Tourism and Hospitality

This exploratory study explores the preparedness and response strategies of tourism businesses to climate change through an in-depth qualitative analysis. Using open-ended questionnaires, we collected detailed narratives from a diverse range of tourism businesses, allowing respondents to express their perceptions, strategies and challenges in their own words. Thematic analysis of the data revealed a wide variation in how businesses understand and respond to climate risks. While most participants acknowledged climate change as a critical issue, many reported significant barriers, such as financial constraints and lack of expertise, which hindered their ability to implement meaningful strategies. Key themes that emerged from the data include the role of external support in overcoming financial and technical challenges, the diversity of mitigation strategies adopted and the gap between climate awareness and practical action. This study pinpoints the need for tailored interventions to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism sector, highlighting the complexity of translating climate change awareness into tangible business practices. The findings contribute to the growing discourse on sustainable tourism by offering an understanding of the challenges and opportunities that businesses face in addressing climate change.

This paper examines how employees in Croatian hotels relate their direct supervisors’ leadership behaviors to job satisfaction. Survey data were collected from 153 hotel employees across departments and hotels of different sizes. Leadership was assessed through five styles (autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, transformational, and transactional), while job satisfaction was measured across six dimensions. The hypothesized relationships were tested using competitive regression models in which all leadership styles were entered simultaneously, complemented by a moderation test and relative-importance analysis. The results show a differentiated pattern. Transformational leadership is positively related to staff development and management satisfaction and also shows a positive association with salary satisfaction. Transactional leadership is most strongly linked to salary satisfaction, while it relates negatively to staff development satisfaction when other styles are controlled. Democratic leadership is positively associated with management satisfaction, but its unique association with staff development satisfaction is contingent on hotel size: it is negative in small hotels and attenuates to non-significance in medium-sized and large hotels. Autocratic leadership is generally associated with lower satisfaction in key domains, whereas laissez-faire leadership does not show meaningful unique effects in the competitive models. These findings provide evidence from the Croatian hotel sector and suggest that leadership development and HR support systems should be aligned with the specific satisfaction domains hotels seek to improve.

We propose an Energy Index to assess how destinations influence visitor well-being by integrating objective environmental conditions, management practices, cultural–spiritual significance and reported emotional experience. Methodologically, the framework of the index builds on a composite-indicator approach that integrates heterogeneous data types–quantitative environmental variables (e.g., air quality, noise, geomineral resources), qualitative assessments of governance and tourism infrastructure, heritage and symbolism indicators, and survey-based/AI-assisted sentiment measures. Indicators are normalized and weighted to produce a composite score. Sensitivity checks are applied to assess the robustness of indicator selection. The model adopts a formative, partially compensable logic that preserves conceptual differentiation across components. Applied to Petrich (Bulgaria)—including locations such as Rupite and the Belasitsa area—the index demonstrates how geothermal assets, environmental quality, and cultural meaning can be translated into actionable metrics for destination management and branding. The approach offers a scalable tool for wellness destinations seeking evidence-based positioning and capacity management.