Éva Happ (p)

Spyros Niavis

Since the emergence of the concept of sustainability in tourism, the phenomenon has been encountered in a wide variety of ways in literature and practice. The aim of this paper is to examine whether sustainability in tourism is seen as an approach, as the development and application of environmentally conscious behaviour, which is communicated to tourism stakeholders and sought to be achieved through education. In examining sustainable tourism as a form of tourism, the aim is to establish whether the term is a possible example of a tourism package offer operating with specific requirements and conditions. The research is conducted using qualitative research methods. On the one hand, the literature was reviewed and published papers were summarised, focusing on the frequency of occurrence and definition of the two terms. On the other hand, the research was also complemented by a content analysis of websites, which investigates the use of the terms in practice by service providers. The data collected was used to answer the research question: to what extent can sustainability be considered an approach and/or a form of tourism, and is it necessary to distinguish and define it? The research shows that instead of using the term sustainable tourism as a form of tourism, it is better to use more specific, more definable forms of tourism. Based on the motivations for tourism, the use of a variety of well-defined terms is recommended for effective communication. The terms soft, slow, eco, responsible, nature-friendly, and alternative tourism have been introduced and linked to sustainability.

Giulia Contu (p), Marco Ortu, Gian Paolo Zammarchi, Andrea Carta

Éva Happ

Studying the movement of tourists inside a destination can be useful to comprehend the spatial-temporal behavior of tourists, and to investigate the existence of specific paths followed by the tourists. Moreover, comprehending which elements can impact on the movement can support the government to identify the existence of a specific target and, consequently, create adequate services to support the tourist during the time spend in a destination.
This paper aims to investigate the movement of tourists inside Sardinian Island using the data of tourist information points. The Sardinian tourism office managed by the regional government has introduced a new system to record information related to the tourists that visit the tourist information points.
The recorded information allows knowing destination visited before to come in Tourist information point and the next destination.
We use this information to identify firstly the main paths chosen by the tourists in Sardinia, secondly to estimate the probability that a tourist chooses a specific tourist destination given he/she has been to another destination before; thirdly to comprehend which elements can impact on the choice of the next destination.
Two different methodologies have been used. The first is the complex network approach useful to investigate the path between the destinations and to identify the cities most visited inside the Island. The second is the Markov chain approach to investigate the probability that a tourist chooses a specific destination after he/she has been at another destination.

Joana Costa (p), Zélia Breda

Giulia Contu

The tourism sector is kernel of the global economy, notwithstanding, its ecosystem also intersects high polluting sectors, such as transportation, energy, electricity, water, and waste management. It is among the world’s largest industries, growing faster than most economic sectors. It serves as major source of income for many countries, and it is considered as a determinant instrument for regional development, multiplying its positive effect in income generation. On the positive side, tourism contributes to economic growth by improving the balance of payments, creating job vacancies, and increasing gross income and production. On the other side, it also poses significant challenges, particularly concerning environmental and community impacts. It can lead to environmental degradation, through pollution and resource depletion, and it can disrupt local communities through cultural commodification and gentrification.
Tourism firms have special production conditions, given that they deal, simultaneously, with private and public goods, imbedding in their production function common resources. The supply combines internal and external factors, based on the ability to produce goods and services that meet the interests of the domestic and the foreign markets, generating high levels of income, job opportunities while preserving common resources and respecting the welfare of local communities. These firms live in interdependence with the local ecosystem, as the product they supply also relies on the environment and the locals. Additionally, the sector is permeable to multiple external factors such as economic volatility, oil shocks, political instability, social conflicts and natural constraints such as seasonality, resource maintenance, weather conditions and government regulations.
Despite its undoubted ability to create income, job opportunities, prosperity and multiplier effects, due to the reliance on common resources, tourism can also cause share of problems, such as overcrowding, congestion, overpressure on public facilities, housing problems, economic dependence and ecological degradation. Notwithstanding, these impacts can be managed, controlled, contained and regulated. Indeed, tourism policy and management will determine the extent of sustainability of the industry.
Given the reliance on public goods, the market forces seem to be insufficient to produce the a socially desirable outcome of the industry, as expansions towards short-term private-driven objectives, may lead to the destruction of the integrity of the resources upon which tourism is built. Nevertheless, its positive impact normally outweighs the negative, still free market actions may lead to unintended consequences jeopardizing both the community, the common resources, and in the long run even the private sector.
Additionally, the sector is highly fragmented and heterogeneous, covering a wide range of industries with very broad managerial strategies, dimensions, human capital intensity, ecological and environmental attitudes, and competitiveness. While their geographical distribution is constrained to the attractiveness, quality and accessibility of destinations.
The evaluation of the regional economic impacts of tourism grasps great interest among academics and policy-makers, and several paths may be adopted. The first branch or research focuses on the direct effect of the tourism value chain while the second relies upon the derived effects of the tourism activity. Here, we approached the first, focusing on firm level effects and addressing the impact those players have on the geography they are placed in, to better understand their role in the ecosystem. Then, we include some policy measures to better picture the effect of governmental actions in income generation.
The study relies on quantitative approach based on multi-regression analysis. We combine firm level economic information collected from SABI with municipality information collected from INE and Tourism of Portugal. Our unit of analysis is the Portuguese municipalities. Several policy instruments were collected such as tourist tax, fiscal benefits, regional incentives to investment. The impact of the activity of these firms was measured on the Gross Value added and multiple dimensions of sustainability. Also, an extensive statistical analysis was performed to fully picture the placement of the tourism supply in the territory, as well as its structural characteristics to fully understanding the impacts in the community, in dimensions such as the job market, space use, proximity to public facilities, cultural amenities and ecological resources. The database covers all the Portuguese municipalities (308, mainland and islands).
Despite the robustness of the sample in statistical terms, as we cover the entire territory and all the registered firms, the analysis of sectional data may bring doubts about the inexistence of a long-time frame to address causality. However, the implementation of robustness checks undermining model structure and parameters support the validity of the results. Despite using secondary data, we always relied upon official institutions therefore, the metadata follows their procedures; in regards to the firm sample, we used 5-digit SIC codes and we have opted to include only those codes entirely devoted to the sector, leaving us with a narrow sense of the sector which is not the same methodology than the satellite account.


The present study provides empirical evidence of the regional impact of tourism firms, in both the economic, the social and the environmental domains. At first, it becomes evident that these activities contribute to the local income generation, they generate job opportunities and they raise economic vitality of the region. It also seems that there is a positive impact of those sectors in the availability of cultural amenities, which generate spillovers to the entire community. Perhaps some transport facilities, some public services, among others were also enhanced due to the presence of these firms. Albeit the positive effects mentioned, the presence of private activities relying upon collective resources also brings some negative effects mainly noticed in natural resource use and conservation, availability and management of space, mobility, waste management, and crowding.
Also, the empirical results highlight the importance of the policy actions to leverage the effect of these firms in their regions, proposing a toolbox to address the most effective policy mix to magnify the positive effects of these firms in the territory, while mitigating some negative externalities through regulations or controls. The instruments were split into two vectors: enhancers and hinderers to shed light on the most effective government intervention in such a complex sector.
At present communities are gaining awareness of the sacrifices they are forced to make because of tourism, questioning the use of their collective resources, their social construction and space by foreigners to the benefit of private agents. It is more than ever required understanding the impacts of these private players in their territories to balance the positive impacts with the negative spillovers and balance community welfare.
As resources are becoming scarcer and the fight for space part of the daily lives of the average citizen, putting the tourism policy and tourism management in the center of the policy agenda is mandatory if we want to recover social peace, involving the entire community in the decision-making process about how and who will access resource endowment and its precise effect. It seems evident that this policy needs to take a place-based approach as regions are multifaceted and the exploitation of resources as well as the economic impacts of the sector is very diverse.

Pia Piroschka Otte (p), Gestur Hovgaard

Joana Costa

The Arctic Region is a popular place for tourism. Arctic tourism is increasing and a driver for development of these regions. However, at the same time many of these regions are severely influenced by climate and environmental change.
Greenland - one of the countries in the Arctic Region - has been a global symbol of climate change and is at the same time a popular place for adventure tourism. It is a paradox that Arctic tourism often involves the release of substantial Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions threatening the natural resources, tourists are coming for.
Greenland has shown continuous growth in tourists over the last 30 years. The Greenlandic government follows an ambitious strategy to increase tourism further and has implemented several measures to foster growth in tourism. Visit Greenland, a key entity for tourism owned by the government, follows an ambitious marketing structure. They are planning to transform Greenland to an attractive meetings, incentives, convention, and exhibition (MICE) -destination. This will open up for a new market segment of tourism. MICE related tourism is considered to be one of the most unsustainable tourism practices. Furthermore, previous research has shown that the sustainability potential of tourism in Greenland has not been properly addressed and contextualized.
This paper is part of a research project that explores the possibility of a local sustainable tourism fund for Greenland applied by the MICE industry. This type of fund could enable participants of international events to contribute to local sustainable development in Greenland and in this way compensate for some of their negative impacts.
The paper is based on semi-structured interviews with Greenlandic tourism stakeholders to investigate the potential and design of such a fund. In addition, based on a set of criteria, we identified three case studies addressing social and environmental sustainability in Southern Greenland that could be financed by the MICE industry. We carried out semi-structured interviews with these three projects to identify their willingness and potential to take part in a local sustainable tourism fund for the MICE industry.

Pelagia moloni, Spyros Niavis (p), Theodora Papatheochari, Antonia Koutsopoulou

Pia Piroschka Otte

One notable aspect of tourism is its unequal spatial and temporal distribution leading thus, the hospitality and tourism industry to being susceptible to seasonal variations in tourist flows. Determining causes and effects is a challenging aspect of the analysis of seasonality in the tourism industry. Key contributing factors relate to climate and weather, social customs and holidays, and special events (conferences, sport events). Despite the fact that ‘seasonality is not necessarily bad for everyone’, many authors support that it has a number of detrimental effects on society, environment, employment and the economy. Tourism destinations can face resource depletion and overcrowding during the peak season, while, on the other hand, lower demand during off season might result in underutilized resources and unstable employment. Understanding the causes and impacts of seasonality in tourism destinations is crucial for developing innovative strategies and policies to address this phenomenon. Existing measures include the diversification of tourist products, infrastructure improvements, destination promotion strategies and pricing policies, with the aim to mitigate the effects of seasonality in tourism.
The Mediterranean region is faced with constantly increasing levels of seasonality, while the pattern of sun, sea and sand is adopted by the Mediterranean tourism destinations with tourism activity mainly taking place during the summer season. Reducing tourism seasonality in the Mediterranean is, therefore, an important challenge in order to ensure the sustainability of the sector and avoid over-tourism. This paper focuses on the identification and evaluation of measures put in place in Mediterranean destinations with the aim to mitigate seasonal variations in tourism. The research builds upon a literature review on policy documents and insights provided by a Community of projects dealing with sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean region. The paper results include the analysis and evaluation of measures and the identification of a typology of measures based on specific criteria. The identification of the policy mix adopted by each destination is a first step to a systematic evaluation of which kind of policies have the best results in confronting seasonality.