The member countries of World Tourism Organization (WTO) at its 13th General Assembly in Santiago, Chile adopted the new Global Code of Ethics for Tourism on 1 October 1999. Acclaimed for its lofty goals and coverage, the Code soon became the reference point for debates on a wide spectrum of issues relating to tourism such as sustainable development, equity and protection of local cultures. The...

BACKGROUND The medical tourism industry, which assists patients with accessing non-emergency medical care abroad, has grown rapidly in recent years. A lack of reliable data about medical tourism makes it difficult to create policy, health system, and public health responses to address the associated risks and shortcomings, such as spread of infectious diseases, associated with this industry. Th...

The use of Agent technology is a very useful tool to find a solution to every day problems in order to improve the quality of life of people. The agent paradigm let us create systems which can offer complex and sophisticated services to different users. Using frameworks like JADE-LEAP, we can even have agents running on our mobile or PDA, giving us the capability to implement a flexible, open, ...

The value chain of any business is vital in identifying, creating and delivering the desired value to the customer. The service providers in tourism industry must be vigilant about changing tourist expectations and volatile competitive environment. Currently less structured business processes in this industry which makes most of traditional controls and measurements weak. However, good supply c...

ecause a large number of tourists come to  Mashhad, this city has a high potential for the development of tourism-related activities. Therefore, it is necessary to equip resources for tourism activities and investment in this regard. Despite the highest tourism potential in Mashhad, there are great opportunities for the tourism industry, which has not been fully identified and has not been made...

Tourism is regarded to be the world's largest industry, with about 8% of the worldwide export value of goods and services coming from tourism. Receipts from international tourism are in the order of US$ 475 billion (2000 values). These benefits resulting from international travel can be weighted against the environmental costs of tourism, including the loss of biodiversity, ecosystems, land, an...

Educational tourism, a burgeoning section in China’s tourism market, has attracted great attention from both industry and researchers, however, the focus always falls on young people, the educational demands of other tourists are largely neglected. The paper, firstly does a comprehensive analysis of situation and problems of Chinese inbound, outbound and domestic education tourism markets, and ...

A model for the medical tourism supply chain with the antecedents and outcomes was developed and empirically investigated in this paper. The theoretical model was tested using Structural Equation Modelling with Partial Least Squares. A self-administered questionnaire was designed and collected from 133 organizations representing various industries that are part of the medical tourism industry i...

With the opening of the long-awaited Boyne Valley Centre in Summer 1997, the time has perhaps come to reassess the relationship between heritage and tourism in Ireland. In recent years, particularly since the start of the 1990s, there has been considerable debate and controversy about heritage issues, illustrating a high degree of public interest in the field. This paper outlines the main featu...

Information technology as a more intermediary utilizes the science of the day to provide the necessary data for the specialists, organizations, and ultimately all types of groups in the shortest possible time and in the best possible way. Many countries believe that entrepreneurship has played an indispensable role in improving productivity and economic growth. Since the benefits of tourism ind...