Search Results (624)

As religious tourism expands across Asia, it remains unclear who benefits from its growth and who is overlooked in policy and industry accounts. Drawing on fieldwork in the temple-towns of Jejuri and Tuljapur in Maharashtra, India, this paper aims to make a timely and original contribution about the significance of informal, family-run and ritual-linked enterprises to the centre of debates on entrepreneurship and inclusive tourism development. The study combines visitor surveys, detailed enterprise mapping and entrepreneur interviews to reveal a dense but precarious local economy which is sustained by religious retail (a term articulated for sale of items related to rituals), street vending and small-scale service provision. These micro-enterprises are culturally central but economically fragile, low-margin and weakly recognised in policy. The paper argues that entrepreneurship is constrained by traditional religious authority, informality, seasonality and limited innovation capacity, while rising visitor numbers are creating opportunities in travel, accommodation and food. It shows that sustainability in temple-towns depends on livelihood durability, socio-cultural continuity, participatory governance and distributional justice. By foregrounding actors often omitted from formal economic analysis, the paper reframes religious tourism as an embedded entrepreneurial ecosystem and calls for policies that strengthen local enterprise capability, resilience and participation. Full article

Tourism generates substantial economic benefits but also increases environmental pressure through rising greenhouse gas emissions. Most previous studies have assessed tourism decarbonization using aggregate national CO₂ emissions, although this approach may obscure important differences across tourism-related sectors. This study examines whether tourism activity in Croatia has become decoupled from sector-specific CO₂ emissions and evaluates changes in the carbon intensity of tourism-related sectors using annual data for 2006–2024. The analysis is based on production-based CO₂ emissions from the accommodation and food service activities and transportation and storage sectors, applying carbon intensity analysis, the Mann–Kendall trend test, and the Tapio decoupling method. Additional analyses of land, water, and air transport were conducted to examine heterogeneity within the transport sector. Tourism growth was generally accompanied by slower growth or declining sectoral CO₂ emissions and a significant reduction in carbon intensity. Positive decoupling prevailed in both sectors. Additional analyses of land, water, and air transport showed that the less favorable decoupling pattern observed for the aggregated transportation and storage sector was not reproduced across the analyzed transport modes, highlighting the heterogeneity of the sector. This study provides the first longitudinal assessment of the decarbonization of tourism-related sectors in Croatia based on production-based sector-specific CO₂ emissions. Full article

Traditional food products are essential for gastronomic tourism, yet their integration into hospitality is limited by supply chain challenges and a significant attitude-behavior gap. This study identifies perceptual factors, operational barriers, and socio-professional predictors influencing traditional food procurement. The research was conducted on a sample of 307 hospitality managers in Vojvodina, Serbia. Data was systematically analyzed through examination of manager perceptions and procurement decisions. Results reveal that although managers highly rate sociocultural and ecological impacts, these factors were not statistically significant predictors of actual procurement in the estimated model, suggesting the presence of a perceptual–operational gap. Instead, professional characteristics drive decisions. Formal education in hospitality and tourism, combined with 6 to 10 years of professional experience, significantly increases the decision to source traditional products. Among non-procuring managers, operational barriers such as inconsistent quality and delivery issues outweigh economic factors as perceived obstacles to procurement. To address these challenges, this study conceptualizes the Perceptual–Operational Gap (POG) as a diagnostic and integrative analytical framework that receives preliminary empirical support in this study. This three-level framework maps product characteristics, managerial perceptions, and procurement outcomes. The model provides a diagnostic tool enabling practitioners to identify attitude-behavior gaps, understand operational barriers, and recognize which manager groups require targeted attention. Based on these insights, decision-makers can design targeted interventions. The POG model moves focus from cultural promotion to practical professional approaches, offering a replicable solution for integrating gastronomic heritage in destinations worldwide. Full article

For transition economies seeking economic diversification and macroeconomic stability, optimizing the allocation of tourism investments between hospitality infrastructure and cultural assets remains a critical challenge. The primary purpose of this study is to determine how these different components of capital affect the gross value added of the national tourism sector. The significance of the results was tested using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag bounds approach over the period from 2003 to 2023. An error correction specification was used to examine short-run adjustment, while FM-OLS served as a supplementary estimator of the long-run coefficients. HC3 robust standard errors were applied after heteroskedasticity was detected. The findings provide qualified evidence of a long-run level relationship. Investment in accommodation and food services has a positive and statistically significant association with tourism gross value added. Investment in arts, entertainment, and recreation does not exhibit a statistically significant direct association in the final specifications. This result does not imply that cultural and recreational assets lack tourism value, as their contribution may operate through destination attractiveness, authenticity, visitor experience, and other indirect channels. The results emphasize the importance of coordinated tourism planning and stakeholder partnerships across the hospitality and cultural sectors. Given the limited sample size, these findings and their policy implications should be interpreted with caution. Full article

Gastronomy is a factor in destination competitiveness; however, studies addressing the integrated role of gastronomic identity and perceived authenticity as determinants of tourist satisfaction remain insufficiently explored. This systematic review examines how both constructs jointly shape satisfaction in gastronomic tourism destinations. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a systematic literature search was conducted in Scopus and Web of Science using a Boolean search strategy based on four conceptual blocks. After applying eligibility criteria and assessing methodological quality using JBI protocols, 12 empirical articles published between 2017 and 2026 were selected. This relatively small corpus reflects the concept-driven focus of the review, which required the simultaneous presence of terms related to gastronomic identity, perceived authenticity, and experience satisfaction, thereby increasing the specificity of the search and reducing its sensitivity. It should therefore not be interpreted as an exhaustive representation of all research on gastronomic tourism. Findings reveal that gastronomic identity operates as a multidimensional cultural stimulus, while perceived authenticity (objective, constructive, and existential) plays a mediating or interpretive role in the relationship between culinary stimuli and satisfaction. Together, these constructs enhance tourist satisfaction and strengthen destination loyalty. Key gaps were identified, including geographic concentration in Europe and Asia, sampling biases, and the absence of hospitality as a moderating variable. The reviewed evidence suggests that both constructs function as interrelated determinants within the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, highlighting the need for destination managers to articulate local culinary heritage to maximize tourism competitiveness coherently. Full article

Curdlan is an industrially important β-1,3-glucan with applications in the food, pharmaceutical, and biomaterial industries. However, the identification of high-yielding curdlan-producing strains is hindered by the absence of rapid and efficient screening methods. To address this limitation, we developed a systematically optimized integrated microscale workflow combining 48-well plate fermentation with a quantitative aniline blue-based colorimetric assay in 96-well plates for high-throughput screening of curdlan-producing strains. Fermentation was miniaturized using 48-well plates, while curdlan quantification was performed in 96-well plates through formation of a curdlan–aniline blue complex. Key parameters were systematically optimized. Under optimal conditions, curdlan dissolved in 1.0 mol/L NaOH was reacted with 2.0 mg/mL aniline blue in 0.5 mol/L phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) for 90 min, and absorbance was measured at 550 nm. The assay demonstrated excellent linearity between curdlan concentration and absorbance (y = 1.0008x + 0.1536, R² = 0.9957, p < 0.001). To validate the method, curdlan yields from nine mutants derived from ATCC31749 were determined using both gravimetric and colorimetric approaches, revealing a strong correlation (R² = 0.8683, p < 0.001), that confirmed the assay’s reliability for rapid screening. Application of this platform to 132 UV-mutagenized strains identified nine mutants with enhanced curdlan production. The best-performing strain, UV150824-02, produced 46.8 ± 0.08 g/L curdlan, an 11.4% increase over the wild-type strain ATCC31749 (41.6 ± 1.54 g/L), and maintained stable curdlan production over nine laboratory passages (coefficient of variation = 2.72%). This method significantly improves the efficiency of mutagenesis-based strain screening and provides a practical and efficient tool for accelerating strain improvement in industrial polysaccharide fermentation. Full article

This study analyzes how the integration of native maize cultivation, cultural identity, and technological innovation can promote sustainable and experiential tourism in rural Mexico. The research was conducted in the community of Llano de Guadalupe, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. The participatory Action Research process progressed through institutional coordination, participatory diagnosis, biofertilization training, monitoring activities, and community dissemination phases conducted between 3 March 2025 to 25 May 2026. The methodological process included institutional coordination, participatory diagnosis, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, field observations, and the implementation of agroecological practices based on biofertilization. An AI-assisted illustrated field notebook was co-designed to support intercultural education, knowledge exchange, and community participation. The study also incorporated collaborative storytelling, seed preservation practices, and the co-design of sustainable tourism routes grounded in local gastronomy, biodiversity, and agricultural traditions. Preliminary impact indicators showed the expansion of participation from two pilot producers to 54 local producers after community dissemination activities. Findings indicate that the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can strengthen community empowerment, intergenerational learning, and sustainable livelihoods while preserving biocultural heritage. The proposed circular framework connects ecological, social, cultural, and economic subsystems by transforming agroecological practices into educational and tourism assets. The results suggest that Indigenous and rural communities can lead sustainable destination development when supported through participatory governance, inclusive education, and context-sensitive technological innovation. The Tlaxiaco case offers a transferable framework for sustainable rural development that contributes to food sovereignty, biodiversity conservation, environmental stewardship, and local economic resilience. Full article

Urban marketplaces are increasingly recognised in European policy debates as multifunctional public spaces that extend beyond their traditional economic role. Across the European Union, emerging trends point to a shift towards market models that integrate social interaction, cultural activities, tourism, sustainable food production and place-based urban development, thereby contributing to more inclusive and liveable cities. However, the extent to which such transformations align with local actors’ perspectives and existing governance arrangements remains underexplored, particularly in Central European contexts. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of urban marketplaces as multifunctional public spaces from the perspective of key stakeholders in the City of Zagreb. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining a desk analysis of European policy and practice trends with empirical research conducted at the local level. Data were collected through surveys of marketplace users (citizens) and vendors (tenants), complemented by focus groups with other relevant local actors. This approach provides insights into everyday practices, perceived barriers, governance challenges, and future expectations related to marketplace development. The findings reveal a strong alignment between stakeholder perspectives and European policy trends promoting people-centred and multifunctional marketplaces, while also identifying tensions with existing management and governance frameworks. Citizens emphasise the cultural, social, and tourism value of marketplace interactions, whereas vendors and governance actors highlight infrastructure needs and the importance of more participatory governance arrangements. The paper argues that stakeholder-based evaluation of transformative potential is essential for advancing inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban regeneration through urban marketplaces. Full article

Although the Mediterranean diet (MD) is widely recognized as a healthy dietary pattern, its potential role as a framework for sustainable urban gastronomy has received limited attention. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from nutrition, environmental studies, gastronomy, tourism, and urban food systems. The review explores MD’s sustainability dimensions, food waste and urban food systems, cultural heritage, and trends in urban gastronomy. The findings suggest that the MD is a strong model for sustainable urban food futures, combining nutritional adequacy, relatively low environmental impact, and socio-cultural legitimacy. Evidence indicates that Mediterranean-style dietary patterns are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use, energy use, and water consumption than Western diets, while also remaining comparatively affordable when based on staple plant foods. However, important challenges remain, including affordability, especially across vulnerable social groups; dependence on local supply systems; authenticity under tourism pressure; and the need for effective governance. Overall, the evidence suggests that the MD provides a useful framework for integrating health, sustainability, and cultural heritage objectives within urban food systems. Future research should focus on city-level implementation strategies, food service and restaurant sector practices, and hotel meal planning within urban MD frameworks. Full article

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. Full article

Sustainable agricultural development in natural heritage sites poses a challenge, requiring food security without compromising the conservation of ecosystems and their outstanding universal values (OUV). The Galapagos Islands, recognized as a Natural World Heritage, have problems of scarce water and arable land, compounded by anthropogenic pressures such as high population and tourism growth and dependence on food imports. The objective of this research is to evaluate the environmental impacts of implementing agricultural greenhouses in the Galapagos by applying a traditional environmental matrix alongside a UNESCO World Heritage approach, integrated with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, to formulate strategies for strengthening local agriculture without compromising ecosystems. This study employed a semi-quantitative methodological approach, integrating three key aspects: (i) a baseline of agricultural information and water availability on the islands; (ii) an integrated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) approach to greenhouse implementation; and (iii) sustainable agricultural development and environmental impact mitigation strategies. The results of the traditional EIA and the UNESCO approach through the OUV showed negative impacts classified as insignificant to moderately significant. For the evaluated design, these impacts can be managed through the active participation of academia, the community, and government entities. However, their scalability depends on a more in-depth analysis of the potential long-term risks associated with the availability of natural resources, microplastic pollution, and the use of agrochemicals. Among the proposed strategies, the importance of monitoring water and soil quality and of agricultural and environmental education campaigns in the community was highlighted. This study presents agricultural greenhouses as well-known alternatives for food self-sufficiency, adapted to the realities of the island territory and the objectives of ecosystem conservation. The proposed methodological approach can be applied in protected areas to promote conservation and sustainable agricultural production. Full article

Agritourism farm-stay guesthouses represent a burgeoning sector of rural tourism, wherein locally produced food serves as the primary experiential attraction. This study examines tourist perceptions regarding food quality, sensory characteristics, sustainability awareness, loyalty indicators, and comparative evaluations at three farm-stay guesthouses in Caraș-Severin County, Romania, located at distinct altitudes: lowland (Sacu, 154 m a.s.l.), hill (Văliug, 550 m a.s.l.), and mountain (Cozia, 1130 m a.s.l.). Altitude in this study marks three distinct settings—lowland, hill, mountain—rather than functioning as a tested independent variable. The results show that tourists evaluated all three guesthouses similarly, with no statistically significant differences across zones. The comparative design was a way of asking whether own-farm food quality perceptions hold across different agritourism contexts, not a test of what altitude does to those perceptions. A structured questionnaire (n = 650) was distributed to guests following an informed consent protocol. Four latent constructs were operationalised: food quality (FQ; Cronbach’s α = 0.593), sensory characteristics (SCs; α = 0.596), sustainability perception (SP; α = 0.393), and comparison with non-farm establishments (CF; α = 0.621). Overall gastronomic satisfaction was particularly high (mean = 4.71 ± 0.62 on a 1–5 Likert scale), and the average overall score was 9.44 ± 1.01 out of 10. Multiple regression accounted for 7.5% of the satisfaction variance (R² = 0.075; F(4,643) = 13.09, p < 0.001), with sensory characteristics (β = 0.232, p < 0.001) and sustainability perception (β = 0.088, p = 0.020) serving as significant predictors. Food origin transparency substantially impacted satisfaction (ANOVA: F(3,646) = 4.964, p = 0.002): visitors who received thorough provenance explanations were more satisfied (mean = 4.77) than those who received no information (mean = 4.57). Among the 569 respondents with prior non-farm experience, 85.2% rated farm-stay cuisine as superior to non-farm alternatives overall. Food quality perceptions in these three Caraș-Severin guesthouses are uniformly high regardless of altitude. What separates more satisfied guests from less satisfied ones is not the measurable quality of the product but whether the host explained where it came from. Full article

Celery (Apium graveolens), rosehip (Rosa canina), and blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum) powders (1–3%, w/w) were evaluated in sous-vide pheasant meat prepared with or without 1.8% NaCl and stored for 28 days at 4 °C. Measurements included proximate composition, pH and titratable acidity, instrumental texture and color, FRAP, ABTS, Folin–Ciocâlteu-reactive compounds, TBARS, nitrate/nitrite, chemical-spoilage screening, and microbial counts; sensory quality was assessed descriptively by a laboratory panel on day 28. Mean cooking loss was 22.11% in salted and 24.10% in unsalted samples. At day 28, 3% rosehip and blackcurrant formulations had total viable counts of 3.80–4.16 log₁₀ CFU/g, compared with 5.78–6.28 log₁₀ CFU/g in controls. Their FRAP values were 2.83–3.23 µmol TE/g dry matter and TBARS values were 0.43–0.57 mg MDA/kg, compared with 1.00–1.05 µmol TE/g dry matter and 1.45–1.53 mg MDA/kg in controls. Celery at 3% retained approximately 170 mg/kg nitrate and 13.3–13.4 mg/kg nitrite. Rosehip and blackcurrant, particularly at 3%, provided the most favorable combination of measured quality attributes under the tested conditions. These findings demonstrate ingredient-specific effects but do not validate pathogen control, commercial shelf life, or population-level consumer preference. Full article

Mediterranean islands face increasing climate risks from rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, extreme precipitation, and sea-level rise, while seasonal tourism intensifies water and energy demand during the most vulnerable periods of the year. This study examines whether incorporating tourism as an intrinsic component of the Water–Energy–Food nexus changes the assessment of climate risks in desalination-dependent island water systems. To address this question, the Water–Energy–Food (WEF) nexus is extended to Water–Energy–Food–Tourism (WEFT) and integrated into an EU-aligned Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment framework. The approach is applied to the Hermoupolis Water Supply System on Syros Island, Greece, where potable water supply depends largely on energy-intensive desalination. A technically bounded climate risk assessment is compared with a WEFT-adjusted assessment that accounts for tourism-driven demand amplification and water–energy interdependencies while keeping hazard exposure and likelihood climate-driven. The results show that heatwaves constitute the dominant near-term risk because they coincide with peak water demand and high electricity requirements for desalination. When tourism amplification is included, drought-related risks shift from medium to high already in the near future for key production and pumping components, indicating earlier emergence of critical risk conditions without changes in hazard probability. Coastal risks become more important toward the end of the century, especially under high-emission scenarios. The main contribution of the study is to show that tourism-driven amplification can be operationally incorporated into sensitivity and impact assessment while preserving comparability with a conventional CRVA. The proposed WEFT–KTM framework provides a transferable basis for assessing and prioritizing adaptation in desalination-dependent, tourism-driven Mediterranean island systems. Full article