Coastal areas are among the most densely populated zones worldwide and at the same time subjected to rapid environmental changes due to their land-sea interface locations. The phenomenal growth of coastal tourism in the last few decades, especially in the tropical countries, has created environmental havocs by drastically altering the local ecological milieu in which the indigenous communities ...

Large, vertically integrated outgoing tour operators dominate the foreign holidays segment of the British and German travel and tourism industry. This industrial structure has emerged and has been sustained by a number of factors, of which the adoption and diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is one of the most significant. As a response, some small outgoing tour o...

In this commentary, we establish a relationship between medical sociology and the study of medical tourism and cross-border healthcare by introducing Ronald Andersen's behavioral model of healthcare use, and linking this model to the recent empirical study of Kovacs et al. on patients travelling to Hungary for orthopedic treatment. Finally, we plead for more measurement in the field of patient ...

Medical tourism in Ireland, like in many Western states, is built around assumptions about individual agency, choice, possibility, and mobility. One specific form of medical tourism—the flow of women from Ireland traveling in order to secure an abortion—disrupts and contradicts these assumptions. One legacy of the bitter, contentious political and legal battles surrounding abortion in Ireland i...

The tourism footprint family comprises the tourism ecological footprint (TEF), the tourism carbon footprint (TCF) and the tourism water footprint (TWF). The tourism footprint represents an important tool for quantitatively assessing the impact of tourism activities on the ecosystem of a tourist destination. This paper systematically reviews the relevant literature on TEF, TCF and TWF, analyses ...

Following the identification of medical tourism as a growth sector by the Malaysian government in 1998, significant government sector and private-sector investments have been channeled into its development over the past 15 years. This is unfolding within the broader context of social services being devolved to for-profit enterprises and 'market-capable' segments of society becoming sites of int...

Infectious disease threat events (IDTEs) are increasing in frequency worldwide. We analyzed underlying drivers of 116 IDTEs detected in Europe during 2008-2013 by epidemic intelligence at the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control. Seventeen drivers were identified and categorized into 3 groups: globalization and environment, sociodemographic, and public health systems. A combination...

China tourism industry is investing to develop a “Golden Tourism Project”. One of the main objectives of this project is to improve web-based tourism online service quality and implement tourism e-commerce. In order to develop successfully the project it is necessary to investigate who are main tourism website users, what are their requirements for online tourism services and how do they assess...