Sabine Gebert Persson, Marina Toger (p), John Östh

Darius Liutikas

Developing participatory engagement in a rural destination
A challenge in developing a place into a sustainable destination lies in the balance of developing an attractive place for inhabitants, tourists and companies while preventing the potential negative aspects related to pollution or socially negative impacts on inhabitants (Milano, Novelli, and Cheer, 2019). This presentation is based on findings from a project which aims to show how digitalization can promote the visitor's and the destination's role in the realization of a sustainable visit in a rural/peri-urban proximity. A sustainable visit means that the visiting activities should generate positive and minimize negative effects for the environment and society that visits may otherwise entail. The contribution is to enable a destination's planning and implementation of the visitor's stay and thereby facilitating a more even distribution of visitors in a region. However, this cannot be done as a top-down project, as research shows the importance of developing participatory models (see e.g., Wang, Fesenmaier, 2007). To reach a co-creation of value through stakeholder participation, a model was developed and designed within the Horizon2020 project, INCULTUM. In this paper, a methodology for collection of data was developed, including surveys, GPS-loggers, like-buttons, and post-visit matching of data to phone mobility and GIS- amenity distribution maps. As a result, we present the methodology that entails passive, active, and participatory collection of data. Through the different levels of stakeholder engagement, a methodology of knowledge co-creation related to policy and strategy formulation is developed.

Tiina Rinne (p), Henrikki Tenkanen

Marina Toger

Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism are increasingly important activities worldwide and the discussions about the role of everyday outdoor recreation for the wellbeing of urban dwellers has substantially increased after the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The changing demands and trends for outdoor recreation poses multiple challenges for planners and managers of recreational areas. These authorities require methods that can provide useful information for decision support including information about the number of visitors and their experience. To support planning and management, it is important to understand when and where people recreate, what do they do there, and who are using outdoor spaces for recreation, and why?

The past few decades have been described by the ubiquity, volume, and speedy development of geospatial big data, such as mobile phone data, social media data, sensors, and environmental imagery. These passive sensing systems have shown to provide multiple opportunities for monitoring and management of visitors in recreational and protected areas, for studying human-nature interactions and the spatio-temporal aspects of people’s recreational activities.

Yet, geospatial big data, tells only a part of the story behind outdoor recreation. Passively sensed data remains limited in providing insights into outdoor recreation regarding who recreates and why and what do they do in certain locations. Planning and management require methods and data that provide useful information for decision support including information about urban dwellers personal characteristics and their motivations for outdoor recreation. For this, multiple studies have utilized active sensing methods, such as digital participatory mapping, to understand location-specific human values, perceptions, behavior, and preferences related to use of outdoor environments. These methods have also been applied in planning and management practices, but thus far mainly for citizen engagement for participatory planning purposes.

While active sensing methods complement passive sensing methods, there exists very few examples coupling the approaches. We review the literature on outdoor recreation and present an overview of the current use of passive and active sensing approaches. We focus especially on social media and mobile phone data as the examples of passive sensing approaches and digital participatory mapping (PPGIS, PGIS) as examples of active sensing approaches. We also discuss the pros and cons of using passive and active sensing data for planning and managing of outdoor recreation. Finally, we bring about the blind spots of current outdoor recreation research utilizing passive and active sensing approaches and suggest selected future research and practice directions.

Caudan Paul (p)

Tiina Rinne

In order to experiment with visitor flow management techniques, managers need to have objective, quantified data that is updated throughout the year, and framed on a half-day basis. In view of the lack of this type of measure, particularly in small island territories, it is necessary to consider the potential of the involvement of the inhabitants and residents of these territories. Based on the case of French islands, we describe the bases of a project design allowing to obtain data on tourism, and more specifically on visitor counts, based on the principles of participatory sciences.

Kamila Borsekova (p), Darina Rojikova, Hans Westlund

Caudan Paul

Tourism is a multifaceted industry with a complicated relationship to sustainability. Understanding the link between the tourism experience and spatiotemporal behavior is key to tourism sustainability as conscious communities of tourists can become ‘change agents’ for sustainability transitions. The motivation for this paper is to search for an answer to the question of how to connect sustainable tourism and tourism sustainability through the search for new and inspiring approaches to specific types of tourism, such as hiking. Our paper aims to analyse how participation and building a hiking community shape spatiotemporal behaviour and possibly contribute to sustainable tourism and tourism sustainability at the same time. For this purpose, we provide an exploratory study of the hikemates organisation and its activities.
Based on primary and secondary data and social media analytics, the paper examines the core activities of hikemates, analyses participatory approaches such as community building, social capital building, crowdfunding, and volunteering, and assesses their possible impact on sustainable tourism and tourism sustainability.
The paper presents new empirically grounded research and outlines possible methodological innovations to understand the role of participation and communities in shaping the future of the tourism industry. Hikemates as a community of conscious tourists can serve as an inspiring example for other tourism industries and contribute to the sustainability and resilience of tourism.

Viktor Smith (p), Maximilian Block

Kamila Borsekova

Taking the coastal plain of Campina de Faro by the Algarve coast as a case in point (cf. Batista, ERSA2023) this paper reports selected results of an investigation carried out by researchers of Copenhagen Business School in collaboration with the Portuguese Pilot under the H2020 project INCULTUM – Visiting the Margins. The point of departure is a special focus taken on Danish visitors to Algarve and their image (or lack of such) of Campina de Faro. More than 100.000 Danish tourists visit the Algarve coast per year, yielding it the third-largest destination in Portugal after Madeira and Lisbon. However, an exploratory survey among 117 recent Danish visitors to Portugal (among which 34% had visited Algarve) showed that only 5 persons (4%) had ever heard the name ‘Campina de Faro’ and only 3 had actually been there. Moreover, when the respondents at large were asked what they would imagine ‘Campina de Faro’ to be, 59% said they had had no idea at all while the rest expected it to be some facility or place in or near Faro – predominantly a camping site (17 respondents) or, alternatively, a lighthouse, an airport, etc.

On this background, continued research addresses the pivotal role of the name of a location (as illustrated by Campina de Faro) in crystallizing a salient and adequate place-brand image among key target audiences while also aligning it with the brand identity desired by local communities. In the case of Campina de Faro, a bottom-up participatory approach is for many reasons preferable to larger-scale marketing campaigns. This calls for a so-called low-budget route of brand development which presupposes a subtle interplay between the inherent properties of the name itself (the Joyce Principle) and cues immediately extractable from being physically (or virtually) preset at the location and/or in its immediate surroundings (the Juliet Principle). This renders it crucial what people actually see and do when exposed to the location and/or its name, and how the local inhabitants contribute to the brand-building process in word and deed. The latter aspect may include also, for instance, testimonies by older residents passing over knowledge and experience to younger generations, and to tourists.

The end goal is to set up operational guidelines to support organic naming and framing processes facilitating efficient place-brand building under the special conditions just outlined. For this, we rely, inter alia, on the results of ongoing follow-up investigations conducted on site.

Darius Liutikas (p), Edis Kriaučiūnas, Viktorija Baranauskienė, Gintarė Pociūtė-Sereikienė, Donatas Burneika

Viktor Smith

The COVID-19 pandemic had an irreversible impact on the tourism sector. The pandemic was a period of transformations for all tourism sector, including tourism business enterprises, state tourism institutions and tourists themselves. In this presentation the attention is paid to the changes of tourism behaviour and new possibilities of responsible tourism. The goal of this presentation is to reveal the new patterns of the tourist behaviour. Are the changes in tourism related to a new reality, a return to normal or return to the past? Has the pandemic accelerated the uptake of responsible tourism? Had the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the adaptation of new tourist behavioural models? The presentation is based on the assessment of primary research data that was collected during the in-depth questionaries (quantitative method) and the focus group discussion (qualitative) of tourism experts in Lithuania. The tourism sector introduced new technological and non-technological innovations during the pandemic. In a changing social environment, tourists had to adapt to the new social and economic realities. Post-COVID-19 tourism is analysed using social, environmental, and technological factors (Liutikas, 2023). The re-evaluation of tourism resources in the context of climate change is related to a new opportunities for responsible tourism, including such elements as sustainable business development, adaptation of environmentally friendly innovations, and digitalization. Sustainable tourism is related to re-shaping our mindset and preferences. The authors provide examples of how future trends of tourism related to the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the insights that can ensure a rapid response to unforeseen events in the future, is sustainable, technologically advanced, and community-based tourism development.
Various new challenges may threaten the social, economic, or environmental sustainability of tourism businesses, as well as challenge the health or security of the different world regions or the entire world. The main question is what kind of new tourism models can ensure a rapid response to unforeseen events in future. The research findings indicates that tourists were inclined to use new tourism services and products during the pandemic. The new products and services were essential for the tourism and leisure sector to survive, and the majority of them are continued to be used in the post-COVID reality and provides opportunities to be more resilient and less dependent on unexpected circumstances in the future. Tourists were more engaged in the local destinations and new local tourism products.