This paper examines how a serious game approach could support a participatory planning process by bringing stakeholders together to discuss interventions that assist the development of sustainable urban tourism. A serious policy game was designed and played in six European cities by a total of 73 participants, reflecting a diverse array of tourism stakeholders. By observing in-game experiences, a pre- and post -game survey and short interviews six months after playing the game, the process and impact of the game was investigated. While it proved difficult to evaluate the value of a serious game approach, results demonstrate that enacting real-life policymaking in a serious game setting can enable stakeholders to come together, and become more aware of the issues and complexities involved with urban tourism planning. This suggests a serious game can be used to stimulate the uptake of academic insights in a playful manner. However, it should be remembered that a game is a tool and does not, in itself, lead to inclusive participatory policymaking and more sustainable urban tourism planning. Consequently, care needs to be taken to ensure inclusiveness and prevent marginalization or disempowerment both within game-design and the political formation of a wider participatory planning approach.
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In the troubled times in which we currently live, the tourism industry has called into question a need for more responsible social practices and more mindful utilisation of natural environments. The Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, has not only become a new wellness trend, but also a great potential for deeply immersive tourist experiences. While there is a wealth of studies examining the positive effects of forest bathing focussing principally on its medical benefits, this qualitative study extends these debates through documenting lived experiences of forest bathers. In so doing forest bathing suggests its latent potential to offer a profoundly mindful experience, and aims to situate this practice more prominently within the tourism discourse.
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In a matter of weeks last year, discussions regarding tourism in cities changed from how to deal with overtourism to how to deal with ‘no tourism’. Shortly thereafter, a great number of posts on LinkedIn, websites, and blogs highlighted how the tourism crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic could help reinvent tourism, into something more equal, inclusive, and sustainable. And so, online – at leastin mypersonalonlinebubble – there seemedtobe a real momentum for proper, transformative changes in (urban) tourism. How can we rebuild urban tourism in a sustainable and resilient way?
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This manifesto describes the notion of sustainable development according to its basic appeal for economic, social and environmental value-creation, together with the implications of its meaning at the level of the individual (the manager), the organisation (the business) and society. As sustainable tourism is focused on the long term, foresight is used to develop four scenarios for a sustainable tourism industry in 2040: “back to the seventies”, “captured in fear”, “unique in the world”, and “shoulders to the wheel”. The implications of the scenarios are mapped for four distinct types of organisational DNA: the blue organisation focusing on quality, professionalism and efficiency, the red organisation for whom challenge, vision and change are most important, the yellow organisation addressing energy, optimism and growth, and the green organisation which is led by care, tradition and security. The manifest concludes with strategic propositions for tourism organisations in each of the four business types and each of the four scenarios.
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Urban tourism increasingly focuses on the role of hospitality in cities, evolving from a means to strengthen tourism as a ‘product’, towards a focus on tourism as an opportunity for revitalization and transformation of destinations. In this context, cities are considered dynamic communities in which ‘hosts’ (entrepreneurs, residents, municipalities) and ‘guests’ (visitors, tourists) co-habitate and co-create multisensorial experiences. This shift in focus comes hand in hand with increasing awareness of competitiveness and sustainability of destinations, expressed by a harmonious relationship between city residents and visitors and a balanced usage of the city as a shared resource. This is of great importance, given the intense usage of urban spaces – the city center of Amsterdam being an illustrative example – and the multiple purposes that these spaces represent for different stakeholders. This paper presents the outcome of a review study into city hospitality experience indicators. We integrate these indicators as a basis for the development of a new scale for measuring the effectiveness of hospitality interventions in relation to outcome variables such as satisfaction and net promotor score (NPS). We thereby provide an important means for scholars and practitioners to develop sustainable tourism actions inclusive of local community interests, in support of efforts toward more balanced city experiences among all stakeholders.
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Why people conduct different sharing about their travel is unclear. Understudied areas include the roles of tourism activity type, tourist well-being, and social context. Under the framework of construal level theory, three studies which combined secondary data and experiments revealed that: 1) challenging (relaxing) tourism activities lead to more desirability (feasibility) sharing; 2) eudaimonia (hedonia) occupy the dominant position and mediate the relationship between challenging (relaxing) tourism activity and desirability (feasibility) sharing; and 3) social context induces the transformation of the relationship between eudaimonia and hedonia, and has a significant moderating impact on the mechanism of travel experience sharing type. Theoretical and managerial implications of travel experience sharing type and mutual transformation between eudaimonia and hedonia are discussed.
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This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.
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The debate on tourism in cities, both academically and in practice, has for a long time taken place in relative isolation from urban studies. Tourism is mostly addressed as an external agent and economic force that puts pressure on cities rather than as an interdependent part of city systems. The recent debate on city touristification and excessive dependence on the visitor economy, as well as the associated processes of exclusion, and displacement of local city users, serves to highlight how tourism is an integral part of urban developments. A wider urban perspective is needed to understand the processes underlying the tourism phenomena and more transdisciplinary perspectives are required to analyze the urban (tourism) practices. The current article seeks to contribute to such a perspective through a discussion of the literature on urban and tourism studies, and related fields such as gentrification, mobilities, and touristification. Based on this, theoretical reflections are provided regarding a more integral perspective to tourism and urban development in order to engage with a transversal urban tourism research agenda.
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The aim of this QSR 2022 on tourism is to make an attempt to assess available information about the tourism industry from three countries and various sources and present it in a comprehensive manner. We, thereby, describe common features of regional tourism structures, as well as differences, and we present some of the identified data incompatibilities (sections 2.2 and 2.3). The recommendations in section 3 present avenues along which data collection and monitoring can be improved, inspired by a set of key forces driving change intourism that stakeholders should be prepared for (section 2.4).
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Experiences are at the core of tourism and hospitality. Understanding how to design, manage and measure such experiences has become a key topic in academic literature focused on this sector. This paper presents the characteristics of an optimal design process model for experiences, based on the results of a meta-ethnographic synthesis of such processes. The characteristics can be seen as critical success factors in delivering the right solution to the right problem efficiently and effectively. Depending on the context, starting level and aim of the design, designers can benefit from applying several different design processes. Such a process benefits from design capabilities developed in multi-disciplinary teams. Moreover, the design process aids design teams through steering the collection of explicit and tacit knowledge on problem and solution aspects with stakeholders in a specific order. The success of a design process depends on procedural knowledge of lead designers and their ability to orchestrate and integrate contributions from various disciplines and stakeholders at the right times. Existing design processes for tourism and hospitality experiences lack maturity and flexibility, resulting in them having poor structural validity. However these processes, with insights from design science, can form a base for further theoretical development.
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