Tour. Hosp., Volume 3, Issue 2 (June 2022) – 11 articles

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected all sectors including educational institutions transitioning from face-to-face to hybrid and virtual classes. Partial or full closure of tourism businesses has impacted college students’ jobs within the college and/or outside in the business sector. For a tourism dependent economy such as Maine’s, the impacts of COVID-19 have been severe, including lost job opportunities for students. Several studies have researched the impacts of COVID-19 on the physical, psychological, social, and mental health status of college students; however, few have addressed the impacts on college students’ jobs. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand how students at the University of Southern Maine (USM) have been impacted in their jobs by COVID-19 and to consider what stakeholders can do to support and rebuild the workforce. A quantitative survey was distributed to all USM undergraduate students (completed by 160) between 26 April through 6 May 2021. The study found that pre-COVID, 44% of student employment was in non-tourism, 25% in tourism, and 16% in USM work study, while 15% were unemployed. At the time of the survey, those proportions had shifted to 42% in non-tourism, 22% in tourism, 14% in USM work study, and 22% not employed with a significant increase in the non-employed student category. The study found that, initially, COVID-19 had impacted student employment in terms of changed responsibilities, reduced hours, job layoffs/losses, increased hours, and voluntary job loss. Students’ current jobs (during the survey) were impacted in the form of changed responsibilities/jobs/locations and industries, including decreased hours. During the pandemic, students valued industry support such as enhanced cleaning/safety, flexible hours/time off, work from home, as well as academic support in terms of flexibility, emotional support, industry updates, and networking opportunities. The study recommends that stakeholders develop collaborative comprehensive emergency management plans (CEMPs) to mitigate disruptions such as COVID-19 and be prepared for future disasters of this nature. Full article

Geodiversity has recently emerged as a key idea for recognizing the value of abiotic nature. The concept has vital implications for informing tourism sustainability research; however, to date, tourism scholarship has not shown adequate engagement with this concept. The issue also assumes further significance in the Anthropocene, where our species has become a geological force. Here, through a review of key works related to geodiversity and Anthropocene, their interface is analyzed, and implications for tourism sustainability are presented. It is argued that, in the Anthropocene, it is no longer enough for tourism sustainability research to remain preoccupied with the human predicament in the Anthropocene or the decline of biotic nature at some prominent tourism destinations, and it is imperative that tourism scholars embrace the concern for abiotic diversity and dynamic earth processes that provide vital resources and services for tourism planetwide. Full article

Full accessibility to people with reduced mobility, applied to tourism, is difficult to achieve and should not be seen in an absolute way, but as a concern to make tourism services more accessible and focused on the specific and individual needs of people as tourists. National and regional entities should adopt good practices to build a tourism of all, for all. The Delphi method was used in order to verify the accessibility and attractiveness of the city of Lisbon as a tourist destination by addressing the following objectives: to analyse the competitiveness of a destination for people with reduced mobility, to analyse if Lisbon is attractive and inclusive, considering its infrastructures, services, hospitality, tourist attractions and accessibility. The results obtained in the study show that Lisbon’s factors and resources are increasingly accessible to people with reduced mobility. Our findings reveal that entertainment, general and tourism infrastructures, accommodation, the various activities and cultural resources and the quality of services present greater accessibility for people with reduced mobility. The factors with less importance were: marketing of a destination, accessibilities, and natural resources. Full article

In this article, we meet a seven-year-old boy, Matti, who was adopted from his birth country in Africa by a family in Sweden. We meet him together with his family as they are planning a family adoption return trip to his birth country and again after their return. We argue that an adoption return trip is a form of family travel and/or visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel. By methodologically using a so-called children’s perspective we are primarily focusing on Matti and how he talks about the return trip. We explore some key concepts from child studies through Matti’s relational encounters in the world. By presenting agency and cultural competence as something that is enacted in practice, we show how they are enacted through the dependencies between Matti, his mother and his sister. The analysis shows that cultural competence and agency are fluid in the sense that they can be changed by how topics of discussion are woven through one another. Staying with Matti’s lived practices makes it possible to elaborate on and demonstrate different forms of competence and agency that are important for understanding children as tourists and children’s roles in family travel. Full article

The focus of experiential tourism is for the consumer or visitor to experience the tourist destination and to actively interact with local people, cultures, and the place itself. In fact, it can be seen as a form of tourism that builds upon place identities, both tangible and intangible, by energetically introducing the visitor to the culture, history, nature, traditions, cuisine, and social life of a place. In doing so, the emotional, physical, or spiritual experience of the consumer becomes a dynamic source of place branding. The paper investigates the main features of experiential tourism in the Greek regions of Central Macedonia, and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, and discusses their interactions with place identity. Our methodology consists of a qualitative survey based on semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and a thematic analysis to trace the main features of the experiential product and enterprises that develop such products. The paper concludes that experiential tourism in Greece bears many of the features highlighted in the literature. Furthermore, our findings underline some new aspects, especially the links between the experiential product, small and well-qualified enterprises, and a place’s tangible and intangible identities, which make experiential tourism an opportunity for locales and their branding. Full article

This study revolves around the village community of Ushguli, located in the Upper Svaneti region in the North of Georgia, which attained UNESCO World Heritage status in 1996. Since around 2010, Ushguli has seen a step-by-step rise in tourism. Until now, it has found itself relatively unprepared to meet visitors’ interests and needs and cope with the diverse aspects of modern lifestyles. The encounter and, in many instances, clash of interests between villagers and tourists, occurring in a context in which the economic objectives of the former group are encouragingly continuously growing visitor numbers, is correspondingly difficult to channel and manage. Ushguli represents a region with ideal conditions for exploring tourism as a strategy for overcoming economic and social crises and its effects on spatial, economic, environmental and social structures against a backdrop of change in material and immaterial objects driven by all stakeholders involved. This paper provides an overview of the specific focus of a multi-year study, which began in 2017. The research approach is critical findings related to impacts on regional values and life organization. In a nutshell, it can be concluded that tourists’ online communicated expectations and reviews have a profound impact on local communities and create intense competitive pressure on the local people. Full article

Focusing on rural destinations and calling on the evolutionary resilience concept as a theoretical lens, this paper investigates whether COVID-19 provokes “revenge tourism” after periods of lockdown or whether the pandemic can be used as a chance for a degrowth-oriented restart that forms the foundation for a more sustainable tourism sector. Analysing tourism data and documents regarding political and economic actors’ actions in two rural destinations in Ireland (Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark) and Germany (Southeast Rügen Biosphere Reserve), the study reveals that so far, neither “revenge travel” nor a degrowth-oriented restart of tourism can be identified. Rather, current development indicates that the two rural destinations show resilience in the sense of bouncing back to the pre-COVID-19 era and a continuation of further growth-oriented rural tourism as far as possible under the conditions of political COVID-19 measures. As this development will not allow the sector to genuinely come to grips with the negative ecological and sociocultural effects of rural tourism, the paper pleads for initiation of a debate about influencing business realities on a supranational level, and in this context, about the value of rural tourism destinations and possible forms of financial compensation for degrowth in rural tourism. Full article

The content of the EU28 Destination Management Organisations’ (DMOs’) official tourism websites is studied to understand how each country is promoting its online position and image, and whether this is compatible with the new forms of neo/post-Fordism consumption. The research incorporates critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a method to analyse the content of the websites for tourism promotion. Today, destinations struggle to portray a unique image in terms of their natural, historical and cultural characteristics and to be ahead of the competition. This paper aims to bring together the 27 EU member states and the United Kingdom’s (EU28) DMOs’ official tourism websites and review their content. The study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the aim of identifying the EU member states’ written web communication with potential visitors and to understand how each country is represented on the web in relation to neo/post-Fordism. The results of the study suggest that the EU28 are positioned online with website content to urge travellers to visit their country and gain constructive experiences within the remits of neo/post-Fordist characteristics. The paper follows an original approach in using CDA of EU28 official website online content in relation to neo/post-Fordist remits of production. Full article

This study explores Generation Z hotel employees’ perception of and behavioral intention to use advanced information technologies (ITs) before and during COVID-19. The relationship between perception and intention moderated by COVID-19 is investigated. The technology acceptance model (TAM) and innovation diffusion theory (IDT) are integrated, and compatibility is added as an additional construct to conduct this longitudinal study. Data were collected in Hong Kong in April 2019 (pre-pandemic stage) and March 2021 (pandemic stage). Regression analysis, t-test, Cochran’s Q test, and correspondence analysis are applied. Follow-up in-person interviews are conducted to validate the results. The results reveal significant differences between the pre-pandemic and pandemic stages and the moderating effect of COVID-19 on the relationship between the perception of and behavioral intention to use advanced ITs. This study addresses the gap in hospitality research by integrating TAM and IDT to examine Generation Z hotel employees’ behavioral intention to use advanced ITs. Full article

To address the adverse impact of climate change, the concept of low-carbon tourism has recently been developed, which promotes a new way of travelling to obtain higher value and travel experience for tourists as well as more social, economic, and environmental benefits for society by reducing carbon emissions caused by tourists’ activities. The present study proposes and applies a methodological approach to assess various carbon-related scenarios for tourism development on the island of Lefkada, Greece. The methodology includes two phases: the diagnosis and the assessment phase. The diagnosis phase includes four distinct steps: (i) SWOT analysis, (ii) STEEP analysis, (iii) identification of driving forces (DF) and (iv) formulation of four tourism development scenarios based on two axes of uncertainty. The assessment phase includes: (i) a pairwise comparison of DF and (ii) selection of the preferred tourism development scenario. A combination of two multicriteria analyses, namely the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), is implemented to rank the four tourism development scenarios. The two most essential driving forces for defining the priority order of the tourism development scenario are National Policies—Green Development and Local Community Awareness. The scenario that promotes low-carbon tourism is the preferred scenario for the study area. The presented research results could provide a reference for relevant tourism development in the study area and the proposed methodology can be applied in all tourism destinations. Full article

In Japan, many academics and practitioners have focused on anime-induced tourism as one of the new alternative forms of tourism in the 21st century. Many fans have visited locations that have appeared in anime as film-induced tourists. Regarding the behavior of anime-induced tourists, many tend to be willing to contribute to the destinations they visit as eco-oriented volunteers, different from purely film-induced tourists. Therefore, anime-induced tourists possess a complex character that entails both an interest in film-induced tourism and volunteer tourism, which may conceptually be opposed to one another. This study reveals anime’s potential as a driver of new volunteer tourism and theoretically contributes to tourism research by redefining anime-induced tourism by relying on the concept of film-induced voluntourism. Using a comparative case study of the behavior of anime-induced volunteer tourists at three destinations, this study found that while anime-induced volunteer tourists have a feeling of gratitude for their host communities with a vacationer’s mindset, they can realize positive outcomes, including economic benefits and problem solutions by engaging in cleaning-up activities at the destinations they visit. In conclusion, this study clarifies that anime tourism is one of the significant alternative forms of tourism that can achieve community development associated with film-induced voluntourists, resolving the negative effects of film-induced tourism and volunteer tourism. Full article