Coordinator: Dora Agapito

Framework: In tourism and hospitality industry, it is important to increase tourism expenditure and to attract visitors in a profitable way, but it is also necessary to complement these practices with the creation of authentic and memorable experiences, the increasing of the well-being of the residents, the promotion of social justice and gender equality and the preservation of natural and cultural assets.

The research of the competitiveness in tourism and hospitality industry needs to incorporate those challenges and also to analyse the role of innovation, the promotion of new products and experiences, the development of human resources, implementation of new marketing techniques and, at the same time, to promote socially responsible entrepreneurship and governance.

Indeed, another challenging topic of research is ’tourism destination governance’, raising questions such as: How to organize a framework of a broadly defined public administration in the destinations? What are the correlations between governance characteristics and destination effectiveness? How to strengthen governance practices, namely through stakeholder engagement, new forms of collaboration, political transparency, etc?

Focus: This research area focuses on developing creative and innovative strategies to ensure the competitiveness of destinations and tourism organisations, as well as models of governance adapted to the needs to all relevant stakeholders in the tourism activity.

Alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN for 2030: Good jobs and economic growth (goal 8); Responsive consumption and production (goal 12); Partnerships for the goals (goal 17).

Keywords: Destination Governance; Hospitality Competitiveness; Quality of Tourism Destinations; Responsible Tourism; Economic Impacts of Tourism; Networking and Collaboration in Tourism; Innovation in Tourism; eTourism; Tourism Marketing; Destination Image and Branding; Tourism Experience Design; Tourism Co-Creation; Multisensory Tourism Experiences; Cultural Tourism; Event Tourism.

Photo by Conor Rees on Unsplash