Prof. Paula Remoaldo (p), Dr. Cátia Faria , Dr. Juliana Alves, Prof. Hélder Lopes

Creative Tourism emerged in the early 2000s. It is characterized by the emphasis on creativity, active participation of visitors, and interaction between local communities and visitors. The municipality of Barcelos was designated a UNESCO Creative City in 2017, in the category of Crafts and Folk Art, in recognition of the diversity of artisanal practices, among which Bordado de Crivo (Drawn Thread Embroidery), a Portuguese intangible cultural heritage, stands out alongside pottery, woodworking, ironwork, and basketry.
For more than a decade, the municipality has consistently invested in Creative Tourism as an opportunity to generate supplementary income for local artisans and to enhance the city’s cultural identity.
Our study adopted a quantitative research approach, based on 619 questionnaires applied to residents of Barcelos between August 2024 and September 2025. Data were analysed using SPSS, through descriptive statistical analysis and chi-square tests.
The sample was predominantly female (55.3%) and the most representative age group was 65 years or older (34.4%). Regarding educational attainment, 26.2% have completed secondary education. Of the total respondents, 30.7% were retired, 91.6% were native to the municipality, and most of them lived in parishes within the urban perimeter.
Regarding attraction factors, residents most frequently mentioned the Galo de Barcelos (Rooster of Barcelos) (72.4%), the weekly market (52.8%), and the Festa das Cruzes (49.9%). Creative Tourism and the UNESCO Creative City designation were less mentioned, by only 1.5% and 2.9%, respectively, reflecting the fact that residents are more familiar with and regularly engage with traditional attractions such as the Galo de Barcelos and the weekly market.
Concerning participation, 28.1% reported having taken part in creative activities, while 71.9% never participated. The most common experiences were pottery (14.7%), gastronomy-related activities (7.9%), and painting (6.9%). Despite the low participation rate, 48.8% are aware of the existence of creative activities, while 51.2% are not.
For future development, residents highlighted pottery and clay-based activities (56.2%), gastronomy (51.1%), and handicrafts in general (32.5%).
The results show a mismatch between the institutional strategy for Creative Tourism and its recognition by residents. Despite the UNESCO Creative City status, participation is low, and more than half of residents are unaware of the activities, indicating weaknesses in communication and community engagement. The appreciation of pottery, gastronomy, and handicrafts demonstrates culturally recognized resources and underlines the need to integrate residents as active agents, reinforcing sustainability, identity, and local economic potential.

Dr. Hisamitsu Saito (p), Dr. Toshiyuki Matsuura

The global expansion of international tourism demand has increasingly led to overtourism, prompting many destinations to shift their policy focus from increasing the number of inbound tourists to enhancing the quality of tourism experiences. The effectiveness of such quality-oriented strategies critically depends on the extent to which foreign tourists value the quality of tourism services. Despite its importance, however, existing studies have neither rigorously quantified tourists’ preferences for quality nor systematically examined the determinants of cross-country heterogeneity in these preferences.

Using detailed microdata from the Japanese accommodation sector, this study quantifies foreign tourists’ preferences for accommodation quality by country of origin and investigates the factors underlying cross-country differences in these preferences. We estimate a logit demand model in which the estimated residuals capture tourists’ perceived quality of individual accommodations. By dividing these residuals by the estimated price coefficient, we derive tourists’ willingness to pay (WTP) for accommodation quality. While conventional quality indicators, such as star ratings, are not consistently available across countries or regions, our approach can be applied whenever accommodation demand data are available, making it broadly applicable across diverse settings.

By examining the relationship between the constructed WTP measure and observable accommodation attributes commonly associated with quality, we show that the estimated WTP serves as a reasonable and informative measure of accommodation quality. We then compare WTP for accommodation quality between foreign and domestic tourists. The results indicate that although foreign tourists exhibit a degree of price sensitivity similar to that of domestic tourists, they place significantly greater value on accommodation quality. In other words, foreign tourists are more willing to accept higher prices in exchange for higher-quality accommodations, as the associated utility gains outweigh the additional costs. This tendency is particularly pronounced among tourists from countries with higher per capita income levels but diminishes as the geographic distance from Japan increases.

These findings suggest that a shift in tourism policy from quantity-based to quality-based strategies may be less effective for destinations that primarily attract tourists from high-income but geographically distant countries. Instead, targeting tourists from geographically closer countries, even those with relatively lower income levels, may be a more effective approach. Overall, our results provide policy-relevant insights for governments and tourism-related businesses by identifying source countries whose tourists exhibit stronger preferences for accommodation quality.

Dr. Umut Türk (p), Prof. John Östh, Professor Karima Kourtit, Prof. Peter Nijkamp

Peer-to-peer accommodation platforms have become a central component of global urban tourism. Beyond facilitating transactions between hosts and visitors, these digital platforms generate large-scale textual data that capture tourists’ place-based evaluations and experiential perceptions. This study examines how structured information derived from Airbnb review texts can be used to identify drivers of visitor satisfaction across 34 major global tourist cities.

Using a harmonized cross-city dataset combining listing characteristics (e.g., price, minimum stay requirements, review intensity, entry timing, distance to city centre) with user-generated review narratives, we transform unstructured textual content into measurable indicators through lexicon-based sentiment scoring and dictionary-based thematic extraction. Thematic frequencies capture core experiential dimensions, including safety and cleanliness, tourism appeal, transport accessibility, cost perceptions, and work-related suitability. Principal Component Analysis is applied to uncover latent perception structures, while K-means clustering identifies typologies of short-term rental environments across cities. A multilevel mixed-effects model is then estimated to explain variation in listing-level sentiment, accounting for neighbourhood and city-level contextual effects. The results show that perceived safety, cleanliness, tourism appeal, and transport accessibility are the strongest correlates of visitor satisfaction across destinations. Platform-related dynamics such as reputational accumulation and lifecycle position also significantly influence sentiment. In contrast, geographic centrality alone does not systematically determine satisfaction once experiential dimensions are controlled for. Distinct typologies of listing environments emerge across cities, indicating heterogeneous tourism configurations and varying spatial patterns of perceived attractiveness. By integrating structured text analysis with hierarchical modelling in a multi-city comparative framework, the study provides evidence on how listing-level management factors and broader urban contexts jointly shape visitor evaluations. The findings offer actionable insights for hosts, platform operators, and urban destination managers seeking to enhance tourism quality and support balanced urban tourism development across multiple spatial scales.

Prof. Veronica Leoni, Prof. David Boto-García, Prof. Roberto Patuelli (p)

This paper examines the interplay between spatial and temporal dimensions of price competition in the hotel industry, where services are non-storable and consumers must book in advance. We study how spatial price competition among hotels evolves across different booking horizons. Using a panel dataset of hotels in Venice covering daily asking prices, we estimate spatial price reaction functions for multiple booking lead times using Spatial Durbin Models. Our results provide evidence of heterogeneous spatial price mimicking across booking horizons: spatial dependence peaks at mid-range lead times. Furthermore, hotels with greater room variety are able to charge higher prices, while greater variety among nearby rivals exerts downward pressure on prices. These findings reveal that the strength of spatial competition is not constant but jointly shaped by timing of booking and seasonal demand, offering new insights into intertemporal pricing and strategic interactions in perishable service markets.

Dr. Ioannis Kaplanis, Dr. Vassilis Monastiriotis, Dr. Ioannis Radin (p)

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) programme has become one of the European Union’s flagship cultural initiatives, aiming to foster urban regeneration, economic development and social cohesion through culture-led interventions. While a growing body of literature has examined the economic effects of ECoC designation—primarily focusing on indicators such as GDP growth, employment or tourism flows—less attention has been paid to its potential long-term impact on urban spatial dynamics and local housing markets.
This paper investigates whether hosting the European Capital of Culture has measurable post-event effects on urban land and real estate prices in designated cities. Moving beyond traditional macroeconomic outcomes, we examine whether culture-led policy interventions are associated with structural transformations in urban development trajectories, as reflected in property values and tourism-related indicators in the years following the event.

Methodologically, the study employs a quasi-experimental econometric design to estimate the causal impact of ECoC designation on urban outcomes over the medium term (three to five years after the event year). Using a panel dataset of European cities covering multiple designation cycles, we compare host cities with an appropriately constructed control group of non-host urban areas with similar pre-treatment characteristics. The empirical strategy allows us to isolate the potential legacy effects of the programme from broader urban and national trends.

By incorporating real estate market indicators and tourism dynamics as outcome variables, the analysis aims to contribute to ongoing interdisciplinary debates on culture-led urban development, place-based policy interventions and the long-term socio-economic legacies of major cultural events. The findings are expected to offer insights relevant to scholars of urban studies, cultural economics and regional policy, as well as to policymakers involved in the planning and evaluation of cultural mega-events.