Culture and Sustainable Tourism: Does the Pair Pay in Medium-Sized Cities?

How does the integration of cultural and tourism industries impact the value added to tourism value chain: Evidences from Jiangsu Province of China

China has been fully implementing the policy of the cultural and tourism industrial integration since 2018. However, the value-added benefits of this policy are not prominent, and the relationship between industrial integration and the value added to the tourism value chain was seldom addressed by researchers. In the context of China's high-quality development, it is necessary to conduct the impact of the integration of cultural and tourism industries on the value added to tourism value chain. This paper proposed four theoretical hypotheses and the corresponding econometric models based on the panel data from 2013 to 2020 in China's Jiangsu Province. According to empirical results, the integration of cultural and tourism industries is spatially unbalanced, with notable imbalances between the south and the north. This paper identified a new connection between cultural and tourism integration and the tourism value chain. It is found that the integration of cultural and tourism industries can enhance the value added to tourism value chain either directly or indirectly through the information technology, with the direct effect being positively moderated by tourism agglomeration. Moreover, this paper may overturn how people generally think about the integration between cultural and tourism industries. It reveals a single-threshold effect that only when the integration of cultural and tourism industries reached a high level will it exert a positive effect. To be more specific, not all Chinese cities are suitable for implementing cultural and tourism integration, because the integration is likely to be ineffective in regions where the cultural industry is substantially less developed than the tourism industry.

Meta-Analysis of Tourism Sustainability Research: 2019–2021

Sustainability in tourism, hospitality, and leisure is a long-standing topic of growing interest. Research in the field of tourism has accelerated over the past decade. The goal of this meta-analysis is to categorize recent research in tourism sustainability to identify patterns and trends, which could help us understand where the field is currently conducting research and where more work may be needed. Over 800 relevant articles published in major tourism journals during a three-year period (2019–2021) were included in the analysis; however, despite the increase in volume of published tourism sustainability research, this quantity was less than 4% of all publications in the same journals. Four over-arching pillars of sustainability research themes emerged (social, economic, ecological, and institutional) with numerous sub-categories within each. The majority of tourism sustainability research occurred in the social and economic arenas. Much more research is needed in the other three categories. The greater part of the recent advances in tourism sustainability appears to be driven by small- and medium-sized tourism firms. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism sustainability is only beginning to be understood. Tourism business leaders have an opportunity to strengthen and integrate their use of sustainability as they work to rebuild consumer trust in travel services.

Erasmus Students’ Experiences as Cultural Visitors: Lessons in Destination Management

Destination management is an important instrument in promoting tourism as a factor of economic development. Its usefulness in planning and developing infrastructures and services especially dedicated to tourism, such as holidays, sports, or balneal resorts, is well established. In the context of increasing the mobility of people at a national and international level, the flows of visitors whose trips are related to jobs, business, studies, conferences have constantly increased, and—as a result—the importance of large cities among tourist destinations is increasing. The management of destinations must also contribute in such cases to the creation of a greater attractiveness for potential visitors, the facilitation of their activities, and the production of culturally enriched and pleasant experiences. There is still a need to better understand how big cities are perceived as a destination by visitors, especially when it comes to longer stays. As a result, this paper proposes an approach to explore the visitors’ perception of their own experiences with the destination city. The subjects of the study are Erasmus students, while the destinations considered are university cities where the mobility programs were carried out. The aim of the research carried out by the focus-group method was to identify the elements that contributed to the coagulation of the experience associated with a certain destination city, in the sense of a more favorable or less favorable image of the destination in question. The results highlight that where visitors interact for a longer period of time and at deeper levels with the host community, they share the conditions of local life. The more pleasant these conditions are for the residents, the more open and welcoming they are to foreigners, and the more appreciated one’s personal experience of that city is.

Sustainable Tourism in Cities—Nature Reserves as a ‘New’ City Space for Nature-Based Tourism

Visible trends in city tourism related to the development of sustainable tourism clearly imply an increase in the significance of green areas and the development of nature-based tourism. Natural areas in cities that ideally fit the assumptions of sustainable tourism are nature reserves—areas where protection of the valuable environment is a priority. This paper aims to highlight that nature reserves are green spots in cities that can be excellent sites for sustainable tourism. The choice of big cities was dictated by the fact that they have the highest requirement for recreational green spaces due to a high concentration of tourist traffic in historic city centres and a clearer need for sustainable forms of tourism. Sixteen nature reserves in five big Polish cities with a population of more than 100,000: Gdańsk, Łódź, Poznań, Toruń, and Warsaw were selected for the study. Field surveys were carried out in nature reserves to see whether basic tourism facilities providing information about nature, supporting education, and conservation of the natural environment existed in the publicly available areas of such reserves. The attractiveness of nature reserves to tourists and their suitability for developing sustainable tourism was evaluated through score-based valuation of the reserves. The valorisation index was used for a synthetic rating and classification of the reserves in terms of attractiveness. The results of surveys imply a possibility of using selected nature reserves in cities for developing sustainable forms of active tourism—in particular hiking and cycling, educational tourism and daily recreational activities of city residents. The sites in question can be regarded as attractive ecotourism products, and as such hold the potential to become a popular destination among tourists and eco-tourists in particular.