The Contribution of Special and Alternative Forms of Tourism to the Sustainable Development of Tourist Destinations:Case Studies

This paper aims to investigate the impact of special and alternative forms of tourism on the sustainable development of tourism destinations,revising the traditional position of tourism development and establishing sustainable development as the only solution to tourism progress of travel destinations.The study includes conceptual approaches to the term tourism,sustainable development and specific and alternative forms of tourism and delves into theoretical approaches that are the bridging of these three central research questions.This is followed by in-depth research through policy analysis of central institutions and regional development stakeholders,as well as further analysis of sustainable development through special and alternative forms of tourism.Key tourism models and theories offer a further understanding of the natural“enemies”and“allies”of sustainable development and how they contribute to its necessity or development.Through a survey and a case study of travel destinations,we conclude the need to couple the term tourism development with sustainable development which is rooted in the healthy coexistence of residents and visitors with respect to the environment,local culture and productive-controlled economic growth.

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.

Tourism Destination Eco-Security and Its Dynamic Evaluation Method

Ecological security of tourism destination is an important factor for the sustainable development of tourism industry, and many tourism destinations are threatened by various ecological problems. A complete understanding of eco-security situation is the foundation of maintaining sustainable development for tourism destinations. However, study on tourism destination eco-security has remained in the initial stage, based on domestic and international researches, the connotations and dynamic characteristics of tourism destination eco-security were discussed. Then, evaluation method of tourism destination eco-security and standard system were proposed, also dynamic evaluation method of tourism destination eco-safety based on the situation evaluation and trend was analyzed.

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.

Attractive Model and Marketing Implications of Theme Shopping Tourism Destination

This paper discusses the definition and connotation of Theme Shopping Tourism(TST) destination,and reveals the attractive distance of TST destination based on the utility function derived from the supposed demand function.An attractive model is deduced.According to this attractive model,it is can be known that the attractive distance is related to the price difference of the theme commodities between TST destination and tourist origin place,the average expenditure of transport,the demand elasticity of price,the actual price of sightseeing spot,the critical price that a tourist will afford,the number of nights that a tourist stays on the TST destination and the price level of accommodation in the TST destination.The change mechanism of attractive distance of TST destinations is revealed in this paper,and implications on TST marketing are put forward.First,theme commodities should be luxuries.Second,lower price is the primary pulling factor of theme shopping tourism.Third,the route combining with sightseeing spots is beneficial to shopping tourism.At last,TST development is one way of rejuvenating the falling destinations.

Influence of Tourists′ Environmental Tropisms on Their Attitudes to Tourism and Nature Conservation in Natural Tourist Destinations: A Case Study of Jiuzhaigou National Park in China

People′s environmental tropism has an effect on their understanding of tourism-nature relationship,and also influences their attitudes to natural resources utilization and environmental protection.Taking Jiuzhaigou National Park of China as a study case,the authors conducted some quantitative analyses with the tools of SPSS 16.0 and LISREL 8.7,to explore the influence of tourists′ environmental tropism on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation in the natural tourist destination.Three hypotheses and the theoretic model of influences of tourists′ environmental tropism on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation have been tested and accepted based on the Structural Equation Model analysis on survey data collected in Jiuzhaigou National Park of China.Some conclusions were drawn as follows: 1) tourists′ human-prioritized concept influences their cognition to tourism-nature relationship.This concept has a positive influence on their supportive attitudes to tourism,but a negative influence on their attitudes to nature conservation;2) tourists′ human-nature coordination concept has a positive influence on their supportive attitudes to both tourism and nature conservation,especially to the latter.This paper generally proves that human′s environmental tropism does have an influence on their attitudes to tourism and nature conservation in natural tourist destinations.

Factors Affecting Financial Performance of Tourism Destination Firms Listed on Stock Exchanges in China

Purpose:the aim of this research is to test the effect of financial ratio on the financial performance of tourism destination firms listed on stock exchange in China.The research selected ratios:current ratio(CR)as a dimension of liquidity,total asset turnover ratio(TATR)as a dimension of asset utilization,debt ratio(DE)as a dimension of leverage,natural logarithm of total asset(LNTA)as a dimension of firm size,GDP growth rate as a dimension of economic prosperity,and effective tax rate as a dimension of effective tax.This research will use return on asset(ROA),return on sales(ROS),return on equity(ROE)and sales growth(SG)to determine the financial performance.Since stock exchange founded in China,tourism destination firm developed very fast.However tourism destination listed firms have weakness financial performance.Design/methodology/approach:the research data collected from quarterly financial report,from 2012 Q1 to 2018 Q4.The secondary data has been analyzed by multiple regression.Finding:the result indicate that CR,TATR,GDP growth rate have positive impact on financial performance.While DE has negative impact on financial performance.And LNTA has a mix result with financial performance.Originality/value:This study led to the effect of financial ratios on tourism's financial performance since past researches with this aim were difficult to identify and certain references were not specifically linked to the topic.

Image Perception and Emotional Evaluation of Tourists for Desert Tourism Destinations in Inner Mongolia——Content Analyses Based on Network Travel Notes

Recent years have witnessed the popularity of desert tourism as a fashion tourism product in the 21^(st) century along with the increasing demand for personalized tourism for tourists. The academic community is paying growing attention to desert tourism research, but there is little research on the perception of tourists about the image of desert tourism destinations in Inner Mongolia. With Inner Mongolia as the object of the study, this paper analyzed the image perception and evaluation of tourists for Inner Mongolia desert tourism destinations from three aspects of cognitive image perception, emotional image perception, and overall image perception according to the "cognitive-emotional" model, with the help of relevant network text analysis methods, and proposed some suggestions for the future development of desert tourism destinations in Inner Mongolia from the aspects of increasing desert humanities tourism resources and product development, improving scenic spot management ability, improving tourism service quality, improving tourism infrastructure construction and strengthening environmental protection. It is hoped that this paper can provide a reference for improving the image of Inner Mongolia desert tourism destinations and improving the tourist experience.

The role of a national park in classifying mountain tourism destinations: An exploratory study of the Italian Western Alps

Together with the main aim of preserving nature,national parks are also expected to play an important role for the local communities,driving economic activities toward the lens of sustainable development.This contribution aims to present an exploratory study on the relationship between the presence of a protected mountain area,the Gran Paradiso National Park(GPNP),in the North West of the Italian Alps,and the classification of tourism destinations,according to Weaver model of destination management.Starting from the model,the authors provide a quantitative analysis using a set of variables and indicators to comprehensively assess the differing patterns assumed by the municipalities within the borders of the GPNP and those that are not.The provisional results illustrate that the municipalities within the border of a protected area are more likely to be grouped alongside the sustainable mountain destinations.Meanwhile,research outcomes confirm that a protected area does not necessarily contrast the tourism industry but instead may boost local development by driving it within the borders of the sustainable development,switching from the area’s only preservation function to a flywheel for the local communities.

Analysis on Behavior Characteristics of Tourists under Perspective of Sustainable Development of Tourism Destinations: A Case Study of Mugecuo Scenic Area in Kangding City of Sichuan Province

Tourists are the subject of tourism activity,and it is conducive to promoting sustainable development of tourism destination by studying their behavior characteristics and tourism perception.Mugecuo Scenic Area in Kangding City,Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,Sichuan Province is taken as research case,and visitors and managers in the scenic area are surveyed by using semi-structured interview method.Based on survey data,the research aims to put forward corresponding policy suggestions for sustainable development of Mugecuo Scenic Area by deeply analyzing tourists’ access to information of scenic area,tourists’ travel purpose,tourists’ satisfaction with services of scenic area and willingness to revisit.

The Spatial Structure of Rural Recreational Tourism Destinations

We select 149 rural recreational tourism destinations in Liaoning Province as the samples, and use geographical mathematical method to analyze the travel spatial structure of rural recreational tourism destinations from aggregation degree of spatial distribution, the balance of spatial distribution, spatial connection and spatial accessibility. The results show that the spatial distribution of tourism destinations shows the gathering distribution pattern, and the evenness of the distribution is very low, displaying strong neighboring positive effect; the accessibility of traffic network is high, and basically the dense tourist traffic network is formed; the nodes with the best accessibility are mainly concentrated in the city groups of central Liaoning and the southern regions of Liaoning, while the nodes with poor accessibility are mainly concentrated in the city groups of western Liaoning and the eastern regions of Liaoning.

Biosphere Reserve as a Learning Tourism Destination: Approaches from Tasik Chini

Biosphere Reserves (BR) are special areas or regions highly recognized for their conservation, logistic functions and sustainable development initiatives. However, not much work has explored into the BRs’ roles or functions as tourism learning destination, especially during the early years of their recognition as BR. This article aims to identify the mechanism utilised in the learning tourism function at Tasik Chini Biosphere Reserve since its inception in 2009 to the present year of 2013. The results reveal that learning of science and culture of the locals are the two-tier perspectives utlised in conceptualizing a tourism learning destination. Activities introduced in the specific themes of The Sustainability of Tropical Heritage fulfils the fundamental need of deep learning of scientific research and learning of the BR’s ecosystem, while the Ecosystem Health fulfils both deep and surface learning of the young visitors. The cultural knowledge of the community, on the other hand, offers a unique and authentic experience to the learners or visitors. As a learning tourism destination, the learning community, nevertheless, expects that the standard of tourism services should not be marginalised and must meet the high standard of tourism services. It is imperative that the science of Biosphere Reserve and the local culture are linked to set a holistic foundation in the creation of the learning programmes at the Tasik Chini Biosphere Reserve.

The Characteristic of Coastal Tourism Destination in Supporting the Development of Multi-Destination Concept for Coastal Tourism Area in North Kayong Regency,Kalimantan Barat Province,Indonesia

Coastal tourism is the main resources from tourism sector in North Kayong Regency.Despite the fact that its potential resource from coastal area tourism has similar attraction in order to attract the tourist more extensively,it is necessary to make an effort to tackle the stagnant market of tourism towards similar coastal tourism destinations.Therefore,it would be a good to make the destination to be more attractive by enhancing the existing tourist attractions through strengthening the destination characteristics as attractiveness that are derived from its signature.Moreover,it could diverse the destination that would impact for its benefits in terms of diversity destination.The lack of development in costal tourism destination tends not to take all part of the area for the benefit of its tourist destination development that is caused by many factors.One of many possible efforts to support the development of coastal tourism is the identification of its availability and establishment of signature tourist destination characteristics.Every tourist destination has their own difference characteristic.This is one of the reason why the development and develop of tourist destination for coastal tourism tend to be influenced by its own unique characteristics.In order to enhance the values,it is needed to put an effort to classify and look for the uniqueness,for further appreciate of uniqueness characteristic.The result of classification from this research has been determined by its own potential and characteristic for each destination.For every category derived from the variable identified from existing condition of every destination.The variables are used to determine many factors of successful development of destination,which are very dependable to the existing resources and coastal resources such as tourism infrastructure,general infrastructure and accessibility as part of the efforts of shortening the access time.The purpose of this research is to search for characteristic of coastal tourism in Remote Island and coastal area of North Kayong Regency.Secondly,it is to find the opportunity to create multi-destination concept in the pattern of tourist visits in the corridor of coastal tourism and to match the appropriateness between the tourist destination characteristic toward the opportunity to create multi-destination concept as direction for strategic development concept to enhance the value of representative destination in remote area location.This research uses descriptive qualitative method with an emphasis on deductive approach.The instruments used for analysis are questionnaire,interview,and continum scale that produce from the Likert method of satisfaction questionnaire.This research reveals that there are many strong characteristics from the uniqueness of nature,i.e.,geographic condition,and ecology which has unique landscape for its gold sand color and natural geological coastal stone distinctive for every destination and its own unique panorama.There are many opportunities to develop the potential of rich natural from coastal area,such as the potency to match up the creative economy with community based tourism.There are many factors that are very crucial to support coastal tourism as multi-destination tourist destination such as infrastructure availability.All of those things will make contribution to enhance the potential of economic growth from tourism industry especially coastal area of tourist destination.

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.

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.

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.

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.