ABSTRACT
The landscape–tourism nexus has been the subject of many scientific contributions that differ in nature and methodological approach. Beyond sectorial planning assessments and impact evaluations, which often fail to grasp this complex relationship, this paper draws on conceptual frameworks in the social sciences and humanities that define the nexus through the productive potential of mobilities, bodily presences and interactions to investigate tourist landscapes in pandemic times. More precisely, the blended concept of dwelling-in-motion is adopted to explore tourist landscapes as evolving constellations of intertwined places and practices of people engaging with empty spaces, redescribing their functions and values and defining new forms of proximity tourism. This study focuses on the Brenta Riviera in northeastern Italy between Padua and Venice—an extremely dense area in terms of landscape stratifications and an exemplary local case where the effects of COVID-19 restrictions have been reshaping physical orderings, social relations and cultural meanings. During the third wave of the pandemic in Italy, a mapping process based on an online survey collected significant georeferenced landscapes among visitors, residents and operators, unveiling multiple and often unexpected Riviera landscapes as expressions of changing attitudes and behaviours towards neighbouring places. Calling for intimate well-being or collective involvement, ‘newcomers-on-the-move' have been blurring the lines between daily, recreational and tourist landscapes, leading to a reconsideration of who can be a tourist and what can be a tourist landscape in a (post-)COVID-19 world. From a tourism policy perspective, tracing these trajectories is one of the starting points for rethinking destination recovery and addressing sustainable goals. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
This exploratory study examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the travel intention of French people (n = 655) for holidays in summer 2020. Qualitative results show demographic and generation differences in the intention to go on vacation caused by a combination of personal uncertainties due to the pandemic, compulsory state measures and travel bans. Using PLS-SEM, quantitative results indicate that influence of perceived risks and attitude towards Covid-19 led tourists to seek out greater proximity when considering vacation travel. The findings may help tourism managers apply proximity marketing strategies using more local and digital services during global health crises.
ABSTRACT
The article analyzes how managers of Catalonia's protected natural areas responded to extraordinary increases in the numbers of visitors during the post-lockdown stage and easing of restrictions implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by the digital media. A systematic review of 105 news published between May and December 2020 was conducted. The results suggest that actions have been mainly focused on responding to the immediacy of the situation were implemented;these involved short-term solutions linked to the management of carrying capacity and entry to natural protected areas. Actions taken related to information and environmental education were delayed, and actions for managing visitors flows within natural protected areas were scarcely reported by the media. Our study is a first step for the identification and characterization of the strategies implemented by the entities managing protected natural areas and their ability to address the avalanche of visitors. Additionally, it reduces the existing research gap in studies of the impact of COVID-19 on the management of protected natural areas.
ABSTRACT
Global tourism is posing challenges on the environmental and social sustainability of host communities, while the industry itself has proven to be vulnerable to threats such as a global pandemic. Proximity tourism was demonstrated to be a more sustainable form in every aspect, especially when locals can co-create the experience and develop place attachment in urban environments through placemaking practices valuing previously underused urban heritage. An alternative urban festival in Budapest focusing on the built environment attracts locals annually to visit open houses providing visitors with genuine experiences. Residents are actively involved in the cultural placemaking practices of the event. As visitors documented the festival and the architectural heritage and uploaded hundreds of photos of their experience to social media platforms such as Instagram, they contributed to the branding process of the event and to the placemaking process involving less known heritage values. In this study, a dataset of more than ten thousand posts was retrieved by scraping Instagram posts based on hashtags related to the Budapest100 festival and analyzed from a temporal and spatial aspect. Returning visitors were identified, who contribute substantially to the sustainability of the event and to the branding of the built environment. Results suggest that community-based local urban festivals are a sustainable form of proximity tourism, resilient even to the COVID-19 pandemic. Place branding through urban festivals focusing on the local built heritage can also decrease the growing pressure on city centers in tourist-historic cities dealing with overtourism. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
ABSTRACT
Archaeological heritage sites constitute the most recent addition to the tourism supply of Madrid, one of the most visited regions of Spain. In 2003, the Plan de Yacimientos Visitables (Plan of Archaeological Visitable Sites) was implemented, museumising 21 sites. However, the peripheral nature of these sites and the lack of personnel prevent strict control being carried out of who visits them, the practices of these visitors and how they rate the sites. This study proposes a systematic procedure to analyse the data gathered from Twitter and Flickr, in order to determine the most shared archaeological spaces in the years immediately preceding the pandemic, and to assess the perception that the visitors had of them. The information provided is useful for learning about the real weight that these sites have in leisure experiences (school trips, guided tours, recreation, etc.). Now that travel has been restricted due to the pandemic, we should ask whether Spain’s minor heritage is able to structure new proximity tourism routes. This is based on the hypothesis that, until now, these types of heritage have had a very limited role in recreational practices, but offer potential as “outdoor museums” in the present climate.