ABSTRACT
As a global issue, Overtourism has highlighted three main things: (1) Tourism is not the cure for all socio-economic issues faced by destinations;(2) sustainability is still an issue to be overcome by the tourism industry;and (3) incremental strategies (as opposed to radical strategies) are not the way forward for the sustainability of the industry. As a result, this chapter is suggesting that new technologies (incremental strategies) could contribute to tackling overtourism, but only if substantiated with a driver of deep and meaningful changes (radical changes) such as an external shock (COVID-19, for instance). In that case, new technologies could be assimilated to an amplifier and the external shock as a driver. This conceptual chapter, based on secondary data (literature review), provides an overview of research on overtourism, and new technologies in tourism. The chapter then provides evidence that new technologies only work as enablers but not as drivers of changes. Finally, taking wedding tourism as an example, this chapter shows that as opposed to incremental strategies (new technologies), COVID-19, as an external shock, is pushing the industry towards radical changes in which technology could potentially play a significant role. This study is offering a strategy (theory) to tackle overtourism, which has not been suggested before, namely combining incremental (enablers) and radical (drivers) strategies. This approach falls under the ambidextrous management approach. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.
ABSTRACT
Despite representing a recent world trend, wedding tourism felt a growth of 75% the past few years, which shows this market, specifically, the destination weddings niche, is proving to have an optimistic development and becoming a relevant topic in events tourism. The research objective analyses how the destination weddings have contributed for the development of events tourism in Portugal by examining what tactics are being utilised towards an international positioning. A quantitative method was used to achieve the objectives, being that two distinct surveys were elaborated, to foreign couples and another to vendors that take part in the industry. The data triangulation method was adopted with the goal of obtaining robust results by gathering a broader source of data. The results show that the destination weddings market contributes positively to the expansion of the events tourism in Portugal. Couples tend to choose Portugal for their climate, impressive sites and sense of intimacy, but the country needs to improve the transaction payments and present a wider range of advertisement. Regarding Covid-19, it had a negative influence mainly because most foreign couples decided to postpone or cancel the wedding. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.