World Travel Research Articles

Podiatry risk in diabetic pilgrims: a prospective study in Tunisia

Background Each year, over 340,000 diabetic patients across the world travel to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage. As they carried out important rituals, several complications might be encountered, particularly foot lesions. We’ve been therefore interested, through this study, in the assessment of podiatric risk in diabetic pilgrims. Methods A prospective longitudinal study was conducted in the region of Sousse, Tunisia. The evaluation of diabetic patients preparing for the pilgrimage was conducted in two phases, before and after the pilgrimage. Results Forty-three diabetic patients planning to perform pilgrimage were included in the study. Post-pilgrimage clinical exams revealed hyperkeratosis (96.8%) and superficial fungal infections (61.3%) as the most common podiatric lesions. Foot ulcers attributed to trauma from walking were found in 7% of patients. Our data showed a significant association between foot ulcer risk and lower total cholesterol (p=0.02), HDL cholesterol (p=0.02), LDL cholesterol (p=0.01), as well as higher triglyceride levels (p=0.04) only in univariate analysis. Other diabetes-related risk factors did not show significant correlations. Conclusion Given the increased risk of foot lesions in diabetic pilgrims, a thorough assessment and tailored management based on individual risk levels are essential before, during, and after the pilgrimage.

Model Safety Behaviour untuk Mengurangi Accident dalam Menjaga Keberlanjutan Industri Pariwisata Madura

The tourism industry is a key player in the global economy, generating billions of dollars in revenue and providing jobs for millions of people around the world, contributing more than $6 trillion annually, employing more than 250 million people, and generating 7% of global GDP (World Travel Tourism Council, 2018). However, as the industry grows, comes the responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of employees and tourist visitors. Safety is critical in maintaining the reputation and sustainability of the tourism industry, while employee safety is critical in ensuring a productive and positive work environment. In recent years, there has been growing concern about safety practices in the tourism industry, prompting researchers to investigate the factors that contribute to safe behavior among employees. This research focuses on the impact of safety knowledge and safety behavior in the tourism industry so that it has an impact on reducing the number of accidents. The aim of this research is to provide insights that can help improve safety practices and ensure a positive and safe experience for employees and tourists at destinations in Madura and reduce accident incidents.

Parables for planetary crisis: storytelling and multispecies migration in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Throughout his oeuvre, Amitav Ghosh deals with storytelling and migration. Exploring legacies of empire and entanglements between the human and non-human world, his writing is driven by an ethical imperative to excavate “forgotten” stories, and, especially in his later texts, to find new forms of storytelling suited to capture pasts, presents, and futures shaped by a growing sense of planetary crisis. Gun Island (2019), a generic mix of personal quest narrative, thriller, romance, and folk tale, depicts a world disrupted by different forms of multispecies migration. Linking the Indian subcontinent, the US, and Europe, it chronicles voluntary and forced journeys of humans and animals between the Global North and South, intertwining refugee and climate crises in the Mediterranean and Bangladesh with the morally charged legend of the gun merchant, a seventeenth-century world traveller. The text brings current and historical links between migration and climate change, which are comparatively rarely treated in literary fiction, into sharp focus. As this essay argues, it highlights specifically the need to broaden the notion of migration literature and its subgenres to include both human and animal migration and the impact of globalization and current realities of climate change. Exploring genre and poetics in Gun Island, this essay reads the novel against the broader aesthetic and cultural-historical arguments made in Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (2016) and The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021). To explore Ghosh’s poetics, which fuse everyday realism with the uncanny, the improbable, and the mythical, this essay also draws on Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose’s notions of “ethography”. It argues that Gun Island, as a multispecies climate migration novel, responds to the author’s call for a rediscovery of storytelling beyond Western-style realism or SF, as a means to capture human and non-human subjectivities and to undo demarcations between rationality and spirituality.

Harnessing Evolution’s Gift of Borderless Wonder to Open New Economic Frontiers for Global Sustainability

Evolution transcends the natural world, oblivious to political borders. It is at the transnational scale of Earth’s evolutionary heritage where transformative scientific discoveries await. These discoveries’ potential to bolster environmental health and resilience by unmasking the most consequential evolutionary trajectories is increasingly coming to light. However, overlooked is a borderless mega-reserve of wonder unearthed along these trajectories and begging to be recognized and harnessed as an unmatched resource for charting a global pathway into a sustainable future. The article backs this assertion with a business model designed to engender a new-generation world travel industry that opens transnational frontiers for the confluence of science-, art-, and faith-based appreciation and guardianship of nature. This model reinforces with economic energy the inspiration it has drawn from Francisco J. Ayala’s engagement of art to bridge evolution, creativity, and the future of humanity, and from his treatment of science and religion as complementary windows into human understanding of the world.

Pengukuran Daya Saing Kampung Wisata di Kota Bandung

The success of a tourist destination in the world market cannot be separated from the influence of its competitiveness. The competitiveness of tourist destinations is an area that attracts the attention of tourism researchers. Tourism competitiveness has tremendous consequences for the tourism industry and is therefore of great interest to practitioners and policy makers. The approach to the competitiveness of tourist destinations has so far focused on the image or attractiveness of tourist destinations concentrating on attributes that are considered to attract visitors, such as climate, scenery and accommodation. There are various indicators used to measure the competitiveness index of tourist destinations, including those from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WWTC), which include the Human Tourism Indicator, Price Competitiveness Indicator, Infrastructure Development Indicator, Environment Indicator, Technology Advancement Indicator, Human Resources Indicator, Openness Indicator, Social Development Indicators. In general, these indicators are relatively general and not local specific in exploring the conditions and circumstances of a tourist attraction, even though this aspect is directly related to the conditions of a destination/tourist attraction. The aim of this research is to assess destination performance using indicators in the aspects of attractions/tourism objects, infrastructure, access, and services/management. In this study, data came from 50 tourists (n=50). The analysis used is the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) Model to create a ranking of various attributes of Tourism Villages which concerns 4 aspects, namely tourist attractions, facilities (amenities), access/affordability (access), and services. additional (ancillary), by analyzing which attributes have a level of correspondence between the level of importance and the level of performance. Based on the results of the analysis, the main indicators that must be improved are additional services, and attractions are still felt to not meet respondents' expectations. The management of Braga Tourism Village needs to improve the quality of its services, especially related to information services and cleaning staff, while the quality of services which are considered to be good needs to be maintained in order to provide comfort for visitors. The results obtained from Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) will be used to determine the right strategy to improve the company's performance.

DETERMINANTS OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN THE ASPECT OF THE CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The paper aims to present the determinants of tourism development in the context of the challenges of today’s economy, i.e. the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the need for the tourism sector to prepare for climate change and the digital transformation of the economy. The study is scoping. To achieve the research objective, a study of domestic and foreign literature, induction, deduction, generalisation and synthesis, and research results of other authors were used. The research used studies from UNWTO, World Travel & Tourism Council, Statista, Travel Trends 2023 (Simon-Kuchner), a European Commission report and other author’ research. The research showed that in the third decade of the 21st century, the tourism sector is affected by health (COVID-19 pandemic), military and geopolitical threats, inflation, climate change and digital technologies. These phenomena influence the behaviour and attitudes of tourists worldwide and shape the opportunities for developing the tourism sector in each country at the macro-, meso- and micro levels. The challenges identified have created, and some will continue to create, crisis risks in tourism. It calls for building a more robust, more sustainable and resilient tourism economy for the future. It will require appropriate economic, climate, and energy policies from governments in many countries.

Not Tourism Worldmaking: A Critical Dialogue with Hollinshead and Vellah on Post-Covid-19 Sensible Entanglements

Hollinshead proclaimed tourism worldmaking as the creative/imaginative and often false/faux processes that management agencies and mediating bodies use to favor particular representations of places and people. While this remains valid at an organizational level, the COVID-19 pandemic has radically (and maybe also hopefully) changed the very regimes of sensory apprehension on which tourism is based, thus also suggesting that we rethink the worldmaking aspects of its postindustrial creation (rather than production and consumption chains). Considering some recent discussions on what may happen to tourism after the end of the pandemic I claim that: 1) we should begin by reassessing the realm of the sensible, 2) talk more about “travel worldmaking”, and 3) reconsider the centrality of the traveler’s emotional work during world travels. The thesis develops at the intersection of the “must” (urgency to sustain), the “ought” (call to respect), and the “desire” (drive to enjoy). It calls for a reassessment of worldmaking agency as a structured form of action, which gestures towards a durable change in sensible entanglements between humans and the world. I engage in a critical collegial dialogue with Hollinshead and Vellah’s thesis that tourism as a postcolonial or postindustrial moment per se contributes to postidentity. Instead, I argue that after the COVID-19 event (among other viral worldmaking events threatening to eliminate humanity), world travelers resort to what is deemed accessible through their sensory capabilities within structured conditions. Tourism is thus also reimagined at a sensible level separately from the organizational/institutional processes that Hollinshead and Vellah placed center stage in their thesis.

The Popularity and Enlightenment of Japanese Fantasy Travel-Themed Animation in China

Japanese animation is widely spread in China with its wide variety and exquisite production, among which animation with fantasy travel as the theme has several loyal fans, such as Kino’s Journey: the Beautiful World, MUSHISHI, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and other animation works have always maintained a high quality of reputation. However, there is little research on this kind of animation in learning. This paper starts with representative animations, introduces the secondary world theory and travel narrative theory, and analyzes that fantasy travel-themed animations are popular because of their high quality, healing effect, and ability to cater to the audience’s yearning. At the same time, it has the double aesthetic value of fantasy and life meaning. Therefore, it is suggested that Chinese animations can make further progress in terms of sensory experience, popular fashion, and cultural value, as well as expand the development space of Chinese animations by enriching themes and improving characters, fitting the popular points, and strengthening cultural integration.

Integration of advanced digital technologies in the hospitality industry: A technological approach towards sustainability

The potential assimilation of Industry 4.0 technologies across diverse sectors unlocks the pathways to achieve sustainability through innovative infrastructure with sustainable approaches. The World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) 2023 report emphasizes the impact of the hospitality industry contributes $9.5 trillion to the gross domestic product (GDP) and provides a workforce of 320 million globally and also strives towards meeting sustainability. Driven by the facts above, this study conducted a review to explore the potentiality of Industry 4.0 technologies specifically focused on meeting sustainability. Along with the review, the study has proposed a scalable-based architecture with the assimilation of many Industry 4.0 technologies. Further, this study has analyzed the real-world examples of Industry 4.0 technologies adoption in the hospitality industry with an objective of innovation and sustainable practices. Finally, the articles discussed the recommendations that can empower the establishment of resilient infrastructure through Industry 4.0 technologies.

Nature Positive Tourism

The concept of nature positive, simply defined as a means of describing a world where nature is being restored and is regenerating, rather than declining, is attracting increasing attention in the tourism industry. With this in mind, this review paper outlines the current global nature crisis, presents the results of an Internet search of academic research and consultancy company reports on nature positive, summarises the World Travel and Tourism Council’s recent report on nature positive travel and tourism, and offers some critical reflections on nature positive tourism. The reflections focus on the concept of nature positive itself, the industry’s commitment to nature positive tourism and concerns about greenwashing, and the relationship between tourism and sustainable development, which might all be seen to call the nature positive tourism into question. Keywords: nature crisis, nature positive, nature positive tourism, tourism industry, sustainability

Artificial Intelligence in Sustainable Tourism and Its Impact on Economic Development of a Country Like India

1. Overview of Tourism Industry Growth in India: Tourism in India has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, appearing as a significant contributor to the national economy. In 2022, India ranked at the 35th position in the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Travel & Tourism 2023 Economic Impact Report, contributing 8.6% to the national GDP and generating eighty-two million jobs. This trajectory is expected to continue, with WTTC forecasting India to climb to the 24th position by 2032, highlighting the industry's ongoing economic vitality. 2. Introduction to AI and its Capabilities: Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a range of technologies, including machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, enabling machines to learn from data and perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence. These capabilities can be harnessed for diverse applications, including data analysis, pattern recognition, and robotic automation, opening doors for innovative solutions across various sectors. 3. Brief on Principles of Sustainable Tourism: Sustainable tourism focuses on minimizing the negative environmental, social, and cultural impacts of tourism activities. It advocates for responsible resource management, community engagement, and cultural preservation, aiming to ensure the long-term viability of tourism destinations and the well-being of local communities.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS TOURISM IN LOCAL MANAGEMENT

Every year, people travel to places considered holy for spiritual and religious purposes. When it comes to spirituality and religion, everyone has their own beliefs and faith, so the pilgrimage to find the higher things that can bring comfort the for our souls. This is how pilgrimage happens, everyone follows the same path to find what this can bring to you, and you feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the walk. Pilgrimages are phenomena of expression. In the past, they had an influence on the historical development of people. Pilgrimages also provide a meeting of people where it is possible to exchange culture, experiences and knowledge about the importance of making some sacrifice in favor of our beliefs. Here we are talking about the importance ofthe Arbaeen pilgrimage in Iran where every year millions of people from around the world travel mosques and the country's famous religious temples. The country is also known for having historic sites that have become World Heritage Sites. Iran is an ancient country that also attracts tourists not only for religious purposes, but also to visit historical sites. Religious tourism, can be understood as an activity developed by people who travel for religious reasons or to participate in activities of religious significance, being important in the religious, cultural, historical aspects and for the economic and social development. However, it can also cause some inconvenience when there is no control at the tourism site, that is, control with regard to accommodation, safety, health, control over the waste left at the site, as well as local transportation. Thus it is important to know what researchers are researching about the positive and negative points of religious tourism in the context of local management, as well as the positive and negative points. This paper sought to identify the overview of religions in Iran as well as the impact on the local economy from the references presented in the literature for the period 2019 to 2022.

Tourism Impacts GDP Growth (and Decline)

According to the recent “World Tourism And Travel Council” report tourism contributes 10.3% toglobal GDP. In 2020, it dropped to 5.5 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is an industry that createsat least 260 million jobs. Tourism’s proportions to a country’s GDP is closely linked to the number ofjobs it creates. When tourism develops, businesses thrive, which leads to more job opportunities. Asa result, more people have money to spend within their local economy. This increase in sales tax revenuefunds important infrastructural and environmental endeavours in the community. As an examplein 2022, the United States reported the highest total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP, withthese industries generating, directly and indirectly, roughly two trillion U.S. dollars. The tourism sectorin the Latin American and Caribbean countries contributes significantly to GDP earnings, thoughthis contribution is not reflected in the domestic income and product accounts of most countries. Inthe Bahamas, tourism accounts for about one-third of GDP, and most sectors of economic activityare directly or indirectly linked to it. In Barbados, tourism is the leading economic sector, accountingfor 15 percent of the GDP in 1992. In Jamaica, the tourism contribution to GDP was 13.4 percent in1992, while in Mexico it was only 4 percent.

Оценка эффектов пандемии COVID-19 для туризма на основе агрегированного показателя

The purpose of the work is to propose and test a method for assessing the effects of the pandemic on Russian tourism in comparison with a number of other countries based on an aggregate indicator of the contribution of this industry to the economy. The role and place of the tourism industry in the global economy, the industry characteristics of tourism and the special significance of measures to support it in modern Russian economic policy are characterized. A cross-country comparative analysis of the aggregated indicator of the contribution of tourism to the economy was carried out, which was calculated on the basis of three partial indicators: the contribution of the tourism industry to the country's GDP; share of tourism in the total number of jobs; share of spending by incoming tourists in total exports. Data used from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). The pandemic contraction and subsequent recovery of the industry are described by indices of the aggregate indicator, where its value in 2019 is taken as the base. It was revealed that among the G20 countries, Russia ranks second to last in terms of the aggregate indicator of the contribution of tourism to the economy. At the same time, it demonstrates a relatively small “compression” of the industry in 2020 and a low rate of industry recovery in 2021. The weak response of Russian tourism to the pandemic can be explained, firstly, by the relatively small significance of its initial contribution to the economy and, secondly, by government employment support measures taken in 2020. At the same time, the low rate of restoration of the contribution of Russian tourism to the economy in 2021 indicates the need to increase the effectiveness of industry regulation measures and, for this purpose, study the best global practices for restoring tourism in countries such as Mexico, Italy, Turkey, etc.

The "Colored American Asiatic Traveler": Peter K. L. Cole and American Empire in Japan

Abstract: This article examines African Americans' participation in US empire-building in the nineteenth-century Pacific World. It uses the life story of Peter K. L. Cole, a Black world traveler and a resident of Yokohama, Japan, to explore how notions of race, empire, modernity, and citizenship circulated around the Pacific Ocean from the 1850s to the 1870s. Cole deployed the intertwined discourses of Black settler colonialism and Black orientalism to stake claims to African American equality in the post-Civil War United States. His efforts to build equal citizenship on the basis of Black men's service to American empire abroad gained little traction as the white supremacist logics of the US settler state excluded Black people from national belonging and erased their participation in imperial expansion.

Right BA 10 lesions impair performance on real-world planning but are not sensitive to problem novelty or tower tasks

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is associated with many cognitive functions, including planning. In the neuropsychology literature planning is reduced to “look ahead” ability and most extensively studied with the “tower” tasks. The most influential theoretical explanation is that planning is required in the absence of a routine solution and PFC patients have difficulty coping with novelty. There is an alternate view of planning that emphasizes the distinction between real world tasks and laboratory tower tasks. This account focuses on the structure of problem spaces and why patients with lesions to right PFC have difficulty navigating ill-structured problem spaces.To further explore these issues we administered two real world travel planning tasks to 56 Vietnam War veterans with penetrating brain lesions and 14 matched normal controls. One planning task involved familiar knowledge while the other involved knowledge unfamiliar to our participants. Participants also completed the D-KEFS tower task. A subset of 18 patients—with lesions to right anterior prefrontal cortex (BA 10)—were impaired in the travel planning task compared to normal controls. The task familiarity/novelty dimension affected performance across participant groups (familiar-task scores were higher than unfamiliar-task scores), but it did not differentially affect any group. An examination of cognitive strategies utilized by participants revealed that the impaired patient group had difficulty maintaining a sufficient level of abstraction and engaged the task at a much more concrete level than other participants. Interestingly, patients impaired in the real-world planning tasks were not impaired in the tower tasks. We conclude that patients with lesions to right BA 10 have difficulty in real-world planning tasks that can be attributed to difficulties in engaging problems at the appropriate level of abstraction.

Impact of big data and analytics on quality management in rural tourism in southern Africa - Zimbabwe: A systematic literature review

Big data and analytics have assumed a significant role in the technological advancement that is shaping the world's travel industry today, posing both significant challenges and opportunities for rural tourism in southern Africa. Big data and analytics provide useful information to all tourism businesses, allowing them to estimate visitor need, optimize decision-making, knowledge exchanges and relationships with consumers, and deliver the best service in a more productive and effective way, thereby managing quality. The focus of this research is to investigate the problems and opportunities that may arise from the use of big data and analytics in rural tourism, its management, and the sector's future. The research content was obtained from popular web sources including articles indexed in Google Scholar, institutional repositories, dissertations and Scopus. Thirty-one peer reviewed articles published between 2012 and 2022 were considered for review. A thread of the problems and opportunities faced by use of big data and analytics was drawn inferring to rural tourism in Zimbabwe, a country in southern part of Africa. Despite widespread privacy and security issues, big data and analytics are widely thought to be advantageous for tourist and hospitality firms as founded in literature. In addition, big data and analytics is offering fresh viewpoints on the quality management discussion to both the tourist and hospitality industries. This study is useful for both scholars and practitioners interested in the utilization of big data and analytics.

TOURISM MARKET IN THE WORLD AND IN RUSSIA: MODERN STATE AND DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS

Tourism plays a significant role in the GDP, job creation, and employment in many countries. According to the statistics of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Oxford Economics, there was a rapid recovery in the tourism sector in 2022, with its contribution to the global GDP increasing by 22% on an annual basis, reaching $7.7 trillion US dollars. There is a direct link between the trends in the development of the tourism industry and overall economic, technical, and social achievements. In recent years, the structure of tourist flows to the Russian Federation has changed significantly due to geopolitical and socio-economic factors.
 The aim of this research is to analyze the development of tourism in the post-pandemic period, taking into account the impact of international sanctions against Russia and restrictions on the travel of Russian citizens abroad.
 The objects of the study were tourist flows, their structure and dynamics, as well as a quantitative assessment of the entities and actors associated with tourism activities.
 This work is based on the authors’ own research and data provided by state statistics. Statistical methods and methods of general scientific research, including observation, data collection, and comparison of two or more objects to identify common and distinctive features, were used for analysis.
 Results. The paper presents economic indicators of the hospitality industry’s development, analyzes statistical indicators of the hospitality market for the years 2018-2022 and their structure. Problems and current trends in the development of the tourism and hotel markets in the Russian Federation are identified.
 Application of results. The results can be applied in the scientific and practical activities of regional authorities in addressing issues related to the development of international and domestic tourism.

In the Shadow of the Palms: The Selected Works of David Eugene Smith

In the Shadow of the Palms: The Selected Works of David Eugene Smith

Travels and Sustainable Tourism in Italy. Selected Dilemmas

The scientific article regards travels and sustainable tourism in Italy in terms of employment, spending, and GDP. The principal purpose of the article is the analysis of travels and sustainable tourism in Italy in terms of employment, spending, and GDP. The paper carried out the documentation analysis, but also very important was the application of the statistical, dynamics, and comparative analysis. The time scope of the study is 2019-2021. Italy's economic recovery will be greatly aided by the travels and sustainable tourism, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). In 2020, the sector was just 0.3% below its pre-pandemic levels. The sector's contribution to GDP in 2019 exceeded €194 billion, according to the World Trade and Technology Council's (WTTC) latest Economic Impact Report (EIR). However, employment in the industry may return to levels seen before the epidemic. Further, the Travel & Tourism industry in Italy is expected to increase at an average annual rate of 2.5 percent over the next ten years, which is five times the growth rate of 0.5 percent of the country's entire economy. In the meanwhile, it's expected to surpass €226 billion by 2032.