Global Opportunities And Challenges For Rural And Mountain Tourism

Mountainous and rural areas throughout the world have continually been attributed with several hinderances including poverty, faulty governance, and susceptibility to natural disasters. However, with the recent development of tourism, these provinces have seen a strong rise in visitation. Despite this increase in economic sustainability, planners are still presented with many challenges as they try to balance developmental and ecological considerations. Global Opportunities and Challenges for Rural and Mountain Tourism provides emerging research exploring the integration of mountain tourism development and innovative practices for managing contemporary issues and challenges of tourism in these regions including socio-economic impacts, role of stakeholders, and promotional strategies for sustainable tourism development. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cultural heritage, marketing strategies, and value chain systems, this book is ideally designed for travel agents, tour directors, tour developers, hotel managers, hospitality and tourism professionals, industry practitioners, researchers, geographical scientists, planners, academicians, and students.

Rural tourism is not a new phenomenon in many parts of the world, but it has only recently received increased attention from researchers, politicians and managers as a result of new market trends, the recognition of the “rural crisis” and the urge to solve it. However, there is also evidence that rural tourism is not a miraculous antidote for this crisis, certainly not in all places and under all conditions. Despite some recent studies examining the critical factors of success for rural tourism, there is still a need for a deeper understanding of the rural tourism phenomenon, the nature of the tourism experience and how it could be optimized to the benefit of all, while making the best use of endogenous resources and competences, yielding sustainable destination development. This book contributes to the debate, focusing on the tourist experience, here conceptualized as “co-created” between hosts and guests, based on destination-specific elements of “countryside capital” and aiming at sustainability. It contains both conceptual and empirical chapters, with diverse and new perspectives, methodological approaches and cases from several countries.

This book examines rural tourism across three different contexts, acknowledging the complexity of rural places. It applies a systematic comparative framework across nine case studies from Australia, Canada and Sweden. The case studies address the uniqueness of different rural spaces, while the framework incorporates many theoretical aspects from human geography including spatial, historic, institutional, demographic, socio-economic and network perspectives. In the course of applying this comparative case study framework, the book identifies numerous implications for planning and policy in rural settings. These contributions from international, expert authors help to identify the opportunities and challenges that affect rural regions, from places at the urban fringe to exotic remote spaces and taking in the ‘boring bits in between.’ Both the analysis and the framework used will be of value to scholars and students of rurality, tourism, regional development, rural policy, geography, and destination management. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the rural context in developed countries and a robust conceptualization of rural tourism geographies.

This Handbook brings together experts from around the world to reflect critically on the relationship between tourism and rural community development. It first orients the reader in the important conceptual and epistemological foundations of the topic, before moving to consider key concepts and the most significant and salient theoretical and methodological developments in the field.

Tourism, one of the world’s leading industries, has propelled countries into recovery from economic recession. As a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, holistic, and systemic industry, tourism also uniquely placed to address the concerns of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the relationships between tourism, sustainability, and sustainable development are the subjects of deep study, the direct positive effects of tourism on SDGs remain underdiscussed. The Handbook of Research on the Role of Tourism in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals is a collection of innovative research that explores sustainable practices within the tourism industry. While highlighting a broad range of topics including economic growth, education, and production patterns, this book is ideally designed for engineers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, executives, advocates, researchers, academicians, and students.

In recent years, the increasing number of tourists traveling to specific urban and resort destinations has caused challenges for the effective management of tourism in these areas, with a resulting negative impact on towns, cities, and host communities. Such issues have included placing undue pressure on infrastructure; destruction of the physical, economic, and socio-cultural environment; and affecting the quality of residents’ daily lives by impacting their mobility and, in some cases, the price and rent of resident accommodation, goods, and services. To achieve a certain level of balance between the interests of local residents and visitors, new regulatory measures and legislation in high tourism areas must be discussed. TheHandbook of Research on the Impacts, Challenges, and Policy Responses to Overtourism is a collection of innovative research on best practices and legislation solutions for the management of tourism destinations suffering from overtourism, tourismophobia, or antitourism movement issues. While highlighting topics including overcrowding, social displacement, and tourism management, this book is ideally designed for local government officials, policymakers, lawmakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, industry professionals, travel agencies, hotels, academicians, and students seeking current innovative empirical research on destination-management practices and application techniques.

The application of theory to practice in addressing social transformation still has a lot of room for growth and improvement. This is also true of theory being informed by practice. Too often, there are gaps between what is studied in the academy and what is needed in the field. The academy develops theories in isolation from the everyday lives of people, especially in post-conflict environments. Communities seeking innovative ways to address their social needs can benefit from the learning of theories and research conducted within academia. At the same time, these methods need to be relevant to the local contexts within which they are being used. While there are certain norms of communication in the academy of how research is conducted and disseminated, there needs to be a translation into practical terms to be used in the field. Redefining Theory and Practice to Guide Social Transformation: Emerging Research and Opportunities addresses the need practitioners and social change agents have in finding processes and practices to use in the field to engage with and transform communities. This critical reference book provides an innovative fieldwork method that leads to social transformation and suggests ways to further develop the relationship between academic theories and practices around social conflicts with the existing local knowledge. The chapters include mini case studies that have been developed over the years from the authors’ work with youth and community leaders with the objective of providing a methodology that allows practitioners to approach the field by engaging with local actors in ways that are generative and trustworthy, yet rigorous. While highlighting the practices, notions, and technologies that are at work in conflict, post-conflict, or transitioning out of conflict settings by local community leaders, this book is ideally for practitioners in the field of conflict, peacebuilding, and social and conflict transformation; community leaders and social organizers; as well as practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in social transformation.

The hospitality, travel, and tourism industries play a major role in citizen wellbeing, socio-cultural integration, and the economic advancement of a nation. The industries are increasingly complex in operation, demanding excellence across a far-reaching and diverse set of capabilities and changes in management practices across the board. With growing expectations for a better service quality from the users and endless calls for value-added service, managers are under constant pressure to improve their services across all aspects while growing customer numbers to meet various stakeholder expectations. Contemporary Management Approaches to the Global Hospitality and Tourism Industry is a key reference source that provides crucial knowledge on the application of new management practices and trends in the tourism industry. While highlighting topics such as service quality, culture sensitivity, and brand marketing, this publication explores the influence of globalization and the methods of sustainable business practices. This book is ideally designed for managers, hotel directors, restaurateurs, researchers, industry professionals, professors, and students seeking cutting-edge hospitality and tourism management strategies.