The Caribbean tourism industry owes much of its success to beneficial geograph­ ical site and situation factors. Yet these geographical advantages have also contributed to the mass tourism-related pressures of economic dependency, social division and environmental degradation. We argue geographically marginal locales in the Caribbean have the potential to develop alternative tourism models that...

This research discusses the negative social, environmental and economic impacts of tourism development in Barbados; describes the perceptions of residents and tourists to such; and measures their preferences for environmental management changes using the island’s lone marine reserve, the Folkestone Marine Reserve, as a case study. This research is underpinned by a number of policy and methodolo...

Heritage is an important part of the international tourism market. As with any resource, sustainable management practices are required to maintain the long-term value of heritage assets. It is claimed that sustainable heritage tourism provides quality experiences for the tourists while protecting the environment and improving the quality of life for local residents. Yet, irrespective of how tou...

An intensive earthquake, the Wenchuan Earthquake of 8.0 on the Richter scale, struck western Sichuan, China on May 12, 2008. The earthquake significantly affected all industries in the quake-hit areas including local tourism. This paper provides suggestions for reconstruction after outlining findings on the various ways by which the earthquake affected the operations and viability of tourism in...

Weather, climate and tourism are interconnected in many different ways. All of them are of both global and local significance. Weather and/or climate information is of interest for tourists and the tourism industry. Crucial for tourism is information on thermal comfort or thermal stress conditions. Thermal indices, i.e., physiologically equivalent temperature, can deliver relevant information f...

Tourism is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing industries. Industrial cluster theory is perhaps the leading model for economic development today. Despite this, the academic literature of industrial cluster theory has paid relatively little attention to the tourism industry. Meanwhile, practitioners of tourism development are experimenting with the cluster concept across the US and ar...

Tourism is frequently acclaimed as one of the world’s largest and most pervasive industries. Research into tourism has grown rapidly in recent years with many new books and journals appearing. In particular, this article notes that perhaps three new journals have marked the coming of age of tourism-related research, namely, Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and finally Mobilities. While a gr...

Th e purpose of this paper is to illustrate diff erent defi nitions of tourism destination competitiveness and some models developed from various environments containing diff erent measures of competitiveness. Th e objective of the study was to empirically test the Slovenian tourism stakeholders' perception of diff erent determinants of competitiveness. Th e study was carried out by a systemati...

The purpose – Accurately forecasting the demand for international health tourism is important to newly-emerging markets in the world. The aim of this study was presents a more suitable and accurate model for forecasting the demand for health tourism that should be more theoretically useful. Design – Applying GM(1,1) with adaptive levels of α (hereafter GM(1,1)-α model) to provide a concise pred...

This study examines what factors affects tourists’ intention to use tourism websites designed by local governments to increase the exposure of local tourism. The study relies on the Technology Acceptance Model to assess the advantages and disadvantages of a specific tourism website and to examine the reasons that motivate tourists to use online tourism websites for travel information searches. ...