The Tourism Education Futures Institute (TEFI) seeks to provide vision, knowledge and a framework for tourism education programs that promote global citizenship and optimism for a better world. This paper provides background on TEFI, its inception, its development and its future. The paper argues that a fundamental shift in tourism education is necessary to respond to global challenges impactin...

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 industry has been the fastest and the most income-generating industry in the first decade of the third millennium. it has been for many countries including some of oic member countries a source of foreign exchange and contributed into their development. in this paper, we try to test empirically whether tourism expansion has had any significant effect on economic growth of oic member cou...

With the world’s science and technology becoming more and more mature and perfect, as well as the environment of supporting policy optimized and application prospects become more extensive, new terms, such as, smart earth, smart city, smart scenic spots, smart hotels, smart services, and smart marketing process have swept the world. The era of smart travel has arrived. However, it must be reali...

Experiences constitute the essence of the tourism industry. While literature has recognised the recent impact of technology on experiences, its empirical exploration remains scarce. This study addresses the gap by empirically exploring five leading industry cases to generate a holistic understanding of technology enhanced tourism experiences. The main contribution of this paper lies in the deve...

The Bristol Bay region of southwestern Alaska is sparsely inhabited, but richly endowed in resources that could support a major tourism industry. Despite an abundance of natural and cultural attractions and a clear need for economic diversification, the tourism industry is still largely undeveloped. Several factors account for this unfulfilled opportunity, including high travel costs, lack of v...

today, the tourism industry is a major source of income for many countries. but the tourism as an economic activity mentioned before, is a cultural phenomenon in nature and the main attraction of tourism development as well. given the special vulnerability and fragility of cultural heritage, tourism development, in some cases, can cause damage to indigenous cultural patterns. this is in relatio...

3D virtual tour is a product of the combination of tourism and information technology development, and building a three-dimensional virtual tour platform will facilitate the future development of the tourism industry. Virtual reality technology has brought about tremendous changes in the tourism industry. Modeling Language VRML, which uses Virtual Reality, turns the rich imagination of people i...

Iran including attractive places and high potential for tourism (external and internal) and investing on tourism industry including social and economic effects leading to constancy of tourism areas. Unfortunately, despite high capacity of developing tourism in our country, this capacity has not recognized well and has not utilized for development of Iran. The special factors influence on transi...