An importance–performance analysis of sustainability factors for long-term strategy planning in Slovenian hotels

This paper explores the potential role of economic, environmental and social reporting in long-term strategy planning in the hospitality industry. The context of study is Slovenia. Following the development of a set of “sustainability” indicators, hospitality managers were asked to rate the importance of each indicator to sustainable operations and the performance of their firms in implementing management actions. Seven hotel performance factors were established across the triple bottom line. Using importance–performance analysis (IPA), key issues are identified as requiring the attention of stakeholders to support the sustainable development of Slovenia's hospitality industry. For managers, the 10 most important indicators include those related to economic performance, customer relationship and cost saving environmental activities: performance here, and in marketing, was perceived as poor. In contrast, actions taken to increase environmental awareness, and improve relationships with employees are seen by managers as less important, and even as possible overkills. Community relationships are seen as of low importance and where the industry performs relatively poorly. A major recommendation is that Slovenian hotel managers should focus on improving their economic performance: neglecting this could threaten hotels’ long-term survival. IPA analysis is shown as applicable to strategy making for sustainable development in hospitality industry contexts worldwide.     

Resilience and sustainability: a complementary relationship? Towards a practical conceptual model for the sustainability–resilience nexus in tourism

“Sustainability” has endured as an important concept for tourism scholars, and volumes have been written about how to achieve this holy grail of the tourism industry. Sustainable tourism destinations are often promoted as the ethical choice for discerning travellers, with some marketers taking full advantage of the widely acknowledged ambiguities implicit in the term. More recently “resilience” has generated appeal in the academic tourism literature as a term that might capture core aspects of sustainability, while acknowledging the considerable influences that multiple contexts have on the capacity of communities to adapt and ultimately sustain their tourism enterprises. The resilience concept encompasses an inclusive and integrative “social ecological systems” approach which gives it a firm interdisciplinary underpinning in its application in tourism. While in a tourism context sustainability and resilience are kindred terms, relatively little scholarly effort has been committed to a critical treatment of these concepts. Addressing this deficiency, we present a conceptual model to discuss the relationship between sustainability and resilience in tourism. Drawing on examples from New Zealand's nature-based tourism sector, this conceptual paper explores the insights that a critical treatment of the sustainability–resilience nexus might offer both academics and practitioners in the field of tourism studies.     

Introducing the concept of environmental policy integration into the discourse on sustainable tourism: a way to improve policy-making and implementation?

Many studies have explored how the tourism sector and tourism policies understand and relate to the concept of sustainable development. A common conclusion is that tourism concentrates on economic and social viability at the expense of environmental sustainable development. This paper considers if and how the concept of environmental policy integration (EPI) could improve sustainable tourism policy implementation. It defines EPI, and explores both the three-level (co-ordination, harmonization and prioritization) and four-level (inclusion, consistency, priorities and reporting) EPI approaches. It notes that there is both strong and weak EPI, and both political systems and policy analysis approaches. The paper then describes Norway's post-2007 adoption of sustainable tourism as a central part of its national tourism development strategy, with 10 defined principles, and suggested defined development standards, and assesses the implementation of the national strategy through the lens of the EPI concept. While there are now 18 pilot sustainable tourism destinations, with 44 criteria and 108 indicators, there remain many difficult issues to address. A series of suggestions are made, the chief of which is the need for a politically strong central authority that has been entrusted with having environmental concerns within the tourism sector as its key mandate.     

Exploring the discrepancies in perceived destination images from residents’ and tourists’ perspectives: a revised importance–performance analysis approach

A comprehensive and balanced understanding of both local residents’ and tourists’ perceived destination image (DI) is a pivotal step for successful tourism development. Using the revised importance–performance analysis approach, this study assesses the differences between residents’ and tourists’ perceived implicit importance and performance of DI attributes in the Liyu Lake Scenic Area in Hualien, Taiwan. A mixed methods approach was adopted. First, 30 pertinent image attributes were identified by interviewing local residents and tourists. These image attributes were subsequently used in a questionnaire survey. Results indicate that residents’ and tourists’ opinions were divided on environmental issues and purposes of visit. The most significant finding is that both the residents and tourists regarded the majority of the attributes as “possible overkill,” suggesting that destination management organization should reconsider the direction for future development and try to realize the “real needs” of the residents and tourists based on their motivations.     

Using a Grey–Markov model optimized by Cuckoo search algorithm to forecast the annual foreign tourist arrivals to China

With the rapid development of the international tourism industry, it has been a challenge to forecast the variability in the international tourism market since the 2008 global financial crisis. In this paper, a novel CMCSGM(1, 1) forecasting model is proposed to address how forecasting precision is affected by the volatility of the tourism market. The Markov-chain grey model is adopted for its emphasis on the small-sample observations and exponential distribution samples. Additionally, the optimal input subset method and the Cuckoo search optimization algorithm are applied to improve the performance of the Markov-chain grey model. The experimental study of the forecasting of the annual foreign tourist arrivals to China indicates that the proposed CMCSGM(1, 1) model is considerably more efficient and accurate than the conventional MCGM(1, 1) models.     

Residents’ perspectives of a newly developed ecotourism project: an assessment of effectiveness through the lens of an importance–performance analysis

Understanding the perceived importance and performance of various components of ecotourism to residents living in the area it is undertaken is crucial to the overall success of an ecotourism development project. This study examines residents’ perceptions of the importance and performance of ecotourism components (i.e. environmental conservation, economic wellbeing, promotion of local arts and culture, local participation, and fair share of resources), including overall ecotourism development, at the Gaurishankar Conservation Area (GCA) – a recently implemented ecotourism development project in Nepal. This study also examines the effect of socio-demographic, economic, and psychological factors on a perceived gap between the importance and the performance of ecotourism components. Findings suggest that the ecotourism development project at the GCA should concentrate on improving the economic wellbeing of residents, and on overall ecotourism development. Findings also suggest that residents’ inclusion in benefit-sharing mechanisms was associated with a reduced perceived gap between the importance and performance of ecotourism components. A comparison among different geographical segments of residents indicated that the perceived gap between importance and performance varies across different locations.     

“I will never go to Hong Kong again!” How the secondary crisis communication of “Occupy Central” on Weibo shifted to a tourism boycott

Social media, an open space for the public's opinion and expression, has become an increasingly essential issue in crisis events, leading to secondary crisis communication. Realizing the potential risk of that, this study took the “Occupy Central” spreading on Weibo as a case, and applied topic clustering and sentiment analysis to examine the sequential characteristics of secondary crisis communication on social media in topics and emotions. Results show that the topics Weibo users discussed shifted from a political event to tourism boycott, with emotions turning increasingly negative. The turning point of such a transfer was aroused group conflicts and negative emotions elicited between people from mainland China and Hong Kong. The results indicate the necessity of emphasizing secondary crisis communication during a crisis due to the dynamic and sequential change of topics and public's emotions, which may result in new crises impacting the tourism destination where the initial crisis occurs.     

Tourist experience of slow tourism: from authenticity to place attachment – a mixed-method study based on the case of slow city in China

ABSTRACT

This study connected slow tourism with the concept of authenticity and place attachment using a mixed-method approach. Different factors were seen as likely to influence the behavioral intention. Yaxi town (the first international slow city in China) was chosen as the research site. Results show that authenticity in the context of slow tourism include objective authenticity, constructivism authenticity and existential authenticity. Authenticity partly influence place attachment and behavioral intention; two dimensions of place attachment have significant effect on behavioral intention. Findings of this study can be applied to slow tourism marketing and slow destination management.     

The dynamic impact of low-cost carriers on full-service carriers and the tourism industry of South Korea: a competitive analysis using the Lotka–Volterra model

The emergence of low-cost carriers (LCC) in the aviation industry has dramatically decreased the cost of short-to-medium distance air travel, alongside the growth of the tourism industry. LCC has also changed the competitive dynamics within the aviation industry, challenging the traditional market dominated by conventional full-service carriers. Past studies have demonstrated the scale of impact of LCC on the aviation market, but have yet to explore the intricate dynamics of competition in greater detail. This paper utilizes the Lotka–Volterra model to assess the changing impact of the entrance of LCC on South Korean tourism and airline industries. Our results offer insights to industry players on developing sustainable strategic plans for future routes and tourism destinations in Asia and beyond.     

Is there a case for revising the UNWTO's Global Code of Ethics to include a new article on the ethical treatment of animals by the tourism industry? A response to the opinion piece by David Fennell

This opinion piece reviews and critiques the opinion piece by David Fennell which presents a proposal for a new article about the ethical treatment of animals to be added to the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for the tourism industry. The case presented here rests on a detailed examination of the use of the concepts of speciesism and anthropocentrism in the original opinion piece. It finds that, while speciesism is currently a fashionable way to draw parallels between animals and humans, it is dependent on the evidence around the questions of sentience, cognition and consciousness. While there is increasing evidence for animal sentience and cognition, human consciousness is wholly different from that of even the most advanced animals. And, although anthropocentrism is a dominant idea in many forms of political decision making in general, it cannot be used as a stick with which to beat tourism scholarship: many writers on tourism adopt distinctly ecocentric lines of argument, including the concepts of ecotourism and sustainable tourism. The paper also notes that only ca. 30% of UNWTO's national members had given legal recognition to the existing code of ethics nearly 10 years after its ratification by the UN.