Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070212

Authors: Aleksandar Racz Ljerka Armano

Guided forest bathing is increasingly incorporated into resort wellness portfolios, yet tourism evaluations often report average programme outcomes without examining how guests differ at entry or what the findings imply for product and service design. This prospective one-group pre–post field study examined a three-day guided forest bathing programme delivered as part of the organised wellness offer of a forest-rich Northern Adriatic resort. Of 150 enrolled adults, 132 provided matched questionnaires. Six study-specific experiential and relational dimensions were assessed before and after the programme: nature connectedness, restorative perception, sensory awareness, environmental-ethical sensitivity, planetary health orientation, and intention to continue nature-based self-care. All six post-programme scores were higher after Holm adjustment. The largest standardised differences were observed for sensory awareness (mean difference = 0.91, Cohen’s dz = 1.42), restorative perception (mean difference = 0.61, Cohen’s dz = 1.17), and future nature-based self-care (mean difference = 0.59, Cohen’s dz = 1.04). Change in sensory awareness correlated with change in restorative perception (r = 0.62) and nature connectedness (r = 0.58). Previous nature contact, nature-related hobbies, and spiritual-existential orientation predicted baseline nature connectedness, whereas integrative health orientation, wellness self-care, spirituality, and expectations predicted baseline future self-care. In baseline-adjusted models, lower previous forest contact was associated with higher post-programme sensory awareness. Because the study had no control group, these differences cannot be attributed specifically to guided forest bathing rather than to the wider resort stay, time away from routine, recreation, social interaction, expectancy, or repeated measurement. Co-created restorative value is proposed only as an interpretive framework and was not measured as a construct. For tourism and hospitality management, the findings generate testable decisions concerning guest onboarding, adaptive facilitation, guide training, expectation management, and the development of low-infrastructure nature-based wellness products.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070211

Authors: Aleksandar Racz Ljerka Armano

Experience has become a central source of competitiveness in wellness tourism, yet natural features in resorts often remain passive scenery rather than deliberately designed service content. This prospective, four-group randomised controlled service-evaluation study examined whether brief nature-based wellness micro-interventions developed from natural elements already present in a coastal health and wellness resort were associated with more favourable immediate evaluations of experience quality, satisfaction, perceived innovativeness, added value, and recommendation intention. Of 120 adult hotel guests randomly allocated in equal proportions to cloud noticing, forest therapy elements, active control, or standard stay, 114 completed the final evaluation. A contextually adapted 22-item instrument based on service-performance logic and tourism-experience research was used. The forest-therapy-elements and cloud-noticing conditions showed the most favourable overall evaluation profiles, followed by active control and standard stay. The clearest differentiation concerned perceived innovativeness, while recommendation intention was most strongly associated with perceived added value and satisfaction. These findings are relevant to wellness-tourism development because they indicate that natural elements already present in a resort may acquire additional perceived service value when translated into structured, facilitated, and place-sensitive guest activities. Because outcomes were immediate self-reports obtained in a single resort and participants and facilitators could not be blinded, the findings should not be interpreted as proof of lasting behavioural effects. They suggest a promising low-infrastructure service-development pathway whose effects on actual recommendation, repeat visitation, willingness to pay, loyalty, and destination outcomes require confirmation in multi-site and longitudinal research.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070210

Authors: Chutimant Boonnual Tawat Boonnual

Community-based tourism (CBT) destinations create sustainability value that tourists may not fully observe during short visits. This study examines how perceived sustainability communication is associated with tourist support. Its originality lies in showing that sustainability communication in CBT is not directly associated with destination image or behavioral intention but appears to operate through destination personality as a symbolic interpretation mechanism before destination evaluation. Drawing on signaling theory and the stimulus–organism–response framework, perceived sustainability communication is conceptualized as a sustainability signal, destination personality as symbolic interpretation, destination image as cognitive–affective evaluation, and behavioral intention as tourist support. Data from 390 domestic tourists visiting six CBT destinations in Surat Thani Province, Thailand, were analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results show that perceived sustainability communication was associated with destination personality, which was subsequently associated with destination image and behavioral intention. Destination image was also associated with behavioral intention, while the direct associations with destination image and behavioral intention were not significant. Destination personality and destination image sequentially mediated the relationship. IPMA identified destination personality as the primary managerial priority, followed by destination image. The findings suggest that sustainability messages become behaviorally meaningful through symbolic interpretation and destination evaluation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070209

Authors: Paula C. Ferreira-Gomes Miguel Fuentes-Collado David Algaba-Navarro José E. Ramos-Ruiz

The growth in the number of half-marathon participants reflects a transformation from performance-centred participation towards sporting experiences of a social and hybrid nature, with a great capacity to generate tourism flows. This study examines the social motivational structure of participants in the Bidasoa Half Marathon and identifies distinct profiles based on their social motivations. In this event, with a strong tourism appeal, 59.15% of respondents reside outside the Bidasoa region, a characteristic already recognised by the organisers, who promote parallel social activities aimed at enhancing the participant experience and encouraging overnight stays. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all runners registered for the 2025 edition (N = 1496), yielding 284 valid responses (an 18.98% response rate). The instrument measured three specific dimensions: event inclusivity, face-to-face socialisation, and digital interaction/validation. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses validated a robust three-dimensional model explaining 85.04% of the total variance, with adequate reliability and convergent and discriminant validity indices. Inclusivity emerged as the primary motivational driver, followed by digital interaction and physical socialisation. Furthermore, cluster analysis identified three segments: the Inclusive Runner (38.03%), characterised by a high valuation of inclusivity and low digital interest; the Connected Runner (31.34%), with high and balanced scores across the three dimensions and a peak score in digital interaction; and the Autonomous Runner (30.63%), displaying low levels across all social dimensions. Significant associations with age, gender, and educational attainment evidence the inherent heterogeneity of the participants. Consequently, the findings extend traditional models by integrating social and digital dimensions, thereby providing strategic implications for the contemporary management of sporting events.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070208

Authors: Wanbao Ge Suraiyati Binti Rahman

AI-based interpretation is increasingly used in heritage tourism, yet its relationship with stewardship-relevant visitor responses remains insufficiently theorised. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework, this study examines how visitor-perceived AI-based interpretation is associated with emotional experience and conservation-oriented behavioural intention at the Emei Mountain-Leshan Giant Buddha World Heritage Site in China. Survey data from 418 adult visitors collected in 2025 were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. AI-based interpretation was positively associated with perceived authenticity (β = 0.657), parasocial interaction (β = 0.530), emotional experience (β = 0.355), and conservation-oriented behavioural intention (β = 0.117). The direct association with conservation-oriented behavioural intention was small. Approximately four-fifths of the total AII-CBI association was accounted for by statistically significant indirect pathways through authenticity, parasocial interaction, and emotional experience. Emotional experience was the strongest proximal predictor of conservation-oriented behavioural intention (β = 0.422). Supplementary indirect-effect and moderation analyses further indicate that authenticity-based and relation-based pathways link AI interpretation with stewardship-oriented intention, and that the AII-authenticity association is stronger among first-time visitors. These findings extend smart-tourism research beyond technology acceptance by showing how AI interpretation can operate as a heritage-communication resource when it is perceived as authentic, socially engaging, and emotionally meaningful.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070207

Authors: Juergen Weimann Marie Schönlein

This study investigates how restaurant guests in Germany evaluate digital service technologies and examines whether perceived digital service quality contributes to overall perceived service quality. Drawing on SERVQUAL, DINESERV, the Technology Acceptance Model, and self-service technology research, a quantitative cross-sectional online survey was conducted with N = 235 restaurant guests across Germany. Seven digital touchpoints along the restaurant customer journey were assessed, ranging from online reservation and contactless payment to chatbots and service robots. Data were analyzed using Spearman rank-order correlations, hierarchical linear regression, and Welch-corrected one-way ANOVAs. Results show that contactless payment and online reservation are the most frequently used and most positively evaluated digital services, whereas chatbots and service robots are rarely used and broadly rejected. Perceived digital service quality was significantly and positively associated with overall service quality (ρ = 0.32, p < 0.01), perceived experience improvement (ρ = 0.39, p < 0.01), and recommendation intention (ρ = 0.24, p < 0.01). Quality perceptions were stable across demographic subgroups, while general digital attitudes varied by gender and technology affinity. The findings suggest that restaurant operators should prioritize investment in transactional digital tools while maintaining human service as the experiential core of the dining experience, as digital technologies function as complements to rather than substitutes for personal service.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070206

Authors: Marko Šostar Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta Ayodele Christoper Oniku

This study examines the role of smart digital systems in shaping the tourist experience, with a particular focus on perceived safety, comfort, and convenience, and their relationship with satisfaction and future intention to use digital services. The research was conducted on a sample of 104 respondents using a structured questionnaire and a quantitative research design. Data were analyzed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the Mann–Whitney U test. The results show that perceived comfort and convenience had the strongest positive association with satisfaction with the tourist experience, whereas perceived safety showed a weaker positive association. Satisfaction, perceived effectiveness of smart technologies in larger destinations, and comfort were positively associated with the intention to use smart digital services. The findings also indicate that perceived digital competence positively affects perceived safety and comfort, while gender differences were not statistically significant. The study contributes to the smart tourism literature by proposing and empirically examining an integrated conceptual framework that simultaneously considers perceived safety, comfort and convenience, satisfaction, and behavioral intention in the context of smart tourism technologies. The results highlight the importance of developing simple, intuitive, and user-oriented digital solutions in tourism.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070205

Authors: Irina Canco Drita Kruja

This study examines green skills and sustainability readiness in Albania’s tourism sector using survey data from 224 tourism organizations operating across five subsectors and several regions of the country. The analysis focuses on current environmental management capabilities, future skill requirements, environmental training, and green investment. The conceptual framing combines the literature on green skills and Green Human Resource Management. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, paired-samples t-tests, independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Spearman correlations, and ordinary least squares regression were employed. The findings show that current green skills are moderate, while future skill requirements are significantly higher, indicating a substantial skills gap. The largest gaps are observed in sustainable transport promotion and climate change knowledge. Organizations providing environmental training report stronger current green skills and greater sustainability readiness than those that do not. Green investment is also positively associated with current environmental capability. In addition, significant differences emerge across tourism subsectors, while size effects appear less consistent. The regression results confirm that environmental training and green investment are important predictors of current green skills. The study contributes to the literature by extending empirical evidence on green skills to an underexplored Southeast European context and by linking green skills with sustainability readiness in tourism organizations. The findings suggest that the green transition in tourism depends not only on environmental intent but also on organizational learning and investment.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070204

Authors: Merita Gecaj Emiljan Mustaqe Edmond Kadiu

Agritourism has emerged as an increasingly important strategy for rural diversification and multifunctional agricultural development, particularly in transition economies characterized by fragmented farm structures, limited rural investment capacity, and growing tourism demand. Despite the expansion of agricultural support schemes aimed at promoting rural diversification, empirical evidence on their effectiveness in supporting agritourism development at the farm level remains limited, especially in Southeast European contexts. Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: To what extent have agricultural support schemes contributed to agritourism development, rural diversification, and rural resilience in Albania, and what factors constrain their long-term effectiveness? To answer this question, the study examines the role of agricultural support schemes in shaping agritourism development in Albania, with particular emphasis on farm diversification, rural resilience, and implementation constraints. The study adopts a mixed-methods case study approach, combining secondary policy and statistical analysis with primary field research. The fieldwork involved 60 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with agritourism farm owners across the regions of Korçë, Berat, Vlorë, Shkodër, and Lezhë, conducted during September–October 2025. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to assess investment patterns, perceived socio-economic impacts, and institutional barriers associated with agricultural support schemes. The results show that agricultural support schemes primarily function as catalysts for investment and diversification rather than stand-alone drivers of sustainable rural transformation. However, persistent structural constraints were identified, including administrative complexity, limited marketing capacity, infrastructure deficiencies, and a strong dependence on seasonal tourism demand. These factors reduce the long-term sustainability and scalability of agritourism enterprises. The paper contributes to the literature on agritourism and rural development by providing empirical evidence from the context of a transition economy and demonstrating that financial support alone is insufficient to ensure sustainable rural transformation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070203

Authors: Alessandro Munoz JdeS

Hotel distribution decisions are commonly analysed through objective performance indicators such as costs, profitability, and revenue outcomes. However, in multichannel environments characterised by attribution challenges and overlapping customer journeys, managerial evaluations and realised booking outcomes may reflect different dimensions of channel importance. This study examined the relationship between perceived channel efficiency and realised booking allocation in urban hotels. Survey data were collected from 54 three- to five-star hotels in Madrid, Spain, of which 49 provided complete channel-level information. Using non-parametric analyses, the study investigates whether managers’ evaluations of channel efficiency are associated with observed booking-share allocations across distribution channels. The results reveal two complementary patterns. First, perceived channel efficiency is positively associated with realised booking share within individual channels. Second, a notable divergence emerges between perceived channel efficiency and realised booking allocation: direct channels receive the highest efficiency evaluations, whereas online intermediaries account for the largest share of bookings. This finding suggests that channels most valued by managers are not necessarily those generating the greatest booking volumes. The study contributes to hospitality distribution research by linking managerial evaluations to observed allocation outcomes and by highlighting a distinction between perceived channel efficiency and realised channel dependence. Rather than viewing channel allocation solely as a performance-optimisation problem, the findings suggest that managerial evaluations are closely associated with observed allocation patterns in multichannel environments. The results also underscore the value of complementing managerial judgement with systematic channel-performance benchmarking.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070202

Authors: Seung Chul Yoo

Food festivals have become important instruments of regional tourism development, destination branding, agricultural promotion, and cultural policy. Yet the authenticity of food festivals is often evaluated through visitor perception or promotional discourse, leaving limited room for scalable assessment across large festival systems. This study develops a Location Quotient (LQ)-based framework for measuring agricultural embeddedness as a supply-side structural condition that can support objective material authenticity claims. Using a dataset of 277 South Korean regional food festivals, the study examines how featured food materials are connected to regional agricultural specialization and how this structural connection compares with budget scale, infrastructure, and material-duplication factors in explaining administrative visitor attendance and portfolio-level governance patterns. The results show that agricultural embeddedness is unevenly distributed across the national festival portfolio. Festival budget is the strongest predictor of log-transformed visitor attendance, whereas agricultural embeddedness is not significantly associated with visitor attendance after budget and infrastructure controls are included. Material-level duplication is useful as a portfolio diagnostic for identifying crowded food categories where place-product credibility may become strategically important. Scenario-based portfolio comparisons provide planning benchmarks suggesting that targeted restructuring and reallocation would be associated with higher average agricultural embeddedness under specified portfolio assumptions, although these scenarios should not be interpreted as causal forecasts. The study contributes to food tourism, event governance, and destination branding research by offering a reproducible way to assess the material grounding of food festival authenticity claims and by shifting policy discussion from festival proliferation toward portfolio quality.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070201

Authors: Fabiano Llanaj Dejsi Qorri Krisztián Kovács

Agritourism is increasingly intersecting with digital technologies to foster rural resilience, economic growth, and sustainable development. This study conducts a comprehensive systematic bibliometric review to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaborative networks characterizing the digitalization of agritourism from 2010 to 2025. Guided by the PRISMA framework, data from the Scopus database were analyzed using scientific mapping techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution tracking, and spatial collaboration analysis. The findings reveal a paradigm shift categorized into three evolutionary phases: an incubation period of basic web adoption (2011–2017), a disruptive phase catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2022), and an exponential maturation phase driven by Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Virtual Reality (2023–2025). Four primary thematic clusters emerged: digital marketing and connectivity, smart tourism and advanced analytics, immersive technologies for heritage preservation, and macro-level sustainability policies. Geopolitically, research is driven by two distinct networks: an Asian-centric hub led by China focusing on state-sponsored smart villages, and a Western hub anchored by the USA and Italy emphasizing entrepreneurial diversification. The study concludes that digitalization has transitioned from a reactive survival mechanism to a proactive strategic necessity. It highlights the critical need to bridge the digital divide through human capital investment and provides a future research agenda focusing on the ethical application of AI, the circular economy, and the preservation of rural authenticity in emerging ’phygital’ environments.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070200

Authors: Ana-Maria Dinu Ana-Irina Nicolau Doina Maria Tilea

Dark tourism (travel to sites of death, disaster and collective trauma) is increasingly mediated by AI-driven content systems, but the conditions under which visitors accept AI interpretation tools in emotionally sensitive heritage contexts remain empirically unexplored. Our study examines the cultural, experiential and affective predictors of AI/immersive technology acceptance among Romanian dark tourism consumers. A quantitative cross-sectional survey (n = 232, predominantly urban respondents, January–March 2026) measured cultural belonging, prior visit experience, dominant emotional response, perceived educational value and technology acceptance; data were analyzed using non-parametric inference and bootstrapped mediation. The results are organized within a descriptive framework we term the Interpretive Legitimation Mechanism (ILM): perceived educational value fully mediates the effect of prior experience on AI acceptance (95.5% of total effect) and partially mediates the effect of cultural belonging (36.4%), while emotional state and gender conditionally moderate receptivity (fascination-dominant visitors show the highest openness and sadness-dominant visitors the lowest). These findings characterize the conditions of receptivity to AI mediation, a necessary precondition for any subsequent influence, and indicate that acceptance in dark tourism is primarily an interpretive and cultural phenomenon rather than a technological one.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070199

Authors: Pil Nhut Le Thuong Khac Vo Han Dinh Pham

This study examined the extent to which corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions shaped hotel reputation (REP) through customer trust (TRU), and whether customer engagement (ENG) moderated this relationship in the Mekong Delta context. Although prior studies had acknowledged the importance of CSR in shaping customer perceptions, they had paid limited attention to the distinct effects of multidimensional CSR and the conditions under which TRU was transformed into REP. A structured questionnaire survey was administered to 874 hotel guests in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The measurement scales were adapted from previous studies and refined through a pilot test. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), together with bootstrapping, was used to test the direct, mediating, and moderating effects. CSR dimensions exhibited heterogeneous effects. Customer-oriented responsibility had the strongest impact on both TRU and REP, followed by environmental and economic responsibilities. Legal responsibility directly enhanced REP but did not significantly affect TRU, whereas community responsibility strengthened TRU without directly influencing REP. TRU significantly improved REP and mediated most CSR–REP relationships. ENG positively moderated the TRU–REP link, amplifying reputational outcomes. The study contributed to CSR and hospitality research by modeling CSR as a multidimensional construct and by identifying ENG as a boundary condition that strengthened the TRU–REP mechanism. Managers should prioritize customer-focused CSR and enhance engagement to maximize reputational gains.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070198

Authors: Onur Akbulut Yakin Ekin Tunahan Celik Gulnihal Sakrak Ekin

In the literature on dark tourism, conceptual diversity has often been addressed as a definitional or thematic problem. This study was conducted to identify the dominant epistemological orientations in a focused corpus of 172 English-language, open access articles indexed in Scopus that explicitly use the term dark tourism. An additional aim was to describe the temporal and methodological distributions of these articles. The articles were analysed using qualitative content analysis on a systematically constructed corpus. They were coded in terms of representational/heritage-centred, functional/social practice, motivational/audience-typology, experiential/affective, and activity-based/performative visitor orientations. Thirty-five randomly selected articles were re-coded by a second researcher, who was blind to the initial coding decisions. The percentage agreement for the dominant orientation was 71.4%, with Cohen’s κ = 0.641, and the percentage agreement for method classification was 94.3%, with κ = 0.888. In the post-consensus distribution, the representation/heritage orientation was the largest category, with 54 articles. Motivation, experience, and performative visitor orientations together constituted 52.3% of the corpus. These findings do not indicate a linear paradigm shift but rather a descriptive pattern in which different forms of knowledge production coexist within the corpus examined. This study extends beyond thematic classification by providing evidence for and explaining how dark tourism is constructed as an object of inquiry. The results should be interpreted only with respect to the defined Scopus-based open access corpus.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070197

Authors: Jorge Alexander Mora Forero

This research aims to analyze audiovisual productions related to the development of tourism at the Armero ruins and the visitor experience in the area. The methodology used is qualitative and was carried out in two phases. This research began in August 2023 with interviews with visitors to Armero and a content analysis of YouTube videos that recount the Armero tragedy. The impact on collective memory and the sense of belonging among visitors is highlighted. The visitors’ personal productions show that the experience in Armero becomes an emotional journey, where history is tangled with the hope of rebuilding the social fabric and honoring the memory of the thousands who lost their lives. This research reveals a range of emotions: from awe at the natural beauty to respect and sadness when remembering the tragedy that buried this prosperous Colombian city in 1985. In conclusion, the importance of preserving historical memory is evident, so that tragedies like Armero’s are not forgotten and can promote reflection on natural risk management and community resilience.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070196

Authors: André Riani Costa Perinotto Ángel Rodríguez-Pallas Priscila Cembranel

Official tourism websites play an important role before travel, when potential visitors look for information and begin to form expectations about a destination. However, studies of these websites have often followed separate lines of analysis, treating marketing, communication, and tourism management as distinct fields. This article proposes a framework for examining these dimensions within a single analytical structure. The study is qualitative and exploratory, and is based on documentary analysis of institutional tourism websites. The framework draws on three theoretical foundations: established website evaluation criteria from international tourism organizations, a communicational and participatory approach to digital media, and the integrated 7Cs + 1C marketing model. From these sources, dimensions, categories, and indicators are defined for the analysis of official destination websites. The findings suggest that these portals shape destination image before travel through content, images, navigation, interaction resources, and institutional discourse. The illustrative application of the framework suggests weaknesses in direct interaction, multilingual provision, and international reach. The proposed framework can support comparative research on digital tourism and future assessments of official tourism websites. As an exploratory and qualitative proposal, however, it should be understood as an initial analytical structure that still requires further testing and validation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070195

Authors: Tao Mei Mahachai Sattayathamrongthian

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping tourism service operations, smart tourism ecosystems, and digital customer engagement, yet many tourism SMEs still struggle to convert AI readiness into operational capability and firm performance. This study develops a staged capability-conversion model that integrates the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, Social Cognitive Theory, the Resource-Based View, and Dynamic Capabilities Theory. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from employees and managers of tourism SMEs, particularly small and medium-sized travel agencies in mainland China. After data screening, 433 valid responses were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, covariance-based structural equation modeling, and 5000-resample bootstrap mediation testing. The results suggest that organizational readiness is the most consistent readiness-related antecedent, digital self-efficacy is positively associated with AI adoption and operational capability, and operational capability shows the strongest direct association with perceived firm performance. These findings are consistent with the view that AI-enabled value in tourism SMEs is associated less with technology adoption alone than with the conversion of readiness into behavioral and operational capabilities.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070194

Authors: Loan Thanh Thi Dang

Tourism destinations increasingly operate through digital platforms, real-time data, and online connectivity tools, yet service coordination among stakeholders remains constrained. This study analyses how tourism logistics information is created, updated, verified, shared, and used in service coordination at coastal destinations in Vietnam’s South Central Coast subregion. The study adopts a multi-stakeholder qualitative case study design, in which qualitative data from 42 participants provide the main source of evidence, while a supplementary descriptive survey of 358 participants is used only to contextualise and clarify selected issues within the sample. The findings show that existing digital tools and information channels support information search, transaction confirmation, operational coordination, and service feedback. However, coordination at the destination and inter-provincial levels remains limited when information flows are fragmented across stakeholders, channels or platforms, data or procedures, and local or regional spaces. On this basis, the study conceptualises the Tourism Logistics Information System (TLIS) as a socio-technical, inter-organisational, and coordination-oriented structure in which the value of information depends on the extent to which data are updated, verified, shared, and translated into coordinated action among stakeholders. The paper contributes to research on smart destinations, destination governance, and tourism supply chains by clarifying information fragmentation (IF) as a mechanism that constrains service coordination in inter-provincial coastal destination contexts.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070193

Authors: Wiparat Suralai Thittarat Pimpaporn Nuthawut Sabsombat

The rapid growth of the pet-humanisation trend has generated a distinct segment of tourists who regard pets as family members and seek travel experiences that accommodate both human and animal needs. This study examines the causal relationships among service quality, destination image, perceived value, and travel intention among Thai pet-humanising tourists. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected from 280 Thai respondents with experience or interest in pet-friendly tourism and analyzed via Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings indicate that service quality and destination image significantly enhance perceived value, which subsequently exerts the strongest positive effect on travel intention. While service quality directly increases travel intention, destination image demonstrates a significant negative direct effect but a positive indirect effect through perceived value, highlighting a competitive mediation mechanism. By extending value-based behavioural models to this emerging segment, the study suggests that tourism and hospitality operators should prioritise tangible pet-friendly infrastructure and value-enhancing experiences over mere destination image, supporting the strategic development of inclusive pet-friendly destinations.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070192

Authors: Pietro Radaelli Antonella Senese Maurizio Maugeri Guglielmina Adele Diolaiuti

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games represent a significant departure from traditional mega-event models due to their markedly polycentric territorial structure. This study investigates the sustainability of this “decentralized” model by analyzing the environmental impact of mobility flows across a vast geographic area. Adopting a methodological approach, the research integrates historical attendance data from previous Winter Games with official projections and travel time simulations to model the event’s carbon footprint. Specifically, the framework quantifies gas emissions by categorizing mobility flows into external international travel and internal inter-cluster transit. The analysis highlights a significant discrepancy between the stated sustainability objectives and the actual implementation of the infrastructural plan. Findings reveal that the total carbon debt is heavily driven by international travel, yet the localized impact on Alpine clusters remains critical due to a persistent reliance on road infrastructure over rail systems. The results suggest a “paradox of decentralized sustainability”, where the benefits of reusing existing sporting venues are offset by the environmental costs of connecting geographically fragmented sites. We conclude that without a robust and efficient public transport network, territorial dispersion acts as a catalyst for widespread anthropogenic pressure on fragile mountain ecosystems, challenging the long-term ecological legacy of the event. By empirically exposing these dynamics, this study offers a novel evaluative framework for assessing the true sustainability of distributed governance in future mega-events.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070191

Authors: Riefky Krisnayana Engkus Kuswarno Feliza Zubair Evi Novianti

Sustainable rural tourism governance in the Global South faces a persistent challenge: enabling genuine community participation in destination management while protecting environmental assets and cultural heritage. This study examines participatory governance practices at Kampung Senyum Homestay, Cibeusi Village, West Java, Indonesia, a community-based tourism (CBT) initiative that has sustained operations for over eight years, despite a 60% failure rate among comparable initiatives. A qualitative case study design was employed, with data collected over six months (November 2022–May 2023) through participant observation (12 days), in-depth interviews with 14 stakeholders, and document analysis. Data were analyzed using Miles et al.’s interactive model and critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal three interrelated participation layers shaping tourism governance outcomes: interpersonal engagement fostering horizontal host–guest relationships (89% of tourists report kinship-based experiences); deliberative governance through musyawarah desa enabling community-led environmental stewardship, including the collective rejection of a proposal to bring 100 tourists monthly to protect waterfall ecosystems; and digital storytelling by youth extending local heritage narratives globally (150 posts, 7.2% engagement rate). The study proposes a ‘layered participation’ model demonstrating that tourism sustainability depends on participatory governance mechanisms that build social trust, integrate traditional ecological knowledge, and balance economic development with environmental conservation and cultural heritage management. The study also critically examines structural inequalities, including gender asymmetries, unequal benefit distribution, and linguistic barriers, that persist within participatory governance structures, offering a contextually grounded governance framework for rural tourism destinations in the Global South.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070190

Authors: Reyner Pérez-Campdesuñer Yaumara González-Sainz Carlos Zambrano-Cancañón Gelmar García-Vidal Rodobaldo Martínez-Vivar Alexander Sánchez-Rodríguez

This study assesses perceived changes associated with the application of a structured co-creation process to the redesign of an authentic rural tourism product by aligning local resources, stakeholder knowledge, and potential users’ expectations. The empirical context is Salinas de Guaranda, Ecuador, where a tourism product was redesigned and evaluated through an applied one-group pretest–posttest design involving a purposive evaluation panel of 28 participants, including tourism stakeholders, local representatives, and potential users with direct knowledge of the product and destination. The assessment covered perceived preference fit, learning opportunities, participation in activities, social interaction potential, memorability, purchase intention, and willingness to share experiences, all measured using five-point Likert scales. The results show statistically significant perceived improvements across all indicators after the redesign, even after applying the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (p < 0.00556). The largest increases were observed in satisfaction with interests and preferences (Δ = 1.32; dz = 2.78), purchase intention (Δ = 1.21; dz = 1.32), and learning (Δ = 1.07; dz = 2.83). Significant increases were also found in perceived interaction with the local community (Δ = 0.64), participation in activities (Δ = 0.55), memorability (Δ = 0.82), and willingness to share experiences. These findings suggest that structured co-creation may help strengthen the perceived fit between rural tourism products and user expectations while enhancing the anticipated experiential and relational potential of authentic tourism products, including situated learning, active participation, and social interaction. The article contributes applied pre–post evidence on how participatory tourism design may support more marketable, memorable, and locally grounded rural tourism experiences, while recognizing that the design does not establish definitive causal effects.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070189

Authors: Xinyan Zhang Pimtong Tavitiyaman Mingfang Zhu

By linking the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework with dynamic capabilities, this research investigates the various organizational enablers for Industry 4.0 technology (I4T) adoption in the hotel industry, and the relationship between I4T and overall hotel performance during the supply chain disturbances. The proposed model was tested using data collected from hotel executives in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. Results revealed that perceived benefits, technology readiness, and supply chain partner pressure were significant predictors for I4T adoption by hotels. The direct positive relationship between I4T and overall hotel performance during disruptions was not found. This relationship was mediated by the hotel’s supply chain resilience (SCR) capability, highlighting the importance of I4T and SCR for improving performance during disruptions. This study provides both theoretical insights and practical implications regarding the adoption of I4T in the hospitality sector.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070188

Authors: Mariska Prijanka Diena M. Lemy Jacob D. Tan

Crisis management has become a critical strategic concern in hospitality, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed limitations in conventional approaches to preparedness, response, and recovery. Although existing hospitality crisis management research has generated valuable insights into individual crisis phases, a limited understanding exists regarding how preparedness, crisis response, and organizational learning interact as an integrated strategic process across the crisis lifecycle. Addressing this gap, this study examines strategic crisis management within Jakarta’s five-star hotel sector and develops an integrated understanding of crisis management across pre-crisis, during-crisis, and post-crisis phases. A constructivist grounded theory approach was employed based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 senior hospitality leaders, including hotel executives, owners, and industry association representatives. The findings suggest that crisis management is best understood as an integrated strategic capability rather than a series of discrete emergency responses. Three interrelated theoretical dimensions emerged: Continuous Strategic Preparedness, characterized by adaptive readiness, environmental sensemaking, decision readiness, and financial preparedness; Coordinated Strategic Crisis Response, encompassing liquidity discipline, operational adaptation, workforce adaptability, leadership coordination, and cross-functional alignment; and Strategic Renewal Through Organizational Learning, involving the retention of effective crisis practices, capability strengthening, and strategic reorientation toward ongoing uncertainty. The study proposes an Integrated Strategic Crisis Management Framework for Hospitality Organizations that explains the mechanisms linking preparedness, response, and organizational learning as a cyclical capability-building process. By reconceptualizing crisis management as an integrated strategic capability rather than a phase-based operational response, the study contributes to hospitality crisis management scholarship and provides practical insights for hospitality organizations operating in increasingly uncertain environments.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070187

Authors: Romina Dhora Arjeta Anamali

The concept of dark tourism has obtained significant attention in recent years, and its appeal to younger generations is a topic of great interest. This study examines the behavioral intentions of Generation Z towards dark tourism in Albania, a country with a strong cultural and historical heritage. Using a quantitative research design, the study collected data from 312 respondents and analyzed them using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression. The results found several key variables that influence the behavioral intentions of Generation Z towards dark tourism, including attitude, motivations, social media, and perceived psychological risk. Interestingly, the study found that attitude is the strongest predictor of behavioral intentions towards dark tourism. This suggests that if young people have a positive attitude towards dark tourism, they are more likely to visit dark tourism sites. On the other hand, the variable of perceived psychological risk was found to have a negative influence on the behavioral intentions of Generation Z to visit dark tourism sites. This implies that if young people perceive dark tourism as risky or threatening, they are less likely to participate in it. The study contributes to dark tourism research by offering empirical evidence from Albania and by highlighting the importance of educational, reflective and ethically sensitive interpretation for Generation Z visitors. The findings of the study reveal the importance of developing tourism experiences that are not only educational and emotionally engaging, but also ethically based. This is particularly relevant for emerging destinations like Albania, where dark tourism remains underdeveloped despite its significant cultural and historical potential. By shaping tourism experiences for younger audiences, destinations like Albania can tap into the potential of dark tourism and offer unique, meaningful experiences for visitors.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070186

Authors: Pirapong Wongsaensee Pintusorn Onpium Chakkrapong Kuensaen Nantawan Muangyai

Social media platforms and user-generated content (UGC) have become central to how travelers discover and evaluate cultural destinations, yet lesser-known second-tier heritage sites remain substantially underrepresented in digital tourism research. This study investigates how Chinese tourists perceive and engage with the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Lamphun, Thailand, through UGC collected from three major Chinese social media platforms (WeChat, Douyin, and Rednote) spanning the period from 2019 to 2023. A total of 642 relevant posts were analyzed using a mixed-methods analytical framework comprising SnowNLP-based Chinese-language sentiment analysis, rule-based tourism intention classification, and TF-IDF-driven K-means thematic clustering. Results indicate an overall predominance of positive sentiment, with sentiment score emerging as the strongest predictor of tourism intention. Thematic clustering revealed three distinct experiential dimensions, with culinary heritage and contemporary local lifestyle and cafe exploration generating the highest sentiment distribution and within-cluster tourism intention rate. These findings demonstrate the analytical value of integrated UGC data mining for underrepresented ICH destinations and offer empirical insights to support data-driven destination marketing strategies and destination management organization (DMO) decision-making for the promotion of secondary cultural heritage destinations.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070185

Authors: Banji Rildwan Olaleye Bayode Olusanya Babatunde Oluwatobi Solomon Olaleye Joseph Nembo Lekunze Tshediso Joseph Sekhampu

This study claims that the Nigerian tourism and hospitality industry must shift from traditional business practices to innovative, knowledge-based approaches to remain competitive and achieve long-term wealth creation. Facing volatility, evolving consumer demands, technological change, and sustainability pressures, the sector cannot rely on outdated models. Through a quantitative survey of 391 staff and top-level managers from the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation and tourism organizations in Southwest and North-Central Nigeria, this research tests how creativity, knowledge management, and innovation operations, defined as value creation, environment, and capability, drive wealth creation. Findings through the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling show that innovation and knowledge management both directly and, through the mediating role of innovation operations, significantly enhance wealth creation. By highlighting how these factors interact, the study advances understanding of wealth creation dynamics between emerging and developed economies and delivers actionable recommendations for managers and policymakers to institutionalize innovation for sustainable industry growth.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7070184

Authors: Richmond Yeboah Mary Acquaye Moore Emmanuel Dornyoh Samuel Otoo Ophelia Mensah

Cape Coast is a prominent tourism destination in Ghana, distinguished by its historical landmarks, coastal ecosystems, and cultural heritage. Yet the city faces mounting threats from environmental hazards such as coastal erosion, flooding, extreme heat, and lagoon degradation, which directly compromise the sustainability of its tourism sector. Guided by the Sustainable Tourism Development Theory (STDT) and the Tourism Resilience and Adaptation Theory (TRAT), this study investigates the impacts of these hazards on tourism development, the effectiveness of current disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies, and the roles of key stakeholders in building sectoral resilience. Using a qualitative research design, data were collected through in-depth interviews with eighteen stakeholders comprising four policymakers, six community leaders, five tourism business operators, and three representatives from non-governmental organisations, alongside documentary analysis of four institutional reports. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that fragmented, reactive DRR strategies and weak stakeholder coordination undermine Cape Coast’s tourism resilience, and by showing how urban natural assets, a dimension largely neglected in existing tourism–DRR scholarship, are central to both hazard exposure and adaptive capacity. The findings call for integrated, ecosystem-based DRR frameworks that align governance mechanisms with sustainable tourism imperatives.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060183

Authors: Sangkae Punyasiri Hathaichanok Chimbanrai Kornkamon Musikachat Narinsiree Chiangphan

This study examines the structural relationships among vendor competency, perceived sanitation and safety, high-value gastronomy experiences, and behavioral intentions in Bangkok’s street food tourism. Using survey data and PLS-SEM, the results indicate that vendor competency significantly enhances both perceived sanitation and safety and high-value gastronomy experiences. Perceived sanitation and safety further strengthens experiential value and partially mediates this relationship. However, contrary to conventional expectations, high-value gastronomy experiences exhibit a significant negative effect on behavioral intentions, suggesting a novelty-seeking paradox in exploratory tourism contexts. This study contributes in three ways: (1) by positioning vendor competency as a foundational driver of experiential value in informal food settings, (2) by integrating sanitation and safety into experiential value formation, and (3) by challenging the linear satisfaction–loyalty assumption through evidence of paradoxical tourist behavior. The findings offer theoretical and managerial implications for gastronomy tourism and destination management.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060182

Authors: Sinh Hoang Nguyen

In the published publication (Nguyen, 2026), there was an error regarding the affiliation; the author requested to only display his primary affiliation and remove the second affiliation (School of Marketing and International Business, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6140, New Zealand) in the published article [...]

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060181

Authors: Tetyana Kalaitan Iryna Danchevska Natalya Yaroshevych Iryna Kondrat

The paper investigates tourists’ willingness to pay (WTP) an increased tourist tax to support the development of accessible tourism. To achieve the research objective, a structured survey was conducted among 452 tourists who spent their holidays in the Ukrainian Carpathians. It has been confirmed that the WTP a higher tourist tax that varies significantly depending on the possible direction of its use. It has been established that in the context of a humanitarian crisis, social inclusion is a more powerful factor of tax loyalty than a traditional environmental programme. A statistically significant relationship was found between WTP an increased tourist tax for the development of accessible tourism and several factors, including respondents’ level of education, income level, frequency of tourist trips over the past five years, current trip expenditure, and perceived accessibility of infrastructure. Consumers’ willingness to voluntarily pay a tourist tax for a specific purpose may suggest that higher tax rates would be publicly acceptable, potentially generating financial resources to support the development of accessible tourism.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060180

Authors: Georgios Konstantopoulos Grigoris Giannarakis Maria Xenaki Georgios Thanasas Alexandros Garefalakis

Operational labor shortages have become a pressing challenge for hospitality organizations, especially in highly seasonal tourism destinations such as Greece, where service experiences are deeply tied to cultural identity and authentic hospitality. While much of the existing research has examined understaffing from operational or human resource management perspectives, limited attention has been paid to its impact on the organizational capacity to sustain authentic hospitality experiences. Using Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as an interpretive framework, this study views authentic hospitality as an organizational process shaped by employee interaction, cultural transmission, and service delivery practices. Drawing on survey data from 201 hotel employees in Greece, it investigates the relationship between operational labor shortages, organizational pressures, and perceived threats to authentic hospitality within hotel operations. The findings reveal significant positive relationships between work stress and service quality decline, as well as between cultural knowledge and perceived challenges in maintaining authentic hospitality. Multiple regression analysis further shows that reactive hiring, serious understaffing, and payroll cost pressure are significantly linked to perceived challenges in sustaining authentic hospitality, while service quality decline exhibits a positive but statistically non-significant effect in the final model. The study contributes to hospitality authenticity literature by emphasizing employee perceptions of authenticity as an organizationally supported process rather than merely a guest-centered outcome. The results also highlight the importance of workforce planning, recruitment quality, and cultural onboarding in supporting authentic hospitality within Greek hotel operations.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060179

Authors: Antun Marinac Barbara Pisker

Circular economy principles are increasingly influencing tourism development strategies, particularly in rural destinations characterized by strong linkages between agriculture, gastronomy, and local economic systems. This study develops and empirically examines a conceptual model investigating the relationship between circular economy practices, gastronomy integration, perceived authenticity, and destination competitiveness within rural tourism economies. The research focuses on the role of gastronomy as a circular tourism resource capable of connecting local sourcing, sustainability, and experiential value creation. Data were collected through a stakeholder-based survey targeting tourism enterprises, local producers, destination management organizations, and hospitality providers operating in rural tourism destinations. The proposed relationships were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) implemented in SmartPLS 4 and bootstrapped mediation analysis. The findings indicate that circular economy practices positively influence gastronomy integration, while gastronomy integration significantly enhances perceived authenticity. Furthermore, authenticity demonstrates a strong positive effect on destination competitiveness. The mediation analysis confirms that gastronomy integration and perceived authenticity function as intermediary mechanisms through which circular economy practices contribute to competitiveness outcomes. The study contributes to tourism economics and destination competitiveness literature by developing and empirically testing a mediation-based framework linking circular gastronomy, authenticity, and rural tourism competitiveness. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for destination managers and policymakers seeking to strengthen sustainability, local value creation, and competitiveness through circular gastronomy strategies.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060178

Authors: Petra Karanikić Svetlana Sokolov Mladenović Ivana Kostadinović

This study revisits the tourism–economic growth nexus in the EU-27 over 2014–2024 by combining an integrative conceptual synthesis of transmission mechanisms with a multi-method empirical strategy. We move beyond a single fixed-effects regression by integrating: (i) a dynamic panel System Generalized Method of Moments (System GMM) estimator that addresses endogeneity and persistence in growth, (ii) interaction terms between tourism intensity and moderating factors (institutional quality, human capital, trade openness), (iii) sub-sample analyses across mature versus emerging tourism destinations and Mediterranean versus Continental economies, and (iv) a Hansen-type threshold model that identifies non-linearities in the tourism–growth relationship. The baseline fixed-effects results confirm a positive and statistically significant tourism elasticity, while the dynamic and threshold specifications reveal that this effect is highly heterogeneous: it is amplified in economies with stronger institutions and higher human capital, but becomes statistically indistinguishable from zero in destinations with very high tourism intensity, consistent with congestion and overtourism mechanisms. Evidence on heterogeneous post-pandemic resilience is treated as exploratory rather than as a confirmed empirical contribution, since the present specification relies on a COVID-19 dummy and sub-sample patterns rather than a dedicated COVID-19 interaction model. The findings reposition tourism not as a uniformly positive growth engine, but as a moderated and bounded driver whose contribution depends on absorptive capacity and management quality.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060177

Authors: Meitolo Hulu Juliana Juliana

Tourism destinations increasingly rely on digitalization and innovation to strengthen their competitive position and stimulate tourists’ post-visit behaviors. However, empirical evidence explaining how tourists’ perceptions of digitalization and innovation are translated into sharing intentions, particularly from an integrated competitiveness perspective, remains limited. Addressing this gap and grounded in Service-Dominant Logic, this study investigates the relationships between digitalization perceptions, innovation perceptions, destination competitiveness, and tourists’ sharing intentions. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected from Generation Z domestic tourists who had visited digitally enabled destinations within the past 12 months. The proposed research model was tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that perceptions of digitalization and innovation significantly enhance destination competitiveness, which in turn positively influences tourists’ sharing intentions. Moreover, destination competitiveness is confirmed as a partial mediator in the relationships between digitalization perceptions and sharing intentions, as well as between innovation perceptions and sharing intentions. The novelty of this study lies in conceptualizing destination competitiveness as a behavioral transmission mechanism that converts perceived digital and innovative destination attributes into tourists’ voluntary sharing behavior, rather than treating digitalization and innovation as direct antecedents alone. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in reconceptualizing destination competitiveness as a dynamic value co-creation mechanism that mediates the transformation of digitalization and innovation into tourists’ sharing intentions within a Service-Dominant Logic framework.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060176

Authors: Brigitta Pécsek Ádám Gyurkó

This research explores how a multifunctional and multi-experience music institution can thrive in the 21st century. It takes the case of the House of Music Hungary that has evolved into a cultural hub over the recent years, equally appealing to locals, professionals, employees, and tourists. To lay the foundation of tying architecture and music together, this highly exploratory study used a holistic approach by discussing issues related to tangible and intangible heritage, heritage tourism, and music tradition. Data collection included official state statistics, on-site experiences, and interviews. Interviews with the architect of the project, a music historian, a musician, a cultural manager, and a tourism professional were analysed, applying interpretive phenomenological analysis. The result are presented in a kaleidoscopic framework comprising the core elements identified in the analysis. This paper contributes to the knowledge of developing heritage tourism through the interplay of architecture and music. It shows how they reinforce one another to generate complex experiences, while highlighting the importance of respecting local cultural, social and environmental circumstances. Its exploratory nature did not necessitate the inclusion of visitor interviews at this stage; however, investigating visitor satisfaction may be one of the new directions that scholars can embark on.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060175

Authors: Van Anh Thi Nguyen Thanh Tung Hoang Anh Tuan Tran Tuan Van Lai Bang Dinh Kieu

This study aims to explore and evaluate the factors influencing Gen Z’s intention to choose green tourism destinations in Hanoi, Vietnam. The paper proposes a comprehensive analytical framework by integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A mixed-method approach was employed, in which quantitative data were collected from 269 Gen Z respondents in Hanoi and analyzed using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique through SmartPLS. The findings reveal that external environmental stimuli, including green destination image (GDI) and social media influence (SMI), positively affect individuals’ internal psychological states, namely environmental awareness (EA), attitude toward green tourism (ATT), and subjective norms (SM). These psychological states, in turn, exert positive effects and strongly promote Gen Z’s intention to choose green tourism destinations in Hanoi. This study not only contributes to filling the theoretical gap in sustainable tourism consumption behavior in the digital era but also provides practical managerial implications for policymakers and tourism businesses in developing communication strategies and tourism products that align with the preferences and expectations of younger generations.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060174

Authors: Duangrat Tandamrong Waraphon Klinsreesuk Jakkawat Laphet Somnuk Aujirapongpan

This study examines how international tourists’ perceptions of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices influence their willingness to pay a premium for community-based homestays. Grounded in signaling theory, ESG perception is conceptualized as a credibility signal that reduces perceived uncertainty in community-based accommodation settings. Data were collected from 300 international tourists visiting Mae Kampong Village, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). To strengthen predictive assessment, the model was additionally evaluated using PLSpredict, Q2_predict, and the Cross-Validated Predictive Ability Test (CVPAT). The results indicate that ESG perception significantly enhances community sustainability image, trust, and booking intention. Trust partially mediates the relationships between ESG perception and both booking intention and willingness to pay a premium, while booking intention demonstrates the strongest effect on willingness to pay a premium. Community sustainability image does not directly influence booking intention but instead operates indirectly through trust. Environmental concern significantly influences willingness to pay a premium, although its moderating effect is not supported. The findings suggest that tourists in community-based homestay environments rely heavily on trust-based psychological assurance when making accommodation decisions. This study extends ESG tourism research into community-based accommodation contexts and highlights the importance of trust in high-uncertainty tourism environments. The findings also emphasize the importance of transparent ESG communication and trust-building strategies for strengthening sustainable tourism competitiveness.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060173

Authors: Carlos Jurado-Rivas Marcelino Sánchez-Rivero Antonio Hidalgo-Mateos Montaña Granados-Claver

Research on post-COVID tourism behaviour has expanded rapidly, yet inland UNESCO World Heritage cities remain underexamined, particularly in Mediterranean contexts. This study examines whether the pandemic produced durable changes in tourist behaviour and in willingness to pay for sustainable services in Cáceres, Spain. A structured face-to-face survey was administered to 421 visitors in March 2023, after public-health restrictions had been lifted. The analysis covered self-reported behavioural change, perceived impacts on different destination types, perceived effects on local sustainability objectives and changes in willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable services. Descriptive statistics were complemented by an exploratory binary logistic regression predicting increased WTP. Because the model includes only sociodemographic predictors and shows modest fit, it is used to describe associations rather than to predict. Reported behavioural change was limited: mean scores for crowd avoidance, health–safety preferences, shorter stays and substitution towards rural and nature tourism ranged from 1.73 to 1.91 on a five-point scale. Respondents nevertheless perceived substantial spatial effects of the pandemic, particularly on natural parks (92.6%) and rural destinations (84.1%). Most believed that the pandemic had accelerated sustainability efforts mainly through greater institutional and business awareness (54.9%). WTP proved relatively stable, with 62.7% reporting no change and 26.1% an increase. Women and respondents with university education showed higher odds of reporting increased WTP. Because constructs such as institutional trust and pro-environmental values were not measured directly, these attitudes are interpreted—rather than demonstrated—as reflecting governance-related confidence and value orientations more than lingering health concerns. This governance-and-values reading is the study’s main interpretive contribution and requires confirmation with direct measures of the underlying constructs.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060172

Authors: Lucía Moreno-Rodríguez Andrés Fernández Martín Ricardo Díaz-Armas

Musical tourism has established itself as a growing segment within cultural tourism, particularly among younger generations who prioritise the experiential value of travel. Whilst prior research has focused predominantly on multi-day music festivals, other event formats remain comparatively underexplored, and their influence on how tourists perceive a destination has received limited scholarly attention. This study examines how the experiential dimensions of musical events shape event satisfaction and, in turn, relate to overall destination satisfaction. An online questionnaire was administered to 205 participants who had attended a musical event whilst visiting a tourist destination. The analysis followed a two-stage approach: first, multiple linear regression was used to identify which experiential factors drive event satisfaction; second, a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the relationships between these dimensions, event satisfaction, and destination satisfaction. Findings indicate that only the musical and event atmosphere dimensions are significant predictors of event satisfaction, whereas the social and separation dimensions did not reach statistical significance in this context. Furthermore, event satisfaction is a positive predictor of destination satisfaction and acts as a mediating variable between experiential dimensions and the overall appraisal of the destination. These findings suggest that musical events may be strategically employed by tourist destinations to enhance their image and foster visitor loyalty.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060171

Authors: Thowayeb H. Hassan Amany E. Salem Ahmed Tawhid Eissa Mahmoud I. Saleh

Despite growing attention to artificial intelligence-driven job displacement, limited empirical research has examined whether and how tourists would accept AI replacing human tour guides—nor which psychological barriers drive resistance most strongly. Existing technology acceptance models assume functional evaluations predict adoption, yet this logic may fail in emotionally grounded service contexts. To address this gap, we conducted a multi-site survey testing Disappearing Jobs Theory using structural equation modeling, incorporating the constructs of Perceived Functional Equivalence, Perceived Affective Deficit, Experience-Seeking Orientation, and willingness to substitute. Results show that Perceived Functional Equivalence has a near-zero direct effect on willingness to substitute, challenging core assumptions of technology acceptance predictions. Instead, Technological Comfort and Perceived Affective Deficit emerge as the dominant predictors. Perceived Affective Deficit also suppresses job-disappearance acceptance. Experience-Seeking Orientation did not yield a statistically significant direct path in the structural model (β = −0.043, p = 0.348); however, subgroup analysis reveals that high-ESO tourists exhibit consistently lower willingness to substitute across all levels of perceived functional equivalence, indicating that ESO operates as a dispositional-level resistance factor rather than a significant individual-level structural predictor. Our core contribution is redefining Perceived Affective Deficit as a structural—not moderating—barrier to AI adoption and extending Disappearing Jobs Theory by integrating demand-side attitudinal constraints. These findings demonstrate that functional equivalence alone cannot drive substitution in experiential tourism; affective deficits must be addressed as independent adoption barriers.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060170

Authors: Eda Oruç Erdoğan Ozan Özdemir Murat Erdoğan Eren Durmuş Özdemir Şefika Özdemir

This study evaluates the demand dynamics of the 20 leading strategic destinations in the global tourism market by modeling the interactions between traditional macroeconomic determinants and climate-linked environmental sustainability indicators. The primary objective is to assess the predictive capacity of physical and structural environmental factors—including water stress, air pollution, renewable energy adoption, and sanitation infrastructure—relative to established economic metrics like GDP per capita. Employing non-parametric predictive frameworks on a panel dataset of 400 observations (2000–2019), the empirical analysis suggests that tree-based ensemble models, notably Extra Trees (90.54%) and CatBoost (84.75%), yield higher predictive accuracy than conventional multiple linear regression (73.97%). Interpretations derived from cooperative game theory via SHAP analysis suggest that environmental determinants may serve as important predictive drivers of tourism demand. Specifically, variables such as water stress (28.20%), renewable energy share (27.12%), and sanitation infrastructure carry substantial predictive weight, whereas the benchmark macroeconomic indicator (2.30%) exerts a relatively marginal influence within the model architecture. These findings imply that environmental sustainability metrics may capture international tourism demand variations more effectively than traditional economic variables. The results suggest that acute environmental vulnerabilities may be associated with reduced tourism inflows, potentially reflecting limitations in destination sustainability thresholds. Broadly, the evidence is consistent with the notion that contemporary global tourism demand may be increasingly interdependent with ecological resilience and low-carbon transition policies. It is important to note that the findings reported here reflect predictive associations derived from machine learning models and should not be interpreted as evidence of causal relationships.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060169

Authors: Wai Ming To Jennifer H. Gao Billy T. W. Yu

Virtual reality (VR) is transforming heritage tourism, yet understanding how specific technological attributes drive on-site visitation remains critical for destination marketers and policymakers. Grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model, this study investigates how VR vividness and interactivity (stimuli) influence perceived usefulness, immersion, ease of use, enjoyment, and certainty (organisms), ultimately shaping users’ on-site visitation intentions and behavioral involvement (responses) regarding Macao’s cultural heritage sites. Analyzing data from 230 users recruited via snowball sampling, the results indicate that the Ruins of St. Paul’s VR experience was the most popular (n = 113), followed by the Macao Museum (n = 95) and the Guia Fortress (n = 75). Structural equation modeling demonstrates that VR vividness and interactivity significantly influence user perceptions, which in turn impact on-site visitation intentions and behavioral involvement, with the sole exception of perceived enjoyment. These findings suggest that the “sense of presence” generated by VR significantly shapes on-site visitation intentions through internal cognitive (perceived usefulness, certainty) and combined cognitive–emotional (perceived immersion) organismic states. Conversely, perceived enjoyment has an insignificant effect on responses, while perceived ease of use, surprisingly, exerts a significant negative impact. The research offers actionable insights for developing immersive digital tools that bridge virtual engagement with tangible cultural heritage tourism in Macao.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060168

Authors: Angelo Minelli Naresh P. Nayak Senthilkumaran Piramanayagam Evan Michelson George Jarjoura

Food waste remains a persistent sustainability challenge within independent restaurants, where operational pressures, cultural norms, and resource constraints limit systematic waste management. This study examines how an industry–academia partnership enabled the co-creation of food-waste reduction practices between hospitality students and sixteen independent restaurant operators in Wellington, New Zealand. Adopting the Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with operators and focus group discussions with hospitality students. Findings reveal that food wastage in the study units is shaped by time pressure, customer service expectations, tacit kitchen routines, and uncertainty in forecasting the demand. The study identifies three mechanisms—emotional disruption, shared reflection and experimentation—through which sustainability competencies become a part in professional identity. It offers theoretical grounded and practically actionable insights for industry–academia collaboration in resource-constrained hospitality environments.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060167

Authors: José Magano

Research on dark tourism and industrial heritage has largely evolved in parallel, despite their shared focus on sites shaped by death, suffering, and socio-environmental transformation. This study aims to map and synthesise the empirical and conceptual literature at this intersection in order to clarify how the darker dimensions of industrial and mining heritage are conceptualised, experienced, and interpreted, and to develop an integrated framework for their analysis. Following the PRISMA 2020 framework, it systematically reviews 33 peer-reviewed studies published between 2009 and the first quarter of 2026. Three main findings emerge. First, sanitisation—the marginalisation of suffering and exploitation in favour of narratives of technological achievement—is a dominant feature of industrial heritage interpretation and research. Second, visitors consistently experience emotional responses to dark heritage, with distinct affective profiles linked to environmental damage, human suffering, and labour histories. Third, labour exploitation remains under-theorised despite its centrality, reflecting its structural and long-term character, which challenges event-based dark tourism models. Building on these findings, the study proposes a tripartite typology of industrial darkness and introduces the concept of the evidence landscape to explain how sites communicate difficult pasts beyond formal interpretation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060166

Authors: Gulnihal Sakrak Ekin Yakin Ekin Onur Akbulut Tunahan Celik

The intersections between memory, space, and mobility have become increasingly prominent in tourism studies in recent years. This article examines the relationship between religious tourism and social memory by conceptualizing religious tourism as an active process of collective remembrance. While realizing this aim, it conceptualizes faith tourism as an active process of collective memory. Faith tourism possesses a wider area than the traditional classification of religious travel. This article adopts a conceptual and thematic narrative review approach. Rather than offering a systematic or meta-analytic review, it develops a theory-based interpretive framework by synthesizing interdisciplinary literature from sociology, memory studies, anthropology, and tourism studies. The article argues that faith tourism constitutes essential memory work. This review does not contribute by presenting the relationship between memory, space, identity, and tourism as an entirely new field of research. Instead, it proposes an integrative analytical framework specific to faith tourism that brings social memory theory into closer dialogue with sacred space, ritual mobility, visitor interpretation, and the formation of collective identity. By organizing these dimensions not as separate themes, but as interacting mechanisms, the article clarifies how sacred sites and faith-based tourism practices contribute to the production, transmission, and reinterpretation of collective memory. Moreover, it provides a conceptual contribution by clarifying the role of religious sites as memory spaces that link past, present, and future.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060165

Authors: Piranun Juntapoon Krit Sittivangkul Amnuayporn Yaiying Kassaraporn Tirawong Parnprae C. Udomraksasup Tiparad Sahatrongjit

Community-based tourism (CBT) destinations are increasingly expected to align visitor experiences with climate responsibility, yet local managers often lack product-level carbon evidence that can guide practical route redesign and service decisions. This study addresses this aggregation-to-action gap by developing a route-level carbon footprint baseline for a CBT itinerary in Ban Boonjaem, Phrae Province, Thailand. Using an exploratory and applied case study design, the study treats one completed six-hour, non-overnight itinerary as the functional unit and applies a life-cycle-informed operational boundary covering transportation, food and beverage consumption, and solid waste generated during the route test. Primary activity data were collected from one organized route test involving 20 Thai domestic volunteer tourists and were matched with relevant emission factors to estimate total and per-tourist emissions. The tested itinerary generated 0.2234 tCO2e, equivalent to 223.4 kgCO2e in total and approximately 11.2 kgCO2e per tourist per trip. Transportation was the largest emission domain, accounting for 55.89% of total route emissions, followed by food and beverage consumption at 38.55%, while waste contributed 5.56%. Together, transportation and food and beverage represented 94.44% of measured emissions, indicating that the route’s carbon profile was shaped mainly by mobility arrangements and service provisioning rather than waste generation alone. The study contributes a transparent, route-specific operational baseline for low-carbon CBT management. The findings should be interpreted as case-specific decision-support evidence rather than as a destination-wide carbon inventory or statistically generalizable estimate.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060164

Authors: Alexandra Lavaredas Bárbara Pereira Paulo Almeida

Understanding how consumers perceive the value of travel packages is essential for pricing and product design. Grounded in behavioral economics frameworks, such as Prospect Theory and Mental Accounting, this study analyses satisfaction across three progressive travel packages before and after explicit price disclosure, exploring multi-attribute service valuation and the moderating influence of traveller profiles. Using a quantitative approach with 387 higher education participants, expected satisfaction was measured through a two-phase price disclosure design. Inferential statistical analyses revealed that satisfaction levels decreased significantly for all packages once prices were revealed, with the sharpest decline occurring in the highly comprehensive, all-inclusive option, validating a psychological threshold of value saturation. Packages comprising only essential elements (flights, accommodation with breakfast and insurance) yielded the highest consistent post-price satisfaction, with these core structural components identified as the absolute most valued attributes. Findings suggest that explicit price disclosure acts as a negative moderator of expected satisfaction, triggering an immediate psychological pain of paying, particularly among independent travellers who exhibit higher price sensitivity and remain more analytical of bundled configurations than users of physical travel agencies. This study provides a framework for stakeholders to avoid over-bundling and optimize product efficiency. Furthermore, it contributes to academic discourse on generational consumer behaviour by highlighting how individual travel organization profiles within an emerging European cohort shape the perceived utility and fairness of tourism pricing.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060163

Authors: Sinh Nguyen

Culinary tourism is increasingly conceptualized as a strategic domain of destination competitiveness, in which gastronomic experiences serve as mechanisms for cultural representation and localized value creation. However, existing research remains fragmented in explaining how multidimensional culinary motivations translate into specific consumption behaviors, particularly in emerging destinations. Addressing this gap, this study develops and tests a motivation–behavior linkage framework grounded in push–pull motivation theory, conceptualizing culinary motivations as heterogeneous drivers with differential effects on intention to purchase local food. A sequential mixed-methods design was employed, beginning with an initial qualitative phase to refine measurement constructs, followed by a quantitative survey of 396 domestic tourists with prior culinary experience in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Data were analyzed using reliability assessment, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple regression modeling. The findings reveal a differentiated structure of influence: cultural experience, sensory appeal, and health concerns significantly enhance purchase intention, with cultural experience and sensory appeal emerging as the most influential predictors. In contrast, interpersonal and prestige motivations are non-significant, indicating that experiential and functional values outweigh social-symbolic drivers in this context. The study contributes by advancing push–pull theory through a behavior-specific, mechanism-based linkage; identifying context-dependent boundary conditions in an emerging destination; and refining culinary motivation by distinguishing experiential–functional from social-symbolic drivers. These insights inform more targeted strategies for promoting local food consumption and sustainable culinary tourism development.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060162

Authors: Chandan Singh Zakir Hossen Shaikh Bibhu Prasad Sahoo Nitin Mishra Akash Gupta Mohit Anand Shrivastava Ankit Kumar Garg

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which tourists appreciate sustainable tourism and what effect eco-friendly practices have on the decision-making process of selecting a hotel. Through the use of large-scale analysis of online reviews of hotels and the application of sentiment analysis techniques, the research investigates the impact of environmental factors (e.g., energy usage reduction, minimising waste, and promoting nature experiences) on customer perspectives and decision-making processes for lodging. This research adopts an approach that utilises machine-learning-based sentiment analysis as its source of understanding. The results of this research demonstrate that while more individuals are becoming aware of sustainable tourism, sustainability often plays a secondary role in determining whether or not to stay at a specific hotel compared to lodging attributes such as comfort, price, and quality service. Based upon these findings, this research indicates that while many tourists value sustainable tourism and make an effort to choose eco-friendly lodging establishments, the influence of sustainability on tourists’ lodging decisions is not as strong as other attributes. These results indicate important implications for hotel managers that will help them balance environmental stewardship with a competitive stance.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060161

Authors: Kazım Dağ Sinan Çavuşoğlu

This research focuses on the effects of online destination brand experience on destination brand authenticity, destination brand engagement, and external search behavior and behavioral intention. It also investigates the mediating effect of destination brand authenticity on the relationship between online destination brand experience and destination brand engagement. The research population consisted of visitors who had experienced the Zeugma and Gaziantep cultural tourism destinations. The Smart PLS (Partial Least Squares) statistical program was used for data analysis. The analysis results showed that online destination brand experience positively affected destination brand authenticity and destination brand engagement. Destination brand engagement influenced external search behavior and behavioral intention positively. However, the findings revealed that the social engagement dimension of destination brand engagement did not have a significant effect on external search behavior. Furthermore, the effect of the cognitive engagement dimension on behavioral intention was also insignificant. Finally, it was found that destination brand authenticity partially mediated the relationship between online destination brand experience and destination brand engagement.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060160

Authors: Mira Zovko Luka Valožić Lidija Srnec Ivana Havrle Kozarić Sara Ivasić

Small Mediterranean islands relying on the sun–sea–sand (3S) tourism model face growing climate risks that threaten their tourism-dependent economies. This study evaluates climate suitability for 3S tourism on the Island of Vis by integrating the Climate Index for Tourism (CIT) with land- use and land-cover (LU/LC) spatial analysis. The integration is operationalized by overlaying CIT-derived seasonal suitability windows with LU/LC-based spatial vulnerability maps, enabling identification of micro-zones where natural buffers (forest cover and elevation) can offset thermal discomfort during peak heat stress periods. Observed data reveals declining ideal 3S conditions from July to October, with the island already exceeding 50 days per year of Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) above 35.1 °C, increasing by 0.7 days per year. Regional climate models tend to exhibit a cold bias over small Adriatic islands, largely related to their limited spatial horizontal resolution (12.5 km grid spacing). However, they robustly reproduce the direction of recent and projected warming trends. Future projections indicate that the annual number of strong heat stress days with PET above 35.1 °C increase from approximately one per year in the reference period to six under RCP4.5 and nine under RCP8.5, with both scenarios reducing ideal peak-summer conditions while extending favorable periods into transitional seasons. Spatial analysis shows that coastal zones have higher sealed surfaces and less forest cover, reducing natural shade and cooling capacity, while the island interior offers higher elevations, forest buffers, hiking trails, and a UNESCO Global Geopark. Drawing on social–ecological resilience theory, we conceptualize the island’s tourism system as an adaptive unit whose long-term viability depends on spatially diversified resource use and temporally extended seasonality. The integrated analytical framework identifies not only when conditions deteriorate but where alternative tourism resources exist, enabling more targeted adaptation planning and supporting diversification toward outdoor tourism forms. The novelty of this study lies in the systematic spatial integration of bioclimatic suitability assessments (CIT and PET) with LU/LC analysis at the micro-island scale. Such an approach moves beyond temporally focused climate–tourism indices to produce actionable, location-specific adaptation strategies.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060159

Authors: Predrag Tošić Bojana Kalenjuk Pivarski Velibor Ivanović Stefan Šmugović Dragana Novaković Tamara Stošić Sofija Vujasinović

This paper explores the importance of local food in tourism development in the Republic of Srpska by analyzing the perceptions of hospitality employees in relation to the characteristics of the food service establishments in which they work. The aim of this study is to determine how local food influences tourism development and whether such effects are conditioned by specific factors. Although previous studies have extensively examined local food through the lens of consumer behavior, there remains a significant research gap regarding the internal perspective of hospitality employees as co-creators of the gastronomic experience. This study addresses that gap by applying Social Exchange Theory (SET) to explain how employees’ perceptions of economic, social, and environmental benefits shape their willingness to support the integration of local food. By placing employees at the center of the analysis, the paper provides insight into the mechanisms through which authentic ingredients are transformed into symbolic capital and strengthen destination identity. In this context, the analytical Local Food model was adapted and applied to a sample of 480 respondents, evenly distributed across the mesoregions of the Republic of Srpska. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), three key dimensions of influence were identified—economic, environmental, and social. In addition, independent-samples t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) confirmed that employees’ perceptions vary significantly depending on the production capacity of the establishments, whereas the type and location of the establishments were not identified as significant determinants of these differences. The findings further indicate that the intensity of these factors varies according to location, production capacity, and ownership type, while other characteristics of the hospitality establishments in which the respondents were employed were not found to be significant. A strong interrelationship among the identified factors was confirmed, with the social factor emerging as the most dominant. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of local food in strengthening the tourism attractiveness and sustainability of the hospitality sector in the Republic of Srpska.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060158

Authors: Miguel Fuentes-Collado Miguel Ángel Alcaide-Sillero Paula C. Ferreira-Gomes David Algaba-Navarro

In this study, the researchers aim to analyse the motivations of active golf tourists in Spain using the AFE-CFA-Cluster methodology. To this end, a survey was conducted in Spain amongst 381 players, both in person and online, who stated that they had undertaken one golf trip at least once in their lives. The survey consisted of three sections of questions: the first concerned preferences regarding both the destination and the golf courses; the second comprised 20 questions relating to motivations, divided into five categories: business opportunities, financial benefits, escape and relaxation, learning and challenge, and social interaction and camaraderie; and, finally, the third section focused on socio-demographic aspects. The results obtained from the exploratory factor analysis, which were subsequently confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis, revealed the composition of four motivational constructs: business opportunity, financial savings, escape and relaxation, and learning and challenge, resulting in a total of five homogeneous groups of golf tourists: experiential golfers, wellness-oriented golfers, multifunctional golfers, low-involvement golfers and learning-oriented golfers. These results may be useful for companies in the sector and marketing managers in defining the various existing segments of golf tourists and applying specific marketing strategies for each.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060157

Authors: Zhanar Dulatbekova Kuralay Tukibayeva

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption to global tourism, exposing the structural vulnerability of tourism-dependent economies and leading to a sharp decline in international mobility. This study examines post-pandemic tourism recovery in Kazakhstan, focusing on the association between travel expenditure and tourism demand, and on regional disparities in recovery patterns. The empirical strategy combines time-series econometric modelling, infrastructure index construction, and regional cluster analysis. Using annual data for 2000–2023, a parsimonious autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is applied to estimate both short-run dynamics and long-run relationships. The results show a positive and statistically significant association between tourism demand and travel expenditure, supporting the interpretation of expenditure-related recovery dynamics. They also indicate persistence in demand and a significant negative association with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) shock. The error correction mechanism indicates rapid adjustment toward long-run equilibrium. Infrastructure and regional analyses highlight substantial post-pandemic capacity expansion alongside pronounced spatial disparities, with activity concentrated in major urban centres. The findings suggest that recovery is closely associated with demand-side dynamics and accompanied by persistent structural and regional constraints, highlighting the need for coordinated policies that combine demand stimulation, infrastructure development, and balanced regional growth.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060156

Authors: A. Azwardi M. Shabri Abd. Majid A. Apridar Taufiq C. Dawood

Tourism is an important driver of regional development, yet its benefits remain uneven across destinations despite continued infrastructure investment. This study examines how economic infrastructure affects domestic tourism performance across Indonesian provinces and whether destination risk moderates this relationship. Using a balanced panel of 34 provinces from 2018 to 2024, the study applies a panel ARDL–PMG approach to distinguish short-run adjustments from long-run equilibrium effects. Domestic tourism performance is measured by domestic tourist trips and average domestic tourist expenditure per trip. Economic infrastructure is represented by energy infrastructure, transport infrastructure, and basic digital access, while destination risk is captured through crime and corruption indicators. Inflation and the COVID-19 shock are included as control variables. The findings show that infrastructure improves domestic tourism performance mainly in the long run, with limited short-run effects. However, these benefits are not uniform. Higher levels of crime and corruption weaken the positive effects of infrastructure on both tourist volume and expenditure. The study contributes to tourism and hospitality research by showing that the infrastructure–tourism relationship is dynamic, conditional, and institutionally embedded. The findings imply that infrastructure development should be accompanied by stronger public safety, governance quality, and sustainable destination management.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060155

Authors: Pedro Fernández Carrasco Clara Matutano Molina Alicia García Galiana

This study evaluates the potential of motorhome tourism to catalyze socioeconomic development in rural municipalities of southeastern Spain (provinces of Jaén, Granada, and Almería). Addressing the critical challenge of rural depopulation in “Empty Spain” (España Vaciada), the research employs a mixed-methods approach covering the period 2022–2024. The methodology is centered on a two-tier empirical design: (i) a provincial-level analysis of eight municipalities, and (ii) an in-depth case study of Vélez-Blanco. A fundamental component of the research was the direct ethnographic validation and field audit conducted by the Fernández-Dutto family during an extensive journey from March to September 2025. By staying two to three nights at each location, the researchers performed in situ assessments of infrastructure quality and bioclimatic efficiency, providing a primary “ground-truth” dataset. These observations calibrate the longitudinal data obtained from the National Statistics Institute (INE) and digital platforms, which were utilized strictly as secondary screening tools for site selection. The results indicate statistically significant correlations between infrastructure quality, proximity to heritage attractions, and increases in local tourism-related expenditure. The study highlights how experiential fieldwork captures nuances in traveler behavior and site functionality that official records often overlook. The paper concludes by identifying strategic investment opportunities, specifically recommending the development of a motorhome service area in the municipality of María (María-Los Vélez area). This intervention is proposed as a vital catalyst to complete the regional tourism circuit and foster economic resilience in the heart of Almería’s rural landscape.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060154

Authors: Stefanos Balaskas Kyriakos Komis

Digital nomads blur the boundaries between tourism, work, and temporary residence, yet little is known about how local businesses interpret this ambiguous population. This study examines how Greek SMEs classify digital nomads and how these classifications shape perceived business benefits and harms, support for protective policy guardrails, and firm-level adaptation intentions. Using survey data from 747 SME owner-managers and managers in tourism-linked and adjacent sectors, the study tests an integrated framework with PLS-SEM and multi-group analysis. The findings show that SME responses are interpretive rather than automatic. Residency-Based Visitor Beliefs positively predicted support for protective policy guardrails (β = 0.334, p < 0.001), but did not directly predict adaptation intentions. Perceived Touristness positively predicted both guardrail support (β = 0.110, p < 0.001) and adaptation intentions (β = 0.181, p < 0.001). Perceived Business Benefits was the strongest predictor of adaptation intentions (β = 0.390, p < 0.001), while Perceived Business Harms also increased both guardrail support (β = 0.175, p < 0.001) and adaptation intentions (β = 0.310, p < 0.001). Mediation results showed that the effects of Residency-Based Visitor Beliefs on adaptation were fully transmitted through benefits and harms, whereas Perceived Touristness operated indirectly only through harms. Multi-group analysis further revealed significant heterogeneity across firm size, years in operation, and tourism dependence. The study contributes to digital nomad and tourism research by introducing a business-side classification perspective and by linking classification, evaluation, and response in a single model. Overall, the findings show that whether digital nomads are classified as tourists by businesses has measurable implications for regulatory preferences and market adaptation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060153

Authors: Can Olgun Brijesh Thapa

This study investigates how parasocial interactions with travel influencers shape consumer–brand identification and purchase intention within hospitality-related virtual communities. Grounded in social influence theory and the literature on parasocial interaction, the study examines the mediating roles of perceived information quality and a sense of belonging in influencer-led digital environments. Data were collected from 940 consumers and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The findings demonstrate that parasocial interaction significantly enhances perceived information quality and consumers’ sense of belonging to influencer-led virtual communities, thereby strengthening consumer–brand identification and purchase intention. The results further suggest that influencer-led social environments function not only as promotional channels but also as psychologically meaningful communities that shape consumer perceptions and behavioral outcomes. By integrating parasocial interaction, virtual community belonging, and consumer–brand identification within a hospitality context, this study contributes to the growing literature on influencer marketing and digital consumer behavior.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060152

Authors: Cátia Rodrigues Alexandra Lavaredas Paulo Almeida

Tourist guides remain understudied in tourism workforce research, particularly regarding the conditions shaping satisfaction and career retention. This study examines how cultural tourism itinerary characteristics are associated with tourist guides’ job satisfaction and career retention intentions. Data were collected through a convenience sample survey of 127 active tourist guides in Portugal. Grounded in the Job Satisfaction Survey and the Theory of Planned Behaviour frameworks, the study utilised exploratory factor analysis and multiple linear regression to analyse the data. Results indicate positive associations between itinerary characteristics, job satisfaction and career retention intentions, with Components (accommodation, meals, accessibility) and Sustainability emerging as the strongest predictors. These findings extend the Job Demands–Resources model to a supervisory-free work context and highlight itinerary design as a previously underexplored human resource management mechanism shaping workforce outcomes in tourism, with implications for tour operators, destination managers and policymakers.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060151

Authors: Vilma Trigoso-Guevara Kasandra Lisset Torres-Cortez Fiorely Margoth Peralta-Córdova Joel Cruz-Tarrillo Robin Alexander Diaz-Saavedra

Despite growing interest in destination branding, empirical evidence is still limited in explaining how brand personality influences tourist behavior mediated by integrated aspects. This study addresses this research gap by proposing and testing a structural model that considers the mediating role of tourist experience, authenticity, and trust in the relationship between brand personality and tourist behavior. The methodology used was quantitative and causal–correlational, using structural equation modeling and a sample of 514 Peruvian tourists selected through non-probabilistic convenience sampling. The results show that brand personality significantly influences tourist experience and destination authenticity, while its direct effect on trust is weak. In addition, experience positively influences trust and authenticity. Significantly, authenticity and experience show direct and positive effects on tourist behavior, while trust has a negative effect. These findings contribute to the advancement of the literature by integrating a single explanatory model with experiential, cognitive, and relational variables, broadening the understanding of the indirect role of brand personality in the tourism context. From a practical standpoint, the results suggest that destination managers should focus on enhancing brand personality and authenticity.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060150

Authors: Petra Vašaničová Kateryna Melnyk Ivan Bukrieiev Natalie Konkoľová

This study examines the perceived usefulness, perceived benefits, and acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in tourism, with a specific focus on Generation Z. Drawing on established technology acceptance frameworks, the research investigates how key perceptual factors influence the adoption of AI in travel planning and tourism services. The empirical analysis is based on a questionnaire survey conducted among 531 university students from Slovakia. The study employs factor analysis, correlation analysis, regression modeling, and non-parametric tests to explore relationships between perceived usefulness, perceived benefits, acceptance, trust, and experience with AI technologies. The results reveal strong and statistically significant relationships among all three core constructs. However, regression analysis indicates that perceived usefulness does not directly influence acceptance when perceived benefits are included, suggesting a mediating effect. Perceived benefits emerge as the strongest predictor of acceptance, emphasizing the importance of experiential value, such as efficiency, personalization, and improved decision-making. Trust in AI-generated travel information and perceptions of AI’s contribution to quality of life significantly influence all constructs. Additionally, prior experience with AI tools positively affects user attitudes. The findings suggest that AI adoption can enhance tourism competitiveness and support tourism development, provided that trust, information quality, and human–technology balance are effectively managed.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060149

Authors: Danijel Pavlović Nina Gavrić Anđelina Marić Stanković Marija Bratić Ninoslav Golubović Mladen Ivanović

Gastronomic festivals play an important role in the development of tourist destinations by strengthening destination image, competitiveness, and visitor loyalty. This study examines how the perceived quality of the gastronomic festival Belmužijada influences visitor satisfaction, behavioral intentions (recommendation and revisit intentions), and the destination image of Svrljig. The research is based on a quantitative approach using a standardized questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS through descriptive statistics, a one-sample t-test, Pearson correlation, and regression analyses. The reliability of the measurement scales was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The results indicate that visitors perceive Belmužijada as an authentic gastronomic experience that contributes to the preservation of local tradition and culture. The perceived quality of the gastronomic offer and festival organization has a statistically significant positive effect on visitor satisfaction, which further influences their willingness to recommend the festival. In addition, the perceived positive impact of the festival on destination image significantly affects revisit intention. The findings highlight the importance of gastronomic festivals in shaping destination image and fostering visitor loyalty, particularly in rural and less developed tourism areas.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060148

Authors: Maria Magdalini Karalazarou Evangelos Christou Chryssoula Chatzigeorgiou Ioanna Simeli

Digital technologies are reshaping how tourists and hospitality consumers search for, personalize, interpret, and share experiences. This study examines customer value co-creation (VCC) as a mechanism linking digital-age participation with consumer outcomes in tourism and hospitality. A PRISMA 2020-guided meta-analysis was conducted using Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and Hospitality & Tourism Complete. Forty peer-reviewed studies met the eligibility criteria. Random-effects models synthesized unadjusted correlations between VCC and its main antecedents and outcomes. VCC was positively associated with customer engagement, perceived innovation, and sustainability/CSR-related perceptions. On the outcome side, the strongest and most mature associations were observed for satisfaction (r = 0.64), loyalty (r = 0.61), and perceived value (r = 0.52). Extended outcomes, including experience evaluations, well-being, image, and equity-related indicators, were also positive on average but less empirically mature. High heterogeneity and wide prediction intervals show that VCC is better understood as a context-dependent mechanism rather than a universally strong predictor. Exploratory evidence suggests that digitally intensive service environments may strengthen the VCC–loyalty association. Although the evidence base is not cultural-tourism-specific, the findings are relevant to cultural and heritage settings where digital touchpoints can support interpretation, perceived authenticity, symbolic meaning, and post-visit advocacy.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060147

Authors: Beth A. Wielde Heidelberg

When a community is thrust into the spotlight due to a tragic event or has a reputation given to it by folklore, it joins the pantheon of dark tourism destinations. Tourists will visit these infamous places regardless of how residents and the local government feel about visitors coming to explore their local tragedy, especially when the community is still rebuilding or grieving. Local governments must decide how they will handle this interest in their community, while protecting and providing service to their residents. This study investigates the frequency of dark tourism being integrated into long-range urban planning document to manage, or possibly enhance, dark tourism in their community.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7060146

Authors: Trevor Shenal Anton Ka Leong Chong Alexander Trupp Marcus L. Stephenson

This study examines smart technology adoption in foodservice microbusinesses by moving beyond intention-based explanations to examine how adoption and post-adoption unfold in practice. Hospitality technology research has largely emphasised attitudes and behavioural intentions, offering limited insight into how technologies become embedded in everyday operations, particularly in resource-constrained microbusiness contexts. Focusing on foodservice microbusinesses in Malaysia, this study goes beyond pre-adoption intention and examines the nuances of actual technology implementation, guided by adaptive training as the central adoption-enabling mechanism. Using an action research approach, this study implemented a one-month adaptive training intervention that enabled operators to engage in hands-on, experiential learning within their own business environments. The findings uniquely indicate that technology adoption is shaped by capability asymmetry, with differences in technological literacy, prior experience, and resources producing varied adoption pathways. These differences were addressed through adaptive training that aligned the pace and intensity of learning with operators’ capabilities. This study also identifies specialist mediation as a key mechanism supporting adoption, as guidance from a knowledgeable intermediary reduced complexity, facilitated learning, and enabled the transfer of trust. The findings suggest that smart technology adoption in microbusiness settings is not only a matter of intention but also a situated learning process shaped by unequal capabilities, adaptive training, and specialist-guided trust formation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050145

Authors: Asma Alomaym Rosniza Aznie Che Rose Rosmiza Mohd Zainol

Tourism education is central to human capital development under Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, yet the extent to which curricula align with emerging industry requirements remains underexplored, particularly in developing economy contexts. This qualitative study examines student and faculty perspectives on curriculum alignment at the University of Ha’il’s Tourism and Antiquities Department. Twenty participants were purposively recruited and interviewed; data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings reveal four interconnected challenges: a persistent theory–practice gap sustained by lecture-based pedagogies, insufficient integration of digital and smart tourism technologies, weak industry–academia partnerships, and structural barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration. In response, this study proposes an interdisciplinary integration model structured around five domains: digital technology, sustainability and environment, business and entrepreneurship, cultural and creative industries, and social sciences and community engagement. The model provides a progressive framework for cross-departmental collaboration and represents the study’s primary practical contribution. Theoretically, the study demonstrates that curriculum misalignment operates through mutually reinforcing institutional constraints rather than discrete correctable deficits. Recommendations address curriculum reform, technology investment, structured partnership development, and administrative conditions enabling interdisciplinary implementation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050144

Authors: Erdogan Ekiz Berislav Andrlić Kashif Hussain

Service failures remain inevitable in tourism and hospitality, yet complaint behavior is often suppressed, particularly in non-routine, time-bound travel contexts. The Tourist Complaint Constraints (TCC) framework explains this silence through five tourism-specific constraints. However, it does not explicitly account for how platform-based and AI-mediated service environments reshape post-failure behavior. This paper revisits TCC and introduces TCC 2.0, a conceptual extension that reframes complaint constraints as structurally generated within platform-mediated recovery architectures. Drawing on justice theory and emerging research on AI-enabled service systems, the framework positions distributive, procedural, and interactional justice as central mediators linking complaint constraints to behavioral outcomes. It further incorporates platform/AI process constraints and algorithmic trust constraints as additional structural dimensions, while identifying recovery channel and failure magnitude as boundary conditions. A key contribution is the concept of platform-mediated silence, defined as a structurally induced form of non-complaining behavior shaped by constrained agency and recovery system design rather than satisfaction. The paper advances a set of propositions to guide empirical testing and future scale development in AI-mediated tourism contexts. By extending complaint behavior theory into digitally mediated service environments, TCC 2.0 offers a foundation for understanding how platform architectures shape customer voice, silence, and post-failure responses.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050143

Authors: Mariana Inácio Marques João Caldeira Heitor Alexandra O’Neill

Mauritius, as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS), depends heavily on tourism and is therefore exposed to external shocks; this study examines how the sector’s performance and value capture evolved from 2010 to 2025, with particular attention to the COVID-19 disruption and subsequent recovery. The analysis uses only secondary data, combining arrivals and source-market breakdowns published by the Ministry of Tourism with the monthly series of gross tourism earnings released by the Bank of Mauritius. Trends and seasonality are described for both arrivals and earnings, and three indicators are derived to support interpretation: revenue per arrival (as a proxy for value capture), the intensity of seasonality, and the concentration of source markets. The results document the magnitude of the pandemic-related break, trace the timing of the rebound, and show how value capture and market concentration shifted between the pre- and post-COVID periods. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for resilience in island destinations, highlighting the need for diversification and higher-value positioning, and proposing a replicable monitoring approach that can be updated as new official data become available.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050142

Authors: Antonio Vlahov Danijela Ferjanić Hodak Danijel Mlinarić

Stakeholders in the tourism system, recognizing the importance of digitalization and the adoption of modern technological solutions, are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence into their operations, including the use of autonomous robots. These initiatives should primarily aim to enhance the customer experience by simplifying and streamlining procedures, while allowing tourism employees to devote more attention to guests. Nautical tourism is a specific form of tourism in which the Republic of Croatia is a global leader; however, it also faces a shortage of qualified staff. Marinas, as the most significant stakeholders within the nautical tourism sector, are the first to invest in the development of innovative solutions. In addition to reviewing the theoretical framework, this paper emphasizes primary research. The aim of the research was to examine the attitudes and habits of nautical tourism guests regarding the adoption of new technologies in marinas, as well as their willingness to use autonomous robots. Given the decision to develop and implement autonomous robots in business operations, the research was conducted among users of nautical services in one of the most modern nautical tourism ports in Croatia and the Mediterranean. A structured online questionnaire was used. The results indicate users’ readiness for the immediate adoption of autonomous robots in certain services, providing a direct incentive for stronger implementation of similar solutions among other stakeholders. This research also suggests that Croatia has the potential to become a technological hub for smart nautical tourism.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050141

Authors: Abdelilah Sadqaoui Mohammed Bougroum Hamid Zahir

The development of sustainable tourism in rural areas brings new challenges in terms of innovation and social inclusion. In this context, this study examines the adoption of social innovation by managers of rural guesthouses in Morocco. The objective is to identify the factors that influence their intention to adopt such practices, which may strengthen local cohesion, enhance cultural resources, and meet visitors’ expectations regarding sustainability. The analysis draws on the conceptual framework of the diffusion of innovation, which allows for the exploration of perceptions related to the relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, visibility, and trialability of innovative practices. The research is based on a questionnaire survey conducted with a sample of 174 managers. The data collected underwent confirmatory factor analysis to validate the theoretical dimensions of the model, and were then analyzed using an ordered Logit model to account for the ordinal nature of the dependent variable measuring the intention to adopt. The empirical results indicate that several perceived factors—namely the superiority of the innovation, its economic or symbolic benefits, its cultural compatibility, its simplicity of understanding and use, and the visibility of its effects—have a significant influence. Other dimensions, such as technical compatibility or risk perception, do not show a notable effect. The study also highlights the role of education level and gender in the propensity to adopt social innovation.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050140

Authors: Henricus Kurniawan Elang Kusumo Diena M. Lemy Meitolo Hulu Johannes Kurniawan Juliana Juliana

This research examines how community support for sustainable tourism development is influenced by sustainable hospitality in protected park areas. This relationship focuses primarily on the effect of perceived eco-social performance (ESP) as an enhancement of the community’s perceived location-specific environmental attachment (CEA), leading to increased pro-sustainable tourism intentions through CEA. Despite the growing focus on sustainability within hospitality industries, there remains very little scholarly research that explores how local communities perceive sustainable hospitality practices and how these perceptions then manifest as emotional attachment, followed by behavioural support. To achieve the stated goal, researchers employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to collect quantitative survey data from residents living in close proximity to a protected area destination, and the quantitative data were used separately to develop qualitative insights into residents’ support for sustainable tourism initiatives. Findings of this study reveal that perceived ESP significantly enhances CEA, providing an impetus for increased PSTI (via direct and indirect pathways) for communities in close proximity to a protected area destination. CEA further enhances PSTI significantly and acts as a significant mediator in the relationship between perception and behavioural support for sustainable tourism. Qualitative findings further indicate that eco-social hospitality practices fulfil the following: develop community pride; increase the sense of environmental responsibility among the community; and create opportunities for actively supporting sustainable tourism. These findings demonstrate that, while sustainable hospitality practices generate observable actions, they also create deeper psychological connections between communities and their environment. The cumulative findings from this study contribute to a greater understanding of how ESP can strategically contribute to growing the number of communities supporting sustainable tourism through the creation of CEA, thereby expanding the overall community’s intention to support sustainable tourism development.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050139

Authors: Rudy Pramono Juliana Juliana Yosep Dudedes Timba

Coffee tourism has emerged as a significant niche within community-based tourism development across the Global South, promising economic diversification and cultural preservation. Yet the human resource foundations of this sector remain under-theorized relative to those of marketing and the supply chain. This study examines the human resource challenges confronting coffee tourism development in Bajawa, Flores, Indonesia—an emerging destination strategically positioned within national tourism priorities. Drawing on qualitative research including in-depth interviews with 42 informants (coffee farmers, tourism workers, village officials, private sector facilitators, and NGO representatives), document analysis, and field observations, the study suggests that workforce sustainability in coffee tourism is undermined by three intersecting dynamics: precarious labor regimes characterized by casualization and income instability; significant skill gaps across the coffee–tourism nexus; and institutional fragmentation wherein state programs, private sector initiatives, and customary labor systems operate without coherent coordination. The findings highlight that human resource challenges are not merely technical capacity deficits but are produced through informal labor arrangements, unequal power relations, and governance fragmentation. The study contributes theoretically by extending precarity scholarship to emerging destination contexts and proposing an integrative framework linking labor regimes, competency development, and workforce sustainability.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050138

Authors: María del Pilar Puente-Martínez Ángeles Bueno-Villaverde

The transformation of the hospitality industry has increased the demand for managerial profiles capable of integrating technical, strategic, and socio-emotional competencies. However, a persistent gap remains between the competencies required by the labor market and those developed through formal education. This study aims to identify and validate the core competencies of hotel management and to translate them into a structured training proposal. A two-round Delphi study was conducted with senior hotel management experts (n = 42 in round 1; n = 32 in round 2), using a competency matrix derived from prior research. Quantitative analysis included frequency distributions, weighted scores, and consensus indicators. The results show a high level of consensus stability (3.1% disagreement), leading to a final matrix of 43 competencies organized into four dimensions: operational, interpersonal, cultural-communicative, and strategic. Interpersonal and leadership competencies emerged as the most prominent, highlighting their structural role in effective managerial performance. Based on these findings, a progressive training framework is proposed, structured around three domains (operations, leadership, and strategy) and supported by a metacognitive pathway that integrates planning, monitoring, and evaluation processes. This study contributes to the professionalization of hotel management by providing an empirically grounded competency model and a coherent framework for aligning educational programs with industry demands.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050137

Authors: Kristijan Breznik Truls Engström Mitja Gorenak

Coastal protected landscapes are increasingly becoming subject to high and diverse recreational use, creating complex challenges for balancing visitors’ experience with ecological protection. While visitor segmentation has been widely applied in tourism research, its integration with spatially differentiated management in frequently used natural areas remains limited. This study addresses this gap by examining visitor heterogeneity in a highly visited coastal protected landscape in Norway. Using survey data combined with behavioral indicators, an exploratory factor analysis identifies three core motivational dimensions: nature experience and environmental learning, social interaction and activity, and family-oriented recreation. Building on these dimensions, a cluster analysis reveals four distinct visitor typologies ranging from low-involvement to highly engaged users. The results demonstrate that visitor segments are primarily differentiated by psychographic characteristics, while socio-demographic and behavioral variables provide limited explanatory power. Importantly, the identified typologies correspond to distinct patterns of use and experiential expectations, offering a robust basis for differentiated management strategies. The findings highlight the need to move beyond uniform management approaches towards segment-specific interventions, particularly in landscapes dominated by experienced, locally based users. By linking motivational structures to spatial and managerial implications, this study contributes to advancing visitor research and provides practical insights for managing recreational pressure in protected coastal environments.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050136

Authors: Jing Zhao Songyu Jiang Jirawan Deeprasert

Theme park tourism has become a trend and brings huge profits; however, how Fantawild, a representative theme park in China, can attract tourists to return remains to be explored. Given the substantial economic value of repeat visitors for theme parks, this study focuses on revisit intention rather than general tourist behavior. Drawing on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework as the theoretical foundation, this study examines how narrative-based experiences influence visitors’ revisit intention to Fantawild as a theme park tourism destination. Data were collected from 573 visitors to Fantawild in China and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that storytelling does not directly influence revisit intention but instead operates through emotional resonance and satisfaction, indicating a fully mediated mechanism. Emotional resonance also indirectly affects revisit intention through satisfaction. In addition, marketing activities, fond travel memories, and IP appeal significantly enhance emotional and evaluative responses, which in turn drive revisit intention. These findings provide a clearer understanding of the affective and cognitive mechanisms underlying narrative immersion and offer practical implications for improving visitor engagement, repeat visitation, and retention in theme park tourism.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050135

Authors: Carlos Neto de Carvalho Ross Dowling

The Special Issue Geotourism: The Tourism of Geology and Landscape has brought together a diverse set of perspectives that collectively illustrate the rapid evolution of geotourism as both a research field and a practical approach to sustainable tourism development [...]

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050134

Authors: Juan Ignacio Pulido-Fernández Yaiza López-Sánchez Jairo Casado-Montilla Isabel Carrillo-Hidalgo

This study examines the relationship between sociodemographic factors and total tourist expenditure in the medium-sized UNESCO World Heritage Cities of Úbeda and Baeza, Spain. Using primary data from a structured survey of 1657 visitors, expenditure was analyzed across nine categories. The methodological approach combined descriptive statistics, non-parametric tests, and a Conditional Inference Tree (CTree) model to identify hierarchical segmentation patterns. The analysis revealed seven distinct visitor segments, with nationality as the strongest predictor, followed by employment status, income, and education. Foreign tourists, particularly retired individuals with university degrees, consistently showed higher expenditure levels, especially in accommodation and shopping. Domestic tourists displayed more heterogeneous spending profiles, influenced mainly by income and employment status. Accommodation, food, and shopping dominated expenditure structures across segments, while transport and recreation played a secondary role. By applying an interpretable CTree approach, the study uncovers interaction-based expenditure profiles that are often overlooked in conventional analyses, thereby offering a more nuanced basis for identifying high-spending tourists and informing destination management strategies.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050133

Authors: Baiba Rivza Inita Kindzule-Millere Laura Pole Sandija Zeverte-Rivza Gunta Grinberga-Zalite Ksenija Furmanova Liga Paula

Tourism is highly exposed to external shocks such as pandemics, geopolitical instability, and security-related disruptions, which particularly affect small and rural enterprises. Although digital tools are frequently discussed as mechanisms supporting tourism competitiveness under conditions of tourism disruption, consumer-centred evidence remains limited. This study examines how consumers in Latvia evaluate digital tools and which factors they associate with rural tourism competitiveness and improvement priorities. The study is guided by a conceptual framework in which digital tools function as intermediary mechanisms linking conditions of tourism disruption to rural tourism competitiveness through consumer perceptions of accessibility, convenience, and trust. A mixed-methods CATI survey (N = 1004) was conducted in February–April 2025, combining statistical analysis of closed-ended responses with thematic analysis of consumer-defined competitiveness and improvement priorities derived from open-ended questions. The results show that age is the main factor differentiating evaluations of digital tools, while regional and settlement-type differences remain weak. Online booking and digital payments are valued across all age groups, whereas tools such as virtual tours show stronger age-related variation. When discussing competitiveness, respondents most frequently refer to institutional conditions, promotion, pricing, and digital tools as key competitiveness dimensions. However, when identifying improvements, priorities shift toward diversification of tourism offers and physical accessibility. Digital tools remain important and are primarily associated with practical functions such as booking, payments, information access, and online visibility that make rural tourism offers easier to find and use. The findings highlight the growing role of digital accessibility and information transparency as foundational conditions for rural tourism competitiveness under conditions of tourism disruption and uncertainty.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050132

Authors: Miriam Edith Pérez-Romero María de la Cruz del Río-Rama José Álvarez-García Driselda Sánchez-Aguirre

This study analyzes tourist loyalty in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve by integrating affinity-based segmentation and the Forgotten Effects Theory within a fuzzy logic framework. The objective was to identify how visitor affinities condition the indirect construction of loyalty in contexts of high environmental complexity. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 316 tourists using a non-probabilistic sampling approach. Using the Pichat Algorithm and the Forgotten Effects Theory, the research captured gradual membership patterns and mediated relationships that conventional models often overlook. Results indicate that, while age, particularly Generation X, acts as a connecting axis, postgraduate education levels generate a polarization of visitor perceptions across segments. Significant forgotten effects (up to 0.30) were identified, suggesting that variables such as satisfaction, entertainment, and relaxation act as mediating mechanisms between learning, perceived value, and the intention to revisit. This study suggests that loyalty is not constructed directly but is indirectly shaped by affinity-based visitor structures. It recommends that management strategies evolve toward environmental edutainment models and that marketing efforts be diversified according to differentiated visitor profiles. These findings demonstrate the utility of fuzzy logic for the strategic management of high-value ecological destinations.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050131

Authors: Youngsun Sean Kim Bosul Yoo Danni Wang Se Jin Kim Chanho Song

Cultivating high-quality interactions between customers and employees has become a central concern for both researchers and practitioners. However, most studies have primarily centered on examining and enhancing the quality and effectiveness of direct interactions between employees and customers. Building upon social influence theory, this study diverges by investigating how interactions among employees and other customers, along with their quality, impact the service perceptions of observing customers within the social servicescape. Using a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design with 384 participants, this study provides the first empirical evidence that the interaction quality among other social actors in a shared service environment significantly influences the perceived customer orientation and service quality for observing customers. Hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Importantly, this effect persists even when the observing customers themselves are not directly involved in the interactions with either the service provider or the other customer. Additionally, the study uncovers a noteworthy gender difference in how individuals respond to the quality of interactions between employees and other customers. Furthermore, the findings suggest that an observing customer’s prior emotional attachment to the service provider does not significantly interact with the effects of employee-to-other customer interaction quality, indicating that the underlying expectation for interaction quality in the social servicescape remains consistent regardless of the customer’s preexisting relationship with the service provider.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050130

Authors: Md Shahzalal Sumon Mahmud Md. Soleman Mollik Mohammad Sahabuddin Zokir Mamadiyarov Mosab I. Tabash

While the adoption of e-ticketing has been studied in various disciplines, few studies have examined tourists’ intention to adopt e-ticketing for visiting small island and valley tourism sites. This study extends the Technology Acceptance Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior by incorporating security and privacy concerns, price fairness, electronic word-of-mouth, destination management effectiveness, government incentives, and environmental concern to examine the antecedents of tourists’ behavioral intention to adopt e-ticketing. Data were collected from 375 purposively sampled on-street respondents in Sajek Valley and Saint Martin’s Island, Bangladesh. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The findings show that perceived usefulness, price fairness, subjective norms, perceived ease of use, environmental concern, and destination management effectiveness affect tourists’ attitudes toward e-ticketing adoption. However, security and privacy concerns have a negative but statistically insignificant influence on attitudes. Attitude is a significant determinant of behavioral intention, and government incentives moderate the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention. The study offers implications for policymakers, online marketers, and destination managers.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050129

Authors: Iroda Mukhammadieva

This study investigates how YouTube food travel vloggers semiotically construct destination images and potentially function as informal culinary ambassadors through gastrodiplomacy mechanisms, using Uzbekistan as a case study of emerging tourism markets. Although digital content creators are increasingly recognised as shaping tourism flows, a systematic understanding of the multimodal semiotic mechanisms through which food travel vlogs construct destination meanings remains limited. Using multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines six YouTube food travel videos on Uzbekistan (over 28 million combined views) from two prominent creators. The analysis integrates Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar, Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, van Leeuwen’s sound semiotics, and Norris’s multimodal interaction analysis to code a 60-segment corpus. Comparative analysis reveals 25 notable differences in semiotic features between the two creators, identifying two distinct semiotic profiles. Vlogger 1 primarily follows a parasocial intimacy model marked by direct gaze (89.2%), frequent second-person address (78.4%), and comparatively minimal editing. In contrast, Vlogger 2 adopts a cinematic documentary model characterised by first-person narration (56.5%), constructed visuals (60.9%), and gastronomic heritage narratives (34.8%). Despite these divergences, shared conventions centred on food composition, upbeat music, positive evaluation, and sharing gestures indicate a stable semiotic grammar of food travel vlogging. Analysis further reveals that orientalist dynamics and resistance to orientalism coexist within the same representational practice phenomenon termed ‘layered orientalism’, with distinct implications for how emerging destinations are mediated to international audiences. These findings suggest that digital content creators may employ distinct semiotic strategies that could function as informal culinary ambassadors through gastrodiplomacy mechanisms, potentially constructing destination awareness and cultural meaning for international audiences. This study contributes to theory on multimodal destination image construction and offers implications for how emerging tourism destinations might leverage multi-creator strategies to build culturally grounded destination brands.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050128

Authors: Yeşim Helhel

This study examines the nonlinear, threshold-dependent relationship between financial leverage and firm performance in publicly traded tourism firms in Turkey, and investigates how this relationship has evolved under post-COVID-19 multi-shock conditions. The main aim of the research is to identify the thresholds at which borrowing becomes a source of financial vulnerability and to analyse how this process deepens under macroeconomic shocks. For this purpose, quarterly panel data covering the period from Q1 2012 to Q1 2025 for 22 tourism firms listed on Borsa Istanbul were used. Firm performance was measured through accounting-based indicators Return on Asset(ROA) and Return on Equity(ROE), and a market-based indicator (stock returns). In the empirical analysis, both the random-effects panel regression model and the endogenous-threshold panel regression methods were applied. The findings indicate that the relationship between financial leverage and performance is nonlinear, and a significant regime change occurs when the leverage ratio exceeds approximately 60–70%. In the post-COVID-19 period, both accounting-based and market-based performance indicators under high-leverage regimes became more sensitive to financial vulnerability. Additionally, the effects of the real effective exchange rate and the service sector price index on firm performance have strengthened in the post-crisis period. The study reveals that financial fragility in the tourism sector is a structural feature sensitive to thresholds and crisis regimes rather than temporary shocks. In this regard, the research highlights the limits of debt-based growth strategies and contributes to early warning mechanisms for policymakers, investors, and firm managers.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050127

Authors: María del Carmen Avendaño-Rito Sandra Nelly Leyva-Hernández Paola Miriam Arango-Ramírez Eduardo Cruz-Cruz Adrián Martínez-Vargas

Sustainable Community-Based Tourism (SCBT) has been predominantly assessed from residents’ perspectives, leaving unexplored how tourists perceive and validate community sustainability. This study analyzes the influence of three SCBT dimensions, authenticity and community empowerment, integral sustainability, and ethical co-design, on tourist experience. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), we analyzed 341 responses from Mexican tourists with experience in indigenous community destinations in Oaxaca. Results show that integral sustainability is the strongest predictor of tourist experience, followed by ethical co-design. Notably, authenticity and community empowerment exhibit a significant inverse relationship, suggesting tensions between genuine local governance and visitor expectations. These findings position tourists as external validators of SCBT and challenge the linear authenticity–experience relationship assumed in classic literature, highlighting the need for heritage interpretation strategies that mediate this interaction. The study provides evidence from underrepresented Latin American indigenous contexts, addressing theoretical and geographical gaps in sustainable tourism research.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050126

Authors: Carmen R. Santos Sofía Blanco-Moreno Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin Nuran Bayram-Arlı

The purpose of this study is to develop and propose a holistic, stage-based conceptual framework for Customer Journey Management, addressing a critical gap in the literature that lacks a diagnostic and strategic tool to analyze the full journey across all phases, particularly within the tourism sector. Using a conceptual modeling approach grounded in a systematic literature review, the study synthesizes existing theories, Service-Dominant Logic and Customer Experience Theory, to propose a new theoretical-practical model (The Pyramid Model) and a measurement tool (Questionnaire/Grid). The framework integrates cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions across the pre-, during-, and post-consumption stages. A comprehensive Questionnaire/Grid systematically maps and measures the impact of critical touchpoints on customer outcomes such as satisfaction and consumer delight. The model pioneers a quantifiable diagnostic tool that translates theory into managerial action, offering service managers a clear methodology to audit journeys, allocate resources, and drive customer delight and sustainable competitive advantage.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050125

Authors: Verena Karlsdóttir

Tourism and hospitality organisations in remote, highly seasonal Arctic and sub-Arctic destinations face persistent workforce instability, multicultural team dynamics, and well-being risks that threaten service reliability and organisational continuity. Previous research has focused mainly on destination- and community-level resilience, while giving less attention to how resilience is built within tourism organisations through everyday workforce-related practices. This study examines people-centred organisational resilience through a qualitative comparative design in two northern contexts: Iceland and Finnish Lapland. The empirical material comprised semi-structured interviews in Iceland and interviews, organisational documents, and field observations in Finnish Lapland, collected in autumn 2025. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings identify four recurring resilience mechanisms: leadership under seasonal and environmental pressure; employee experience across employment phases; living conditions and belonging; and ethical governance. Here, “mechanisms” refers not simply to broad topics but to organisational processes through which recurring practices support resilience in remote, highly seasonal tourism settings. Together, these mechanisms show that resilience in remote tourism is built not only through operational flexibility or crisis response, but through people-centred organisational practices that support continuity, coordination, safety, and trust across seasons. The study contributes a workforce-centred extension of resilience theory in tourism and offers a comparative account of how these mechanisms operate across two northern tourism settings.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050124

Authors: Md Rokibul Hasan Bristy Akter Valentierrano Rezka Rizaldin Narariya Dita Handani Rianmahardhika Sahid Budiharseno

Glamping tourism has expanded rapidly as travelers increasingly seek nature-based experiences combined with comfort and privacy, particularly in the post-COVID-19 period. Online reviews provide a valuable source of insight into how guests perceive such experiential accommodation, yet large-scale, data-driven analyses of glamping sentiment remain limited. This study applies machine-learning techniques to classify customer sentiment expressed in online reviews of glamping sites in South Korea. A total of 3233 reviews were collected from ten leading glamping locations on Naver Map, cleaned, and translated from Korean to English. Sentiment labels (negative, neutral, and positive) were generated using VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner), a lexicon-based sentiment scoring tool validated for short informal texts and the labeled corpus was subsequently used to train and evaluate six supervised classifiers. Six supervised classifiers—Naïve Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbors, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, Gradient Boosting, and Support Vector Machine (SVM)—were trained and evaluated through stratified ten-fold cross-validation using accuracy, AUC, F1-score, and Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC). Results indicate that SVM achieved the strongest overall discriminatory performance, particularly in identifying minority sentiment classes under substantial class imbalance. These findings suggest that automated sentiment classification holds practical potential for supporting evidence-based service monitoring and reputation management in glamping tourism, although further validation in operational settings is needed before deployment can be recommended.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050123

Authors: Eddy-Antonio Castillo-Montesdeoca Giovanni Herrera-Enríquez Danny Zambrano-Vera Diego Sande-Veiga

This study advances a configurational perspective on domestic tourism in protected areas by introducing the Applied Cultural Proximity Model (ACPM). While dominant tourism frameworks rely on causal relationships grounded in cultural distance, novelty, and outcome-based evaluation, domestic tourism remains theoretically underdeveloped despite being embedded in shared symbolic systems and cultural familiarity. To address this gap, the study conceptualizes tourism experience as a multidimensional configuration of interrelated dimensions, emphasizing patterns of covariance rather than causal relationships. The ACPM specifies six experiential domains—natural, cultural, administrative, accessibility, complementary, and communication—modeled as a system of covarying latent constructs within culturally proximate contexts. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods design was employed. The qualitative phase supported construct specification, and the quantitative phase analyzed data from 1113 domestic tourists visiting Cotopaxi National Park using Confirmatory Factor Analysis and covariance-based Structural Equation Modeling. Results support a six-dimensional measurement model with satisfactory reliability and validity (CFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.064). Significant positive associations among all dimensions indicate a coherent covariance structure. Natural attributes exhibit higher perceptual salience within the covariance structure, while cultural and communication dimensions occupy a central position within the experiential configuration. The study contributes by modeling tourism experience as a relational system and positioning cultural proximity as an interpretive condition, providing a non-causal framework for understanding experiential organization in domestic tourism.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050122

Authors: Dóra Gábriel Bálint Koós

This study examines the transformation of the Balaton region in Hungary from a traditional tourist destination into an international retirement migration destination for older adults from Western Europe. Migration theories and models are applied to illustrate the relationships between migration and development and to explore how tourism, lifestyle aspirations, and socio-economic factors influence the settlement decisions of older migrants. Empirical findings suggest that prior tourism experience can mitigate the uncertainty associated with migration and foster belonging. However, many retirees move to Hungary with limited knowledge of the country, relying on social networks and real estate agents for information. These retired migrants also utilize local services and infrastructure, including healthcare and community spaces, which shape their daily lives and help them integrate into the community. The migration of older adults stimulates the development of peripheral rural areas through real estate purchases, renovations, and small-scale entrepreneurial activities, particularly in the accommodation sector. This challenges the traditional perception of older-age migrants as inactive.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050121

Authors: Andromaxi Papadam Gaby Gavriilidis Theodore Metaxas

This study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality sector in Greece during the COVID-19 period. To this end, questionnaires were distributed in 320 enterprises operating throughout Greece exclusively in the hospitality industry. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed for analyzing data. The results reveal a structured transmission pathway: Business Survival Anxiety and Psychological Distress intensify Financial Strain; financial pressure constrains Strategic Capability; and diminished strategic flexibility shapes firms’ evaluation of the crisis’s overall impact. Financial Strain emerges as the central mediating mechanism, bridging managerial perceptions and organisational outcomes. These findings confirm that crisis impact is embedded in firm-level dynamics, where psychological pressures, resource constraints, and strategic contraction interact systematically. Ultimately, the study shows that the severity of the pandemic was not assessed solely in terms of immediate revenue loss, but in relation to the erosion of strategic capacity—innovation, investment potential, and long-term competitiveness. Resilience in tourism therefore depends on the alignment between psychological stability, financial robustness, and strategic adaptability.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050120

Authors: Angeliki N. Menegaki

Urban tourism is frequently promoted as a driver of regeneration, competitiveness, and local economic growth. However, its expansion increasingly generates overtourism, environmental degradation, social inequality, gentrification pressures, and cultural commodification in densely populated cities. Although existing tourism research has examined these challenges from managerial, planning, and sustainability perspectives, less attention has been paid to their ethical foundations. This conceptual paper addresses that gap by developing an integrated ethical framework for sustainable urban tourism through a structured, theory-driven synthesis of literature in environmental ethics, social justice theory, virtue ethics, and urban tourism studies. The paper makes three main contributions: it reframes urban tourism growth as a moral and normative issue rather than merely an economic one; it organizes the key ethical dilemmas of urban tourism as interconnected outcomes of growth-oriented development; and it links ethical principles to stakeholder responsibilities and desired governance outcomes. The proposed framework positions tourists, businesses, and policymakers as moral agents and identifies ecological integrity, social equity, and cultural protection as core criteria for evaluating tourism development. As a conceptual study, however, the framework remains theoretical and requires future empirical application and testing across different urban contexts.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050119

Authors: Sivesan Sivanandamoorthy

The tourism industry is a wide and holistic industry, the value of which cannot be overestimated: it plays a key role in promoting inter-cultural understanding and socio-cultural development. Sri Lanka is a renowned tourism destination that offers many diverse tourism products. However, the tourism industry has been continuously and severely disturbed by prolonged civil war. After the war, tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka, particularly to war zones and war memorial sites, rapidly grew. The main objective of this study is to explore dark tourism development in the Northern Province (NP), Sri Lanka. Employing a qualitative methodological approach, this study is underpinned by an interpretive research philosophy. Research data were collected through field-based interviews. For in-depth interviews, sixteen interviewees from different stakeholder groups were selected, using a purposive sampling technique. The research results reveal that twenty-seven dark tourism destinations in the northern territory face various challenges in being developed as sustainable dark tourism destinations. Furthermore, this study indicates that the Sri Lankan Army was aggressively involved in the revitalization of the tourism industry in the northern territory. This research recommends the following moves intended to promote dark tourism development in the NP. First and foremost, when developing dark tourism in the NP, the active participation of locals should be accommodated. Second, rituals must be taken into account as a key mechanism for impressing upon tourists the richness and historical value of dark sites. When developing dark tourism packages, death-related rituals ought to be considered. If so, travelers can experience amazing intangible heritage associated with death.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050118

Authors: Ioannis Valachis Sofoklis Skoultsos

Despite growing attention to social sustainability in tourism, employment relations remain predominantly studied at the firm level, overlooking the broader systemic contexts that shape how workforces function. This paper argues that Sustainable Human Resource Management (SHRM) in tourism cannot be fully understood without examining what workers expect from employment before they enter it, and how those expectations are formed. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and revisiting the longstanding vocational–liberal debate in hospitality and tourism education, the paper reframes education as a formative mechanism shaping social exchange expectations prior to labour market entry. An integrative framework is developed, bringing together four literature streams—tourism labour markets and employment precarity, hospitality and tourism education, SET, and destination governance—to connect educational orientations, SHRM practices, and destination-level governance structures. Education conditions how workers read and respond to HR practices, while governance arrangements determine whether the relational foundations of employment are sustained or eroded across destination labour markets. Workforce sustainability thus emerges from coordinated social exchange relations embedded across tourism destination systems rather than from isolated HR initiatives. The framework’s main contribution lies in repositioning education as a relational mechanism central to SHRM theory, framing workforce sustainability as a system-level outcome, and offering practical directions for destination governance bodies, policymakers, and curriculum designers seeking to strengthen the institutional foundations of sustainable tourism employment.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7050117

Authors: Jiajun Chen Lin Zhu Chuleerat Kongruang

High-speed railway services represent complex service environments in which customers evaluate both functional performance and lived experience. Thus, this study investigates how high-speed railway service quality influences customer satisfaction, and further examines whether consumer emotions affect the relationship between them. Data were collected via an online survey of 558 customers with recent travel experience at major high-speed railway stations in Guangzhou. Service quality was captured via reliability, responsiveness, empathy, tangibility, and compensation; emotions were measured as positive and negative affects. Main and interaction effects were estimated using hierarchical regression. Findings suggest a strong positive link between overall service quality and satisfaction. Four of the five dimensions have significant positive effects, whereas compensation is not significant. In addition, positive emotions amplify the effects of all five service quality dimensions on satisfaction, while negative emotions reduce the effects of empathy, tangibility, and compensation on satisfaction but do not significantly affect the effects of reliability or responsiveness. Overall, satisfaction in a high-demand hub depends on dependable operations, timely support, considerate encounters, and well-maintained facilities, alongside emotional experience management to improve service management across the overall journey.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7040116

Authors: Elisa Zentveld

This editorial article introduces the six articles in this Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travel Special Issue. A call for submissions was undertaken in late 2021 to invite articles for consideration for a Special Issue dedicated to VFR travel. Despite the size of VFR travel and its relevance to countries around the world, research interest has not been as high as would normally be expected for such a substantial form of visitor movement. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a juncture for VFR travel. On one hand, VFR was the ‘biggest loser’ during COVID-19 as people most missed contact with friends and family. However, it may be the ‘biggest winner’ in a post-COVID world, as people were harshly reminded of how vital social connections are. The six featured articles in this volume bring together a broad range of perspectives on how COVID-19 impacted aspects of VFR travel. This editorial piece summarises those articles and outlines future directions and conclusions.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7040115

Authors: Warach Madhyamapurush

Since sustainable tourism gains relevance in tourist destinations like Thailand, the fact that some satisfied customers fail to become avid promoters is a research dilemma. In this paper, the researcher explored the behavioural intentions of low-carbon tourists in Thailand by looking at the contributions of constraints and sustainability communication, satisfaction, and advocacy in an integrated framework. The study aimed to explain the gap between satisfaction and advocacy, and to determine the key determinants of revisit and recommendation intentions. The methodology used was a mixed-methods approach of combining the survey data of 452 valid respondents who were questioned in major destinations such as Chiang Mai, Phuket, Krabi, and Bangkok, with 32 semi-structured interviews. Structural equation modelling found that sustainability communication has a positive impact on satisfaction, and structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal constraints have a detrimental influence on such. Advocacy was highly predicted by satisfaction, and it mediated its influence on behavioural intentions partially. Passive satisfaction, doubt towards green claims, social identity, and advocacy fatigue were recognized as qualitative findings to explain the gap found. The research finds that plausible communication and identity-based interaction are critical to make contented tourists loyal low-carbon campaigners.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7040114

Authors: Marco Agustín Arbulú Ballesteros Marilú Trinidad Flores Lezama Luis Edgardo Cruz Salinas Ana Elizabeth Paredes Morales Cristina Fuentes Mejía

Customer loyalty is a critical asset for the restaurant industry, yet the mechanisms linking the physical environment, price perception, and satisfaction remain underexplored in emerging Latin American gastronomy markets. This study examines the relationships among three servicescape dimensions—décor and artifacts, spatial layout, and ambient conditions—price perception, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in full-service restaurants in northern Peru (Chiclayo, Trujillo, and Piura). A cross-sectional survey was administered to 310 diners, and the proposed model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 10,000 bootstrap resamples. Results supported seven of nine direct hypotheses and three of four mediation hypotheses. Décor and artifacts and ambient conditions significantly predicted both price perception and satisfaction, while spatial layout showed no significant effect on any path. Price perception partially mediated the effect of décor and ambient conditions on satisfaction, and satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between price perception and loyalty. The satisfaction–loyalty path yielded the largest effect size (β = 0.708, f2 = 0.798). Serial chain analyses revealed that the physical environment shapes diner loyalty through sequential cognitive and evaluative mechanisms. These findings offer actionable insights for hospitality managers seeking to enhance gastronomy destination competitiveness through strategic servicescape investment.

Tourism and Hospitality doi: 10.3390/tourhosp7040113

Authors: Julio Guerra Sheyla Fernández Danny Benavides Víctor Caranquí Mónica Meneses

Timely monitoring of tourism demand is essential for destination management, yet official monthly arrival statistics are often released with delays and can be difficult to use for near-real-time decision-making, particularly under structural shocks such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study develops a fully reproducible, open-data nowcasting pipeline for Ecuador’s international tourist arrivals using a Python workflow. The framework integrates (i) the official monthly arrivals series published by Ecuador’s Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR), (ii) open online attention proxies from Wikipedia pageviews retrieved via the Wikimedia REST application programming interface (API), and (iii) open climate covariates derived from the ERA5-Land land reanalysis. Multiple forecasting models are evaluated under a rolling-origin, one-step-ahead backtest, with a mandatory seasonal naïve benchmark and a regime-aware assessment that separates a stress-test window (2019–2021) from an operational post-COVID window (2022–2025). Forecast accuracy is summarized using root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and symmetric mean absolute percentage error (sMAPE), and statistical significance of performance differences is assessed using the Diebold–Mariano (DM) test. Results show that a ridge-regularized autoregressive model (ridge_ar) achieves the best overall accuracy, reducing RMSE by approximately 79% relative to the seasonal naïve baseline over the full evaluation window. Windowed results confirm robust performance during the shock period and sustained improvements in the post-2022 operational regime, while the incremental benefit of broader exogenous signals is heterogeneous across windows, underscoring the importance of regularization and regime-aware reporting. The proposed approach provides a transparent, low-cost blueprint for reproducible tourism monitoring that is transferable to other destinations using open data and standard computational tools.