Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics

Playing with the cultural pilgrimage to stimulate tourism: the xFORMAL project on cultural heritage and informal learning

The focus on culture as an engine of sustainable development has favoured its gradual acquisition by institutions engaged in the protection and promotion of heritage as an enabling and systemic factor capable of connecting innovation, continue education, research, and citizen engagement in a single chain. Knowledge of the landscape that combines works of nature and humankind and its bio-cultural diversity makes it possible to identify innovative informal education and new tourist itineraries where the real experience is presented as a cultural pilgrimage. The European project of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Programme RISE 'Informal and non-Formal E-Learning for Cultural Heritage - xFORMAL', currently halfway through its lifecycle, was born to create an informal way of accessing the cultural heritage of one's territory, revealing its past, history, and the civilisations that preceded us. After two years of closure due to the pandemic, this project reintroduced an authentic experience through gamification, a contact with landscapes, museums, and archaeological sites with physical, social, and cultural dimensions of their environments across space and over time. Building upon this foundation, the article delves into the intricate design and architectural principles that underpin the creation of the xFORMAL game, showcasing it as a paradigm of informal learning. This exploration includes a detailed analysis of the game's innovative design elements, educational strategies, and its role in facilitating an engaging and immersive learning experience outside traditional educational settings.

An empirical study of Thailand cities' color landscapes

Color landscapes are important parts of cultural landscapes. Cities are cradles of human spiritual and material civilizations. As a city changes, its unique cultural context also changes. One of the most significant features of a city is its color landscapes, which help to convey the culture and spirit of a city in a deeply intuitive way. The color landscapes not only shape a city image, highlights a city personality, and transmits cultural information but it is also an important aid in helping people to perceive regional cultural values and experience folk customs. With these concepts in mind, the researchers of this study have selected three typical tourist cities in Thailand as the basis for an empirical study. Three main findings are discussed: (1) Thailand's city color landscapes tend to consist of pure colors with high saturation, and colorful colors have been integrated into Thai people's daily life, which reflect Thailand's different history and culture. (2) The clearer the attributes of the color landscape, the more pertinent they are to the images of the tourist destination. (3) The geographical environment, local religious beliefs, and tourists' expectations are the main motivating factors in choosing the main colors of a city. City color landscapes have become an important part of Thailand's city tourism "industry" and would promote the development of sustainable tourism.

Parametric Definition of Slow Tourism Itineraries for Experiencing Seasonal Landscapes. Application of Sentinel-2 Imagery to the Rural Paddy-Rice Landscape in Northern Italy

Slow tourism is a growing phenomenon in Italy; it is assuming a key role in the definition of new strategies for sustainable tourism for the enhancement of landscape and cultural heritage, but also as a driver for the revitalization of marginalized and inner areas of the country. In this framework, the aesthetical phenomena related to seasonal landscape changes (e.g., autumn coloring foliage, spring blooming, controlled paddy-rice fields flooding) that occur in specific environments are emerging as new tourist destinations and are of major interest for the experiential tourism sector. This research shows a GIS-based method to draw up parametric slow tourism itineraries, which are defined according to seasonal landscape changes, by exploiting the high frequency of Sentinel-2 data acquisition. The algorithm defines parametric itineraries within the network of existing local roads by detecting the current landscape conditions through NDVI. The algorithm has been tested in the study area, within the historical agricultural landscape of paddy-rice fields in between Turin and Milan, where high scenic conditions related to the flooding occur over the spring season. This tool can support a range of end users’ decisions for the creation of a widespread tourist destination offer year-round, with the aim to promote more sustainable and balanced use of the places and reduce overpressures in the most frequented places.

Research Advances in Tourism-Landscape Interrelations: An Editorial

The significance of the landscape to a variety of experiences that are sought or unfold at a visited destination is well established and considered paramount to the study of tourism [...]

Measuring Overtourism: A Necessary Tool for Landscape Planning

The tourism debate prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was dominated by the problems inherent in overtourism, reflecting an inadequate land management. Although publications on overtourism have grown exponentially in recent years, its scientific study still has major shortcomings, particularly with regard to measurement. With the aim of overcoming this insufficiency, we have carried out a review of the literature (using the mapping review method) and, based on its conclusions, we have drawn up a proposal to systematise the measurement of overtourism by combining several tools: indicators, surveys, interviews, and other tools linked to the Internet and social networks. The results of the research make a contribution to the expansion of the literature on the topic and may have important practical implications in formulating effective land-use policies by guiding policy makers in the management of overtourism. They could be of use in both the early detection of overtourism and the design of policies that prevent and/or detect situations of risk and that correct existing problems. This is especially relevant in the current international context to implement the effective transition to a responsible tourism model post-COVID-19.

Bridging the Gap between Landscape and Management within Marinas: A Review

Marinas are known to be features related to nautical tourism. Nevertheless, the responsibility of managers does not lie solely on providing accurate services to boats, seafarers and visitors. Thus, an effective management should include other factors, because marinas are embodied in a singular space, with links to diverse nature. Landscape, known as the relationship between people and their environment, represents a set of these links. In this paper, we attempt to delve into the marina management and landscape. Firstly, a targeted exploration of the main issues related to the management of marinas was accomplished. Secondly, based on the previous items, a screening was carried out from a landscape viewpoint with the aim to stablish which elements of marina’s management are significant when tackling landscape. The results indicated that there is a concern with environmental aspects, specifically, on issues related to marine pollution and water quality. However, the determination of the main management-related issues, valued from a landscape perspective, may provide the main issues that need to be addressed in decision-making processes, incorporating the landscape dimension. Thus, we have attempted to understand and discuss how the landscape should be considered in marina management as a potential competitive advantage.

Tourism, Water Pollution, and Waterway Landscape Changes in a Traditional Village in the Huizhou Region, China

Based on archival research, non-participatory observation, and semi-structured interviews, this paper examined waterway landscape changes mainly caused by tourism development in Hongcun, a traditional village in the Huizhou region, China, and how the locals have responded to water pollution in order to achieve landscape sustainability. It is found that the physical structure of the waterways of Hongcun Village has been well preserved, but the water pollution caused by tourism, with a combination of changes of land use and demographic structure, has changed the functions and cultural meanings of waterways. Although there remains quite a daunting task towards sustainability in terms of technology, heritage protection, and desire for development, we claim the waterways environmental governance in which local governments play a crucial role in resilience strategies by controlling the sewage from homestays, restaurants, and pigment sewage from sketches. However, the ways in which landscape animates, including the daily lives, processual daily practices, and mundane activities of different social actors related to waterways, deserve further implementation to build the resilience of cultural landscape from the perspective of non-representational theory. This paper adds to a new narrative to the waterway landscape research by presenting a water utilization pattern that could profitably coexist with a specific environment in the Huizhou region in the agricultural society of ancient China and discussing how the non-representational theory contributes to analyzing and managing waterway landscapes in modern times. It also sheds light on the connection between cultural landscape and resilience.

The Tourism–Landscape Nexus: Assessment and Insights from a Bibliographic Analysis

Over the last two decades, the awareness about landscape as a common good and the definition of tourism as a relevant driver of territorial development have both increased contributions to contemporary reflections on places and mobilities. From a scientific point of view, the need for structured contributions on the “landscape–tourism” nexus has been stressed. In fact, tourism and landscape studies are fed by many disciplines, often returning sectorial articles, sometimes lacking in organicity. Considering recent literary reviews carried out through bibliometric and content analyses, the present paper intends to map different ways of defining and understanding this complex interrelation as it emerges from the main research areas. From geographical contributions to managerial perspectives addressing destination planning and development, and from sociological non-representational to actor network theories applied to tourism, among others, the nexus is faced by approaches and concepts that are both specific and recurrent. Expressions such as “tourist landscape”, “tourism landscape”, “touristscape” with their different meanings orient this literary investigation informing a tentative conceptual framework where interrelated spatial, social, and symbolic dimensions emerge with a key definitional role. The general aim was to possibly enrich the reflection on this relationship, providing new definitional contributions and conceptual frameworks able to coherently influence both theory and practice.

Landscape and Tourism: European Expert Views on an Intricate Relationship

Although the centrality of landscape to tourism is unquestionable and already a broadly established scientific area of research, much remains to be explored and understood regarding their interrelatedness. The objective of this research was to investigate, analyze and assess notions and perceptions of the reciprocal relationship between the landscape and tourism through an electronic survey among European researchers and scientists of relevant and associated academic fields. This was achieved with the aid of an interview questionnaire survey, focusing on the experts’ (a) perceptions/understandings and visions of future optimization of the reciprocal relationship tourism–landscape, (b) their conceptualizations of landscapes of tourism, and 9c) their assessments of the prospects (opportunities) and challenges (threats) coming out of the close tourism–landscape relationship, both for the tourism industry and the local societies involved. Our findings point to an emergence of a definition for “landscapes of tourism”. The experts elaborated on the high significance of the tourism–landscape relationship, through well-balanced and realistic opinions vis-à-vis the positive and negative aspects of the researched relationship but leaning towards its negative aspects. Overall, the findings reveal significant social sensitivities, environmental concerns, support for the principles of sustainability, locality, participatory governance and a call for appropriate governmental planning.

Strategies of Landscape Planning in Peri-Urban Rural Tourism: A Comparison between Two Villages in China

Landscapes have multiple functions relating to natural preservation and cultural inheritance, which are fundamental factors for tourist development. Particularly in villages, rural tourism is primarily based on the rural landscape. However, peri-urban villages face complex conflicts of urbanization and ruralism, in which landscapes are dynamic and need synergistic plans and management. Thus, this research contributes to a better understanding of comprehensive landscape planning integrating natural and cultural dimensions in peri-urban villages. Taking as a comparison studies in two peri-urban villages, Heshu village and Pu’an village in the Yangtze River Delta in China, the research mainly adopted qualitative methods of document analysis, in-depth interviews and field observation. We found that local features and interactions with nature are both stressed in the village landscape plans but with different strategies. Firstly, Heshu village’s landscape plan intends to reproduce eight scenes described in famous local poetry, while Pu’an village’s plan intends to develop local traditional customs of bulrush craft. Secondly, the detailed landscape design of green-way and blue-way systems in Heshu village is people-oriented, while landscape design in Pu’an village is experience-oriented in relation to creative tourism. Finally, it is essential to consider both the interests of local villagers and tourists in the process of identifying, preserving and enhancing the locality of rural landscapes.