Opportunities in Identifying and Marketing Windsport Tourism Destinations: High-Resolution Wind Analysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic is very interesting, especially in the post-covid context when outdoor activities in nature become more and more popular. In the following text I provide some comments and suggestions in order to improve the paper:
Please state in the introduction the area or destinations that will be analyzed in the paper.
When referring to a certain work at the beginning of the sentence, please use the surname of the authors with the reference number in brackets.
The authors need to include more recent academic papers on this topic in order to get a wider picture of the importance of this topic for scholars and different aspects of the investigation.
The chapter: The role of marketing in developing innovative destination experiences includes a lot of theoretical facts that might be already well known to the reader. The authors should make it clearer, shorter, and more related to the topic they investigate. Writing in general about the role of marketing is unnecessary here.
The methodology of the paper should be explained in a separate chapter
I wonder why the time period of data collection finishes in 2018. Why the recent years not included?
The authors should state if there are some contributions to the theoretical knowledge on this topic, besides managerial implications.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
I have submitted a revised manuscript and a pdf with marked changes. The latter doesn't include line numbers due to incompatibility with MDPI template.
Kind regards,
Martin Vodopivec
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. You should explain what you mean by “rush activities”.
2. What is the contribution of this research? It seems like you are mapping wind speeds and then highlighting some areas that have high winds. Wouldn’t those places already know that they have good wind? Would you want to incorporate other attributes of locations too, like distance to a major airport, hotel capacity, etc.? Those factors may be important in determining which locations will be destinations for future windsport activities. Or perhaps these locations are already windsport hotspots?
3. The thing that came immediately to mind when reading your article is wind energy. Wind energy is often a source of conflict in coastal areas with good wind potential. Here are some articles that explore that:
Westerberg et al. (2013). The case for offshore wind farms, artificial reefs and sustainable tourism in the French mediterranean. Tourism Management, 34, 172-183.
Albrecht et al., “The Impact of Offshore Wind Energy on Tourism: Good Practices and Perspectives for the South Baltic Region,” Stiftung OFFSHORE-WINDENERGIE, 2013. Available at https://www.offshore-stiftung.de/sites/offshorelink.de/files/documents/Offshore_Stiftung_2013_04SBO_SOW_tourism_study_final_web.pdf.
Carr-Harris, A., & Lang, C. (2019). Sustainability and tourism: the effect of the United States’ first offshore wind farm on the vacation rental market. Resource and Energy Economics, 57, 51-67.
Parsons et al. (2020). The effect of offshore wind power projects on recreational beach use on the east coast of the United States: Evidence from contingent-behavior data. Energy Policy, 144, 111659.
Trandafir et al. (2020). How are tourists affected by offshore wind turbines? A case study of the first US offshore wind farm. Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics, 7(1), 1.
I think it would be great to incorporate this literature in a couple ways. First, my read of this literature is that wind energy does not detract from tourism activities, and may even enhance it (Westerberg et al. 2013, Carr-Harris and Lang 2019, Trandafir et al. 2020), particularly if the wind farm is beyond a certain distance from the coast (Parsons et al. 2020). This is probably true for windsports too, but it could be a concern given the needed expansion of wind energy. Second, there may be synergies in these two activities. Tourist destinations become known for wind and sustainability and develop identities and other activities related to that identity (“edutainment” in words of Albrecht et al. 2013). This could enhance the windsport tourism business. I think this connection broadens the interest of your study, so I strongly encourage you to incorporate it and these references.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
I had problems replacing uploaded files in the online submission form, so the lines in our last answer could be missing. In this case the sentence should be:
"… and the section “6. Discussion” (lines 377-392):"
I submitted a revised manuscript and a pdf file with marked changes. The latter doesn't include line numbers due to incompatibility with MDPI LaTeX template.
I sincerely apologize for the confusion.
Kind regards,
Martin Vodopivec
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
NA
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, dear Editor.
In accordance with the review, the English language and spelling have been thoroughly revised. The layout of the pdf with marked changes is somewhat different from the original manuscript due to incompatibility between latexdiff and MDPI template.
We are thankful for your time and comments, which helped us improve the paper.
Kind regards,
Martin Vodopivec
