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European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation
Vol. 3 No. 1 (2012)Volume 3, Issue 1 of the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation.
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European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation
Vol. 2 No. 3 (2011)Volume 2, Issue 3 of the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation .
More information, soon...
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European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation
Vol. 2 No. 2 (2011)In the inaugural issue of the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation (EJTHR), we expressed the hope that this journal will represent an adequate nutrient for a scientific germination and anchorage for many projects. Furthermore, we presented EJTHR as a partner for the international cooperation, mainly to encourage the tourism research networks. Indeed, the main goal for the creation of this scientific journal was to support the development of international partnerships in tourism research, and to highlight the most significant outputs of the international cooperation networks. A few months later, we are finding a high degree of support for this project by reputable researchers from the most prestigious universities worldwide. We are thus encouraged to continue to step in the direction we previously defined.
In the inaugural issue of the EJTHR we also noted that although the name of the journal includes the adjective “European”, its content will reflect all issues that are relevant for tourism in all over the world. As we said, the adjective “European” is related to the specific positioning intended for the EJTHR: to become a significant reference for European researchers in the tourism field.
Although tourism became a global phenomenon, European tourism is still a topical issue, because it represents a significant part of the world tourism and, from the qualitative point of view, it presents very specific aspects, which one can describe as following: The cultural diversity of the European countries. This continent is shaped by medium or small countries, and it includes so much cultural diversity, in terms of cultural heritage, languages and history.
This vast mosaic of cultures also includes a huge value as a model for civilization, as Europe has always been a reference for the whole world. One can refer, for instance, the great legacy of Greek and Roman civilizations, the Renaissance and the subsequent global dissemination of European traditions, practices and values, caused by the expansion of world trade. No wonder that cultural tourism has mainly focused on this continent. Furthermore, the European cultural heritage is spread along the other continents. For example, there are 21 sites classified as World Heritage of Portuguese Origin (UNESCO) in Africa, Asia and South America.
Since the beginning of tourism, from the XIX century to the present, the European tourist market always had an unquestioned dominance in the world. According to UNWTO (2010), Europe in 2009 accounted for 52% of international tourist arrivals and 48% of international tourism, with receipts of 296 billion Euros. In the top 10 arrivals per country, are six European countries (France, Spain, Italy, UK, Turkey and Germany). And if we consider the revenue generated by tourism, seven of the 10 most important destinations in the world are European countries, namely: Spain, France, Italy, Germany, UK, Turkey and Austria.
The richness and diversity of cultural heritage in Europe, associated with its primacy in world tourism market, are the main reasons that led editors of EJTHR to invite the scientific community from all over the world to reflect together on the specificities of European tourism. For this purpose, the EJTHR will organize every two years an international conference devoted to European tourism.
The 1st international conference of the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation EJTHR will take place in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), and will run in May 2012 under the motto “Tourism Destination Branding, Heritage and Authenticity”. The Conference will be promoted by the publisher of the journal (Polytechnic Institute of Leiria) in partnership with CETUR - Centre for Tourism Studies of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
The themes suggested for this international forum are: (a) Search for meaning and religious tourism; (b) Tourism and cultural heritage in Europe; (c) Tourism and natural heritage in Europe, (d) Brand strategies for cultural and religious tourism; (e) From the tourist imaginary to the destination branding.
The papers presented at the Conference of EJTHR will be published in a special issue. So, we invite you to join us in a vast and deep reflection concerning the tourism in Europe, because we believe that the great richness of European tourism, like the European integration process, consists in its immense diversity.
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European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2011)The first issue of the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation (EJTHR) was launched during the 4th International Tourism Congress – ITC 2010 – that took place in Peniche, in the School of Tourism and Maritime Technology (ESTM) at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (IPL).
Since 2007, ITC has gone step by step through an innovative way, sharing the new scientific knowledge amongst the academic community of tourism. Growing consistently since the first edition, this fourth edition of this congress represented a great success from the point of view of the international representativeness: the number of foreign scholars who submitted their communications to this international meeting became clearly higher than the number of national representatives. Besides this, the quality of most papers presented was a reality. As a consequence, the editor-in-chief of the EJTHR proposed to the Scientific Committee of the Congress the following challenge: to select the best 10 papers presented to the congress for publication in the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation. This challenge was accepted, and now we have the honor to present our readers some of the most interesting empirical research submitted to the congress.
Consequently, in the promotional brochure of the ITC 2010, one could read: «a special issue of the EJTHR exclusively dedicated to this congress will be published». However, some weeks after, the EJTHR’s Editorial Board took the decision to include these papers in a regular issue, avoiding this way to categorize them as “congress papers”. This decision was based on the fact that an autonomous and anonymous evaluation, made by EJTHR’s reviewers, have considered them good enough to avoid such “label”.
For the present issue we selected seven papers of the ITC 2010, including this one that was awarded with the prize of Best Paper: “The impact of secondary information sources on the formation of the tourist image. The case of rural tourism in Galicia”, submitted by María José Andrade Suárez, from the University of A Coruña, Spain.
However, the remaining six papers are also innovative and deserve the reader’s attention, namely:
“Islandness and remoteness as resources: Evidence from the tourism performance of small remote island economies”, submitted by Shamnaaz Sufrauj (University of Trento, Italy). The author’s conclusion seems to be very interesting: “tourism demand is negatively affected by being an island, a small country, or a remote country, but favoured by being a small or a remote island”.
“Effects of climate change on Romanian mountain tourism: are they positive or mostly negative?”, submitted by four members of the National Institute for Research and development in Tourism, Romania (Surugiu, Surugiu, Frent & Breda). This paper focuses on a up-to- -date problem, which must be more and more scrutinized in the future.
A group of researchers of the Azores University (Calado, Rodrigues, Silveira & dentinho) present a study entitled “Rural tourism associated with agriculture as an economic alternative for the farmers”, which shows how to use the Geographical Information Systems as a tool for private and public decision-making concerning tourism planning.
A new branch of research is the so-called film tourism, which is addressed to the feature film impacts on the tourist image and on the willingness to visit a tourist destination. A research group from the University of Vigo (Rodríguez Campo, Fraiz Brea & Muñiz), presented an empirical study about the impact of a specific film: “Tourist destination image formed by the cinema: Barcelona positioning analysis through the feature film Vicky Cristina Barcelona”.
A benchmarking study involved twelve different European countries was conducted by a research group of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (Castro, Iglesias, Piñeira & Paül). The collected information allowed authors to develop applicability models for other geographic realities, but above all, for the tourism reality of Galicia.
Finally, a researcher of the University of Aveiro (Josefina Salvado) presents a travel experience ecosystem model (TEEM), which was designed to bolster the travel agencies’ business resilience.
This issue presents also a tribute in memoriam to Rachid Amirou, an Algerian/French sociologist whose contribution to the deep understanding of tourism phenomena remains still almost unknown in the Anglo-Saxon scientific community, aside his great popularity in France. The authors of this tribute share with the readers their personal testimonies and also present a synthesis of his most relevant ideas.
So, on behalf of the EJTHR’s Editorial Board we hope that this journal issue will be useful for both the scientific community and professionals in Tourism.
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European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2010)Mankind reflects in itself the continuous ambition to improve living conditions. The creative nature of human beings has led to inventions that have progressively revolutionised the working methods and the way we occupy our leisure time, which convey more quality and satisfaction, in both cases. This path of continuous development of societies had led to the emergence of systematic practices in the search for knowledge about places, cultures and dynamics linked to territories distinct from those we deal with in our daily lives. Whether influenced by the professional needs or by the achievements in terms of spare time activities, Tourism has emerged, around the Mid-20th century, as one of the main pillars of the world’s economy in modern societies.
We can anticipate the 21st century as a fertile period in consolidating tourism practices, which will certainly be based on innovative processes that will affect the current state of knowledge about Tourism. This course of permanent change in social habits, searching for balances that promote quality of life, does not only reflect the creativity and innovation leveraged by the global business sector or by pressure from specialised civilian communities, but it is also a result from the contribution of academies, through a sustainable reflection of knowledge stimulated by scientific practice and sharing of that same knowledge.
The Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (IPL) is decidedly an organisation that intends to ensure international quality standards, in both teaching and applied research. Wide-ranging in the training programmes offered – covering a diverse range of areas, such as engineering, management, art and design, biotechnologies, social sciences, maritime technologies, tourism, hotel industry and catering, health – IPL has been awarded, due to the exceptional quality of some of its research projects, being inclusively distinguished for its ability to register patents, as corollary of the excellence of its research.
Committed to contributing to scientific diffusion in a singular way, IPL has included, in its strategic plan, the project of the scientific journal European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation (EJTHR).
The EJTHR is a scientific journal born with the assumption of significantly contributing to divulge knowledge in the field of Tourism and its multiple intervention areas. It will try to create a solid position in the international scientific community, progressively entering the ranking of scientific publications that are a reference in the fields of Tourism and Hotel Industry. This is how we want to contribute to strengthen the Tourism Sciences. To implement the assertion strategy of this project, IPL trusts the Tourism Research Department (GITUR), located in its School of Tourism and Maritime Technology, with the responsibility of editorial management of EJTHR.
I take this opportunity to invite all academic communities, spread all over the world, to participate in the EJTHR project, by submitting papers dedicated to the Tourism field. I am certain that the criteria underlying our decision, editing and publication processes will rely upon high standards of ethical and scientific demand that are naturally compulsory to any scientific publication that aims for quality, rigour, merit and international recognition.
