Tourism Management Practices Research Articles

Plastic litter pollution along sandy beaches in the Caribbean and Pacific coast of Colombia

Plastic pollution is a global problem that poses a threat to coastal and marine ecosystems and human livelihoods and requires effective solutions adaptable to local conditions. In Colombia, the knowledge about marine plastic pollution is still limited and the development of effective strategies for managing marine and coastal environments is crucial. Therefore, plastic pollution was assessed on 43 Colombian sandy beaches on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Amounts of macroplastic ranged from 35 ± 15 to 81 ± 23 items 100 m−1, being product’s packaging the most common. Microplastic densities ranged from 3 to 1387 items m−2. The highest microplastic concentrations were found on the beaches from Caribbean cities and in rural areas of Pacific municipalities. Fragments and polyethylene were the most commonly observed shape and polymer categories, respectively. Tourism and poor waste management practices are the primary plastic sources on the studied beaches. Plastic litter on Colombian beaches are a problem that requires prevention, mitigation, and control actions to help conserve this ecosystem.

Retracted: Digital Media Application Technology in Tourism Management Major VRAR Direction Talent Training Model Reform and Practice Research

Digital media application technology has become the main expression of digital information media in the era of society through the perfect combination of art design and technical language through digitalization and informatization platforms. This paper studies the reform of the training mode of digital media application technology in the VR and AR direction of tourism management majors. Here, digital media application technology is used to reform the training model of tourism management professionals, and the teaching method of the talent training model is analyzed. A comparative analysis of the talent training programs of various universities is also conducted, and the experimental results of the reform of the talent training model are summarized. It shows that through the reform of the talent training model in the VRAR direction of the tourism management major, the overall learning performance of talents has been improved by 13.2%, and the research investment in VR and AR technology has increased by 23.7%.

ICT and the future of tourist management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to speculate how recent and emerging trends in information and communication technology (ICT) could change the way tourism businesses and organizations communicate with and manage their guests. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies elements of futures and design thinking to analyze current tourism management practices and identify critical touchpoints that link tourist decisions to management strategies. Findings Fictional travel stories were used to identify and analyze how technology might affect tourism through five touchpoints– choice, connection, co-creation, customization and compliance. These stories were analyzed to identify changing forces and suggest potential paradigm shifts that tourism managers need to consider. These included increasingly complex content, the importance of compatible connections, and the critical role of coordination and cooperation in future tourism systems. Originality/value While there have been numerous discussions of how tourists and tourism businesses access and use technology, there is little evidence of scholars and practitioners applying formal futures thinking to ICT and tourism. This paper used design thinking and stories to predict and illustrate ways in which technology could be embedded into tourism experiences and services. It suggests that technology can, and probably will, fundamentally change the way in which we manage tourists and their experiences.

The Evolution of Rock Festivals in Greece

There is a steady growth of music festivals that has continuously occurred within the last thirty years, and this has changed the structure of the international cultural market. Nowadays, selling recorded products does not make large profits and music festivals became the vitalsupporters of the music industry. This paper focuses on presenting how the growth of rock festivals introduced to Greek society a new kind of entertainment quite different from the traditional festivities of the region and how this practice supports tourism. Indeed, some great festivals are created with the international market in mind and are based on specialized tourism management practices. This study, after considering some aspects concerning the interaction between global and local music culture, provides a brief historical framework of the rock festivals. It constitutes basically a general review presenting the evolution of this imported type of entertainment in Greece, and it reveals possible commonalities between the traditional and the new forms of festivities. Although there are significant differences between Panygiri which is the old traditional Greek festivity and the rock festival, it seems that some fundamental elements in those social phenomena such as attracting tourism and uniting people always remain the same.

NATURAL HERITAGE MANAGEMENT AND PROMOTION THROUGH FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: A PRELIMINARY SYSTEM DESIGN FOR THE INSUBRIPARKS PROJECT

Abstract. Nowadays, sustainable development and preservation of territories poses a number of challenges requiring innovative and robust technological tools to fully accomplish them. According to this, the design of an integrated tourism management system is here discussed. The tourism management system is developed for the Insubria Region within the INSUBRIPARKS project, funded by the Interreg program of the European Union. The Insubria is a historical-geographical area stretches between Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland embedding a valuable historical and natural heritage. Nevertheless, the tourism potential of the region is not fully exploited due to a fragmented political context within the geographical area that extends across different local and national jurisdictions. The final goal of the project to increase tourism attractiveness of the Insubria Region through the provision of physical infrastructure, the development and promotion of new tourism experiences, and the deployment of a standardized Information Technology infrastructure to support cross-border land management and marketing operations. Central to this paper is the preliminary design of this infrastructure that will provide tools for supporting information generating and consuming among project partners and external stakeholders. The design phase leverages exclusively Free and Open Source Software. Alongside the preliminary architecture, both use cases and user requirements are discussed together with the expected benefits deriving from the co-creation of best tourism management practices by means of open and shared software platforms.

Preservation and tourism in Tunisia: on the colonial past in the neocolonial present

ABSTRACT Historic built environments of the modern colonial era survive in cityscapes of former colonies the world over, often featuring largely in the projected urban identities of cities in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Tunisia is no exception. The complex relationships between extant architectures of colonialism and current users, designers, and preservationists there are shifting within the context of contemporary globalization. Though ties between Europe, France, and Tunisia are less overt than they once were—now taking the form of international development loans, professional and educational exchanges, tourism programmes, popular culture and the media—they are nonetheless significant in their sustained influence. This article explores the nature and products of neocolonialism in postcolonial heritage management and tourism practices, using several case studies from Tunis including curated medina walking tours, the renovation of the Avenue Bourguiba, and expansion of the renowned Bardo Museum. Rather than dismissing contemporary preservation and tourism management practices, the article invites further debate regarding the influence of foreign actors, conservation approaches, and potential alternatives for the future of heritage management in a rapidly changing Tunisia.

Fostering corporate sustainability in tourism management through social values within collective value co-creation processes

Collective value co-creation is not fully explored in management research. The phenomenon of social value co-creation has not been investigated in detail either, particularly regarding sustainable tourism management. In our work, we investigate the role of social values within the collective value co-creation process, as a key factor for building sustainable tourism management practices able to generate sustainable benefits to all stakeholders. The study setting is Sardex, a complementary currency community based in Sardinia (Italy). By adopting a qualitative methodology, and through face-to-face interviews, the entrepreneurs’ relationships were analysed using dialogue, trust, and reciprocity as core factors of value co-creation within the hospitality and tourism firms grouped in Sardex. Particularly, we explored whether, and to what extent, reciprocity was the salient factor in the process of value co-creation. Findings show that social values, and especially reciprocity, are the backbone of value co-creation: they foster corporate social orientation, which brings together corporate social responsibility and sustainability, and represent our contribution to enrichen theoretical and practical perspectives in this multidimensional field.

National culture and tourist destination choice in the UK and Venezuela: an exploratory and preliminary study

National culture determines consumer attitudes and behaviour. While this holds true for tourism consumption, little research has sought to better understand the effect of culture on tourist destination choice. The geographical scope of analysis has also been restricted. This study employs the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework to conduct an exploratory, qualitative evaluation of the influence of tourist cultural background on destination choice. It focuses on the UK and Venezuela, the two countries with significant cultural differences and forecast growth in outbound tourism. The study shows the distinct role of culture in tourist preferences for destination choice and structure of travel groups. The effect of culture is also recorded in how tourists research destinations prior to visit and perceive travel risks, thus ultimately influencing their motivation to travel. Recommendations are developed on how to integrate knowledge on cultural background of tourists into tourism management and policy-making practices.

Understanding the tourist mobility using GPS: How similar are the tourists?

The emergence of the motilities paradigm places tourism at the core of social sciences. Thus, understanding the tourist mobility is fundamental for both tourism management practice and tourism research. This study proposes a heuristic method that combines dynamic time warping and the earth mover's distance, to accurately measure the similarity of tourist trajectories. A case study at Xiamen University Campus was conducted to estimate the performance of our proposed method, and the results of two experiments suggest that our method has better measurement accuracy and noise resistance than current methods. Furthermore, our method has vast potential applications in the fields of personalized service, tourism attraction marketing and management.

Women’s mountaineering tourism: an empirical investigation of its theoretical constraint dimensions

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived constraints on participating in mountaineering tourism faced by women, and to empirically verify the dimensionality of those constraints. Survey responses from 314 female mountaineers were collected and four constraint dimensions were identified using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of these dimensions: ‘intra-personal’, ‘inter-personal’ and ‘structural’ constraints support earlier findings in the extant literature, both in general and in the adventure literature more specifically. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to ‘family’ constraints represents a theoretical contribution to the literature and an additional barrier to women’s participation in mountaineering tourism. In previous studies, ‘family’ constraints have typically been subsumed within ‘inter-personal’ or ‘intra-personal’ constraints, but have emerged as a distinctly separate constraint category for women in relation to this particular tourist activity. The findings also have important implications for adventure tourism management practice.

Eco-efficiency, sustainable development and environmental accounting in the tourism industry during a crisis

Tourism industry exploits the local fragile resources of a destination including biodiversity, archaeological and cultural areas with tourists expressing a propensity to visit places with high environmental quality and intensely local culture elements. Thus, traditional tourism management practices that are associated with the environmental degradation and catastrophe of these resources should be scrutinized and avoided. The aim for the particular study is to investigate the notion of sustainable development within the realm of hospitality and tourism industry by suggesting avenues for further research regarding both policymakers and practitioners. The contribution of this study is that it links sustainability management with financial reporting and business performance. Building on the above, it highlights the importance of accounting by shedding light on how the latter could better incorporate environmental practices and performance of a business entity into reporting improving the quality of narratives and usefulness of financial reports to various stakeholders. The novelty of this study is that it proposes the focus on accounting as a mediating factor to imprint sustainable practices adopted by a business entity in an effort to provide quality reports to stakeholders and a tool to diffuse environmentally sensitive practices from the side of policymakers.

Tourism in protected areas: Developing meaningful standards

In response to research revealing only 21% of protected areas worldwide have ‘sound’ management practices, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature has introduced The Green List for Protected Areas. A system of certification that has resulted from recognition of the need for global standards for protected area management. While not focused specifically on tourism, visitation and visitor management practices where relevant to the overall management of a park are important components. For many protected areas, tourism is integral, relying on visitors and tourism for financial support. Increasingly, partnerships between conservation and tourism are contributing to changes in attitudes around the issues of biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible business practices. This paper discusses The Green List concept and a case study of one of the successful pilot sites, Arakwal National Park in Australia. The paper also explores partnerships between conservation and tourism and how these partnerships could unfold through the work of The Green List. The work of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council which encourages such partnerships is also discussed, focused on sustainable tourism criteria.

Local Communities in Tourism Development of Rural Area, A Case Study of Two Local Tourism Initiatives in Wanayasa, Purwakarta

This paper describes the challenges in the rural tourism development based on local participation. The rural tourism based on local participation has been identified as ideal model that will uplifting local economy without had significant impacted to their “nature” way of life. However, based on the research on two local groups who are managing the tourism in Wanayasa, we found out that there are challenges in developing the tourism based on local participation. Despite of each groups have differences characteristic in tourism management practice, there are some similarity challenges. Each of groups has facing the external and internal challenges. It shows us that the rural tourism development is the complex process. Furthermore, the integrative model which is including various stakeholders would be an alternative model to optimize the rural tourism development, especially in sustainable tourism. Keywords: sustainable tourism, rural tourism, local participation

Эффективные практики поддержки и стимулирования развития сельского туризма: региональный уровень

Analysis of rural tourism management practices in Russia shows that at the regional level is implemented more active and often productive stimulating policy of rural tourism development. Generalization of regional experience of stimulation and support of rural tourism allows identifying the most effective practices and advanced experience. The article presents the main results of conducted by the author the total survey of legal and regulatory framework of the Russian Federation, related to the development of rural tourism. In particular, the typology of measures aimed at the rural tourism development is proposed. Author justifies the usage of direct (address) or indirect (mediated) nature of the measures applied as signs of the typology. Financial and fiscal instruments, public-private partnerships, as well as measures of information and consulting support are ranked as the measures of direct effect. In the group of indirect measures are included advocacy, marketing measures and action to control and monitoring of rural tourism development. Author proves that for supporting rural tourism the indirect measures are the most commonly used. It is caused by aspiration of regional tourism authorities to universalize the regulation of various types of tourism. The author proves that this practice should be regarded as limited, as it does not take into account the specifics of rural tourism and the conditions of its development. Public-private partnership is used less frequently. It is associated with the established practice of the support of tourism investment projects, development of the cluster approach in tourism.

Guidelines on Halal Tourism Management in the Andaman Sea Coast of Thailand

The purposes of the research were to:1) evaluate the potential of existing Halal tourist places and to rank them; 2) examine (current) Halal tourism management practices in the Andaman Sea coast of Thailand catering for travelers from Muslim countries and; 3) propose feasible guidelines on Halal tourism management in this area. The sample groups were government officers working in the tourism-related sections, administrators in the sub-district administrative organization offices in the provinces along the Andaman Sea coast, community leaders, tour guides, officers of the provincial offices of the Islamic Council in the Andaman Sea coast, Muslim tourists from Muslim countries and officers of the Central Islamic Council of Thailand. The research instruments included a questionnaire, observations and focus group discussions. The findings suggests that Halal tourism operators must provide prayer rooms for Muslim tourists as well as the direction signs to the mosque either in English or Arabic, separate restrooms for men and women. In addition, Halal restaurants should be provided in tourist attraction areas.

Evolutional Model of Tourism Efficiency Based on the DEA Method: A Case Study of Cities in Guangdong Province, China

Efficiency is an important indicator of an industry's development. To explore the temporal dynamics of tourism efficiency, this paper attempts to discuss its evolutional models, based on data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist Index (MI) of the seven-year panel data for 21 cities. The results show that, first, the province as a whole has relatively high tourism efficiency. Variations among cities, however, are quite large. Second, MI shows a trend of improvement in tourism efficiency, although there are differences among cities. Third, based on the magnitude and fluctuation of tourism efficiency, a quadrant chart is constructed on which cities can be classified into four categories. Fourth, based on the trajectories of corresponding points of each city on the quadrant chart, four tourism efficiency evolutional models can be identified: stable model, reciprocating model, progressive model and radical model. These findings provide a new perspective for tourism research and management practice.

Pattern mining in tourist attraction visits through association rule learning on Bluetooth tracking data: A case study of Ghent, Belgium

The rapid evolution of information and positioning technologies, and their increasing adoption in tourism management practices allows for new and challenging research avenues. This paper presents an empirical case study on the mining of association rules in tourist attraction visits, registered for 15 days by the Bluetooth tracking methodology. This way, this paper aims to be a methodological contribution to the field of spatiotemporal tourism behavior research by demonstrating the potential of ad-hoc sensing networks in the non-participatory measurement of small-scale movements. An extensive filtering procedure is followed by an exploratory analysis, analyzing the discovered associations for different visitor segments and additionally visualizing them in ‘visit pattern maps’. Despite the limited duration of the tracking period, we were able to discover interesting associations and further identified a tendency of visitors to rarely combine visits in the center with visits outside of the city center. We conclude by discussing both the potential of the employed methodology as well as its further issues.

Cultural Routes as a Source for New Kind of Tourism Development: Evidence from the Council of Europe's Programme

Europe offers a wide variety of cultural itineraries that, crossing several regions or countries, provide a living example of the rich and impressive European common heritage. For more than two decades 24 of such itineraries have been jointly collaborating under the Council of Europe's (CoE) Cultural Routes Programme aimed at preserving the diversity of European culture and heritage, and to promote understanding of Europe's history. Today, when cultural heritage is more and more often viewed as a new form of good -cultural good, - methods of heritage management are changing to incorporate new elements, which could help local communities to draw more obvious benefits from their cultural legacy while preserving and maintaining its uniqueness. Often these elements come from tourism: a new kind of tourism, which is respectful of the environment, of the natural and cultural heritage and of the local traditions. This article offers an overview of the Study on the CoE Cultural Routes Impact on Tourism SMEs (Khovanova et al., 2011) that demonstrated how the need for implementing sustainable tourism management practices is growing within the CoE cultural routes. One of the breaking findings of the Study was that, even though founded on social and cultural principles, CoE routes today serve as a source of innovation, small business creation, local income generation, and cultural tourism products development. These potentials are now been reinforced by building in sustainable tourism elements in cultural routes management practices, and by bringing the benefits of ICT and digitalization, following the Study recommendations. The findings of the Study could also help cultural heritage managers and policy makers around the globe to better understand tourism potential of cultural heritage sites, while encouraging respectful and sustainable management approaches.

Managing local tourism: Building sustainable tourism management practices across local government divides

Increasingly, the challenge for local government in managing tourism is not in preparing plans and policies or undertaking new initiatives but in collaborating across internal organisational silos and across artificial administrative boundaries to provide a more integrated approach. The Managing Local Government Master Class was a programme designed to develop a ‘joined-up’ integrated approach to local government tourism management. This article outlines the Master Class approach within the increasingly complex context facing Australian local governments, and discusses two applications in Northern Rivers, NSW and Perth's Eastern Metropolitan Region. It was found that while the Master Class offers a mechanism to increase collaboration and leverage the benefits of working more effectively within and across councils, there remain political and administrative impediments to improved collaboration.

Constructing the Nature Experience: A Semiotic Examination of Signs on the Trail

This paper is an exploratory examination of the role of signs perceived along nature trails in parks and wooded settings and the ways in which they shape the nature experience for individuals. Literature was examined to define what it means to experience nature, the values and meanings people place on nature, hikers’ expectations, and tourism and park management practices. Sign objects, their underlying meanings, and the interpretation of signs along the trail were examined in the context of the existing theory based on semiotics, particularly the work of Peirce. Through a series of hikes, we found that signs contribute to the satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and meaning making in outdoor environments. Areas for further investigation are discussed.