Measuring Stakeholder Perspectives on Environmental and Community Stability in a Tourism‐Dependent Economy

Tourism is promoted as an environmentally beneficial activity for Caribbean economies. Yet degradation still occurs and more integrated policy approaches are needed. Using Q‐methodology within a social‐ecological system (SES) framework, we quantified the importance of various policy issues to stakeholders in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, where tourism produces 77% of its GDP. Stakeholders agree Providenciales' economy benefits from a healthy marine environment, but disagree over which SES drivers are functionally important. Our results show that Q‐methodology is a robust tool for informing the policy‐making process and quantifying stakeholder views in a tourism‐dependent economy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Exploratory Use of Web Content Analysis to Understand Cruise Tourism Services

Research within the cruise industry now has the ability to utilize Web‐based content analysis. This paper provides an example of a methodology that explores patterns of co‐creation of value on board cruise ships using holiday reviews retrieved through Web content mining from CruiseCritic.com . The aim is to add to the field of co‐creation and cruise tourism by providing an approach to exploratory Web‐based data collection. With the use of a data‐driven approach to knowledge discovery, this paper provides a means to achieve a deeper understanding of guest‐to‐guest and guest‐to‐staff interactions on board cruise ships. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tourism and Long‐run Economic Growth in Aruba

This study examines the long‐run relationship between tourism development and economic growth in a small island destination. Determining whether the nature of the relationship is unidirectional or bidirectional provides insightful information as to policies to be implemented. This information is crucial in a resource‐poor environment, such as a small island destination. The study employs an econometric methodology consisting of unit root testing, co‐integration analysis, vector error correction modeling and Granger causality testing. Results confirm the reciprocal hypothesis. The policy implication is that resource allocation supporting both the tourism and tourism‐related industries could benefit both tourism development and economic growth. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Culinary tourism strategic development: an Asia‐Pacific perspective

Many destinations view their food and cuisine as a market niche. Operating within the Asia‐Pacific perspective, this study analyzed the key success factors in culinary tourism based on resource‐based theory in seven benchmark countries to identify the structure of promotional strategic development in culinary tourism. The methodology primarily involved in‐depth interviews and document analyses. The results identified four key success factors: (i) identifying and effectively using culinary tourism resources; (ii) evaluating governmental principles for promoting culinary tourism; (iii) adopting marketing strategies to promote culinary cultural sectors; and (iv) constructing educational environment for culinary culture and tourism. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling inbound international tourism demand to Portugal

In this paper the Johansen cointegration analysis of time series is used to model the Portuguese inbound international tourism demand from five countries of origin—France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and UK. This approach examines the long‐run relationships between the demand for holiday visits and the variables that affect holiday travel such as income, destination prices and travel costs (airfares and road costs). Demand functions, for each country of origin, are estimated using annual data on tourism flows from 1975 to 1997. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploratory Space–time Analysis of Inbound Tourism Flows to China Cities

The integration of space and time generates much closer interactions between geography and other social sciences in general while providing new perspectives for the role of geography in tourism flow studies. This paper aims to apply exploratory space–time analysis to provide insights into inbound tourism flow patterns in China's cities over the period of 2000–2009 using city‐level Geographical Information System datasets. First, this paper ascertains that there exists geographic neighborhood effect at city level by testifying significantly positive spatial autocorrelation. The hot spots and temporal stability are identified. The hot spots are locally concentrated in metropolitan areas. Local Markov matrix has also shown significant transitions with negative or positive influence of geographic neighbors upon a city. Specifically, three‐dimensional surface is created to visualize tourism flows. The spatial inequalities have the pattern of ‘the east more dense than the west, the south more dense than the north’. There simultaneously exist spatial agglomeration and spatial dispersion. The intensity of spatial agglomeration has become stronger. At the same time, smaller peaks of tourism flow centers developed around the main cities and spread toward surrounding cities. These potential tourism flow centers have gradually emerged and grown larger. Furthermore, the space–time covariance matrix uncovers correlation, which shows strong regional integration over years. Eight hundred and ninety links are identified and visualized. Two hundred and sixty nine links forming 10 spatial clusters represent strong positive correlation. One hundred and thirty‐four links are negative correlation, which is about 15.06 per cent of all links. In conclusion, our comprehensive evidences offer deeper insights and have important policy implications. These enable the tourism‐oriented governmental agencies, as well as the tourism industry professionals, to better understand the changes of inbound tourism flows in China's cities and relevant tourism partners/competitors for cities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

International price competitiveness of Australia's MICE industry

A special‐interest tourist market that holds out great promise for continued growth well into the next century is that of MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions). At the same time, changing prices in particular destinations relative to others are regarded as one of the most important economic influences on destination shares of total international tourism flows. The question arises as to the price competitiveness of major competing MICE destinations. Although earlier research has recognised that a destination's price competitiveness differs according to a visitor's country of origin there has been relatively little attention paid to tourism price competitiveness from the perspective of those having different motives for travel. This paper has four major aims: first, to provide a method by which price competitiveness of tourism by journey purpose can be estimated; second, to construct price competitiveness indices that measure, absolutely and relative to major competitors world‐wide, the price competitiveness of Australia's MICE tourism industry; third, to compare Australia's price competitiveness as a MICE destination with its price competitiveness for total inbound tourism; fourth, to discuss the implications of the results for travel and tourism decision‐makers in both the private and public sectors. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rural tourism development in the USA

Rural tourism has been a subject of study since the early days of tourism scholarship. Most of tourism's deleterious impacts were identified from studies conducted in rural settings. It is only recently, however, that rural tourism has become a special focus of study, dissimilar enough from urban tourism, to be a study subject unto itself. This paper reviews some of the history of rural tourism development in North America with most of the attention paid to the USA's experience, with some examples from Canada. The reason for this is the huge economic difference between the two countries with respect to tourism flows and impacts. In reviewing the history of rural development in the USA, the argument is made that most developments are unplanned and result from market and economic forces that have greatly transformed the American rural landscape. A review of these transformational forces is provided. It is also shown that rural destinations are used, primarily, by local tourists and do not, with few exceptions, cater to an international clientele. After the historical perspective is presented an argument is made that current rural tourism development practices rely on an old paradigm, which is to use local attributes as the primary basis for development and marketing strategies. This has led, in recent years, to a great deal of development attention being paid to the cultural/heritage attributes of a place. Using research conducted in the state of Minnesota on highway travellers and tourists to rural destinations, a new way to look at actual and potential visitors is offered. Instead of an attribute‐specific development approach, a benefits‐based model is suggested as a different way to position rural tourism destinations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An evaluation of unethical business practices in Australia's China inbound tourism market

This paper examines the prevalence of unethical practices within the business sector operating in the China to Australia tourism market. The range and nature of the practices are outlined in the context of the structure of outbound operations in China and inbound operations in Australia, taking account of the roles of the respective governments. The prospective impact of the practices on the growth of the market is evaluated. An estimation is provided of the potentially negative impacts of word‐of‐mouth recommendations on future China to Australia tourism flows. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.     

Methodological approach for assessing the potential of a rural tourism destination: An application in the province of Cáceres (Spain)

Evaluating the resources in a tourism destination is one of the previous tasks in the development of its comprehensive planning. There are many criteria to use in order to evaluate tourism resources; but, independently on the number of attributes considered the fact is that not every criterion is equally important in the process of evaluation and ranking of the tourism potential of a destination's resources. In contrast to other well-known methodologies, the aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to weight qualitative and hierarchical evaluation attributes by estimating a discrimination parameter. In this research, an item response theory (IRT) model is used, the graded response model, to estimate each attribute's discrimination coefficient. This parameter will be the basis to propose a weighting system for the entire set of attributes. Graded response model (GRM) will also allow establishing a hierarchy of resources by constructing a continuous latent scale, where it will be possible to position every analysed resource in the tourism destination. The applicability and robustness of the IRT methodology will be tested using data from rural tourism resources in the Spanish province of Cáceres.     

Social impacts of tourism: an Australian regional case study

As the support of host communities is a precondition for a sustainable industry, regional social impact studies are a crucial input to tourism planning and decision‐making. This study assessed the social impacts of tourism in a rural region of Australia where tourism is an important sector of the economy. As well as providing data to aid regional tourism planning, this study identifies differences in personal and community‐wide impacts; advances understanding of the factors that influence residents' perceptions of tourism impacts; and assesses the degree to which tourism activity associated with protected areas contributes to the identified social impacts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Migration and inbound tourism: an Italian perspective

This paper investigates the impact of migration on Italian inbound tourism flows in a dynamic panel data framework. Arrivals, expenditure and nights from 65 countries are analysed for the period 2005–2011. The migration variable is defined at both origin and destination in order to assess the pushing and pulling forces. Estimates were performed using both aggregated flows and flows disaggregated to separate the visiting friends and relatives (VFRs) from two non-VFR categories, namely holiday and business. The results suggest the presence of a strong migration-tourism nexus, which clearly goes beyond VFRs. Moreover, the effects of the different determinants vary according to the way in which the tourism market is segmented and, within each segment, to the way in which tourism demand is measured.     

Is the tourism‐led growth hypothesis valid for malaysia? a view from disaggregated tourism markets

This research note attempts to re‐investigate the validity of tourism‐led growth hypothesis for Malaysia based on the data set of 12 different tourism markets from January 1995 to February 2009. The error‐correction modelling‐based cointegration test shows that economic growth and international tourist arrivals are cointegrated for all tourism markets. Nevertheless, the Granger causality results demonstrate that not all international tourism markets Granger‐cause economic growth. Therefore, identification of potential tourism markets is vital for implementing effective tourism marketing policies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flows into tourist areas: an econometric approach

The globalisation of the tourism industry has led to a horizontal and vertical penetration of firms, leading to strong competition in all tourist centres. In light of these circumstances there is a need to develop strategies that encourage entrepreneurial actions and help firms to design the most competitive tourism offer possible. For the development of these strategies, the current work attempts to identify the degree of interrelation existing between the different tourist markets. Specifically, the study is based on an analysis of the evolution in the relations between the main tourist‐receiving centres in Spain. It identifies the short‐ and long‐term dynamic relations existing between them, and determines their degree of interdependence and any potential leadership relations between them. The methodology used is the one underlying Cointegration theory and vector autoregressive theory, together with forecast error variance decomposition and the impulse‐response function. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the Implications of Virtual Reality Technology in Tourism Marketing: An Integrated Research Framework

The proliferation of the Internet and other technological innovations has transformed the structure of the tourism industry as well as affected how tourism destinations are perceived and consumed. The 3D virtual world provides opportunities for destination marketing organizations to communicate with targeted markets by offering a rich environment for potential visitors to explore tourism destinations. However, as of yet, there is little understanding about how to effectively market tourism destinations to virtual world participants who are technology users as well as potential consumers. The purpose of the present study is to develop a research framework that integrates the technology acceptance model (TAM) and self‐determination theory to understand how tourists use a 3D virtual world. Primary data were obtained for this study through self‐administered Web questionnaires. The data were conducted in a laboratory setting with 186 participants. This study contributes to the empirical TAM literature by applying the model to a 3D virtual tourism site. Additionally, this study provides a research framework to capture the entertainment nature of a 3D virtual world by extending the TAM to incorporate psychological elements of self‐determination theory to understand consumer experience. From the perspective of tourism professionals, this study contributes to an understanding of how best to construct informative and interactive tourist destinations in 3D virtual worlds to attract potential online and real‐world tourists. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of tourism on HSR: Spanish empirical evidence derived from a multi-criteria corridor selection methodology

The exorbitant cost of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines requires a selection methodology to define which HSR corridors within a network should be built first, and the most suitable evaluation tool appears to be the multi-criteria approach. In any corridor-ranking methodology, and especially in countries with high tourism attractiveness, tourism impacts on HSR should be considered as a variable.In addition to economic geography and destination choice models, the current literature on tourism demand is dominated by econometric models using a single-equation time-series based approach. However little research has been done so far on methodologies to rank HSR corridors taking into account the tourism variable. In 2014, a ranking methodology developed by Todorovich and Hagler was validated using the current Spanish HSR network. Twelve variables were used to create an index to assign scores to the city pairs, but tourism was not included as a variable. The findings showed the consistency of the model for ranking pairs mainly in the top O–D relations; however the tool failed to discriminate clearly between secondary groups of corridors.The aim of this paper is to assess empirically the positive effect of tourism on HSR and to enhance the abovementioned ranking tool with a tourism database. The new methodology is tested by application to 1176 city pairs in Spain, and the results clearly show that the implementation of a tourism variable helps discriminate between secondary groups of corridors and offers a more effective approach for determining the implications of tourism on HSR.     

Tourism demand response by residents of Latin American countries

A general‐to‐specific methodology was used to build international tourism demand models by residents from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela to Aruba. We seek to evaluate demand parameters, especially elasticity values, which were disaggregated on a country‐to‐country basis. We also aim to learn more about the structure and important variables and investigate the process of adjustment. The study has provided new and compelling evidence that, in the short run, residents in developing countries respond rationally and substantially to economic stimulus. The short‐run income elasticity ranges from the low of 1.52 for Venezuela to the high of 2.34 for Argentina. These results indicate that Aruba will benefit differently from income increases in these four Latin American countries. The coefficients of the price variable had the expected negative signs, inelastic in the short‐run for all countries but significant at the 5% level for Venezuela only. Any deliberate effort to expand tourist arrivals will require a much larger decline in prices than would be the case in the presence of short‐run elastic response. The adjustment elasticity, being less than one, suggests that a period of more than one year is required for Latin American residents to fully adjust their tourism decisions in response to demand shocks. This study would seem to provide some useful information about international tourism demand from developing to developing countries that could form a very good and solid basis for analyses and policy action. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling tourism flows through gravity models: a quantile regression approach

Gravity models are widely used to study tourism flows. The peculiarities of the segmented international demand for agritourism in Italy are examined by means of a novel approach: a panel data quantile regression. We characterize the international demand for Italian agritourism with a large data set, by considering data of 33 countries of origin, from 1998 to 2010. Distance and income are the major determinants, but we also found that mutual agreements and high urbanization rates in countries of origin are associated with larger flows of incoming tourists.     

Sustainability of Tourism Development in Macao,China

To maximize the benefits to stakeholders in Macao, the sustainability of Macao tourism was examined by assessing the economic, socio‐cultural and environmental impacts of tourism, visitor satisfaction and the level of community involvement in local tourism planning from 2002 to 2009, through the use of primary and secondary data. The results revealed that tourism did bring both positive and negative impacts to the community. Visitor satisfaction was found to be moderate. Channels for community participation in local tourism development were also lacking. The paper suggests that for sustainable tourism development, Macao needs to diversify away from its casino industry, to speed up the construction of the public transport system and to keep monitoring the environmental conditions, the students' drop‐out and crime rate and the locals' quality of life. More importantly, a master plan for its tourism development integrating all the key stakeholders' interests is urgently required. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.