Segment-Centric Geo-Competitive Environment of a Tourism Destination (A Case of Georgia)

This work aims to introduce a conceptual approach to determining the competitive environment for a particular tourist destination by considering popular outbound destinations of its leading segments.This approach we name as a concept of a segment-centered geo-competitive environment of a tourism destination(SGE-TD).The applied methodology includes consideration of the popularity of tourist destinations for each selected segment and the indicators of leading segments of the studied destination.The practical application of the proposed concept is examined in the case of Georgia as a tourist destination by selecting its leading segments and identifying their popular travel destinations.The integrated consideration and application of the mentioned indicators define the competitive position of a destination(in this case Georgia)among the specified tourism destinations,considered as the geo-competitive environment.This research suggests an innovative version of the universal conceptual approach to identify the leading competing destinations for a specific studied one.It fills the gap in similar studies where competing destinations for the analysis are selected based on specific research objectives,missing the universal conceptual approach in this regard.

Distance decay of place attachment and perceived authenticity of mountain tourism destinations in China

Place attachment has been a research focus in the fields of park and recreation management.Place attachment plays an important role in promoting sustainable development of parks and mountain tourism destination,however,there are limited studies that identified the spatial patterns of place attachment,especially in the context of mountain tourism destinations in China.Also,the geospatial spectrum of visitors is usually broad,examining the multivariate relationships among spatial proximity,perceived authenticity,and place attachment are essential for mountain tourism destinations to promote destination image and strengthen emotional bonding with targeted visitor groups.In this study,we selected an iconic and highly visited park,Jiuzhai Valley National Park in China,as our study site and conducted an on-site visitor survey to collect 557 samples.Study uses factor analysis and the structure equation model to analyze the relationship among spatial proximity,perceived authenticity,and place attachment.Results validate the two-dimension structure of place attachment and perceived authenticity.Study findings suggest that spatial proximity has significant impacts on existential authenticity and place identity,but has no significant impacts on place dependence.Perceived authenticity has a positive impact on place attachment.Study results advance the theories of place attachment and provide effective strategies to enhance emotional attachment between visitors and mountain tourism destinations.

The Coupling of Landscape Pattern and Landscape Esthetics of Urban Traditional Cultural Tourism Destination: A Case Study of Confucius Temple-Qinhuai River Scenic Area in Nanjing City

Study on the relationship between landscape beauty and ecological beauty is an important scientifi c problem that refl ects the nature of man-land relation, and current academic researches on this topic are most based on a single perspective. Therefore, this paper took the Confucius Temple–Qinhuai River Scenic Area in Nanjing City as a typical case of urban traditional cultural tourism destination, adopted landscape pattern indexes and balanced incomplete block comparison and evaluation method as the evaluation standards of ecological beauty and landscape beauty, and analyzed the coupling characteristics and rules of landscape pattern and landscape aesthetics. The results showed that(a) The overall landscape of the study area had higher fragmentation degree, but different landscape groups were infl uenced by different human interventions, landscape patches showed moderate diversity and heterogeneity, patch area, spatial distribution and spatial aggregation degree showed structural differences.(b) The locals and visitors had aesthetic perception of the study area, but preferred the beautiful natural scenery of the Qinhuai River, as well as the historical buildings and cultural landscapes that contain rich memories of the city.(c) Landscape pattern and landscape aesthetics showed coupled complementation and harmonious coexistence. The Confucius Temple–Qinhuai River Scenic Area has profound historical and cultural background, but it has witnessed gradual loss of cultural characteristics and fast "delocalization" against the background of rapid urbanization. As an urban traditional cultural tourism destination, it carries the responsibility of protecting city memories and inheriting regional cultures.

Evaluation Model of Residents' Hospitality in Tourism Destination

The hospitality spirit of tourism destination is one of the sources of destination comparative advantage,and it is also an important factor affecting the quality of destination products.From the perspective of tourists’ perception,analytic hierarchy process is used to construct the evaluation model of residents’ hospitality in tourism destination from two aspects:the behavioral expression of individual hospitality and the atmosphere performance of social hospitality.The research could provide reference basis for managers evaluating the hospitality of residents in tourism destinations.

Social Media Impact on Tourism Destination Decision: Evidence from International Students in China

Technological advancement has led to the adoption and usage of social media among businesses including tourism sector to disseminate information and communicate with customers more effectively. Due to the limitless capabilities that social media provides, it is gradually transforming diverse business ecosystems. This study seeks to assess at the impact of social media on tourism destination decision-making from foreign students in China context. From the background of Uses and Gratification theory, a quantitative research approach was used to achieve the sole of the present study. This study used an online questionnaire tool to obtain response, validated using a Partial Least Square and Structural Equation Modeling and SPSS statistical software to analyze 271 samples of foreign students in China. The findings of the study show that behavioral intentions have a positive and significant effect on tourism destination decision-making, and social media significant direct influence on tourism destination decision making. Furthermore, tourists’ satisfaction can enhance tourism destination decisions when mediated by social media usage. The research findings would help tourism service providers to identify and select social media platforms as a marketing strategy for tourism competitiveness.

The Company Clusters Power in Tourism Destinations: The Network Configuration and the Business Organisation

Better and greater coordination and integration between companies are essential for tourist destination development processes improving competitiveness.Moreover,it is difficult to imagine that all companies can cooperate.In this way,we can imagine finding a group of companies that,for several reasons,decide to cooperate,creating some clusters as small groups.Companies with stable connections with other clusters or relevant companies could be relevant and central to Tourism Destination(TD)management.In this way,the knowledge of network articulation seems to be critical for TD management business dynamics.In most cases,the relationships are hidden and not formalised,increasing the complexity in TD analysis.The presence of clusters is possibly vitrificated using the Social Network Analysis(SNA)methodology.The present work could be framed in cooperative networks since it analyses the companies’commercial networks and clusters groups.The article focuses on how groupings of small firms can govern Tourism Destinations.This paper uses network indexes and metrics to emphasise structural features regarding the density and centrality of relationships.As the main result,in the case study analysed,there is a relational framework where three clusters of companies with a high density of exchanges emerge.These groups can influence the tourism business at the destination.

A Study on Brand Personality of Coastal Tourism Destinations:Text Mining Approach

As the core element of the brand,brand personality is closely related to the personality of tourists.Unique and distinctive brand personality has become an important means for tourism destinations to enhance their core competitiveness.Through text analysis,the content of the online review content of three coastal tourist destinations in Yalong Bay,Silver Beach,and Gulangyu Islet were analyzed.The brand personality of coastal tourist destinations was identified from the perspective of tourist perception,and the selected 3 coastal tourist destinations were identified by correspondence analysis.Comparative analysis on a case-by-case basis.The research results show that the brand personality of coastal tourism destinations perceived by tourists is mainly concentrated in the two dimensions of“elegance”and“benevolence”,but different coastal tourism destinations have their own distinct and unique brand personalities.On this basis,directional suggestions for the development of brand personality in coastal tourism destinations are given.

Importance and performance of streetscapes at a tourism destination in Indonesia:The residents’perspectives

The present study examined the importance and performance of streetscapes at a tourism destination in Makassar,Indonesia,from the residents’perspectives using the importance-performance analysis method.Thus,six attributes of the streetscapes in four segments of the old city district were identified and presented to 400 participants.The participants were then asked to rate the perception and preference of each attribute.Results of the attribute values were illustrated in a Cartesian diagram.Findings indicate notable discrepancies between the perceptions and preferences of the respondents.Thus,these attributes were inconsistent with their expectations.Moreover,the results showed that each segment should have different priorities for specific attributes to improve the performance of the streetscapes.Overall,such data can be used by stakeholders,such as tourism developers and government policymakers,to make appropriate and informed decisions that will improve the attractiveness of this tourism destination and increase the number of visitors.

Tourism Entropy as a Critical Factor for Destination Sustainability:Assessment of Carrying Capacity Through IoTs and Determination of Tourism Satisfaction

This paper introduces a novel methodology to address the issue of destination carrying capacity assessment and monitoring,while,to develop a new tool to enable effective and optimized policy making in tourism sector.Tourism fits together a chain value,where stakeholders are working as cogwheels targeting the sustainability.An inherent requirement towards the objectives of sustainability is the capacity of policy makers to sustain the available social,economic,and environmental resources.Given the facts that(i)carrying capacity is a complex,dynamic,multidimensional concept,apparently vague,as such it is quite difficult to assess and monitor and(ii)each destination has unique characteristics,varying the extent and intensity of tourism development,the research proposal refines and implements measures and establishes a state-of-the-art data collection network in order to monitor tourism development in terms of sustainability and to establish an integrated carrying capacity estimation framework.Since validity and reliability of input data is a critical issue,different kind of sensors for environmental data(IoTs)are used,as well as web mining methods and field surveys,statistical information and secondary research results.Also,specialized analysis methods are applied and integration of all sources is achieved,defining the characteristics of the tourism destination ecosystem from the perspective of entropy change,in order to provide planning,policy making,and decision support,as well as a set of intelligent tools.

A New Perspective of Rural Tourism and Leisure Agriculture Integration:An Empirical Analysis of Rural Tourism Satisfaction and Loyalty in Dalishu Village

Tourism has become the most dynamic and promising green industry in Dalishu Village.However,with the increase of the same type of tourist areas and the addition of other theme tourism destinations,the rural tourism of Dalishu Village is facing the problem of how to develop in homogenous competition and how to maintain stable development.This is also a problem that needs to be addressed seriously in the development of rural tourism.Starting from the image perception factors,this study chooses the interaction among image perception factors,satisfaction and loyalty as a perspective,in order to identify the important factors that play a key role in tourists'satisfaction and loyalty,and to provide a new driving force for the integrated development of rural tourism in Dalishu Village.

Core Competitiveness Elements of Tourism Industry in Ethnic Villages

Decisive and correlative factors of tourism industry core competitiveness in ethnic villages were analyzed, and it was proposed that location, environment, facilities and service quality laid the foundation of tourism industry core competitiveness, tourism attractions were the core, construction of tourism industry cluster was the direction, and tourism business management model was the guarantee.

MDIVis: Visual analytics of multiple destination images on tourism user generated content

Abundant tourism user-generated content(UGC)contains a wealth of cognitive and emotional in-formation,providing valuable data for building destination images that depict tourists’experiences and appraisal of the destinations during the tours.In particular,multiple destination images can assist tourism managers in exploring the commonalities and differences to investigate the elements of interest of tourists and improve the competitiveness of the destinations.However,existing methods usually focus on the image of a single destination,and they are not adequate to analyze and visualize UGC to extract valuable information and knowledge.Therefore,we discuss requirements with tourism experts and present MDIVis,a multi-level interactive visual analytics system that allows analysts to comprehend and analyze the cognitive themes and emotional experiences of multiple destination images for comparison.Specifically,we design a novel sentiment matrix view to summarize multiple destination images and improve two classic views to analyze the time-series pattern and compare the detailed information of images.Finally,we demonstrate the utility of MDIVis through three case studies with domain experts on real-world data,and the usability and effectiveness are confirmed through expert interviews.