Wine tourism: Motivating visitors through core and supplementary services

Wine tourism is a relatively fledgling industry sector facing a number of important economic development issues. One such issue is the industry's ability to foster a sustainable revenue base for small and medium wineries. Winery visitation is a significant concern and in this paper is defined as the visitor's intention to pay a first or return visit to a winery. The purpose of this exploratory study is to compare specific factors that may influence wine tourists' intentions to visit or revisit a winery or wine region in North Carolina. A theoretical model of core and supplementary services is examined to see which of a number of factors are most influential in decisions to visit a winery and to determine the role of winescape and tourism services in promoting wine tourism. The importance of customer service was found to be the primary predictor of intentions for repeat visitation.     

Border resident perceptions of sanctions and tourism: A case study of North Korea

Sanctions have been increasingly used as a diplomatic practice among international actors. Although sanctions have offered important insights into the global tourism system, relevant understandings require further research endeavour. This study explores border resident perceptions of sanctions and tourism in the case of North Korea. It involves an analysis of in-depth interviews with residents of Dandong - the largest Chinese border city facing North Korea. The findings reveal that the economic and tourism development of both North Korea and Dandong are considered to be disrupted by sanctions. In addition to the perceived negative impacts brought by sanctions, the study also uncovers relevant positive impacts. Furthermore, it suggests that sanctions tend to be interpreted and evaluated by residents through short- and long-term perspectives. The study advances the emerging interdisciplinary progress of tourism and sanctions through unpacking and highlighting the influences of sanctions on residents and tourism of border city.     

Social disruption theory and crime in rural communities: Comparisons across three levels of tourism growth

The study compares rural tourism places under different growth levels in terms of crime effects. Adopting social disruption theory, the study hypothesized that average crime rates would differ for tourism counties with different growth levels, and that high growth tourism counties would experience the greatest increase in average crime rates. The study used data from a sample of rural Colorado tourism communities. Results partially supported the hypothesis and confirmed some results of the relationships between rapid growth and crime identified in previous boomtown studies. The results of the study provide useful insights to public leaders and policy makers engaged in processes of evaluating alternative tourism growth strategies for their community.     

The determinants of Chinese visitors to Australia: A dynamic demand analysis

Although China has progressively become an important inbound tourism market for Australia, its demand elasticities have been little studied to date. This study examines the determinants of Chinese visitors to Australia using a dynamic time-series estimator. Interesting findings include a high income elasticity as a source of the continuous doubledigit growth rates in Chinese arrivals that Australia has experienced over the past two decades, together with relatively high total trip price elasticities for both short run and long run. A trend of Chinese outbound to Australia is also identified. From a policy perspective, the results confirm that keeping a low cost of visiting Australia, both ground and travel costs, is a good strategy to secure greater numbers of Chinese tourists.     

Assessing the vulnerability of beach tourism and non-beach tourism to climate change: a case study from Jamaica

The Jamaican tourism industry is very climate sensitive, and, like most Caribbean islands, Jamaica's main tourism product is coastal, centered on “sun, sea and sand”. The island is susceptible to many risks posed by climate change, including sea level rise and extreme events, with resultant impacts such as beach erosion, flooding, saline intrusion into aquifers and general coastal degradation. This paper evaluates the relative vulnerability of beach versus non-beach tourism in Jamaica, using 43 pre-determined literature-linked indicators. These comprise bio-geophysical, social, technological, economical, technological and institutional factors. Four case areas are assessed using multi-criteria decision analysis to derive vulnerability scores for each area. The study finds that non-beach tourism operations should not be automatically perceived as less vulnerable than beach-based operations. Sustainable adaptation options are complex and numerous, and overall beach tourism businesses have better insurance, emergency savings, disaster plans and backup power facilities, among others. They also have the advantage of being in business longer than the inland resorts, a firmer business structure and an extensive marketing budget. In the long term, better adaptation and planning by inland businesses could change this balance.     

Tourism and attitude change: Greek tourists visiting Turkey

This study evaluates attitude change of Greek tourists towards Turkish people inclusive of their political beliefs and institutions, as a result of their visit to Turkey. A sample of 97 Greek first-time travelers to Turkey completed a structured questionnaire measuring attitudes towards Turkey before and after their visit. A control group of 82 Greek citizens who remained in Greece also completed the questionnaire twice. The major results showed that travel to Turkey had a negative impact on Greek tourists perceptions of the host population. This was particularly true concerning such aspects as the quality of life in Turkey, Turkish institutions, and the cultural aspects of its people.     

Social tourism and self-efficacy: Exploring links between tourism participation,job-seeking and unemployment

Social tourism is assumed to provide important psychological benefits for economically and socially disadvantaged populations. This study examines empirically whether these individual benefits are associated with socioeconomic benefits to society by focusing on unemployed individuals. Psychological benefits are addressed in terms of self-efficacy, and socioeconomic benefits, in terms of job-search behaviour. Findings from mixed-methods data reveal that holidays create enabling environments, which bring about positive changes in participants’ self-efficacy, contributing to positive effects on their job-search behaviour. Positive effects are also identified with regard to behaviours towards alternative paths to employment, such as volunteering. Given that these behavioural changes comprise major determinants of reemployment, it is suggested that social tourism may hold potential for incorporation into existing unemployment policies.     

Climate change and tourism: Time for environmental skepticism

Tourism scholars tend to endorse the most pessimistic assessments regarding climate change, despite the fact that it is a highly controversial scientific topic. This research note provides the balance that is missing from the overly alarmist studies on climate change and tourism. Notwithstanding the common notion in the academic tourism literature, recent research provides evidence that the mainstream reports on anthropogenic global warming are vastly exaggerated, and that human-induced greenhouse gas concentrations do not play a substantial role in climate change. In any case, whatever small degree of global warming is likely to occur, its net effects will most likely be positive for humans, plants and wildlife. Consequently, the recommendation to tourism scholars and policymakers is to exercise extra caution in the face of the fashionable belief of dangerous man-made climate change. In light of the current scientific literature, advocating and implementing radical environmental policies are likely to be ineffective, ill-timed and harmful to the tourism industry.     

Managing tourism emissions through optimizing the tourism demand mix: Concept and analysis

Carbon mitigation strategies are an urgent and overdue tourism industry imperative. The tourism response to climate action has been to engage businesses in technology adoption, and to encourage more sustainable visitor behaviour. These strategies however are insufficient to mitigate the soaring carbon footprint of tourism. Building upon the concepts of optimization and eco-efficiency, we put forward a novel carbon mitigation approach, which seeks to pro-actively determine, foster, and develop a long-term tourist market portfolio. This can be achieved through intervening and reconfiguring the demand mix with the fundamental aim of promoting low carbon travel markets. The concept and the analytical framework that quantitatively inform optimization of the desired market mix are presented. Combining the “de-growth” and “optimization” strategies, it is demonstrated that in the case study of Taiwan, great potential exists to reduce emissions and sustain economic yields. The implications for tourism destination managers and wider industry stakeholders are discussed.     

Theoretical linkages between well-being and tourism: The case of self-determination theory and spiritual tourism

Self-determination theory (SDT) offers a robust and globally adopted evidence-based foundation from which explorations of increasingly popular forms of travel, like spiritual tourism, can be analyzed for their potential contributions to well-being. This paper draws on SDT to examine outcomes of well-being within spiritual tourism. It draws on autoethnography, a thick data approach to qualitative inquiry, which allows for the emergence of experiential and self-reflective processes engendered by forms of travel like spiritual tourism. The autoethnographic narrative is based on the author's spiritual tourism experience at a yoga/meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India. The narrative is transcended through theory-based linkages to broader social phenomena (i.e., well-being, SDT), by so doing, the legacy of theoretical development, characteristic of interpretive inquiry, is sustained.     

Modelling attitudes to nature,tourism and sustainable development in national parks: A survey of visitors in China and the UK

This research undertook a visitor survey in two protected areas in different cultural contexts, namely China and the UK, to explore whether the value a person attaches to the environment influences their attitude towards sustainable tourism development in national parks. Structural equation models were developed with data from 597 and 368 questionnaires collected in Jiuzhaigou National Scenic Area, China and the New Forest National Park, UK respectively. The results suggested that anthropocentric or ecocentric values significantly influence people's attitudes to tourism and sustainable development. The same structured causal relationship was found in both samples, between people's attitudes towards the natural environment, conservation and tourism in a national park context.     

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Despite the rich and diverse tradition of research on the gender dimensions of tourism, such studies have had little impact on transforming unequal gendered power relations in the sector itself. In this paper, we are concerned with why this is the case and what steps might be taken to redress this situation. The paper argues that the challenges inherent in gender mainstreaming processes within public policies worldwide are replicated and – to some extent – exacerbated in the tourism sector. We contend that, despite its substantive insight into the sector, the impact of such literature has been minimal. We further suggest that this is, in part, due to the sustainable tourism paradigm's resistance to incorporating gender equality and gender analysis as core principles. In order to develop these arguments, we reflect on our experiences as specialist consultants in gender and sustainable tourism, drawing out some of the key tensions of integrating gender into sustainable tourism projects. In conclusion, we argue that there is substantive work to be done for gender to be integrated into the theory and practice of sustainable tourism, offering recommendations as to how this process might be improved.     

Interactions between climate change and the tourism sector: Multiple-criteria decision analysis to assess mitigation and adaptation options in tourism areas

Tourism is one of the most climate-sensitive economic sectors, but also a contributor to climate change. With the effects of climate change becoming an increasing concern, the tourism sector must urgently and realistically respond by mitigating its emissions and adapting tourism businesses and destinations to the changing climate conditions. This work presents a generic methodological framework to plan, manage and implement climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in the tourism context. The methodological scheme is based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for prioritizing available options applicable to a defined tourism area. The proposed framework is implemented for Greece, one of the world's most popular tourism destinations, and optimally ranks 18 mitigation and 16 adaptation measures under 4 criteria i.e. environmental benefit, applicability, cost and social acceptance. The analysis indicates that rational energy use, improvement of energy efficiency and water management/saving measures should be primarily put forward for the Greek case.