaviour and motivation of a sample of 546 visitors to 13 gardens in Great Britain. In the light of the empirical findings, a range of implications relating to demand for garden visiting is discussed.