During the last two decades, tourism policies in Spain have had as a priority objective the diversification and differentiation of tourist destinations, together with the improvement of service and infrastructure quality levels as the best strategies to guarantee the competitiveness of tourism activity. Although Spain has managed to maintain its leadership as a sun and sand tourist destination,...

Tourism destinations have a necessity to innovate in order to remain competitive in an increasingly global environment. A pre-requisite for innovation is the understanding of how destinations source, share and use knowledge. This conceptual paper examines the nature of networks and how their analysis can shed light upon the processes of knowledge sharing in destinations as they strive to innova...

This study develops propositions for a benchmarking exercise involving SME and tourism destination brands. In order to reveal the role of SMEs at destinations and their role in the destination brand, the tourism production process is analysed. It is suggested to view destinations as virtual service firms (VSF) as this highlights the interdependencies between SMEs, but also allows the descriptio...

This paper presents a novel recommender service system that considers the image as a uniform representation for tourists’ expectations, destinations, and local tourism SMEs. Images carried by each stakeholder role is modeled and managed by several system modules, and they also evolve to reflect the real time situations of each entity. In addition, the system is dynamic in terms of its emphasis ...

Policy makers and tourism developers must understand visitors’ mobility behavior and how they consume space and tourism resources in order to set up sustainable cultural tourism destinations. With this in mind, it should also be pointed out that the mobility patterns of tourists in urban destinations are mainly located in the city center (spatial centrality), the analysis of which enables us to...

This paper proposes a preliminary model of a balanced scorecard for tourism destinations, with a specific emphasis on sustainable development. We begin with a review of the perspectives and critical performance variables for the traditional balanced scorecard. We then present empirical work based upon quantitative analysis techniques. A survey was completed by 1531 Spanish municipalities that a...

The article introduces an integrated market-segmentation and tourism yield estimation framework for inbound tourism. Conventional approaches to yield estimation based on country of origin segmentation and total expenditure comparisons do not provide sufficient detail, especially for mature destinations dominated by large single-country source markets. By employing different segmentation approac...

This paper suggests that many of the negative effects of globalization and inadequate tourism growth can be compensate by the use of intelligent ICT solutions in the development of heritage tourism. The encounter between cultural tourism and information and communication technologies represents an opportunity to preserve national culture, create partnership and enhance destinations value in inf...

Health tourism in Hungary holds major opportunities. When analysing medical and wellness accommodation data, it can be stated that the Hungarian population is keenly interested in health-related tourism services. From the aspect of further development, health tourism based on medical services can be a take-off point for Hungarian tourism. In my opinion, the next few years will be crucial for Hu...

It is often observed that tourism generates a negative impact on the environment of destination places, among which the depletion of the natural capital is the most evident. To avoid this, tourism development and management should be based on the recognition of the limits characterising a destination. The indicator of Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) can be particularly relevant to this purpose....