The Impacts of COVID-19 Crisis over the Tourism Expectations of the Azores Archipelago Residents

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is interesting, but the approach to the study is too little in depth.

It would be important to improve the description of materials and methods with more details on the questionnaire and the choice of questions.
The discussion of the results and their concrete contribution to the management of the territory should also be improved

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Many thanks for the comments and improvement suggestions. We have considered them and added them to the manuscript (at orange text color).

 

Many thanks

Reviewer 2 Report

Very interesting and extremely up-to-date subject of the study, dealing with issues both important and interesting from the point of view of tourism management in the region.

However, the article requires some modifications and changes.

Among the weaknesses of the presented text - in my opinion - should be indicated:

1. The purpose of the article should be added to the Abstract section.
2. The choice raises doubts - sustainable development among the keywords?
3. It should describe the method of selecting the sample for the Authors' research with argumentation.
4. There is no clear indication in the text what was the attempt? N = ???
5. There is no information about N =? in tables presenting the results of own research.
6. The way in which it was decided to present the research results in table 2 (p.5) , table 4 (p.6) and table 6 (p.7) makes them illegible and makes it difficult to read the text. It is worth thinking about the change (e.g. list the questionnaire questions in the table itself, not under it).
7. Does figure 2 (p. 3) show the division into Eastern / Central / Western Group (used in the questionnaire form)?
8. The purpose of selecting a specific method of analysis (AHCA) is not presented? Why was this method chosen to solve the research problem? It is not clear.
9. It is necessary to expand the part concerning inference, and in particular the possibilities of rural and slow tourism development (line 298: “new models of…”) - then it will enable the achievement of one of the indicated objectives of the article.
10. Discussions and Conclusions section also need to be expanded with the elements announced in the abstract and the objectives of the article. For example, in the Abstract section (line 26-27) there is an announcement of the content ("how this situation will influence regional sustainable development”), while the content of the article, in particular in the Discussions and Conclusions section, lacks any development of the topic.
11. The spelling of “Residents” or “residents” should be standardized - lowercase or uppercase letters throughout the text.
12. In the lines 266-277 Authors present extremely interesting observations, describing the differences in the perception of respondents resulting from the difference in age or place of residence. It is worth expanding this part.

In my opinion, the article will be suitable for publication, however, after completing the above information. Thank you for the opportunity of reading and reviewing very interesting article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Many thanks for the comments and improvement suggestions. We have considered them and added them to the manuscript (at orange text color).

 

Many thanks

Reviewer 3 Report

The reviewed article discusses the problems of domestic tourism with case study of the Azores Islands during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, despite the extremely important issue they decided to consider, the authors completely failed to use the potential of the topic itself and the conducted survey. In my opinion the introduction seems to be acceptable, although the authors did not make literature background of domestic tourism at all. Instead, they discussed issues related to the impact of the pandemic on tourism. The following chapters are much weaker. The research area is very poorly presented in the materials and methods. Apart from the fact that the Azores are 9 different islands, we learn nothing more. The main questions here should be as follows: what is the Azores’ tourism potential, how the tourism industry looks like and how the Azores’ inhabitants used to spend their holidays in normal conditions. There is hardly any information about the survey. Again my questions here: what was the design of the tool, how was the survey conducted, what problems were taken up in it, what other data was used to prepare the article. Research results are very sketchy. There is no reference whatsoever to any other literature study on this subject. Finally, the authors did not refer to the impact of changes in inhabitants' preferences on the development of the region, which was their goal, among others.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thanks for the comments and improvement suggestions. We have considered many of them. The main goal of the study was not a review over the domestic tourism but is instead focused on how COVID-19 influences the Archipelago residents' intentions of tourism, and from there, we were able to extract guidelines and directions for the Sustainable Development of the Region. Yet, some of the suggestions were added to an entirely new section of this article: Study Limitations and Additional Research Lines.

 

Many thanks

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The suggestions have been accepted and the work appears more complete

Author Response

Thank you very much for your recommendations.
We took into account the last suggested suggestions and updated the paper, where we indicate the changes made in blue, for a better view of the changes.

I hope that we have been able to respond to Your expectations in this way.

Reviewer 2 Report

It should describe the method of selecting the sample for the Authors' research with argumentation. There is still no explanation regarding the chosen method of selecting the research sample. The advantages and disadvantages of this choice should be indicated.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your recommendations.
We took into account the last suggested suggestions and updated the paper, where we indicate the changes made in blue, for a better view of the changes.

I hope that we have been able to respond to Your expectations in this way.

Reviewer 3 Report

It is still very descriptive. There is a problem with many basic items I pointed out in my first review. I do not recommend the paper for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your recommendations.
We took into account the last suggested suggestions and updated the paper, where we indicate the changes made in blue, for a better view of the changes.

I hope that we have been able to respond to Your expectations in this way.