Tourism has become one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the world economy. Increasingly, research on tourism destinations has been at the centre of debates concerning destination competitiveness, governance, policies and destination management and marketing. This book investigates tourist destinations from two different perspectives. First, it approaches destinations using the concept of tourist clusters and investigates their role in competitiveness and firm performances. The second perspective studies the development of models of competitiveness and governance. It also develops an international benchmarking system of 15-EU countries, with an additional focus on Italy, UK and United States. The book will appeal to academics, scholars and practitioners in tourism studies, management, urban and regional studies and economic geography, etc.

Creative Tourism and Sustainable Territories: Insights from Southern Europe examines the growth and development of this emerging and fast developing area of tourism practice, while assessing it’s impacts on sustainability and regional development.

This Special Issue addresses relations between tourism activities, smart specialization strategies, and sustainable development at different territorial levels, including the local, regional, national, and international. Framed by appropriate conceptual frameworks to define the contemporary dynamics of innovation in tourism, case studies supported by advanced quantitative methods and developed in rural and urban areas of Asia, Europe, and Africa are presented and discussed. The concept of smart specialization inspires the formulation of regional innovation policies and strategies, emphasizing the importance of endogenous resources and existing territorial capabilities. By exploring the diversity and variety of each economy to develop inter-sectoral relations, this approach aims at promoting the creation of spillover effects of innovation processes supported by adequate key enabling technologies, potentially leading to the sustainable development of places, regions, and countries. As an activity that mobilizes contributions from different economic sectors, tourism may play a central role in such strategies. As described and discussed in this Special Issue, aspects related to the creative sectors of economies, information and communication technologies, traditional products and lifestyles, food production, or diverse cultural values can be mobilized to generate innovative and sustainable solutions for tourism development.

The aim of this book are two-fold: (1) to evaluate the current progress of theoretical approaches to tourism marketing and (2) to show the ways to further develop the concept of tourism marketing for application within tourist destinations and individual businesses and evaluate its potential impact on performance improvement. The structure is based upon the inclusion of an introduction and four main parts, namely IT marketing, destination competitiveness, image measurement, and consumer behaviour. There is a brief introduction for each part prior to the discussion of specific chapters just to make the readers familiar with their content. The editors believe that there is a need for information on how to better apply both traditional and contemporary marketing tools in order to be more competitive within the international arena. Metin Kozak serves as an Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Mugla University, Turkey. Also, he is a visiting fellow in the Department of Marketing, University of Namur, Belgium. Following a successful career within the last five years (since the approval of PhD degree in 2000), Metin has received two awards to mark his achievements. In 2001, his PhD dissertation on benchmarking was nominated, by the EFQM- EU, among the best three PhD studies on TQM. In 2004, by a committee of the Turkish Tourism Investors’ Association, he was awarded the grand prize of the tourism researcher of the year 2003 in Turkey. He has published mainly in tourism journals and authored a book on Destination Benchmarking. His main research interests focus on consumer behavior, benchmarking, competitiveness, cross-cultural research, destination management and marketing, and European tourist markets. Luisa Andreu is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing, University of Valencia, Spain. She obtained her Master's degree in Tourism from the International Centre for Tourism, Bournemouth University, UK, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Valencia, Spain. She is a member of the Spanish Association of Scientifics in Tourism. She has published various articles in Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, among others. She has presented papers at several conferences organized by the European Marketing Academy, Academy of Marketing Science, CPTHL, and State of the Art: Tourism. She has also involved in numerous academic and industrial projects. Her research interests include consumer behavior and cross-cultural issues in service marketing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of the modern world, and its impact is felt by all. The pandemic particularly has had a large impact on businesses as they were forced to close, supply chains were disrupted, and new health and safety precautions were adopted. As such, many businesses, especially small businesses, were faced with losses they could not afford. Governments and stakeholders across the world have thus needed to formulate various strategies and interventions to mitigate the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as they relate to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Handbook of Research on Strategies and Interventions to Mitigate COVID-19 Impact on SMEs is a comprehensive reference source that encapsulates the overall effect of COVID-19 on SMEs and a variety of strategies to overcome the negative effects and create more sustainable policies and organizations moving forward. The book offers a thorough overview of interventions and tactics to help organizations, entrepreneurs, and institutions of higher learning overcome the negative impact of COVID-19 while preparing policies for a more effective post-pandemic world. Covering topics that include sustainable practices for development, interventions to lessen the impact of COVID-19, and psychological resilience for SME employees, this book is Ideal for entrepreneurs, managers, executives, small businesses, family firms, academicians, scholar-practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and students.

Analyses of contemporary tourism planning and policymaking practice at local to global scales is lacking and there is an urgent need for research that informs theory and practice. Illustrated with a set of cohesive, theoretically-informed, international case studies constructed through storytelling, this volume expands readers' knowledge about how tourism planning and policymaking takes place. Challenging traditional notions of tourism planning and policy processes, this book also provides critical insights into how theoretical concepts and frameworks are applied in tourism planning and policy making practice at different spatial scales. The book engages readers in the intellectual, political, moral and ethical issues that often surround tourism policymaking and planning, highlighting the great value of reflective learning grounded in the social sciences and revealing the complexity of tourism planning and policy.

Industry clusters promote innovation in the Arab World, through collaboration among businesses, research institutions, and governments. Benefits include the creation and sharing of knowledge, professional networking, access to spill-over knowledge, and specialized talent pools.

Revised and updated, the fourth edition of The Economics of Tourism Destinations provides a guide to the economic aspects of tourism for students and practitioners to decipher the methods of measurement of supply, demand, trends and impacts as well as the role of tourism in development strategy for destinations and regional development. Each chapter combines theory and practice, and international case studies are provided. New to this edition: Three brand new chapters on overtourism, terrorism and pandemics, and sustainable development, covering the importance of risk management and sustainable strategy in relation to tourism management. New content on climate change, Airbnb, the impact of events and sustainable tourism development. Pedagogical features: new case studies, discussion questions and student activities to show theory in practice and encourage reflection on the content. Updated data throughout and reference to important new literature. Combining macro and micro aspects of economics to the tourism destination, this book is an invaluable resource for students studying this topic.

This book introduces a new approach to the analysis and management of growth in small tourism markets for regional and rural locations. It recognizes from the outset that the vast bulk of the tourism industry’s product is delivered by small business enterprises and that many of these are located outside of metropolitan areas. Its central premise is that a myriad of small-scale clusters can provide an effective means to establish a local competitive advantage in tourism activities based on the resources of existing communities. The book brings together contemporary views of the potential of clustering theory to promote development in micro-markets, within the paradigm of competition, to create a new framework for regional development that might serve to enhance the growth of small-scale tourism destinations. Microclusters and Networks provides a theoretical explanation of how and why micro-clusters come about, with chapters by specialist authors to illustrate examples of their practice in the real world; but it goes further to demonstrate not only why they work but also how community members interact to form successful clusters. The incorporation of networking theory provides the means to explain the role of local community interaction in delivering successful social outcomes. The analysis that is provided clearly has applications for many industries beyond the development of rural and regional tourism destinations.