Despite the growth of the vulnerable tourist segment, limited research has investigated how destinations can enhance their competitiveness while accommodating tourists. This study employs qualitative interviews with 20 respondents across macro, meso, and micro levels to examine the facilitators of and barriers to developing vulnerability-friendly tourism destinations (VFTD) and proposes a multilevel framework for VFTD development in Macau. The framework reveals that institutional enablers and inertia at the macro level, organizational capabilities and service gaps at the meso level, and psychosocial resources and experiential deficits at the micro level collectively shape VFTD development. A VFTD matrix identifies systemic, resource, and logistical barriers as urgent intervention priorities. The findings provide theoretical and practical insights for VFTD development, positioning vulnerability-friendliness as a strategic driver of destination competitiveness.
Growing attention to patient-centered care and transformations in health management systems, accelerated by the pandemic and global aging trends, are driving the development of big health tourism. However, a systematic understanding of its determinants remains underdeveloped. This study employs a multi-perspective Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the determinants of big health tourism destination development. Through 50 interviews with tourism, health, and government stakeholders and guided by the PESTLE framework, this study identifies five key dimensions: sociological, technological, economic, environmental, and political-legal. Unlike traditional medical tourism focused on treatment, big health tourism encompasses integrated, lifelong wellness ecosystems spanning prevention, treatment, and lifestyle management. The findings further show how accessible, affordable, and coordinated destination services can jointly address barriers faced by vulnerable groups at the destination level. Theoretically, it contributes a multidimensional analytical framework that integrates PESTLE dimensions with multi-stakeholder perspectives for vulnerability-friendly big health tourism destination development. Practically, it provides guidance for healthcare, tourism, and government stakeholders.
Research on tourism recommendation algorithms typically assumes a monotonic distance-decay relationship between physical distance and destination preference. However, in the context of tourism, destination preferences are more closely linked to subjective distance than to physical distance. To address this limitation, this study proposes an enhanced recommendation algorithm that incorporates tourist movement sequences, subjective distance preferences based on travel context, and place similarity within tourist movement data. Specifically, the proposed method integrates tourists' travel purposes, current activities, and distance preferences associated with different travel contexts. This is achieved by combining destination category probabilities predicted by a gated recurrent unit (GRU) model, user preferences derived from latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, and subjective distance weights. Experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement in recommendation accuracy compared to baseline algorithms that do not account for distance or rely on monotonic distance decay functions. Ultimately, this approach overcomes the limitations of traditional models by offering sophisticated, context-aware recommendations, thereby providing valuable data-driven insights to enhance the tourism experience and improve destination planning and management.
Air transport is the most carbon-intensive component of the tourism bundle and is indispensable for remote island destinations lacking alternative international connectivity. In the Canary Islands, where tourism accounts for around one-third of regional GDP, aviation carbon pricing creates a transition challenge for climate policy.This study estimates round-trip emissions from tourism-related aviation to the Canary Islands over 2010–2021 using flight-level route, aircraft and occupancy data. EU carbon prices and climate-damage estimates are translated into origin-specific travel-cost increases. Assuming these costs are passed on to travellers, we estimate tourism-demand changes and use a regional input–output model to trace effects on regional value added.Results reveal an efficiency paradox: emissions per aircraft and passenger declined, but aggregate emissions increased as tourism expanded. Replacing the observed fleet with the most efficient widely used aircraft would reduce emissions by 14.6%, showing that fleet renewal alone is insufficient. Under the main case, with a moderate demand response, historical carbon-price benchmarks generate limited regional effects, whereas higher damage-based valuations imply greater adjustment. Under the more responsive demand scenario, tourism demand falls by up to 29.4%, and the regional and accommodation-sector value added by up to 5% and 24.9%, respectively. These results provide the flight-level empirical baseline that destination-level climate governance currently lacks for its dominant emission source.These estimates capture transition-related economic exposure, not the net economic effect of climate mitigation. They exclude physical and economic climate damages to the Canary Islands and therefore do not imply that mitigation is costlier than inaction.
Creative place-making combines cultural heritage, spatial design, creative symbolism, and experiential affordances to cultivate distinctive destinations, yet what tourists holistically perceive in these places remains underexplored. Drawing on atmospheric aesthetics theory, this study conceptualizes perceived placeness in creative tourism as tourists' holistic perception of the environmental and atmospheric qualities that make creative tourism destinations experientially distinctive. To operationalize this construct, content analysis was used to identify its dimensions and initial items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses refined these items into a 20-item, five-dimensional scale comprising environmental qualities, historical-cultural embeddedness, creative-symbolic ambiance, restorative affordance, and emotional affordance. The nomological relevance of the scale was further established by examining its implications for transformative experiences via authenticity. Theoretically, this study positions perceived placeness as an integrative perceptual field between place-making and tourists’ psychological responses, and contextually elaborates atmospheric aesthetics theory in creative tourism. Practically, the scale provides a timely tool for evaluating and planning creative place-making efforts and curating meaningful tourist experiences.
