Academica Turistica
Tourism & Innovation Journal – Revija za turizem in inovativnost
Year 13, No. 1, June 2020, issn 2335-4194
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13_1
3 Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance:
Results from an Early Convenient Sample in Slovenia
Maja Turnšek, Boštjan Brumen, Marjetka Rangus, Mitja Gorenak,
Janez Mekinc, and Tanja Lešnik Štuhec
21 Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus in Latin America and Caribbean Countries:
Evidence from an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Panel
José Alberto Fuinhas, Matheus Belucio, Daniela Castilho,
Joana Mateus, and Rafaela Caetano
35 Erasmus+ Mobility: Empirical Insights into Erasmus+ Tourists’ Behaviour
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik
51 Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
Barbara Pavlakovič and Eva Jereb
67 Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Stanislava Pachrová, Petr Chalupa, Eva Janoušková,
Alice Šedivá Neckářová, and Leoš Štefka
81 Congress Destination Attractiveness: The Case of Supply-Side
of Business Tourism in Slovenia
Marijana Sikošek
97 Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism:
The QCII Model
Dejan Križaj
111 Hotel Employees and Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of Portorož, Slovenia
Tanja Planinc, Zorana Medarić, and Kristina Bogataj
117 Abstracts in Slovene – Povzetki v slovenščini
121 Instructions for Authors
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2 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Original Scientific Article
Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel
Avoidance: Results from an Early Convenient Sample
in Slovenia
Maja Turnšek
University of Maribor,
Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia
maja.turnsek@um.si
Boštjan Brumen
University of Maribor,
Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia
bostjan.brumen@um.si
Marjetka Rangus
University of Maribor,
Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia
marjetka.rangus@um.si
Mitja Gorenak
University of Maribor,
Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia
mitja.gorenak@um.si
Janez Mekinc
University of Primorska, Faculty
of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
janez.mekinc@fts.upr.si
Tanja Lešnik Štuhec
University of Maribor,
Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia
tanja.lesnik@um.si
The present study provides a snapshot of Slovenian tourists’ perceptions in a his-
torically unique point of time – the early days of the covid-19-related lockdown.
Based on an online survey performed in March and April 2020 the study provides
first insights into Slovenian tourists’ perceived threats of covid-19 on two dimen-
sions: severity and susceptibility; how this depends on their demography and past
travel experience and what, in this specific point in time, they think about future
travel avoidance. The results have shown that age affects the two measured dimen-
sions of perceived threat and future travel avoidance, but only with women. Further-
more, people who have travelled the most in the past express the least likelihood of
avoidance to travel due to the covid-19 pandemic. Those who are more educated,
on the other hand, perceive higher risk, yet education has no role in their expressed
future travel avoidance. The results, moreover, show that the moral obligation to-
wards taking care of others might be a highly important element in the success fac-
tor of covid-19 measures and thus future appeals by the tourism industry. Finally,
the results show that we cannot easily predict how the general population will be-
have regarding their future travel avoidance since the opinions are not polarised in
the extremes. This does indicate, however, that tourists will be susceptible to the
context-specific factors of future travel decisions, such as assurances of health safety
provided by the tourism industry.
Keywords: covid-19, tourism, health threat perception, future travel avoidance,
fear appeals
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.3-19
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 3
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Introduction
With the declaration of a pandemic, caused by the
spread of the covid-19 disease, the world is expe-
riencing the biggest lock-down in recent decades,
also affecting the developed countries of the western
hemisphere. who released the announcement that
covid-19 disease is characterised as a pandemic on
March 11th 2020, thus calling for action on a global
level to fight against the disease. Even though this pan-
demic is not the first nor the only one of the 21st cen-
tury (Mathis et al., 2015), the world is facing a global
health crisis unlike any in the last 75 years.
The travel industry is amongst those first and most
hit by the pandemic (oecd, 2020). Countries have
taken different measures to limit the spread of the dis-
ease, including total or partial lock-down, strict lim-
itations on meetings of people in public and closed
public and private places, limited free mobility of res-
idents and execution of services. The latest report by
unwto shows that 96 of global destinations have
imposed travel restrictions (unwto, 2020). Public
and massive modes of mobility (i.e. airplanes, trains,
buses, ships, etc.) have been recognised as a primary
threat to the spread of this new disease and thus first
to be made subject to preventive measures.
Furthermore, experiences vital to the tourism sec-
tor such as cruises, gambling, wellness, beauty and
health services, group sport activities, concerts and
events, culinary events and many others have been
hit hardest by governmental restrictions and practi-
cally shut down for the related period. According to
unwto estimation, tourist arrivals on a global level
in 2020 will be down by 20 to 30 when compared
with 2019 figures. This in turn will also affect millions
of tourism jobs and it will take several years to recover
from the fall.
A pandemic is classified in literature as one of
the five major categories of disasters, next to politi-
cal events, natural disasters, financial events andman-
made events, and the travel and tourism sector have
suffered the hardest thus far from the series of pan-
demics and epidemics like avian flu and swine flu,
which have occurred in the 21st century (Bhati et al.,
2016). The tourism industry has proven to be vulnera-
ble to national disasters, even though on a global level
such downturns are not always visible (unwto, 2011).
Since World War ii, the tourism industry has ex-
perienced enormous growth which has also caused a
change in the character of tourism. The early 20th cen-
tury decades were characterised as the infancy period
of mass tourism (Sezgin & Yolal, 2012). The Fordist
model of mass production made mass tourism pos-
sible and turned tourism itself in effect into a Fordist
mode of production and consumption (Torres, 2002).
The after-war period has been marked, among other
factors, by greater prosperity of the population at large,
paid holidays for many European workers, better ed-
ucation, technological development, etc., which have
resulted in greater numbers of tourist arrivals per year,
increasing from 25 million in 1950 to 1,401 million in
2018 (unwto, 2019) and 1.5 billion in 2019.
This form of development has in turn created a
feeling of existential angst or alienation amongst its
citizens. According to Smith (2003), long working
hours, and fragmentations of communities and tra-
ditions have exacerbated feelings of isolation, depres-
sion, and stress, causing individuals to seek solace and
activities which enhance their physical, mental and
spiritual well-being. Within the literature, escapism
has been posited as a key motivation factor for travel,
relating to escape from routine, making important de-
cisions, desire to postpone work or other responsibil-
ities (Cohen, 2010).
Considering the modern development of tourism
and the latest events related to the pandemic, the
tourism sector is expecting major challenges in the
immediate future. Compared to the usual asymmetric
distribution of the impact of economic recession, the
impacts of pandemics are symmetrical. With covid-
19-related measures, tourism was practically suspen-
ded. According to unwto (unwto, 2020), 93 of
destinations in Europe (as of 6 April 2020) have adop-
ted covid-19-related restrictions since January 2020.
Europe as a destination alone still represents more
than 50 of all international tourist arrivals, and the
Americas an additional 15 (unwto, 2019).
The questions of when and how tourism will re-
bound are thus of a highly important focus with not
enough early information on how potential future
travelers will respond to the covid-19 crisis. This re-
4 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
search builds on results of an online survey conducted
in Slovenia in the first three weeks of covid-19 self-
isolationmeasures. The sample was a convenient sam-
ple, focusing on catching a specific timeframe of early
responses to the covid-19 pandemic. The research
aims presented in this paper were threefold: (a) to
analyse the perceived threat of the covid-19 disease
expressed by the survey participants, (b) to analyse
the future travel avoidance expressed by the survey
participants, and (c) to analyse how threat perception
and future travel avoidance are correlated with age,
travel experience, gender and education of the survey
participants.
The research question is as follows:Howdo tourists
in the early phase of lockdown perceive threats related
to covid-19 and express future travel avoidance with
respect to their age, travel experience, gender, and ed-
ucation? The answer to the question could help the
industry to address the key segments in the opening-
up phase and identify the issues that potential tourists
care and worry about most.
Literature Review
Threats, Risks, Security and Tourism
Safety and security have become key criteria in global
travel decisions. The global importance and dimen-
sion of tourism as an economic activity have caused
safety concerns not only to affect the individual and his
or her travel choices, but also the economic and politi-
cal stability of entire regions. Bajpai (2000) argues that
the term ‘human security’ directs the concept of secu-
rity towards the survival, well-being, and freedom of
people. Contrary to Bajpai (2000), Inglehart and Nor-
ris (2012) refer to the concept of human security as a
security concept that seeks to ensure the security of
individuals and communities where there is a lack of
agreement on its definition of content between ‘free-
dom from fear’ and ‘freedom from desires.’
In the United Nations Human Development Sur-
vey (Bajpai, 2000; Oberleitner, 2002; Paris, 2001), hu-
man security also refers to the protection of personal
safety and individual freedom against diseases that
we define as indirect violence and set aside, under-
development, environmental degradation, overpopu-
lation, wars and refugee crises. The covid-19 pan-
demic has highlighted the extreme vulnerability of the
global population, both economically and physically.
Protective policies are needed to reduce risks to the
most vulnerable sections of the population. Moussa
(2001) notes that human security is an acknowledg-
ment of the right of people and nations to an equal
share of global economic, social and political develop-
ment and protection against threats arising from their
own and other countries.
The consequences of global security crises demon-
strate the impact of security on tourism, and on the
other hand, tourism has very little impact on secu-
rity at the macro level, as stressed by Mekinc and
Dobovšek (2011), and that tourism is very dependent
on security, as also claimed by Hall et al. (2003). This
is additionally confirmed by the findings of Mansfeld
andKorman (2015), who emphasise that the seemingly
safe and developing tourism environment is very frag-
ile since the reason for the restoration of environmen-
tal safety is not in the development of tourism, but in
the fields of politics, the economy and society, which
togethermust first create safe conditions for the devel-
opment of tourism in an environment. The covid-19
pandemic has shown that the global health crisis as a
security threat has hit global tourism and travel par-
ticularly hard. When security threats occur at or near
tourist destinations, this is generally reflected in a de-
cline in the number of tourist arrivals in the wider area
of influence. However, if the security threat is global,
the imbalances in global tourism are even more af-
fected. The reason for this is mainly information net-
working, which can transmit information from one
end of the world to the other in real-time. Thus, in-
formation on escalating security threats reached po-
tential tourists’ homes in real-time and discourages
them from making a travel decision (Kurež, 2011). A
characteristic of the covid-19 pandemic, as a global
security crisis, is also the stringent action taken by
countries regarding movement, border crossings, and
closure of service activities, which hinders most tour-
ism activities.
Global security threats, such as a pandemic, do not
arise on their own but are a product of the security
environment and its instability, which in covid-19 is
reflected in the development of individual health sys-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 5
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
tems. Internationalmeasures and proactive action will
need to be taken to prevent and limit global health
crises. As Kurež (2011) notes, the international com-
munity has many resources at its disposal to deal with
security threats in tourism. The risks and threats need
to be identified first, followed by risk and threat man-
agement. Proposals for security improvements should
be based on an audit of the existing situation, which re-
quires a thorough and in-depth analysis of vulnerabil-
ities and security risks exposures, both internally and
externally. Global risk management refers not only to
the coherence of internationalmeasures but also to the
understanding of individual countries’ responsibilities
to limit or counteract the security threat (Ivanuša et al.,
2012).
An important element in threat management is
how tourists perceive the threats and what tourists’
characteristics affect their threat perception. We will
turn to this question in the next sub-section.
Perceived Threats and Travel Research
In travel research, risk perception has long been recog-
nised as one of themain predictors of travel intentions,
with early research focusing on the topic of general
risk perception (see e.g. Roehl & Fesenmaier, 1992;
Sönmez & Graefe, 1998a) and becoming more case-
focused in the last millennium. Risk perception is of-
ten researched in the context of destination image,
with perceived safety being one of the common in-
dicators of overall destination image measures (e.g.
Karl, 2018b; Kim et al., 2019; Tavitiyaman & Qu, 2013;
Tsiotsou et al., 2010).
Health-related risk perception, however, has re-
ceived a relatively smaller focus in travel research to
date. Yang & Nair (2014) performed a content analysis
of 46 articles on risk and perceived risk. Out of the 46
articles, only one was specifically focused on health
risks: Atherton and Wilks (1994), while not includ-
ing risk perceptions. From 42 risk factors involved in
travel identified by Mitchell & Vassos (1998) in their
‘classic’ study, none was related to health risks. At the
time, the terrorism and sociocultural risk emerged as
the most significant predictors of travel anxiety, with
health risks remaining in the background (Reisinger
& Mavondo, 2005).
As Seabra et al. (2013) point out, the past 50 years
of study on risk perception reveal difficulties in oper-
ationalising this concept, mostly because risk percep-
tions are specific to each situation, and should there-
fore be evaluated using measurement instruments
appropriate to the decision-making context. Twenty
years ago, Sönmez and Graefe (1998a) tested which
types of risk are most often associated with tourism
to specific destinations. These were financial, psy-
chological, satisfaction, and time risks. Resinger and
Mavondo (2005) defined perceived risk as one’s per-
ceptions of the uncertainty and negative consequences
of buying and consuming traveling services and at the
destination.
Perceived health risks were measured with one
item: ‘possibility of becoming sick while travelling or
at destination’ (measured on a 7-point scale; 1 = none;
7 = very high). In their study it showed to be a part of
a common factor named ‘health and financial risk’ in-
cluding also physical, financial and functional risk per-
ceptions – reflecting the relative lesser importance of
health-related risks in the overall perception of travel
risks and its measurements.
Health-related risks were in the past thus analysed
primarily through the prism of becoming sick while
travelling – what Hunter-Jones et al. (2008) termed
‘everyday types’ of health hazards while travelling. It
was only after the foot andmouth disease outbreak af-
fecting livestock in the uk (Frisby, 2003; Sharpley &
Craven, 2001), and sars and the bird flu epidemics
(Mao et al., 2010) that the fear of pandemics, or ‘crisis
health hazards’ (Hunter-Jones et al., 2008) started to be
more prominently recognised in travel research. Both
Seabra et al., (2013) and Yang & Nair (2014), for exam-
ple, mention ‘fear of pandemics,’ ‘health threats such
as influenza’ or ‘a number of major tragedies, includ-
ing the sars outbreak’ as main arguments as to why
risk perception should be analysed in travel research,
but do not include anymeasures in their research. Per-
ceived threat is also recognised as one of the main in-
dependent variables affecting one’s risk aversive be-
haviour in relation to the sars pandemic (Brug et al.,
2009; Smith, 2006; Vartti et al., 2009). The analysis of
sars-specific travel literature (Aro et al., 2009; Mor-
eira, 2004, 2008; Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009;
6 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Zeng et al., 2005) shows that more specific measures
regarding perceived threats and pandemics were in-
cluded, yet remained only at the level of comparing
one disease against another. For example, Rittichain-
uwat and Chakraborty (2009) included questions on
perceived risks for three types of disease: sars, bird
flu, and anthrax, but did not include a more in-depth
measure of perceived risks related to these types of dis-
ease.
What the covid-19 pandemic calls for at the mo-
ment are more specific analyses of the extent to which
covid-19 is perceived as a health risk and how this
affects travel intentions. In order to analyse risk per-
ception of covid-19 in more depth, we turned to
measures in the promotion of health behaviour.While
travel research recognises the importance of commu-
nicating safety information to travellers (Abrams et
al., 2020; Wang & Lopez, 2020), covid-19 reflects
a globally unprecedented need for public health risk
communication of which we are currently witnessing
the first analyses (Abrams et al., 2020; Zhang et al.,
2020).
An important area of research is so-called threat
or fear appeals (Dillard & Li, 2020; Yuen et al., 2020)
with disease being a common threat in public-fears ap-
peals such as anti-smoking campaigns (Pechmann et
al., 2003). Following the protection motivation theory
(Floyd et al., 2000; Rogers, 1975) and the extended par-
allel process model (Maloney et al., 2011; Witte, 1992)
we can identify what Seabra et al. (2013) term a more
context-specific, more in-depth definition and mea-
surement of risk perception in relation to the covid-
19 pandemic.
Rogers (1975) was amongst the first to identify the
two dimensions of perceived threat: (a) the magnitude
of noxiousness of a depicted event (‘Severity of the
threat’) and (b) the probability of that event’s occur-
rence (‘Susceptibility or vulnerability to the threat’). In
the current research we build on Witte’s (1992) opera-
tionalisation of the two dimensions (see the Methods
section) and are primarily interested in the differences
of the two dimensions of perceived threat according to
travel experiences, gender, age, and education andhow
this correlates with future travel intentions of Slove-
nian travellers.
Travel Intentions and Perceived Threat According
to Age, Travel Experience, Gender and Education
The literature review within tourism studies shows
that various individuals perceive travel risk differently
and react to it in distinctive ways (Garg&Kumar, 2017;
Karl, 2018a, 2018b; Yang&Nair, 2014), especially when
from different cultural backgrounds (Le Serre et al.,
2013; Matyas et al., 2011; Park & Reisinger, 2010; Qi et
al., 2009; Reisinger & Mavondo, 2006a, 2006b; Vartti
et al., 2009).
Furthermore, even within the same nation or age
group, tourists are heterogeneous in terms of their risk
perception (Karl, 2018b; Seabra et al., 2013; Wantono
& McKercher, 2020). While risk is generally studied
as a factor that increases risk aversive behaviour, it is
important also to note that for some people risk in-
cludes higher motivation to seek risky behaviour – a
point of research covered especially within the area
of sensation-seeking personality traits and tourism
(Lepp & Gibson, 2003, 2008; Pizam et al., 2001, 2004).
For example, Gibson and Jordan (1998a, 1998b) found
that solo women tourists take calculated risks while
traveling in order to gain a sense of empowerment
and adventure.
In terms of demographic factors, risk perception is
related to factors such as life stage, gender, nationality,
education, and social class (Gibson&Yiannakis, 2002;
Karl, 2018b; Lepp & Gibson, 2003, 2008; Matyas et al.,
2011; Park & Reisinger, 2010; Pizam et al., 2014, 2004;
Qi et al., 2009; Reisinger & Mavondo, 2005, 2006a,
2006b; Roehl & Fesenmaier, 1992; Sönmez & Graefe,
1998a, 1998b). Yang and Nair’s (2014) study deals with
15 internal factors that can influence tourists’ risk per-
ception, categorised into four dimensions: sociocul-
tural, socio-demographic, psychographic and biologi-
cal. Nationality and past experience were found to be
the most significant factors shaping tourists’ risk per-
ception.
Regarding age, Sönmez and Graefe (1998a) found
that age did not influence an individual’s perception
of travel-related risk, which was also confirmed by the
work of Garg and Kumar (2017). However, Gibson
& Yiannakis (2002) found that preference for risk-
related tourism tended to decrease with age. These
were the results of many other researches as well (Ha-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 7
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
jibaba et al., 2015;Hallahan et al., 2004; Lepp&Gibson,
2003; Pizam et al., 2004; Reisinger &Mavondo, 2006a,
2006b; Williams & Baláž, 2013). Williams and Baláž
(2013) highlight that the general health and safety fac-
tor tended to be significantlymore important for older
people.
With age, riskier travel forms decrease and are
explored within the non-institutionalised forms of
tourism, such as travel of ‘explorers and drifters’ (Co-
hen, 1973), backpacking (Carr, 2001; Elsrud, 2001) and
budget travelling (Riley, 1988). Hajibaba et al. (2015)
found that tourists who are extremely resistant to
risk are generally younger than other tourists with a
more risk-averse behaviour. According to Pizam et al.
(2001, 2004), young males showed more propensity
for spontaneous vacations and are more adventurous.
Higher age groups are more dominant in risk- and
uncertainty-averse tourist types (Karl, 2018b).
However, there are large differences even within
the same age groups, and non-institutionalised tour-
ism styles are not homogeneous in terms of risk per-
ceptions. Kozak et al. (2007) found that older ex-
perienced male travellers were less likely to change
their travel plans when faced with potential terrorism,
health, or natural disaster related risks. Williams and
Baláž (2013, pp. 22–23) found that ‘package tourists
were more likely to be relatively younger (and there-
fore to have young children), while explorers are likely
to be relatively older.’ Organised mass tourists and
independent mass tourists are generally more con-
cerned about health risks than tourists engaging in
non-institutionalised forms of tourism (Lepp & Gib-
son, 2003).
Another important factor affecting travel risk per-
ception is travel experience, with the most experi-
enced tourists perceiving less risk (Hajibaba et al.,
2015; Karl, 2018b; Kozak et al., 2007; Lepp & Gibson,
2003, 2008; Park & Reisinger, 2010; Qi et al., 2009;
Sönmez & Graefe, 1998a, 1998b). The survey of Sön-
mez and Graefe (1998a, 1998b) showed that previous
visits to a destination considered risky were associated
with greater likelihood of avoiding these in future, but
Lepp and Gibson (2003) found positive relationships
between travel experience and preference for destina-
tions with higher risks.
Regarding gender and risk perception, the results
aremixed.Although the research of Sönmez andGrae-
fe (1998a, 1998b) showed no influence, other studies
concluded that gender does influence travel risk per-
ception and risk-aversive behaviour while travelling
(Carr, 2001; Darley & Smith, 1995; Elsrud, 2001; Garg
& Kumar, 2017; Hawes, 1988; Kinnaird & Hall, 1996;
Kozak et al., 2007; Lepp & Gibson, 2003; Loker-Mur-
phy & Pearce, 1995; Matyas et al., 2011; McGehee et al.,
1996; Mitchell & Vassos, 1998; Pizam et al., 2004; Qi
et al., 2009; Reichel et al., 2007; Squire, 1994; Williams
& Baláž, 2013; Yang & Nair, 2014). Lepp and Gibson
(2008) concluded that gender is only significant for
subcategories of risk that may disrupt a holiday (i.e.
strangeness of food) but not for life-threatening risk
factors. According to Byrnes et al. (1999) men are
more risk tolerant in 14 out of 16 observed types of
risk behaviour and Boksberger et al. (2007) showed
that women have been found to be more likely to be
concerned about physical risks in tourism. Thus, in
general, women are often shown as not as willing to
take risks as men are (Garg & Kumar, 2017; Lepp &
Gibson, 2003; Matyas et al., 2011; Pizam et al., 2004;
Wantono&McKercher, 2020;Williams&Baláž, 2013),
where risk aversion depends on the specific situation.
In Lepp and Gibson’s (2003) study, the results have
shown that amongst most travel styles, men generally
perceived less risk of terrorism than women, with one
exception. The so-called ‘drifters’ group of travellers
showed the opposite results – here women perceived
less risk than men. On the other hand, Williams and
Baláž (2013, p. 22) found that ‘drifters were more likely
to be men, which is consistent with their greater risk
and uncertainty tolerance.’
With respect to health risks, Mattila et al. (2001)
found gender differences in perceived health risk. Ac-
cording to Kozak et al. (2007), female tourists are
more concerned about risks in terms of infectious dis-
eases, terrorist attacks and natural disasters than male
tourists. Lepp and Gibson (2003) reported that men
are less concerned about health and food-related risks
than women. Literature from the field of disease pre-
vention showed that after the sars outbreak, women
reported higher perceptions of risk than men (Brug et
al., 2004). Lau et al.’s (2004) investigation of sars in
8 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
connection to preventive and risk behaviours showed
that male travellers were much less likely to be using
masks or washing their hands frequently.
An important warning about gender as a factor af-
fecting risk perception is the fact that it is often only
representative of other more comprehensive and in-
depth differences. Carr (2001), for example, points out
that other factors, such as personality type, are proba-
bly more influential on an individual’s travel risk per-
ception than gender per se.
Finally, many authors confirm that tourists’ per-
ceptions of travel risks vary depending on education
(Chang, 2010; Hallahan et al., 2004; Karl, 2018b; Park
& Reisinger, 2010; Sönmez & Graefe, 1998a; Williams
& Baláž, 2013). Generally, the results show that higher-
educated tourists perceive lower travel risk than less-
educated tourists (Garg&Kumar, 2017;Halek&Eisen-
hauer, 2001; Hallahan et al., 2004).Williams and Baláž
(2013) concluded that package tourists had relatively
lower educational qualifications, while explorers and
drifters had higher qualifications.
The research performed in Germany (Karl, 2018a,
2018b) has shown that high educational levels and high
travel frequencies are distinct characteristics of risk-
affine tourists. Garg and Kumar (2017) showed that
tourists’ decision-making is influenced by their risk-
perception level in relation with socio-cultural factors
and media influence. Park and Reisinger (2010) pos-
tulate that tourists with low educational attainment
perceive a greater influence of social risk than high-
and middle-educated tourists perhaps because they
have relatively fewer social skills and are less con-
fident about their vacation choice. Higher-educated
tourists are likely to be more informed regarding nat-
ural disasters and travel risks and hold fewer miscon-
ceptions about the real risk than less-educated in-
dividuals (Laver et al., 2006). Similarly, Brug et al.’s
(2004) survey of sars conducted in the Netherlands
has shown that people with less education expressed
more worries about the disease.
In the remainder of this study we focus on how
age, travel experience, gender and education affect
covid-19 threat perceptions and future travel risk
avoidance amongst the sample of the Slovenian popu-
lation.
Methods
Questionnaire
We used an on-line questionnaire (open from 17th
March to 11th April 2020) that addressed variables for
perceived threat, travel experience and future travel
avoidance, and standard demographic variables. We
adjusted the perceived threat measures from the ex-
tended parallel process model (Witte, 1992; Witte &
Morrison, 2000) with 3 questions measuring per-
ceived severity dimension and 4 questions measuring
susceptibility or vulnerability dimension (see Table
3). The items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale
from strongly disagree to strongly agree.Wemeasured
travel experience with three numerical questions, for
example ‘How many times a year have you on average
gone on vacation (for 5 days or more) in the last three
years?’ Finally, wemeasured future travel intentions or
travel avoidance as the extent towhich the participants
express planned travel avoidance after the covid-19
lock-down measures.
Population, Sample and Source of Data
The data were collected from a convenience sample of
respondents (N = 428), which is an acceptable form
of data collection in tourism (Carr, 2001). The survey
was made among residents of Slovenia, asking them
about the new sars-cov-2 virus and their perception
of possibilities of self-isolation and traveling. Table 1
represents the sample we have collected; next to the
information in Table 1 we have also calculated the av-
erage age of respondents was 32.7 years, some 10 years
lower than the national average.
Data Acquisition and Analyses
We processed the acquired data in Microsoft Excel
2013 and ibm spss v.23. For simple data analysis we
used Excel’s built-in functions, such as counting in-
dividual responses, calculating percentages, and cal-
culating mean values. ibm spss version 23 was used
for statistical analyses. The threshold for rejecting a
null hypothesis was set at α = 0.05. The correlations
between dependent and independent variables were
calculated using Spearman’s Rho and differences be-
tween respondents’ views based on parameters was
calculated using the Kruskal-WallisH test.
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Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Table 1 Sample Demographic
Variable n 
Gender Male  .
Female  .
Level of
education
Secondary education or lower*  .
Higher professional education  .
University education  .
Post graduate education  .
Do not want to disclose  .
Notes * Post-secondary, pre-university.
Results
First, we tested the reliability of the collected datamea-
suring the three main variables: perceived susceptibil-
ity of threat, perceived severity of threat and future
travel avoidance (see Tables 3 and 5 for the exact items)
by calculating the value of Cronbach’s alpha. The value
was 0.837 and this represents an acceptable reliability
(Cronbach, 1951), which suggests that the ‘measures
were free from random error and thus reliability co-
efficients estimate the amount of systematic variance’
(Churchill, 1979, p. 4).
Factor Analysis
We have performed a factor analysis on both sets
of variables (perceived threats, future travel inten-
tions) separately. First, we performed factor analysis
on variables that have measured perceived threat lev-
els amongst respondents. As seen from Table 2 and
Table 3, there are two distinctive factors found. In line
with past research (Witte, 1994) the first factor was
‘susceptibility to threat’ (explains 36.57 of variabil-
ity). Again, in line with past research, the second fac-
tor was ‘severity of threat’ (explaining an additional
13.50 of variability). With both factors together we
were able to explain 50.07 of variability of perceived
threats.
The analysis of the mean value on each of the items
shows that in general people perceive a relatively high
probability that they themselves or their loved ones
could fall sick to the covid-19 disease (perceived sus-
ceptibility). Regarding the perceived severity, however,
themean values are lower, with the survey participants
Table 2 Factor Analysis – Total Variance Explained –
Perceived Threats
() () () ()
(a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c)
 . . . . . . .
 . . . . . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . ..
Notes Extraction method: principal axis factoring. Col-
umn headings are as follows: (1) factor, (2) initial eigenval-
ues, (3) extraction sums of squared loadings, (4) rotation
sums of squared loadings (when factors are correlated, sums
of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total vari-
ance), (a) total, (b) percentage of variance, (c) cumulative
percentage.
generally perceiving lesser gravity of the disease. There
is an important exception, though: the indicatorsmea-
suring perceived threat to oneself versus the indica-
tors measuring perceived threat to one’s loved ones
show that survey participants generally perceive the
covid-19 more endangering the people that we love
rather than ourselves, which is probably also a reflec-
tion of the relatively young sample. These results, how-
ever, indicate that the moral obligation towards taking
care of others might be a highly important element
in the success factor of covid-19 measures. The re-
sults are in line with similar research, for example on
effectiveness of antismoking campaigns (Goldman &
Glantz, 1998).
Next, we have performed factor analysis on vari-
ables measuring future travel avoidance. As seen from
Table 4 and Table 5, all the variables have positioned
themselves in one factor, named ‘Future travel avoid-
ance.’ With this factor we can explain 40.59 of vari-
ability of future travel intentions. The items we intro-
duced to measure future travel avoidance are a rel-
atively reliable scale for measuring this variable. The
lowest travel avoidance is somewhat surprisinglymea-
sured with the item ‘In the future I will no longer at-
tend crowded events due to the fear of the new coron-
10 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Table 3 Factor Analysis on the Group of Variables Measuring Perceived Threats
Factor Variable () () ()
 Perceived threat:
Susceptibility (.
variability explained)
It is highly likely that I myself will fall sick with the new cor. disease. . . .
It is highly likely that my loved ones will fall sick with the new cor. disease. . . .
I myself am at risk of contracting the new coronavirus disease. . . .
 Perceived threat:
Severity (.
variability explained)
The new coronavirus disease is extremely dangerous to one’s health. . . .
The new coronavirus disease has a high mortality rate. . . .
The new coronavirus disease is not curable. . . .
My loved ones are at great risk of dying from the new coronavirus disease. . . .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) factor value, (2)mean value, (3) standard deviation. Extractionmethod: principal
axis factoring. Rotation method: Oblimin with Kaiser normalization (rotation converged in 5 iterations).
Table 4 Factor Analysis – Total Variance Explained –
Future Travel Intentions
() () ()
(a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c)
 . . . . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
 . . .
Notes Extraction method: principal axis factoring. Col-
umn headings are as follows: (1) factor, (2) initial eigenval-
ues, (3) extraction sums of squared loadings, (a) total, (b)
percentage of variance, (c) cumulative percentage.
avirus.’ Gathering with others was something the par-
ticipants perceived as least likely they will give up in
the future. This might indicate good news for future
event management. The highest travel avoidance is
measured with the item ‘Once the problems are over,
I will travel extensively in order to make up for the
lost time.’ This item, however, next to being reversely
coded, also had the lowest factor value.
A deeper analysis of mean values per item shows
that on average survey participants’ travel avoidance,
when calculated in an index (average of all items) per-
forms very similarly to a normal distribution (see Ta-
ble 6). The mean value of index of future travel avoid-
ance is 2.51 on a 5-point scale. In other words, we can-
not easily predict how the general population will be-
have regarding their future travel avoidance since at
the time of the results there was only a slight tendency
for the participants to answermore often that they will
not avoid future travel. It is thus important to analyse
the differences in travel avoidance according to other
variables to be better able to predict which groups of
future travellers are those that will more likely and/or
sooner be travelling again.
After performing the factor analysis, we havemade
an index for each of the three variables (the sum of all
the itemsmeasuring the same variable) and performed
basic descriptive statistics on newly formed indexes. In
Table 6 we can see that the highest mean value (2.83) is
for ‘Susceptibility of threat,’ followed by ‘Future travel
avoidance’ (mean value 2.51) and ‘Severity of threat’
(mean value 2.22). In the continuation of the paper
we will analyse the effects of age, gender, education,
and travel experience on the three variables: suscep-
tibility of threat, severity of threat and future travel
avoidance. Since distribution is not parametric based
on the Shapiro-Wilk test (p < 0.005), we are further
treating the variables as non-parametric and using ad-
equate statistical tests.
Differences Based on Age
We first investigated correlations between the three
dependent variables ‘susceptibility of threat,’ ‘sever-
ity of threat’ and ‘future travel avoidance’ and the
independent variable ‘age of respondents.’ We have
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 11
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Table 5 Factor Analysis on the Group of Variables Measuring Future Travel Intentions
Factor Variable () () ()
Future
travel
avoidance
(.
variability
explained)
I will be avoiding travelling abroad for at least a year. . . .
I will prefer to stay home this summer as a precaution and not go on any vacations. . . .
If travelling I will avoid public transportation. . . .
In the future I will no longer attend crowded events due to the fear of the new coronav. . . .
I will have no prob. about using planes, buses or trains as they will be safe again soon.* . . .
This year I will rather look for holiday possibilities within my own country. . . .
Once the problems are over, I will travel extensively in order to make up for lost time.* . . .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) factor value, (2)mean value, (3) standard deviation. * Reversely coded. Extraction
method: principal axis factoring. Rotation method: Oblimin with Kaiser normalization (rotation converged in 5 iterations).
Table 6 Descriptive Statistics of Indexes of the Factors Gained from Factor Analysis
Variable () () () () () () ()
Susceptibility of threat  . . . . –. .
Severity of threat  . . . . –. .
Future travel avoidance  . . . . . .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) number, (2) mean, (3) standard deviation, (4) skewness, (5) standard error of
skewness, (6) kurtosis, (7) standard error of Kurtosis.
Table 7 Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient of Correlation
between Age and Three Variables
Variable Correlation with age
Both Man Woman
Susceptibility of threat .** .
(p= .)
.**
Severity of threat .** .
(p= .)
.**
Future travel avoidance .
(p= .)
–.
(p= .)
.**
Notes ** p ≤ 0.01.
used Spearman’s correlation for this analysis. Table 7
shows that two out of three factors show statistically
significant correlations to age of respondents. Older
respondents evaluate susceptibility to threat higher
than younger respondents; they also evaluate severity
of threat higher than younger respondents, while age
does not correlate with future travel intentions when
both genders are included in the analysis. Since corre-
lations made for both genders together were relatively
weak, we have decided to see if there are any addi-
tional differences with regards to difference in gender.
We have determined that within the group of male
respondents there is no statistically significant corre-
lation with any of the three factors; however, within
the group of female respondents correlation is now
seen with all three factors. The results are thus only
partly in line with the literature review. As in previous
research, both threat perception and travel avoidance
are affected by age – yet in our research this is con-
firmed only for women.
Differences Based on Past Travel Experience
We have furthermore analysed correlations between
the variable ‘future travel avoidance’ after the covid-
19 crisis (see Table 6 for exact items, index was calcu-
lated as mean scores) and the three items measuring
travel experience (see Table 8 for exact items).We have
used Spearman’s correlation for this analysis. Results
are shown in Table 8. In accordance with expectations
from the literature review, one of the three items for
travel experience showed a statistically significant neg-
12 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
Table 8 Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient among
Variables ‘Travel Experience’ and ‘Future Travel
Avoidance’
Travel exp. in the past  years Future travel avoidance
Number of holiday travels* –.**
Number of international travels –. (p= .)
Number of air flights –. (p= .)
Notes * For 5 days or more. ** p ≤ 0.01.
Table 9 Analysis of Differences among Males and Females
on Susceptibility and Severity of Threat and
Future Travel Avoidance
Variable z p Mean rank
Male Female
Susceptibility of threat –
.
. . .
Severity of threat –
.
. . .
Future travel avoidance –
.
. . .
ative correlation (p ≤ 0.05) with future travel avoid-
ance. The results thus show that people who have trav-
elled the most in the past will be the ones who also ex-
press the least likelihood of avoidance of travel due to
the covid-19 pandemic.
Differences between Gender
Further, we tested for differences between respon-
dents’ views based on gender. As we can see from Ta-
ble 9, even though women evaluate the variable higher
thanmen in all three cases, the differences are not sta-
tistically significant. The results are thus again in line
with the literature review: while women are often said
to perceive more threat, the differences are not shown
in every research and are generally not as significant
as they are for age.
Differences Based on Education
Finally, we also tested if there are any statistically sig-
nificant differences between respondents’ views based
on their level of education. Results are shown in Ta-
ble 10. Regarding future travel avoidance, the results
show no significant differences. However, from Table
Table 10 Analysis of Differences on Susceptibility and
Severity of Threat and Future Travel Avoidance
Based on Education
Variable H p () ()
Susceptibility of threat . . (a) .
(b) .
(c) .
(d) .
Severity of threat . . (a) .
(b) .
(c) .
(d) .
Travel avoidance . . (a) .
(b) .
(c) .
(d) .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) level of educa-
tion, (2) mean rank. Row headings are as follows: (a) sec-
ondary education or lower, (b) higher professional educa-
tion, (c) university education, (d) postgraduate education.
10 we can see that there are statistically significant dif-
ferences on both dimensions of perceived threat. On
the dimension susceptibility of threat there is a sta-
tistically significant difference (H = 17.083, p = 0.001)
among various levels of education. The lowest mean
rank has respondents with secondary education or
lower (mean rank 140.02) and the highest those with
post graduate education (mean rank 198.95). Simi-
larly, severity of threat is also statistically significantly
different between the differently-educated groups of
participants (H = 8.566, p = 0.036). The group with
secondary education or lower has evaluated this fac-
tor lowest (mean rank 144.63) whilst the group with
highest evaluation is the one with Higher professional
education (mean rank 179.06). Compared with the lit-
erature review, however, these results are surprising.
Namely, higher-educated persons tend to accept more
risk and thus their susceptibility to threat is lower. But
with covid-19, higher-educated people feel that they
are more susceptible to threat, and they also perceive
that the threat is more severe. More future research
is needed to analyse the reasons for the differences in
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 13
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
education. We can only speculate that the differences
are a result of different information sources between
the differently-educated groups.With regards to travel
avoidance we did not discover any statistically signifi-
cant differences between education levels.
Discussion, Limitations and Further Research
Recommendations
The covid-19 pandemic is an unpreceded event that
shook global tourism industry to its core. It is too early
to reliably say what kind of effects it will have for the
future of tourism. The present study cannot provide
answers to the questions of when and how tourists will
be willing to travel again. Rather, it provides a snap-
shot of Slovenian tourists’ perceptions in a historically
unique point of time – the early days of the covid-19-
related lockdown. The value of the study is thus pri-
marily in its analytical insight in the situation-specific
state of tourists’ perceived threats, how this depends
on their demography and what they in this specific
point in time think about their future travel avoidance.
As such, the study first has a methodological merit:
to our knowledge this was the first study that de-
veloped a scale of perceived threat of covid-19 on
the two dimensions of severity and vulnerability. Per-
ceived threat is a variable that is very context specific.
In the past, travel research primarily focused on com-
paring several types of threats and providing only very
general measures of health-related risks. The covid-
19 pandemic, however, is a specific situation that called
for a more in-depth analysis of perceived threat. To
achieve this, we have built on literature on health-
related fear appeals in order to develop a scale that
showed to be context specific, reliable and in-depth.
Similarly, the merit of the present study is the de-
velopment of a scale for measuring one’s expressions
of future travel avoidance due to covid-19. As with
perceived threat, this variable, too, showed to include a
reliable set of indicators, all showing one dimension of
future travel avoidance.However, an important limita-
tion of measuring future travel avoidance is its depen-
dence on actual behaviour control – which is mostly
not in the hands of the tourists but is rather an issue
of policy regulation and how the disease will spread
in the future. Future travel avoidance is a measure of
what people expect about the future, and not a mea-
sure of actual future behaviour. Therefore, it cannot be
used as a valid predictor of actual future travels. It can,
however, point to important early considerations.
The oecd (2020), World Tourism Organization
(2020) and the European Commission (2020) recently
published guidelines regarding tourism recovery after
covid-19. Common amongst these are three basic
proposals that seem to be supported by the present
research: providing health assurances to the tourists,
promoting domestic tourism, and targeting younger
tourists and those who have travelledmore in the past.
First, the Slovenian early sample shows that peo-
ple will be relatively highly susceptible to the context-
specific factors that will affect their decisions, such as
assurances of health measures. The European Com-
mission (2020) highlights the importance of updated
and easily accessible information to travellers in order
to be reassured that public health and safety rules are
respected. Our results show that we cannot easily pre-
dict how the general population will behave regard-
ing their future travel avoidance since at the time of
the results most participants were not on either of the
two extremes of the opinion. However, while we can-
not predict whether this means they will be more will-
ing or less willing to travel in the future, it does mean
that the general opinionmight be highly susceptible to
the context of the future. Extreme opinions are those
that are the most difficult to change. The common sets
of health standards and assurances of health safety in
the after-covid-19 scenarios are thus likely to fall on
appreciative ears.
Second, a common assumption regarding the re-
covery of tourism is to focus on domestic tourists. For
Slovenian tourism it is thus of highest importance that
in general the data shows that the survey participants
are slightlymore inclined to intend travel domestically
in the near future. Therefore, the support to domestic
travel such as tourism vouchers, a focus on ‘local gems’
and general short-term localisation of tourism seem to
be supported by the current data.
Third, the data supports the general proposals that
younger tourists and those with more travel experi-
ence are those who should be primarily targeted in the
recovery attempts. The results have shown that age af-
14 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
fects the twodimensions of perceived threat and future
travel avoidance, but only with women. Men, on the
other hand, do not seem to be affected by age differ-
ences, nor are there significant differences in gender in
general. The results furthermore unsurprisingly show
that people who have travelled the most in the past
will be the ones who also express the least likelihood
of avoidance of travel due to covid-19 pandemic.
Contrary to the above three main research results,
the current data also provides two unexpected and
thus important research conclusions: the first is per-
ception of threat in relation to education and the sec-
ond is perception of threat in relation to one’s moral
position.
The results on perception of threat in relation to
education are surprising compared to past research on
risk perception in tourism studies. Past research gen-
erally showed that higher-educated persons tend to ac-
cept more risk. But with covid-19, higher-educated
people in the Slovenian sample feel that they are more
susceptible to threat, and they also perceive the threat
is more severe. Future research is needed to analyse
the reasons for the differences in education. At the
moment, we can only speculate that the differences
are probably a result of different information sources
between the differently-educated groups. This does
mean, however, that the higher-educated tourists are
those who perceive higher risk and are thus those
who will pay more attention to health standards and
health-related assurances. Such standards and assur-
ances thus need to be prepared with the highest cau-
tion and information support for concerned tourists.
Finally, the analysis showed that in general the sur-
vey participants perceive covid-19 as a disease more
endangering to the people that they love rather than
themselves. More research is needed; however, these
results show that the moral obligation towards taking
care of others might be of utmost importance in the
success factor of covid-19 measures for policy mak-
ers and the tourism industry. In future persuasive ap-
peals on covid-19-related threats, appealing to the
safety of one’s loved ones might show to be the most
effective.
Future research is needed in order to assess how
threat perception and future travel avoidance differ
in later points in time and in other national contexts.
Specifically, as the restrictions ease and new measures
are being introduced such as, for example, spatial dis-
tancing on beaches and during transportation, more
research is needed on how risk perception is related
to perception of pleasure and travel value and to what
extent these might be perceived as lowered due to the
covid-19-related measures. Additionally, more re-
search is needed on how different generations differ
regarding covid-19 threat perception and especially
why there seem to be generational differences amongst
women, while not amongst men. The issue of moral
stance (taking care of others) in relation to covid-19
might have an important role in the future – more re-
search is needed on how effective are appeals on safety
to one’s health and health for one’s loved ones. And
especially, how this moral stance might relate to the
issues of sustainable tourism of the future. Finally, the
roles of information sources and social class need to be
analysed in the future in order to provide the answers
as to why in relation to covid-19 the more educated
perceive more risk than the less educated.
Just as the September 11, 2001, attacks on theUnited
States forever changed our understanding of security
in international tourism, and we adapted to the conse-
quences in the form of increased controls at airports,
so will the covid-19 global health crisis bring forth
changes in the way international travel and transport
are conducted. New security protocols will be imple-
mented at airports, hotels, and border crossings. The
new security protocols will become part of interna-
tional security standards. After every security crisis
so far tourists returned to their destinations as soon
as the threat was eliminated. Even with the covid-
19 pandemic, we hopefully expect that ‘tourists have a
badmemory’ about security threats, as claimed (McK-
ercher & Huij, 2003) and that tourism will blossom
againwhen conditions calmdownand safetymeasures
are transformed in a way that they allow safe travelling
again.
Acknowledgments
The research presented in this article has been partly
conducted within Interreg Mediterranean med Pro-
grammePanoramedpeoject BestMedproject co-financed
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 15
Maja Turnšek et al. Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Future Travel Avoidance
by the European RegionalDevelopment Fund and partly
by the trl3-6 Tourism 4.0 research and development
project co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and the
European Regional Development Fund of the European
Union.
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Original Scientific Article
Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus in Latin
America and Caribbean Countries:
Evidence from an Autoregressive Distributed
Lag Panel
José Alberto Fuinhas
ceber, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal
fuinhas@uc.pt
Matheus Belucio
isag – European Business School and Research Group of isag (nidisag)
and cefage-ue, Department of Economics, University of Évora, Portugal,
matheus.silva@isag.pt
Daniela Castilho
Management and Economics Department, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
daniela.castilho@ubi.pt
JoanaMateus
Management and Economics Department, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
joana.mateus@ubi.pt
Rafaela Caetano
Management and Economics Department, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
rafaela.caetano@ubi.pt
This research focuses on tourism as a way to stimulate economic growth in Latin
America and the Caribbean countries. The impact of tourism on economic growth
was expected to have both short- and long-run effects. Panel autoregressive dis-
tributed lag, an econometric technique that allows for this temporal decomposition,
was used. The results for the twenty-two countries revealed that, in the short-run,
tourist capital investment per capita, tourist arrivals (number of persons), per capita
electricity consumption, and the real exchange rate were statistically significant and
had a positive impact on economic growth. In contrast, in the long-run, only tourist
arrivals and per capita electricity consumption proved to be positive drivers of per
capita economic growth. Policymakers should continue to develop and implement
measures to attract as many tourists as possible while promoting investment in the
tourism industry. However, they also need to pay attention to other economic sectors
so that their countries do not become extremely dependent on tourism activity.
Keywords: capital investment, tourism arrivals, economic growth, Latin America
and Caribbean, ardl
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.21-34
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 21
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Introduction
Although the economic activity of Latin America and
Caribbean countries is still recovering from the im-
pacts of various economic and social crises, the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (imf) stated that after 2017
the region’s economic growth increased by 1.3, 1.6
in 2018, and 2019 it is expected to increase by 2.6 (In-
ternationalMonetary Fund, 2018). These results could
mean that these countries can rapidly increase their
growth rates. The primary motivation for the achieve-
ment of this study was the fact that tourism is a sector
in development and has an essential role in the eco-
nomic growth of this region. Thus, corroborating with
World Travel Market (2018), the number of foreign
tourists arriving in Latin America increased by 6 in
the previous five years. Moreover, the World Travel
and TourismCouncil (2018) estimates point to the fact
that the travel and tourism sector recently contributed
to 15.2 of the Caribbean Gross Domestic Product, re-
gion which is included in the group of countries that
we will use in our investigation.
Given the facts previously stated, the characteris-
tics of this region and the particular interest points,
tourism becomes quite relevant. Being a fast-growing
sector, it is crucial to verify if more tourists and in-
vestment (as well as, their efficiency) lead to an in-
crease in economic benefits of Latin American and
Caribbean countries. Thus, this theme should con-
tinue to be studied.
The impact of tourism on economic growth is an
extensively explored theme in the economic growth
literature. However, few studies use panel methodol-
ogy to study the impacts of this sector on the growth
of the Latin America and Caribbean region.
In our study, we used 22 countries from the Latin
America andCaribbean region,with annual data rang-
ing from 1995 to 2014. The autoregressive distributed
lag (ardl)model was used in our empirical investiga-
tion mainly because it supports variables with differ-
ent orders of integration and gives robust results with
small samples. Though the ardl model, we evaluate
the impacts that tourism intensity and tourism capi-
tal investment have on the economic growth of Latin
America and Caribbean countries on both the short
and that long run. To reach this objective, we used
annual data on Gross Domestic Product per capita
(gdppc), which is our proxy for economic growth,
and on tourism arrivals per capita (tapc) and tourism
capital investment per capita (tipc) in order to repre-
sent the tourism sector.
The main goal of this study is to answer the cen-
tral question: ‘What are the impacts of tourism inten-
sity and tourism capital investment on the economic
growth of Latin America and Caribbean countries?’
Given the central question of our study, we can con-
struct the two following hypotheses.
h1 Tourism intensity has a positive impact on eco-
nomic growth, given that it contributes to em-
ployment creation and stimulates the economic
activity of the Latin America and Caribbean
countries.
h2 Capital investment has a positive impact on
economic growth, given that it contributes to
the construction of new infrastructure, techno-
logical progress, and innovation in Latin Amer-
ica and Caribbean countries.
In this research, wewill attempt to confirm (or not)
the validity of these hypotheses as we simultaneously
attempt to contribute to the enlargement of the litera-
ture on this field.
This study is organised as follows. The second sec-
tion presents literature reviews about the tourism-
economic growth nexus. The third describes the data,
methodology, and preliminary tests. The fourth sec-
tion presents the results and discussion, and the fifth
section concludes the study.
Literature Review
In this section, essential aspects will be discussed in
the literature on tourism economics, focusing on the
way tourism relates to the economy and addressing
specific aspects of tourism in the Latin American and
Caribbean region.
Revisiting Tourism and Economy
The relationship between tourism development and
economic growth has been studied widely in recent
years (e.g., Cannonier & Burke, 2019; Belucio et al.,
2018; Brida, Lanzilotta & Pizzolon, 2016; Du et al.,
22 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
2016; Cárdenas-García et al., 2015; Tugcu, 2014) given
that the results from this relationship can help some
countries to develop effective growth strategies for
their economies.
The supply of foreign currency, the promotion of
investment, in both infrastructure and human capi-
tal, and the jobs that this sector creates are some of
the significant benefits from international tourism
that can produce positive effects on a country’s eco-
nomic growth.Moreover, following Blake et al. (2016),
tourism has an essential role on the increase of the
average income of a country, as well as in the in-
crease of both the efficiency and competitiveness of
the economies.
Malta et al. (2019) analysed the context that enabled
the creation of a vision that attributes to tourism the
capacity to reduce poverty. According to the World
Tourism Organization (2015), in 2014, one in every
eleven jobs around the world was created by the tour-
ism sector, which demonstrates the weight that this
sector has on the worldwide economy.
Given the facts previously stated, it is natural that
the relationship between tourism and growth has an
extensive branch of literature about it. Lanza and Pigli-
aru (2000) were the pioneers of the investigation of
the relationship between these two variables. In their
work, they concluded that the countries specialised in
tourism shared features, such as tourist destinations of
small geographical size, where the average per capita
income proliferated.
Moving forward, the analysis of the relationship
between tourism and economic growth has at least
four hypotheses that can be easily identified in the lit-
erature: growth hypothesis also called the tourism-led
growth hypothesis (tlgh or tlg): conservation hy-
pothesis; feedback hypothesis; and neutrality hypoth-
esis (e.g., Dogru & Bulut, 2018). These hypotheses ap-
pear in the majority of the causality tests related to
economic growth, mainly in energy economics. Nev-
ertheless, this group of hypotheses can be reformu-
lated and used in tourism analysis.
The tlgh, as the name implies, state that tourism
development stimulates economic growth: the tourist
arrivals and the revenues generated by the tourism sec-
tor have a positive impact on economic growth. This
hypothesis is supported by the majority of the authors
that focus their works on the assessment of this rela-
tionship (e.g., Shahzad et al., 2017; Tugcu, 2014;Husein
& Kara, 2011; Cortes-Jimenez & Pulina, 2010).
Regarding the conservation hypothesis (e.g., Aslan,
2014; Payne &Mervar, 2010), while this hypothesis as-
serts that the economic output of a country can induce
tourism development, it also suggests that deteriora-
tion on the economic performance of a country can
significantly reduce its tourism demand.
Concerning the feedback hypothesis (e.g., Rivera,
2017; Al-mulali et al., 2014;Massidda&Mattana, 2013),
it considers economic growth and tourism develop-
ment to be complementary and strongly dependent.
This hypothesis is the same as saying that economic
growth promotes tourism development as well as the
other way around.
Finally, the neutrality hypothesis (e.g., Katircioglu,
2009) suggests that there is no relationship between
tourism development and economic growth: they are
entirely independent. This hypothesis indicates that,
for example, strategies for tourism development (e.g.,
investing in the tourism sector) do not produce direct
effects on economic growth.
Besides these four hypotheses, there is an addi-
tional one: the curse hypothesis, or the beach disease
effect (e.g., Holzner, 2011). This hypothesis can be de-
fined as follows: countries in which the tourism sector
plays a significant role in their economies (tourism-
dependent countries) tend to grow less than the others
do.
Turning to the methodological part of the works
on the tourism-growth nexus, in the literature, many
variables were used as tourismproxies. Themost com-
monly used are international tourism revenues (e.g.,
Durbarry, 2004; Balaguer & Cantavella-Jordà, 2002),
number of tourist arrivals (e.g., Zortuk, 2009; Gun-
duz & Hatemi-J, 2005), tourism specialization (e.g.,
Algieri, 2006), tourism industries (e.g., Tang& Shawn,
2009), and tourism spending (e.g., Nissan et al., 2011),
for example. As expected, the variable Gross Domestic
Product is the one that researchers use the most often
to measure economic growth.
Regarding the empirical methodologies that are
used to investigate the relationship between tourism
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 23
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
and economic growth, it can be emphasized that they
differ from author to author. However, there are two
main methodological approaches: panel data estima-
tions, and time-series estimations. Brida et al. (2016)
made a detailed review of the empirical methods that
were applied in the literature close to this theme, and
their advantages and disadvantages.
The panel data models are frequently preferred
because they allow doing a simultaneous analysis of
the cross-sectional and temporal dimensions. The
panel Granger causality techniques (e.g., Belucio et
al., 2018; Al-mulali et al., 2014) and the autoregressive
distributed lag model (ardl) (e.g., Katircioglu, 2009)
are some of the estimation methods that are more fre-
quently used in this type of studies.
The Region
LatinAmerica has been experiencing significant chan-
ges in recent decades (Bianchi et al., 2018). Tourism
has grown in most Latin American and Caribbean
countries. Researchers and policymakers have long
recognised the significance of tourism to theCaribbean
region (Cannonier & Burke, 2019)
The region has two of the seven natural wonders
of the world, and three of the seven wonders of the
modern world. Tourism in the region has diversified
effects, whethermicro or macroeconomics. Garza and
Ovalle (2019) argue that tourism-driven development
affects the spatial distribution of prices and increasing
daily transportation difficulties.
Focusing on the Latin America and Caribbean
countries (lac), we can refer that for these countries
the tourism literature is quite extensive (e.g., Belucio
et al., 2018; Risso & Brida, 2008; Brida et al., 2008;
Eugenio-Martin et al., 2004). The conclusions of the
works focused on the relationship between tourism
and growth in this region, or in some countries of
the lac, predominantly support the tlgh. Before we
conclude, we also should refer that the reasons cited
in the literature to the differences in the study’s results
are mainly the fact that authors usually apply different
empirical methodologies, and chose different periods
and samples to be analysed (e.g., Dogru&Bulut, 2018).
Even thoughmost of the studies show that tourism
development has positive impacts on the economic
output of the countries, the results are far from conclu-
sive, and for that reason, we support the idea that this
relationship should continue to be extensively studied.
The assessment of the impacts that tourism have
on growth is especially crucial for the case of Latin
America and Caribbean countries because they have a
set of characteristics (e.g., cultural and natural wealth)
that make them a choice destination for tourists from
all over the world. However, tourism safety in Latin
America has not evolved to the same level in all Latin
American countries (Maximiliano, 2014).
Some of the critical factors that can deter tourists
from a destination are the security of the destination
and the exchange rate. Regarding the safety of tourists
in Latin America, the central issue is related to lo-
cal crime (Maximiliano, 2014). However, the devel-
opment of sound public regulation can generate eco-
nomic growth and benefits for tourism agents, which
is reflected in improvements for the population (Belu-
cio et al., 2018) and tourists.
The exchange rate plays an essential role in the lives
of underdeveloped or in the development of tourist
destinations. The inflow of foreign capital is responsi-
ble for economic growth, but policymakers often ne-
glect the exchange rate policies (Dogru et al., 2019),
which can have a significant impact on the trade bal-
ance. It is also known that the real effective exchange
rate has significant effects on economic growth (Lee &
Chang, 2008) and that exchange variation can benefit
or hurt a tourist destination.
Data andMethodology
Our study is focused on the assessment of the impacts
of tourism on the economic growth of a group of Latin
America and Caribbean: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Re-
public, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Hon-
duras, Jamaica,Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.
For the present investigation, we will use annual data
from 1995 to 2014. Both the time horizon and countries
were chosen, given the available data. In this study, we
used stata 15.0 to perform our econometric analy-
sis. In Table 1 the name, definition, and source of our
variables are presented.
24 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 1 Variables Description
Variable Definition Source
gdp Gross Domestic Product in
a constant local currency
unit
World Bank
p The total population in the
total number of persons
World Bank
epc Electric power consumption
in gwh
World Bank
ta Tourism arrivals in the
number of persons
World Bank
gdp_us Gross Domestic Product in
constant 2010 us$
World Bank
ti Capital Investment in a
constant local currency unit
World Travel &
Tourism Council
tx Real exchange rate Author’s calcu-
lation from the
World Bank
The dependent variable will be Gross Domestic
Product in constant local currency (gdp), our proxy
for economic growth.
To measure tourism intensity, the ratio of the tour-
ism arrivals (ta), by the total population (p) was used.
The tourism capital investment (ti), which represents
the capital investment spending by all industries di-
rectly involved in travel and tourism, is another of our
interest variables and will also be divided by the to-
tal population (p). We choose the electric power con-
sumption (epc) as our control variable because the
energy use of a country is highly correlated with its
economic growth (e.g., Santiago et al., 2020); further-
more, energy can contribute to the three dimensions
of development: social, economic and human (e.g.,
Malaquias et al., 2019). The Gross Domestic Prod-
uct was also retrieved in constant 2010 us$, in or-
der to calculate the real exchange rate (tx) through
the ratio of Gross Domestic Product in constant local
currency by the Gross Domestic Product in constant
2010 us$.
The transformation of the variables into per capita
values is essential because it eliminates the dimen-
sional distortions caused in the model’s estimations by
the variables in levels. gdp, epc, ta, gdp_us, and p,
were all retrieved from the World Bank, while ti was
retrieved from the World Travel & Tourism Council.
We will use the autoregressive distributed lag (ar-
dl) model in the form of an Unrestricted Error Cor-
rection Mechanism (uecm). This methodology gives
the dynamic effects of the variables, allowing us to
make a distinction between the Granger causality in
short and the long-run. Moreover, it is robust to the
presence of endogeneity, and when a determined co-
efficient is statistically significant, it is equivalent to
the Granger causality testing (Menegaki et al., 2017;
Jouini, 2015). Additionally, it deals with cointegration
and supports the inclusion of variables with different
orders of integration (I(0), I(1), and fractionally inte-
grated variables) in the same estimation. The variables
were transformed into natural logarithms (‘L’) and first
differences (‘D’). The ardl model specification is the
following:
lgdppcit = α1i + δ1itrend + β1i1lgdppcit−1
+ β1i2ltapcit + β1i3ltapcit−1
+ β1i4ltipcit + β1i5ltipcit−1
+ β1i6lepcit + β1i7lepcit−1
+ β1i8txit + β1i9txit−1 + β1it. (1)
To explain the dynamic relationships between our
variables, we reparametrized equation (1) into the fol-
lowing specification:
dlgdppcit = αi + β2i1dltapcit + β2i2dltipcit
+ β2i3dlepcit + β2i4dltxit
+ γ2i1lgdppcit−1 + γ2i2ltapcit−1
+ γ2i3ltipcit−1 + γ2i4lepcit−1
+ γ2i5txit−1 + ε2it . (2)
A series of diagnostic tests before the estimation are
necessaries to validate that the choice of method was
accurate. In addition, other tests and statistics need to
be verified after model estimation to make sure that it
meets mandatory econometric requirements in panel
analysis (e.g., Dogru et al., 2019; Santiago et al., 2020;
Marques et al., 2017; Fuinhas & Marques, 2012; Katir-
cioglu, 2009). Every test and statistics of the method
used will be presented.
In sequence, the characteristics of the series through
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 25
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 2 Descriptive Statistics and Cross-Sectional Dependence
Variables Descriptive statistics Cross section dependence (cd)
Obs Mean Std. dev. Min. Max. cd-test Corr Abs(corr)
lgdppc  . . . . .*** . .
ltapc  –. . –. –. .*** . .
ltipc  –. . –. –. .*** . .
lepc  . . . . .*** . .
ltx  . . –. . –. . .
dlgdppc  . . –. . .*** . .
dltapc  . . –. . .*** . .
dltipc  . . –. . .*** . .
dlepc  . . –. . .*** . .
dltx  . . –. . –. –. .
Notes To achieve the results of descriptive statistics and to test the presence of cross-section dependence, the Stata com-
mands sum and xtcd, respectively, were used. The cd test hasN(0, 1) distribution under the h0: cross-section independence;
*** denote statistical significance at 1 level.
the descriptive statistics as well as the results from the
cross-section dependence test are presented.As can be
observed, gdppc has one less observation (data on
gdp fails for Haiti in 1995), but that is not a problem,
because stata 15.0 can correct this issue and contin-
ues to assume the panel to be a strongly balanced one.
It is also possible to observe one less observation on
tx because the variable was calculated using the gdp,
and it is not a concern due to the same explanation. As
previously stated, in Table 2, the results from the cross-
section dependence test can be observed, where it can
be concluded that cross-section dependence is present
in all variables, except in real exchange rate (tx).
Next, the correlation matrices and variance infla-
tion factor (vif) statistics are examined. The correla-
tion matrix was used to check the degree of correla-
tion that exists between the variables, while the vif
statistics was used to test for the presence of multi-
collinearity. The results of the correlation matrix only
indicated the existence of a high level of correlation
between ltipc and lgdppc, which is not a concern,
given that the high correlation is with the dependent
variable. A similar situation (high correlation between
the ltx and lgdppc) is detected; again, this does not
cause a problem for the estimation due to the same rea-
son. The lower vif and mean vif values prove that
Table 3 Correlation Matrices and vif Statistics
lgdppc ltapc ltipc lepc ltx
lgdppc .
ltapc . .
ltipc . . .
lepc . . . .
ltx . . . . .
vif* n.a. . . . .
dlgdppc dltapc dltipc dlepc dltx
dlgdppc .
dltapc . .
dltipc . . .
dlepc . . . .
dltx . –. . . .
vif** n.a. . . . .
Notes *Mean vif 2.12. **Mean vif 1.04.
multicollinearity is not a problem for this paper’s esti-
mation. Details are in the Table 3.
Because cross-sectional dependence seems not to
be present on the real exchange rate (tx), the 1st gener-
ation panel unit root tests will also be computed. Next,
the results of theMaddala andWu test are presented in
26 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 4 Maddala and Wu Panel Unit Roots Test (mw)
Variable wb (Zt-bar)
Without trend With trend
lgdppc .*** .***
ltapc .* .
ltipc .* .***
lepc . .
ltx .*** .***
dlgdppc .*** .***
dltapc .*** .***
dltipc .*** .***
dlepc .*** .***
dltx .*** .***
Notes *, *** denote statistical significance at 10 and 1
level, respectively; Maddala and Wu (1999) Panel Unit Root
Test (mw) assumes that cross-sectional independence, and
h0: series is i(1); to compute this test, the Stata command
multipurt was used.
Table 4. As the test of Maddala and Wu (1999) shows
that there are variables presenting cross-sectional de-
pendence, the veracity of the results is compromised
for them. Thus, only the order of integration of the tx
variable will be analysed. The result seems to indicate
that the variable is I(0).
To see the order of integration of the remaining
variables, the 2nd generation unit root tests, namely
the augmented cross-sectional ips (cips) test by (Pe-
saran, 2007) were computed. This test was used be-
cause the presence of cross-sectional dependence was
registered in most of the variables, and the 1st gen-
eration panel unit root tests turned out to be ineffi-
cient in these cases. The results of the cips test show
that some variables are I(1) and others are I(0), which
is not a problem because the ardl model supports
these two levels of integration. These results confirm
that the ardl methodology is the best approach for
the study (Table 5).
The Hausman test confronts random and fixed ef-
fects, andwhen the structure of the data is in the panel,
it is necessary to test for the individual effects. In se-
quence, the results of the Hausman test are presented
and, as we can be observed, the test rejects the null hy-
Table 5 Panel Unit Root test (cips)
Variable cips (Zt-bar)
Without trend With trend
lgdppc –. .
ltapc –.*** –.
ltipc –.*** –.***
lepc –. .
ltx –.*** –.***
dlgdppc –.*** –.***
dltapc –.*** –.***
dltipc –.*** –.***
dlepc –.*** –.***
dltx –.*** –.***
Notes *** denote statistical significance at 1 level; Pesaran
(2007) Panel Unit Root Test (cips) assumes that cross-
sectional dependence is in the form of a single unobserved
common factor and h0: series is i(1); to compute this test,
the Stata commandmultipurt was used.
Table 6 Hausman Test
Test fe vs re
Hausman test χ2() = .***
Notes *** denotes significance at the 1 level; in bothmod-
els, theHausman test was performedwith the sigmamore op-
tion. h0: random effects are the most appropriate.
pothesis. This result led us to conclude that the fixed
effects model is the proper specification for our es-
timation: the countries’ individual effects are signif-
icant. In this estimation, the sigmamore option was
used, which is a recurrent option in previous studies
(e.g., Özokcu & Özdemir, 2017) (Table 6).
After theHausman test, with the results pointing to
the use of the fixed effects model, the next step is the
execution of a group of specification tests. The results
of the pre-tests still reveal details of the nature of the
variables, information useful for models’ estimation.
Results and Discussion
To test for the presence of heteroscedasticity, we com-
puted the modified Wald Test (null hypothesis: Ho-
moscedasticity). The Pesaran test (null hypothesis:
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 27
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 7 Specification Tests
Test Statistics
Modified Wald test .***
Pesaran’s test .***
Wooldridge test .***
Notes h0 of Modified Wald test: σ(i)2= σ2 for all i; H0 of
Pesaran’s test: residual are not correlated; h0 ofWooldridge
test: no first-order autocorrelation; *** denotes statistical sig-
nificance at 1 level.
residuals are not correlated and follow a normal distri-
bution) to check for the presence of contemporaneous
correlation was used. The Breush-Pagan Lagrangian
multiplier test was also used to test if the variances
across individuals are not correlated. In the present
case, this test could not be applied because the number
of countries in that sample is larger than the number
of years in the study. Lastly, the Wooldridge test was
used for autocorrelation to assess for the presence of
serial correlation in our model.
The results from the previously mentioned tests
are presented in Table 7, showing that heteroscedas-
ticity, contemporaneous correlation, and first-order
autocorrelation are all present in the model. All the
statistics reject the null hypothesis of the respective
specification tests.
Given these results, the Driscoll and Kraay (1998)
estimator is the most appropriate estimator to use in
estimations, because the standard errors produced by
the estimator are robust to disturbances being cross-
sectional dependent, heteroskedastic and autocorre-
lated up to some lag.
In this model, both the trend, the tourism capi-
tal investment per capita, and the real exchange rate
(both ti and tx on the long-run) were statistically
insignificant and were thus retrieved from the model.
After these conclusions, equation (2) was replaced by
equation (3), which represents thismore parsimonious
model.
dlgdppcit = αi + β3i1dltapcit + β3i2dltipcit
+ β3i3dlepcit + β3i4dltxit
+ γ3i1lgdppcit−1 + γ3i2ltapcit−1
+ γ3i3lepcit−1 + εit. (3)
Table 8 Estimation Results
(Dependent Variable: dlgdppc)
Variable fe fe-dk
Constant .*** .***
dltapc .*** .***
dltipc .*** .***
dlepc .*** .***
dltx .*** .***
lgdppc (–) –.*** –.***
ltapc (–) .*** .***
lepc (–) .*** .*
Diagnostic statistics
N  
R2 . .
F F(, ) = .*** F(, ) = .***
Notes ***, * denote statistical significance at 1 and 10
level, respectively; to estimate the models, the Stata com-
mand xtscc was used.
Specification tests were remade for the parsimo-
nious model, and the results were in line with the
previous ones (presence of heteroscedasticity, auto-
correlation. and contemporaneous correlation in the
model). The results of the estimations are presented in
detail in Table 8. The results show that, in the short-
run, the tourism intensity, the tourism capital invest-
ment per capita, the electric energy consumption per
capita, and the real exchange rate are all positive and
statistically significant. Table 8 also shows a positive
and statistically significant impact of both tourism in-
tensity and electric power consumption on economic
growth in the long-run. As we previously stated, the
tourism capital investment and real exchange rate
failed to show a statistically significant impact in the
long-run and, for that reason, it was excluded from the
estimation.
The long-run elasticities are not displayed in Ta-
ble 8 because they had to be calculated through the ra-
tio between the variable’s coefficient and the lgdppc
coefficient, both lagged once, and this ratio was mul-
tiplied by –1. In Table 9, the impacts (short-run), elas-
ticities (long-run), and the adjustment speed of the
model (ecm) are shown.
28 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 9 Elasticities and Speed of Adjustment
(Dependent Variable: dlgdppc)
Variable fe fe-dk
Short-run impacts
dltapc .*** .***
dltipc .*** .***
dlepc .*** .***
dltx .*** .***
Long-run (computed) elasticities
ltapc .*** .***
lepc .*** .***
Speed of adjustment
ecm –.*** –.***
Notes *** denote statistical significance at 1 level, the
ecm denotes the coefficient of the variable lgdppc lagged
once.
From Table 9, it can be seen that the Latin Amer-
ica and Caribbean countries’ economic growth was
positively affected by the tourism arrivals per capita
(tourism intensity) and by the electric power con-
sumption per capita, both in the short and long runs,
while the positive effects of tourism capital investment
per capita and real exchange rate were only detected
in the short run.
LatinAmerica andCaribbean countries suffer from
serious political, economic and social problems and
therefore, once these problems had an impact on the
economic growth of these countries, we considered
the relevant shocks, which affected their economies
between 1995 and 2014.
In 1997, the Mexican government adopted the Na-
tional Program for Development Finance (npfdf). In
Uruguay, in 2002, a bank crisis occurred, due to the
country’s over-dependence on Argentina, which was
also in depression. This depression was mainly due to
currency devaluation. In the Dominican Republic, in
2003, a financial crisis was caused by bank failure.
In Venezuela, the oil strike in 2002–2003 followed
in 2004 with an impressive rise in the oil prices. Trini-
dad and Tobago are very dependent on exports; in
2003m this country registered a massive increase in
gdp, which could be associated with the Venezuelan
Table 10 Estimation Results (Corrected for Shocks,
Dependent Variable: dlgdppc)
Variable fe fe-dk
Constant .*** .***
dltapc .*** .***
dltipc .*** .***
dlepc .*** .***
dltx .*** .***
lgdppc (–) –.*** –.***
ltapc (–) .*** .***
ltipc (–) . .**
lepc (–) .*** .**
arg –.*** –.***
arg –.*** –.***
cb .*** .***
cb .*** .***
rd –.*** –.***
h –.** –.***
mex .** .***
mex –.*** –.***
tt .*** .***
tt .*** .***
tt –.*** –.***
ur –.*** –.***
ven –.*** –.***
ven –.*** –.***
ven .*** .***
Diagnostic statistics
N  
R2 . .
F F(, ) = .*** F(, ) = .***
Notes *** and ** denote statistical significance at 1 or 5
level, respectively; to estimate the models, the Stata com-
mand xtscc was used.
instability in the same year, which led to a search for a
new hydrocarbon exporting country, which benefitted
Trinidad and Tobago.
In 2006, Trinidad and Tobago, due to a rise in the
oil and gas prices and an increase in the foreign di-
rect investment (fdi), expanded their energy sector.
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 29
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
Table 11 Impacts, Elasticities and Speed of Adjustment
(Model Corrected for Shocks, Dependent
Variable: dlgdppc)
Variable fe fe-dk
Short-run impacts
dltapc .*** .***
dltipc .*** .***
dlepc .*** .***
dltx .*** .***
Long-run (computed) elasticities
ltapc .*** .***
ltipc . .**
lepc .*** .***
Speed of adjustment
ecm –.*** –.***
Notes *** denote statistical significance at 1 level, the
ecm denotes the coefficient of the variable lgdppc lagged
once.
In 2005, Cuba had a development of the tourism sec-
tor and was registered a reduction in the unemploy-
ment rate. In 2006, the highest economic growth in
the history of Cuba happened as a result of Cuba’s
so-called energy revolution (e.g., Suárez et al., 2012).
Other shocks that were considered were in Argentina,
Haiti, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago (all in 2009)
and that can be due to the financial crisis of 2008 fol-
lowed by a global recession. Details in Table 10.
What was said previously about some economic
problems in these countries indicates the existence of
outliers in Argentina (2002), Cuba (2005, 2006), the
Dominican Republic (2003), Mexico (1997), Trinidad
and Tobago (2003, 2006), and Venezuela (2002, 2003,
2004). To control the detected outliers, dummies were
added on the model to represent these events and cor-
rect them. Dummies arg2002, arg2009, rd2003,
h2009, mex2009, tt2009, ur2002, ven2002, and
ven2003 represent a break, while cb2005, cb2006,
mex1997, tt2003, tt2006 and ven2004 represents
a peak. In Table 11, the impacts, elasticities and speed
of adjustment of the model are shown.
From Table 11, it can be seen that the Latin Amer-
ica and Caribbean countries economic growth was
positively affected by the tourism arrivals per capita
(tourism intensity) and by the electric power con-
sumption per capita, both in the short and long run.
After the correction of the shocks, the tourism invest-
ment per capita has become statistically significant,
not only on the short-run but also in the long-run. In
addition, it had a positive impact on economic growth,
becoming one of its main drivers. The real exchange
rate has a significant and positive impact on economic
growth but only in the short-run.
Regarding the ecm, from Table 11, it can be seen
that its coefficient is negative and statistically signif-
icant, which indicates the presence of long-memory
between the variables. This value represents the speed
of adjustment of the model, i.e., the speed at which
the dependent variable returns to equilibrium after
changes in our independent variables. As can be ob-
served, the speed of adjustment of the model is rela-
tively slow.
The positive impacts of the electric power con-
sumption per capita on the economic growth of these
countries, both in the short and long-run, were ex-
pected, given that energy is seen as a driving force
for growth (e.g., Hatemi-J & Irandoust, 2005). Addi-
tionally, it has high explanatory power in empirical
growth models. Moreover, many authors consider en-
ergy variables crucial to explain countries’ economic
growth (e.g., Toman & Jemelkova, 2003). The real ex-
change rate, as previously stated, had a positive im-
pact on the economic growth in the short run. The
importance of the exchange rate to the policy and eco-
nomic growth could benefit the countries that were in
the early stages of economic development (Habib et
al., 2017). Thus, because the countries used in this in-
vestigation are developing countries, this impact was
expected. In the long run, with countries becoming
more developed and prosperous, the real exchange
rate could become irrelevant to growth (Aghion et al.,
2009).
Given these results, the policymakers from Latin
America and the Caribbean should be cautious in
the adoption of energy conservation policies, since
the economic output of these countries seems to be
strongly linked with energy consumption, in the pres-
ent case, with the electric power consumption per
30 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
capita. Measures that lead to a reduction in its con-
sumption appear to be able to affect the economic
growth of Latin America and Caribbean countries ad-
versely.
Regarding the central question of the present study,
it can be seen that both variables (tourism intensity
and tourism capital investment) seem to have had a
positive impact on growth, which confirms both of
the hypotheses. The results of this study also corrob-
orate those of other authors that studied the relation-
ship between the tourism sector and economic growth
for some countries from this region (e.g., Shahzad et
al., 2017; Tang & Abosedra, 2014; Amaghionyeodiwe,
2012).
Given these results, we think that the countries
from our sample should continue to attract as many
tourists as possible at the same time, while the indus-
tries directly involved in travel and tourism should
continue to increase the levels of their investments,
given that both factors have a positive impact on eco-
nomic growth. This is congruent with the findings of
Du et al. (2016) that tourism’s contribution to the long-
run growth of an economy comes through its role as
an integral part of a broader development strategy.
Conclusion
In order to answer to the central question of this
study, the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl)model
was used to assess the impacts, in both the short and
long-run, of tourism on the economic growth of 22
Latin America and Caribbean countries. The specifi-
cation tests showed that cross-sectional dependence,
heteroscedasticity, contemporaneous correlation, and
first-order autocorrelation were present in the model,
which led to the Discroll Kraay estimator with fixed
effects being used. The Error Correction Mechanism
(ecm) is statistically significant and negative, which
indicates the presence of cointegration/long-memory
relationships between the variables in the study.
From the results, it is possible to observe that, in
the short run, tourism intensity, capital investment,
electric power consumption, and real exchange rate
have a positive and significant impact on the economic
growth of the Latin America and Caribbean countries,
with the electric power consumption per capita being
themain driver of the growth. In the long-run, all vari-
ables were shown to be significant and have a positive
impact on growth. The tourism arrivals and electric
power consumption have been revealed to be the prin-
cipal drivers of economic growth in this region.
Therefore, the tourism intensity and capital invest-
ment, both on short and long-run, had a positive im-
pact on the economic growth of the Latin America
and Caribbean countries, which supports Hypotheses
1 and 2.
The main finding of this investigation is that once
that tourism has a positive impact on the economic
growth of this region, which means that an increase
on the tourism intensity leads an increase on the eco-
nomic growth, this region should increase the level
of investment in this sector. The policymakers of the
Latin America and Caribbean region should continue
to develop measures aimed to attract as many tourists
as possible while simultaneously promoting the in-
vestment in their travel and tourism industries. The
country’s economies have to invest more in human
capital directly involved with the tourism sector and
invest more in marketing to promote the region of
Latin America and the Caribbean in addition to other
economic sectors.
When a tourist chooses one destination, the ma-
jority of them (or all of them) do so considering the
economic situation, the level of security, and the pub-
lic health conditions of the region. Consequently, the
policymakers should increase the level of the invest-
ments in healthcare (both to residents and tourists),
which could happen through international partner-
ships with tourism agencies, for example, and should
also increase the security in the region.
However, they also must pay attention to the other
economic sectors so that their countries do not be-
come extremely dependent on tourism activity. Exces-
sive investment in the tourism sector, while neglecting
the other sectors of the economymay lead these coun-
tries to a ‘deindustrialisation’ situation.
The use of energy consumption or electric power
consumption directly related to tourism should be in-
cluded in further research because it is a limitation of
this investigation, as is the temporal horizon that ends
in 2014. Another limitation of the study is analysing
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 31
José Alberto Fuinhas et al. Tourism and Economic Growth Nexus
the exchange rate behaviour with on linear analysis,
which is different from what is commonly addressed
in the literature, non-linearmethods (e.g., Dogru et al.,
2019; Irandoust, 2019).
We note that another gap in the tourism litera-
ture and economic growth that may be incorporated
in future research: the inclusion of exogenous vari-
ables representing instability (e.g., political instabil-
ity). Thus, allowing a more robust empirical approach
to the current problems of the countries of the re-
gion (e.g., Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia) could
guarantee greater veracity of the results (e.g., Arslan-
turk et al., 2011; Chen & Chiou-Wei, 2009).
Acknowledgments
ceber, r&d unit funded by national funds through
fct –Fundação para aCiência e a Tecnologia, ip, project
uidb/05037/2020; nece, r&d unit funded by national
funds through fct – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tec-
nologia, ip, project uidb/04630/2020; cefage, r&d
unit funded by national funds through fct – Fundaçâo
para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, ip, project uidb/04007/
2020.
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34 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Original Scientific Article
Erasmus+ Mobility: Empirical Insights into Erasmus+
Tourists’ Behaviour
Miha Lesjak
University of Primorska, Turistica – Faculty of Tourism Studies, Slovenia
miha.lesjak@fts.upr.si
Emil Juvan
University of Primorska, Turistica – Faculty of Tourism Studies, Slovenia
emil.juvan@fts.upr.si
Eva Podovšovnik
University of Primorska, Turistica – Faculty of Tourism Studies, Slovenia
eva.podovsovnik@fts.upr.si
Erasmus+ students represent a large sub-segment of educational tourists, making
this segment an attractive market for universities as well as destination marketing
organisations. Unfortunately, very little is known about Erasmus+ students’ travel
behaviour; hence the present study aims at extending empirically supported knowl-
edge about travel behaviour of students during their Erasmus+ mobility. Data was
collected via an online survey among all Erasmus+ enrolling students in the aca-
demic year 2016/17 in Slovenia. The results show that 93 of the participants trav-
elled during theirmobility. The level of studies as well as gender affect students’ travel
behaviour, making the two characteristics immediately useful attributes when tar-
geting Erasmus+ travellers. Based on perceived destination attributes, male students
predominantly seek cities with attractive nightlife but female students look for eas-
ily accessible cities, which are safe and offer attractive cultural sites. These findings
suggest that tourism providers, destination tourism organisations and universities
should work hand in hand when designing personalised tourism experiences and
their promotion among Erasmus+ students. This is crucial during the phase of plan-
ning Erasmus+mobility, when students choose their destination and host university,
as well as during students’ Erasmus+ mobility, because Erasmus + students travel
during their student mobility.
Keywords: Erasmus+ mobility, education, international students, destination
attributes, tourist behaviour
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.35-50
Introduction
Student mobility involves an increasingly large pop-
ulation of students. The volume of student mobil-
ity worldwide exploded from 2 million in 1999 to
5 million in 2016 (Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development, 2018). In the oecd area
alone, there were 3.5 million international or foreign
students engaged in tertiary educational programmes
in the year 2016. Different mobility programmes sup-
port students’ mobility and aim at improving students’
professional, cultural and language skills as well as stu-
dents’ international employability. International study
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 35
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
mobility has become a key differentiating experience
for students, and has gained increased policy atten-
tion (oecd, 2017). Students engage in study mobility
for various reasons, predominantly to improve their
professional skills and for personal growth (Juvan &
Lesjak, 2011). Nevertheless, recent research (for exam-
ple, Lesjak et al., 2015) shows that factors specific to
leisure travel play a highly important role in pursuing
student mobility. Namely, being a tourist helps Eras-
mus mobility students to grow personally (for exam-
ple, improve their understanding of a foreign culture
or of nature, improve their ability to survive in a dif-
ferent environment, improve language skills, etc.).
The Erasmus+ mobility programme is a lot about
travel. For example, Erasmus+ mobility students need
to travel to a foreign country and, once in the host
country, they explore the host as well as neighbour-
ing countries (for example,Martinez-Roget et al., 2013;
Gardiner et al., 2013; Pavlič & Koderman, 2014); they
pursue the role of tourists. Given the volume of travel
involved during Erasmus+mobility it is inevitable that
not only educational but also travel-related attributes
of host countries play an important role in students’
decisions to pursue mobility (Lesjak et al., 2015). The
empirical evidence about the size of the Erasmus+mo-
bility programme and the fact that Erasmus+ students
do travel while at the host destination, makes them
an interesting travel market. However, little is known
about the travel behaviour and drivers of Erasmus+
students’ travel behaviour during their mobility.
There is no doubt that hospitality is focused on
nurturing of guests, providing them the best possible
experience while they are our guests (Gorenak, 2019).
That is why understanding travel behaviour and its
key drivers improves the ability of destination mar-
keting organisations as well as educational host insti-
tutions to personalise tourist experiences and inform
approaches, thus improving destination competitive-
ness. More specifically, destination organisations can
increase the attractiveness of places and educational
institutions. Additionally, they can inform tourism
providers about the Erasmus+ student’s characteris-
tics that effectively differentiate various segments and
segment specific travel decisions (for example, choice
of accommodation). While many different factors af-
fect tourist behaviour (Moutinho, 1993; Pearce, 2015),
and thus differentiate tourist segments, themost inter-
esting for the industry are the factors which are easily
identified with the specific market segment (Dolničar,
2008); for example, among the student population
these would be gender, age and the level of studies.
Investigating students’ travel behaviour is not new,
however, understanding leisure travel behaviour of
Erasmus+ students is still relatively unexplored. Exist-
ing studies predominantly investigate travel behaviour
of a general student population, typically involving
long-term international students, which differentiate
from Erasmus+ students. The key differentiating vari-
able is that Erasmus+ students reside in a host country
for up to 6 months and their high interest in leisure
travel (Lesjak et al., 2015). Following this conceptual-
isation, Erasmus+ students represent longer-staying
tourists, engaged in studying as well as leisure travel.
As such, Erasmus+ students should represent an in-
ternational travel market of high interest to univer-
sities and tourism organisations, because both strive
to attract this educational international market seg-
ment.
The present study aims at extending our current
understanding of Erasmus+ students’ travel behaviour
by investigating the most typical travel decisions and
their association with most evident and easily identi-
fied characteristics of students (gender and level of
studies). The theoretical contribution of this study
lies in improving the theory of tourist behaviour in
the context of a medium-term international student’s
travel. Practically, this study informs (1) educational
institutions about key destinations attributes impor-
tant for attracting Erasmus+ mobility students and
(2) destination marketing organisations and tourism
providers about how to personalise typical tourism
services and infrastructure as well as how to com-
municate leisure travel opportunities to the Erasmus+
student travel segment.
The manuscript continues by explaining the speci-
fics of the Erasmus+ student mobility and drivers of
students’ travel behaviour. We then proceed by ex-
plaining the methodology of the empirical research
and data analysis. The manuscript concludes with the
discussion and key recommendations on how tourism
36 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
industry and educational institutions can benefit by
catering to the Erasmus+ student travel segment.
Drivers of Students’ Mobility and Tourist
Behaviour
Formal and informal learning are recognized as im-
portant behaviour drivers for young travellers, in-
cluding students (unwto, 2008; 2016), who typically
travel for more than 24 hours but less than one year,
for the purpose of education. During such travels, stu-
dents engage in different forms of tourism, for exam-
ple volunteering, work and travel, cultural exchange,
sports and adrenaline tourism; however, education re-
mains their main motive (Moisa, 2010). More specif-
ically, students can choose between various forms
of educational tourism, such as study mobility ex-
changes, excursions, international research projects
and international internships (van ’t Klooster et al.,
2008). Studying abroad has become an important per-
sonal investment as it brings an important competi-
tive advantage once students enter the labour market
(Moreira & Gomes, 2019). Additionally, international
students represent an important source of income for
host destinations with everyday living expenses con-
tributing to the local economy (oecd, 2017; Amaro et
al., 2019).
Different reasons drive students’ decisions for stu-
dy mobility; the prevailing ones are improving em-
ployment opportunities, access to higher quality of
education, learning about culture, improving foreign
language skills and ensuring higher economic or so-
cial status in the future (Abubakar et al., 2014; Mor-
eira & Gomez, 2019). Several authors (for example,
Ajanovic et al., 2016; Sova, 2017; Stone & Petrick 2013;
Vossensteyn et al., 2010) conceptualise students’ mo-
bility motives as personal and professional skills de-
velopment, career opportunities, leisure, relaxation
and other drivers. Juvan and Lesjak (2011) report that
Slovenian student outgoing mobility is driven by a de-
sire to gain international experience, a change of ev-
eryday environment, interesting study programmes
offered by the host universities, improvement of lan-
guage skills, recommendations from friends, and by
the Erasmus grant. In general, international Erasmus
travel is driven by the desire to experience something
new, personal growth, to have fun and relax, visiting
new places, learning about different cultures, meet-
ing new people, spending a semester abroad, improv-
ing foreign language skills, experience a different ed-
ucation system, improve academic knowledge and in-
crease job opportunities (Lesjak et al., 2015; Heung &
Leong, 2006; Kim, 2007).
Students consider a number of university and des-
tination related attributes whenmaking their mobility
choices, for example welcoming attitudes of the local
population, tuition fees and scholarships, security and
quality of life in the host country, political instabil-
ity in the home country, access to visas and proximity
to the homeland (Juvan & Lesjak, 2011; Abubakar et
al., 2014). When choosing their mobility destination,
students also look at the non-academic attributes of
their host country. More specifically those perceived
destination attributes are connected to rich natural
attractions, safety and security, novelty, rich culture
and history, a large number of different events, a high
standard of living, nightlife, accessibility and others
(Lesjak et al., 2015; Buffa, 2015). During their study,
mobility students travel within and outside their host
country and typically consider fun, costs and safety at-
tributes of the tourism products and services (Vukić et
al., 2015; Pavlič & Koderman, 2014) as the key drivers
of choices. North American and European students
typically stay in cheaper forms of accommodation,
while Chinese and Indian students opt more for tra-
ditional accommodations, such as hotels or motels
(Michael et al., 2004).
Tourist behaviour typically involves tourists’ choi-
ces of destination, accommodation infrastructure, and
destination activities as well as booking tools. Be-
sides that, tourists seek tourism services that make
them feel at ease and relaxed (Gorenak et al., 2019).
These choices greatly depend on the travel budget.
Students, and in particular Erasmus+ students, pursue
their tourist travel through the Erasmus+ exchange
mobility system which supports students in evaluat-
ing tourist-related alternatives (one example of such
support is the Erasmus+ grant, which financially sup-
ports students’ travel-related choices). Students are a
heterogeneous travel market, yet with some common
characteristics (Richards &Wilson, 2003). Prior stud-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 37
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
ies (Table 1) provide a wide range of, yet inconclusive,
knowledge about how to attract and cater to the inter-
national Erasmus+ students travel market.
Based on the existing literature, it can be con-
cluded that a number of easily identifiable character-
istics of student travellers affect students’ travel be-
haviour. More specifically, age (Hsu & Sung, 1997;
Kim & Jogaratnam, 2003; Michael et al., 2004; Payne,
2009; Shoham et al., 2004; Varasteh et al., 2015), gen-
der (Shoham et al., 2004; Kim & Jogaratnam, 2003)
and the level of study degree (Glover, 2011; Shoham
et al., 2004; Payne, 2009; Varasteh et al., 2015). These
characteristics typically drive the choices of accom-
modation (Michael et al., 2004; Kim & Jogaratnam,
2003; Shoham et al., 2004) or influence travel motives
and students’ expenditure during the mobility (Payne,
2009; Varasteh et al., 2015). Marital status, national-
ity and sources of income affect travel preferences
of international postgraduate students in Malaysia
(Varasteh et al., 2015).
Student Mobility: Erasmus+ Programme
Student mobility is a form of educational mobility
aimed at supporting enriching formal education by
travelling to a foreign country and university. It en-
ables students to grow professionally and personally,
but also provides them with opportunities for leisure
travel and escape from everyday life (Lesjak et al.,
2015). Erasmus+ is a successor of the Erasmus pro-
gramme (founded in 1987) for the period 2014–2020,
which promotes education, training and sports in all
sectors of a lifelong learning programme (European
Commission, 2017). It was developed to provide easy
access to a quality educational andmulticultural expe-
rience for knowledge seekers and to modernise edu-
cation, training and sport for youth across the Europe.
It (1) offers a unique global educational experience
catered to students seeking atypical ways of complet-
ing their formal education, at various levels of degree,
(2) aims at increasing a sense of global citizenship
in each participant, and (3) provides students with
the opportunity to experience novel educational ap-
proaches for studying an already-chosen professional
discipline. The Erasmus+ programme’s aim is also to
help develop a highly-skilled labour force, improving
students’ capabilities and skills and enhancing the Eu-
ropean status of a knowledge-based economy (Gon-
zalez et al., 2011). Since its foundation, the Erasmus
programme has supported educational travel for over
9 million individuals, of which over 5 million were
students (European Commission, 2017).
In Slovenia, Erasmus+ and other student mobil-
ity programmes are managed by cmepius (Center
rs for Mobility and European Education and Train-
ing Programs) and movit, the two national agencies
responsible for the implementation of the program in
the period 2014. Table 2 demonstrates numbers of in-
coming and outgoing Erasmus+ students in Slovenia
in the last decade. From the table it can be seen that
the number of incoming students has more than dou-
bled, while the number of outgoing students has risen
by 30 from 2007 to 2017.
Methodology
The present study investigates tourist behaviour (des-
tination choice, accommodation choice, travel expen-
diture, transport choices, booking behaviour and per-
ceived importance of destinations’ attributes) of Eras-
mus+ students in Slovenia. A web survey was sent to
all Erasmus+ enrolling students in the 2016/17 aca-
demic year, both to incoming and outgoing Erasmus+
students. The survey questionnaire was developed to
measure tourist behaviour of Erasmus+ tourists. The
survey questionnaire was developed in the English
language and administered via the online survey tool
1ka. Prior to finalizing the instrument, questions and
items were reviewed and discussed by a pilot group
of 40 Erasmus+ students in order to justify and val-
idate the items and to amend the wording so as to
ensure the reliability and understanding of the queries
and answer options for the Erasmus+ students’ differ-
ent levels of English language skills. As a result of this
process, some unreliable statements were rephrased
or excluded from the final version of the question-
naire. Questions used closed type binary and single
or multi category answer options. The total popula-
tion involved approximately 2500 Erasmus+ students
from three major Slovenian universities (University of
Ljubljana (uni lju), University of Maribor (uni mb)
and University of Primorska (up)). The final sample
38 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 1 A Brief Bibliographic Study about Students’ Tourism Behaviour and Its Drivers
Reference () () () () () () ()
Gardiner et
al. ()
qual,
quan
International
students studying
in Australia (N =
)
Australia Hostel ()
Holiday app ()
Hotels & Motels ()
Camps ()
– au  –
Varasteh et al.
()
quan Malaysian stu-
dents (N = )
Malaysia – – – Touring
Attending events
Sports
Recreation
Resting
Lantai & Mei,
X. Y. ()
qual Mainland Chi-
nese international
students (N = )
Norway Homestays
Airbnb
Hostels
– – –
Michael et al.
()
quan International
students studying
in Melbourne (N
= )
Australia – – a  Sightseeing (nat-
ural, manmade
attractions)
Shopping
Monteiro
& Pereira
()
qual Erasmus students
(N = )
Portugal Youth hostel ()
Hotel (.)
Housing with families
(.)
– – –
Glover () qual Domestic & In-
ternational stud.
(N = )
Australia Friends & Relatives
(.)
Backpacking (.)
– –
Payne () quan International stu-
dents on holidays
(N = )
New
Zealand
Backpacking & Hostel
(.)
Family & Friends
(.)
– nz
.–
.
Eating out (.)
Beaches (.)
Shopping (.)
Shoham et al.
()
quan Students (N =
)
usa,
South
Africa &
Israel
Hotels
Friends/family
b&b
Camps
Hotels
– – Entertainment
Sport
Culture
Nature
Weaver
()
quan International
students (Hong
Kong, India, In-
donesia, Japan,
and Singapore)
(N = )
Within
Australia
Motel ()
Hotel ()
Private home ()
Hostel ()
b&b, guesthouse ()
Camping ().
Package
tours
– Sightseeing
Recreation
Socialising
Xu et al.
()
quan Students from the
uk (N = ) and
China (N = )
uk &
China
Hostels
Self-catering
– – Outdoor
Sightseeing
Shopping
Entertainment
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) methodology, (2) respondents, (3) destination, (4) accommodation, (5) booking
tool, (6) expenditure, (7) activities.
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 39
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 2 Number of Incoming and Outgoing Erasmus+ Students 2007–2017, for Slovenia
Year            Total
Incoming            
Outgoing            
Notes Based on data from cmepius (http://statistike.cmepius.si).
included 546 valid responses. In December 2017, re-
searchers contacted the three Erasmus+ coordinators
at the Slovenian universities with the request to send a
survey invitation via email with the link to all their in-
coming and outgoing Erasmus+ students in academic
year 2016/2017.
Building on existing youth travel, and specifically
students’ travel-related literature, the surveymeasured
typical tourist choices of Erasmus+ students. More
specifically, students were asked if they took any trip
during theirmobility (dichotomous variable; Yes, No),
where they took the trip (nominal variable; domestic,
international or domestic and international destina-
tion), where they typically stayed during their trip
(nominal variable; hotel, motel, bed and breakfast,
holiday apartment/holiday house/holiday cabin, pri-
vate room, camping site, youth hostel/backpacker, hol-
iday home owned by my family, other), how they typi-
cally booked their accommodation (nominal variable;
couch surfing, AirBnB, online travel agent, walk-in
travel agent, friends and relatives, directly with the
provider, other), how much they spent on average per
trip (ordinal variable; up to 310 €, between 311 and 620
€, more than 621 €), how they typically travelled to
their destination (nominal variable; by air, by sea, by
coach/bus, by car, by train, by motorbike, by bike) and
how they typically booked their transportation (nom-
inal variable; online travel agent, walk-in travel agent,
other). Students were asked about the importance of
destination attributes (interval variable; 1 meaning the
attribute is not important at all, 5 meaning the motive
is very important) in their choice of a travel destina-
tion. The following research hypotheses were built:
hypothesis 1 The gender and the type of study
degree influence the tourist behaviour of the in-
terviewed erasmus+ students.
hypothesis 2 The gender and the type of study
degree influence the importance of the destina-
tion attributes for the interviewed erasmus+
students.
Frequency distributions were used to analyse Eras-
mus+ students’ tourist behaviour. Chi square tests
were used to infer relationships between tourist be-
haviour and socio-demographic characteristics (gen-
der and type of degree) of students. Kramer’s V test
was used to indicate the strength of the association
between the variables (Field, 2013). Given the use of
the chi-square test, only responses with N = 30 (the
assumption of at least 5 units in each cell is needed
in order for the test to be valid, thus, having at least
6 cells in each analysis, 30 units is the minimum as-
sumption) or above on a single response option were
included in statistical analysis to limit the effect of
sample size (McHugh, 2013). A t-test was employed
to infer differences between destination attributes and
socio-demographic variables.
Results
72 of the interviewed students were female, the rest
were male students. 47.8 of participating students
were undergraduate, while 52.2 of them were post-
graduate (master or doctoral) students.More than half
(51.6) of the surveyed students were incoming and
48.4 were outgoing students. The participating stu-
dents’ average age was just short of 24 years. When
testing the associations between the gender and the
degree of study (using the chi-square test) no statisti-
cal differences at the 0.05 level were found (χ2 = 0.119,
p= 0.730). Table 3 demonstrates that Erasmus+mobil-
ity students actively engage in travelling during their
student mobility.
Students’ Travel Behaviour and Its Drivers
The following section demonstrates the existing statis-
tically significant differences between students’ tourist
40 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 3 Erasmus+ Students Travel Behaviour
Question Answer f f
Do Erasmus+ students make
leisure related travel?
Yes  .
No  .
Where Erasmus+ students travel? Only within Erasmus+ country  .
Only outside Erasmus+ country  .
Both, within and outside Erasmus+ country  .
Where Erasmus+ students stay? Hotel, motel, bed & breakfast  .
Holiday apartment/holiday house/holiday cabin, private room/Airbnb  .
Camping site  .
Youth hostel/backpacker  .
Holiday home owned by my family or friends/couch surfing  .
How Erasmus+ students book
their accommodation?
Couch surfing  .
Airbnb  .
Online travel agent  .
Friends and relatives  .
How much Erasmus+ students
spend per trip?
Up to    .
Between   and    .
  and above  .
How Erasmus+ students travel
to the trip destination?
By air (e.g. airplane, helicopter, etc.)  .
By sea (e.g. ship, boat, etc.)  .
By coach/bus  .
By car  .
By train  .
By bike  .
How Erasmus+ student book
their transportation for trips?
Online travel agents/sites  .
Walk-in travel agents  .
Other  .
behaviour and their demographics. Table 4 demon-
strates significant association between gender, type of
degree and typical students’ travel-related behaviour
(detailed outputs are available in Tables 5 and 6).
A significantly higher number of the interviewed
male students reported staying in hotels and simi-
lar establishments (26.7) as well as in private types
of dwellings (e.g. apartments, holiday houses; 26.7)
compared to the interviewed female students (13.8
of the interviewed female students reported staying
in hotels, motels or bed and breakfast; 22.3 of them
stayed in private accommodation). On the other hand,
a significantly higher number of the interviewed fe-
male students reported staying in dwellings typical for
young travellers (e.g. youth hostels; 64) compared
to the interviewed male Erasmus+ students (46.7).
As a means of transportation to the destination, a sig-
nificantly higher proportion of the interviewed male
students reported using cars (42.4) compared to
the interviewed female students (28.6), while the
higher proportion of the interviewed female students
reported using coaches or buses (36.8) compared
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 41
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 4 Students’ Tourist Behaviour by Gender and Type of Study Degree
Behaviour/choices Gender Degree of study
χ2 p Cramer V χ2 p Cramer V
Accommodation . . . . . .
Destination . . . . . .
Booking the accommodation . . . . . .
Expenditure . . . . . .
Transportation . . . . . .
Booking the transportation . . . . . .
Table 5 Students’ Tourist Behaviour by Gender
Item Behaviour/choices Percentage Test
Male Female χ2 p Cramer V
Destination Domestic . . . . .
Domestic and international . .
Accommodation Hotel, motel, bed & breakfast . . . . .
Holiday apartment* . .
Youth hostel/backpacker . .
Booking the accommodation AirBnB . . . . .
Online travel agent . .
Friends and relatives . .
Expenditure Up to  . . . . .
From  to  . .
 and above . .
Transportation By air . . . . .
By coach/bus . .
By car . .
By train . .
Booking the transportation Online travel agent . . . . .
Walk-in travel agent . .
Other . .
Notes * Or holiday house, holiday cabin, private room or AirBnB.
to the interviewed male students (21.2). No statis-
tically significant associations exist between gender
and other investigated forms of travel behaviour (e.g.
destination choice, booking the accommodation, type
of transportation and expenditure).
The type of study degree appears to be significantly
associated only with the trip expenditure of Erasmus+
students and the choice of transportation to the des-
tination. A significantly higher proportion of the in-
terviewed undergraduate students, compared to the
interviewed postgraduate students, reported spend-
ing 610 eur or more. 70 of the interviewed under-
42 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 6 Students’ Tourist Behaviour by the Type of Study Degree
Item Behaviour/choices Percentage Test
() () χ2 p Cramer V
Destination Domestic . . . . .
Domestic and international . .
Accommodaton Hotel, motel, bed & breakfast . . . . .
Holiday apartment* . .
Youth hostel/backpacker . .
Booking the accommodation Airbnb . . . . .
Online travel agent . .
Friends and relatives . .
Expenditure Up to  . . . . .
From  to  . .
 and above . .
Transportation By air . . . . .
By coach/bus . .
By car . .
By train . .
Booking the transportation Online travel agent . . . . .
Walk-in travel agent . .
Other . .
Notes * Or holiday house, holiday cabin, private room or AirBnB; (1) undergraduate, (2) postgraduate.
graduate students spent more than 310 eur per trip,
while just 10 less interviewed postgraduate students
reported similar expenditure per trip.
Statistically significant differences exist between
the level of studies and the choice of transportation
to the destination. More specifically, a significantly
higher proportion of the interviewed undergraduate
students reported using air transportation and cars
to reach their travel destination. In contrast, a sig-
nificantly higher proportion of the interviewed post-
graduate students reported using coaches or buses and
trains.
Empirical evidence shows no significant associa-
tions between the type of degree and other measured
forms of the Erasmus+ students’ tourist behaviour.
Results partially support Hypothesis 1. The gender
of the interviewed students statistically significant in-
fluences only the choice of the destination and the type
of the transportation at the destination, while the de-
gree of study statistically significant influences the to-
tal expenditure at the destination and the type of trans-
portation at the destination.
Destination Attributes and its Drivers
The following section reports the association of per-
ceived importance of destination attributes with the
gender and the type of the degree (see Tables 8 and
9 for detailed outputs). The most important desti-
nation attributes overall (Table 7) are the natural (m
= 4.18) and cultural (m = 4.14) attractions and sites.
Other important attributes for choosing the destina-
tion are safety and security (m = 3.84), cheap to visit
(m = 3.76), easily accessible (m = 3.68) and cheap to
live in (m = 3.57). Attributes less important to the stu-
dents are the destination’s popularity (m = 2.57), high
living standard (m = 2.61) and familiar lifestyle (m =
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 43
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 7 Perceived Destination Attributes by Gender and Type of Study Degree
Item Gender Degree of study
t sig. t sig.
Destination is very popular . . . .
Destination offers cultural attractions and sites –. . –. .
Destination offers events . . . .
Destination is cheap to visit . . . .
Destination is yet to be discovered by tourists –. . . .
Destination is easy accessible –. . . .
Destination is safe and secure –. . . .
Destination offers interesting night life . . . .
At destination they speak language which I know . . –. .
Destination is sustainably oriented –. . . .
Destination has high living standard . . –. .
Destination is cheap to live in . . . .
Destination offers a lifestyle which I am familiar with . . –. .
2.68). In almost all cases of the variable destination
attributes the skewness and kurtosis statistics show a
distribution similar to the normal one (in the interval
±). Responses on the importance of ‘destination offers
natural attractions and sites’ suggest distribution that
is not close to a normal one (kurtosis = 2.319); hence
we decided to omit this attribute from further statisti-
cal analysis.
Four of the measured 13 destination attributes are
significantly different by gender. More specifically,
the interviewed female students placed significantly
higher importance on cultural attractions (m = 4.21, p
= 0.01), ease of access (m = 3.74, p = 0.02), and safety
and security (m = 3.90, p = 0.04) than the interviewed
male students. However, the interviewed male stu-
dents placed significantly higher importance on in-
teresting nightlife (m = 3.18, p = 0.03) than the inter-
viewed female students. The gender of the interviewed
students does not significantly affect other measured
destination attributes.
Only two destination attributes appear to be signif-
icantly different by the type of the study degree. The
interviewed bachelor Erasmus+ students placed sig-
nificantly higher importance on destinations’ interest-
ing nightlife (m = 3.22, p = 0.001) but the interviewed
masters and PhD students placed significantly higher
importance on familiar lifestyle (m = 2.77, p = 0.047).
No other significant differences exist between the type
of degree and the perceived importance of the desti-
nation’s attributes.
Hypothesis 2 claims that the gender and the de-
gree of study of the interviewed students influence
the perceived importance of destination attributes.
Results just partially support the stated hypothesis.
The gender of the interviewed students statistically
significant influences some of the above-mentioned
perceived importance of destination attributes, such
as the fact that the destination offers cultural attrac-
tions and sites, that the destination is easy accessible,
that it is safe and secure and that it offers an interesting
nightlife. The degree of study of the interviewed stu-
dents statistically significant influences the perceived
importance of destination attribute that the destina-
tion offers an interesting nightlife and that the desti-
nation offers a lifestyle they are familiar with.
Discussion
Erasmus+ students generate an important share of the
international tourist market, and studying abroad ap-
pears among the top travel motives of the younger
44 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 8 Associations between Destinations Attributes and Gender
Item Gender N Mean t sig.
Destination is very popular Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination offers cultural attractions and sites Male  . –. .
Female  .
Destination offers events Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination is cheap to visit Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination is yet to be discovered by tourists Male  . –. .
Female  .
Destination is easy accessible Male  . –. .
Female  .
Destination is safe and secure Male  . –. .
Female  .
Destination offers interesting night life Male  . . .
Female  .
At destination they speak language which I know Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination is sustainably oriented Male  . –. .
Female  .
Destination has high living standard Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination is cheap to live in Male  . . .
Female  .
Destination offers a lifestyle which I am familiar with Male  . . .
Female  .
generation. Youth travel (both study and educational
travel) is becoming a stable ongoing industry, con-
tributing over 20 of international travel flow, which
is equal to 207 million arrivals and $194 billion ex-
penditure in the year 2012 (see http://www.student-
market.com/youth-travel). The number of interna-
tional trips of young people based on the unwto
forecast might increase to almost 370 million by 2020
for a total expenditure of over 400 billion dollars
(Global Report on The Power of Youth Travel, 2016).
Consequently, it is deemed relevant to investigate Eras-
mus+ students’ tourist behaviour and infer factors sig-
nificantly associated with typical tourist behaviour.
The present study empirically supports that Eras-
mus+ students are an active and large travelling seg-
ment, with over 90 of respondents reporting trav-
elling during their mobility. The travel industry sec-
tor sells most of its products and services via the in-
ternet (Abou-Shouk et al., 2013) and millennials are
the first generation born to be living continuously
with various technology options every day. There-
fore, they could be described as e-travellers who are
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 45
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
Table 9 Associations between Destinations Attributes and Type of Study Degree
Item Level of degree N Mean t sig.
Destination is very popular ()  . . .
()  .
Destination offers cultural attractions and sites ()  . –. .
()  .
Destination offers events ()  . . .
()  .
Destination is cheap to visit ()  . . .
()  .
Destination is yet to be discovered by tourists ()  . . .
()  .
Destination is easy accessible ()  . . .
()  .
Destination is safe and secure ()  . . .
()  .
Destination offers interesting night life ()  . . .
()  .
At destination they speak language which I know ()  . –. .
()  .
Destination is sustainably oriented ()  . . .
()  .
Destination has high living standard ()  . –. .
()  .
Destination is cheap to live in ()  . . .
()  .
Destination offers a lifestyle which I am familiar with ()  . –. .
()  .
Notes (1) Bachelor degree, (2) Master/PhD/doctoral degree.
constantly connected to the internet via their gad-
gets (smart phones, tablets, etc.) either searching for
travel information or booking holidays (Huang & Pet-
rick, 2010). Travelling Erasmus+ students are exten-
sive users of e-tourism infrastructure, both to inform
and purchase travel services. About 40 of respon-
dents book their accommodation through an online
travel agency and 36.8 of respondents book accom-
modation using the Airbnb p2p platform. Erasmus+
students’ travel choices significantly depend on gen-
der and type of the degree, making these attributes
the most suitable for identifying and targeting Eras-
mus travellers with personalised tourism offerings.
More specifically, the choices of accommodation de-
pend solely on gender, but transportation choices de-
pend on the gender and the type of degree. In ad-
dition, the type of the degree demonstrates signifi-
cant association with the student’s destination-based
travel expenditure. More specifically, the interviewed
female Erasmus+ students are more likely to stay in
46 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
youth hostels, backpackers, family homes and with
friends and relatives. However, the interviewed male
Erasmus+ students prefer traditional commercial ac-
commodation dwellings such as hotels, motels, bed
and breakfast, and private rooms. These findings sug-
gest that universities as well as destinations’ market-
ing organisations should work together in developing
and promoting gender-customized accommodation
infrastructure and their promotion as well as distribu-
tion channels. For example, they could promote and
provide typical tourism accommodation to male stu-
dents, but low-budget types of dwellings for female
students.
Moreover, undergraduate students appear to be
more lucrative to the tourism industry than their grad-
uate counterparts are; the latter segment has signif-
icantly fewer students spending over 610 Eur. Every
Erasmus+ student receives a living allowance for their
stay in a foreign country; however, it may be that
undergraduate students receive higher financial sup-
port from their parents as they predominantly de-
pend on them (Souto-Otero, 2008). The Erasmus+ al-
lowance and their parents’ financial support improve
undergraduate disposable income, which students can
use for tourism purposes. In addition, graduate stu-
dents predominantly seek fulfilment of professional
rather than personal goals, and thus have lower de-
sire for leisure travel (Brooks & Waters, 2009), which
may result in lower spending for vacations. The find-
ings about expenditure usefully contribute to exist-
ing knowledge about students’ travel expenditure and
more specifically, our findings suggest that Erasmus+
students may be better spenders than other types of
international students (for example, Payne, 2009; Gar-
diner et al., 2013).
Destination attributes play an important role in
leisure travel, as they represent characteristics of tourist
places that tourists find most important when mak-
ing travel-related decisions; yet, tourist segments differ
in the perceived importance of destination attributes
(Um & Crompton, 1992; Meng & Uysal, 2008). Un-
derstanding what Erasmus+ travellers find important
at the destination and how this importance depends
on students’ personal characteristics allows destina-
tion marketing organisations as well as universities
to develop and communicate relevant destination at-
tributes. Overall, Erasmus+ travellers find cultural and
natural attractions as well as safety to be the most im-
portant attributes of their chosen destinations. These
attributes are followed by costs of visiting and living;
thus rounding up themost typical attributes important
to the mainstream travel market (Um & Crompton,
1992). Familiar lifestyle, living standard and familiar
langue seem to have less importance when evaluating
destination alternatives.
The perceived importance for someof the attributes
changes between gender and the type of degree; hence
suggesting different approaches when targeting stu-
dents of different gender and type of degree. More
specifically, having cultural attractions and sitesmakes
a destination significantly more attractive to female,
than to male students. Compared to male students,
female students place significantly higher importance
on destination transport accessibility and to the level
of safety and security. In contrast, male students rate
interesting nightlife opportunities significantly higher
than female students. Looking at gender, a typical fe-
male Erasmus+ student prefers a destination that is
easily accessible, is safe and has attractive cultural sites
and attractions. A typical male Erasmus+ student pre-
dominantly seeks destinations with attractive nightlife
opportunities.
Two research hypotheses were tested in this pa-
per. The first one states that the gender and the de-
gree of study of the interviewed students influences
the students’ travel behaviour. Results just partially
support the above-mentioned research hypotheses.
More interviewed male students reported staying in
hotels and similar establishments (26.7) as well as
in private types of dwellings (e.g. apartments, holiday
houses; 26.7), while a higher number of the inter-
viewed female students reported staying in dwellings
typical for young travellers (e.g. youth hostels; 64).
A higher proportion of the interviewed male students
reported using cars (42.4), while a higher propor-
tion of the interviewed female students reported using
coaches or buses (36.8). A higher proportion of the
interviewed undergraduate students, compared to the
interviewed postgraduate students, reported spend-
ing 610 eur or more. 70 of the interviewed under-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 47
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan, and Eva Podovšovnik Erasmus+ Mobility
graduate students spent more than 310 eur per trip,
while just 10 less interviewed postgraduate students
reported similar expenditure per trip. A higher pro-
portion of the interviewed undergraduate students
reported using air transportation and cars to reach
their travel destination, while a higher proportion of
the interviewed postgraduate students reported using
coaches or buses and trains. Hypothesis 2 claims that
the gender and the degree of study of the interviewed
students influences their perception of the destina-
tion attributes. The research hypothesis can be just
partially supported by the results. The interviewed fe-
male students placed significantly higher importance
on cultural attractions (m = 4.21, p = 0.01), ease of
access (m = 3.74, p = 0.02), safety and security (m =
3.90, p = 0.04) than the interviewed male students.
However, the interviewedmale students placed signif-
icantly higher importance on interesting nightlife (m
= 3.18, p = 0.03) than the interviewed female students.
The interviewed bachelor Erasmus+ students placed
significantly higher importance on destinations’ in-
teresting nightlife (m = 3.22, p = 0.001) but the inter-
viewed masters and PhD students placed significantly
higher importance on familiar lifestyle (m = 2.77, p =
0.047).
Conclusions
Educational tourism is one of the fastest-growing
forms of tourism and has become a multimillion-
dollar industry (Payne, 2009); however, the tourism
professionals and destination organisation marketers
too often overlook it. Erasmus+ travellers, especially
students, engage in tourism while on their mobility
and they need personalised infrastructure and re-
sources for successful engagement in tourism. This
requires that the tourism industry collaborates with
various educational institutions to understand stu-
dents’ needs, their capabilities and tourism-related be-
haviour. Thus, universities are an important player for
destination-based tourism, because they provide the
tourism demand. Even more, it appears that knowl-
edge provision is no longer the most important com-
petitive product of universities (Juvan & Lesjak, 2011)
and that universities must collaborate with providers
of other attributes within their places (for example,
cultural attractions or interesting nightlife). This calls
for increased collaboration between universities, as
knowledge providers, and destination marketing or-
ganisations, as tourist opportunity providers.
Two key conclusions derive from the present re-
search. First, the Erasmus+ travel market is growing
and is distinct from the mainstream travel market and
second, at least gender and level of degree make the
Erasmus+ travel market heterogenic. The first conclu-
sion points to the need for the travel industry and uni-
versities to collaborate in marketing destinations and
universities. The second conclusion suggests a per-
sonalised destination marketing mix when catering
to travel planning and destination-based behaviour
of Erasmus+ students. In addition, the study offers an
important insight for the future research on Erasmus+
students. While educational aspects of Erasmus+ stu-
dents’ mobility are well covered in scientific literature,
a lack of empirical evidence about Erasmus+ students’
travel behaviour exists. The present study extends
our empirically-derived knowledge on Erasmus+ stu-
dents’ typical tourism behaviour and characteristics
of the Erasmus+ travel market that warrant distinc-
tive tourism development and promotion approaches
when catering to Erasmus+ travellers.
The key limitation of the study lies in the geo-
graphic dimension of the study sample. Conclusions
that could be more generalisable would require a ge-
ographically more diverse and representative sample
of Erasmus+ students. Thus, we recommend expand-
ing the research to all countries participating in the
Erasmus+ programme. Further, we advocate more re-
search focused on the leisure travel aspects of Eras-
mus+ mobility, not only direct travel by the Erasmus+
mobility students, but also the travel behaviour of in-
dividuals socialisingwith Erasmus+mobility students.
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50 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Original Scientific Article
Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
Barbara Pavlakovič
Faculty of Tourism, University of Maribor, Slovenia
barbara.pavlakovic@um.si
Eva Jereb
Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor, Slovenia
eva.jereb@um.si
Industrial tourism, as a specific type of tourism, emerged over a century ago but was
not studied widely until recently. However, most of the current research is focused
either on heritage industrial tourism or on several aspects, such as visitor charac-
teristics, relation to the local economy, and similar. This paper attempts to highlight
the human resources aspect of industrial tourism in different organisations.Our pri-
mary research methods were observation with participation (joining factory tours)
and semi-structured interviewswith company representatives.We define various ex-
isting categories of industrial tourism human resourcesmodels of organisations that
carry out industrial tourism, the necessary competences for the workplace, and the
methods of educating industrial tourism employees. Based on the gathered results,
we propose some guidelines for companies to follow in forming their products of
industrial tourism.
Keywords: hr, competence, education, industrial tourism, hr model
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.51-65
Introduction
Human resources are the basis of an organisation’s ac-
tivities, since the organisation does not exist without
them. One of the most critical aspects of hr manage-
ment is the concern for the development of employee
knowledge, that is, the implementation of education
and training. With this, the organisation ensures con-
tinuous development and progress and maintains and
strengthens its value on the market (Armstrong, 2012;
Bratton & Gold, 2012). Education and training take
place in various forms and are adjusted to the posi-
tion of an employee within the organisation, to his/her
previous knowledge and abilities. Here we encounter
another essential aspect of hr management. Employ-
eesmust have the appropriate competences to perform
the work efficiently and effectively (Svetlik, 2005). The
task of the supervisor is to recognise the capabilities of
employees and, firstly, to place them in a specific po-
sition, and then to ensure that these competences are
further upgraded in the process of education or train-
ing.
In this research, we focused on the study of the nec-
essary competences and the practice of developing the
knowledge of employees in companies that carry out
industrial tourism. Industrial tourism, as a particular
tourist product, is distinct from the production pro-
cess itself and, as such, does not provide added value in
the creation of a factory’s primary product. However,
with a thoughtful strategy, the product of industrial
tourism can become a powerful marketing tool and,
at a very developed stage, it can be a new product of
an organisation that can be marketed independently.
Employees involved in the implementation of indus-
trial tourism become the first representative of the or-
ganisation, before visitors and potential buyers of the
company’s primary product. Therefore, they must be
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 51
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
properly selected, have the appropriate competences,
and take care of the development of their knowledge.
The purpose of the research was to present a hu-
man resourcesmodel for industrial tourism. To achie-
ve this purpose, several research objectives were devel-
oped. First, we wanted to define the types of employ-
ees that carry out industrial tourism. We were inter-
ested in whether there are any differences between the
companies engaged in industrial tourism. The second
objective was to identify competences that are neces-
sary for the implementation of industrial tourism. The
third objective was to outline the modes of the educa-
tion of industrial tourism employees.’ In the research,
we examined how Slovenian companies carry out in-
dustrial tourism and how they take care of the person-
nel involved in this product.
Literature Review
Industrial Tourism
The concept of industrial tourism can be defined as
a type of tourism that includes visits to operating
companies and industrial heritage sites. Visitors can
taste edible products, view production processes, try
out interactive applications, and experience histori-
cal insights into the company (Otgaar et al., 2010;
Rodríguez-Zulaica, 2017). According to Ifko (2010)
and Vargas-Sánchez et al. (2014), industrial tourism
can be considered to be a viewing of industrial heritage
or operating processes, although it is not necessarily
considered as a type of tourism but as a marketing
activity (Chow et al., 2016; Otgaar, 2012). There is ev-
idence that tourists have been visiting companies for
over a hundred years (Frew, 2000; Page & Connell,
2014). For example, in France, they visited vineyards
and chocolate factories, in the United States whiskey
distilleries, and elsewhere in the world anything from
tobacco factories tomines and stock exchanges. In this
regard, industrial tourism is perceived as a tourist at-
traction; such attractions (Edelheim, 2015) are a strong
motivator for travel and can be divided into several
groups, including cultural attractions, natural sights,
events, recreation and entertainment; they can also
be categorised as being natural or manmade (Goeld-
ner & Ritchie, 2003; Holloway & Humphreys, 2016).
Industrial tourism can be placed in the category of
cultural sites and is a form of cultural tourism (Ya-
mashita, 2014). Cultural tourism places particular em-
phasis on education and entertainment components
(Frank Orel & Medarić, 2018) and industrial tourism
offers precisely that: education about industry and en-
tertainment while observing production processes or
participating in interactive displays.
As a form of cultural tourism, industrial tourism is
an important factor in European countries, especially
for those with long industrial traditions, such as Great
Britain, Spain or Germany. However, more and more
central and east European countries are recognising
the benefits of industrial tourism, since they also built
their economy on different industries and are nowa-
days still strongly dependent on them. For example,
the Czech Republic and its town Ostrava are build-
ing their tourism on industrial tourism (Kajzar & Vá-
clavínková, 2016). However, other countries with rich
industrial heritage still lack further industrial tourism
development; for example, Hungary only has heritage
industrial tourism (Boros et al., 2013), and Croatia has
some initiatives about power plant and mining visits
(Gržinić et al., 2009). Industrial tourism and its offer
of factory tours and visits to industrial heritage sites
is also present in Slovenia. However, the local scien-
tific research is primarily focused on industrial her-
itage (e.g., mines) (Ifko, 2010).
Meanwhile, industrial tourism can be an appropri-
ate alternative to the existing tourism services, since in
Slovenia and abroad there are many operating plants,
well-organised companies with innovative business
processes, and interesting service activities that tour-
ists would visit. Thus, industrial tourism becomes a
critical socio-economic phenomenon for which in-
terest is growing. As stated by Xie (2006) and Mac-
Cannell (2013), one of the reasons for the popular-
ity of industrial tourism is that society is in the de-
industrialisation phase in which we are beginning
to forget the traditional methods of production and
are more involved in the service industry. By view-
ing traditional production processes, we nostalgically
look upon our technical heritage and regain forgotten
knowledge.
Since industrial tourism is a relatively less explored
field of tourism, education in this area is particularly
52 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
important. Organisations need to provide suitable
and qualified personnel for implementing industrial
tourism. Training at work and continuous improve-
ments are particularly important for maintaining the
competitiveness of the organisation (Salas & Cannon-
Bowers, 2001; Rakowska, 2014; Bratton & Gold, 2012).
There are several essential points in performing indus-
trial tourism that relate to the skills and knowledge of
employees. First, as stated byOtgaar et al. (2010), there
are numerous contact points of employees with visi-
tors. The company must provide an appropriate and
qualified guide that will lead the group around the
company and present the operation of the organisa-
tion (Marsh, 2008). Furthermore, the company must
also arrange the contact points of visitors with em-
ployees within the regular working process. In doing
so, viewing should not interfere with the work pro-
cess, and employees should not feel pressured by the
visitors (Otgaar, 2010). There are also positive effects
of such tourist visits, since employees are much more
motivated, productive, and proud of their work in the
presence of the public.
Human Resources and the Tourism Sector
Employees are one of the basic pillars of the organisa-
tion, since the success and the survival of it depends
on their performance. This is particularly so in the
tourism sector, which is a service activity and is based
on the interaction of employees with tourists (Madera
et al., 2017). Employees are defined as human resources
or people who in any form participate in an organised
form of human work and, therefore, work in an eco-
nomic, political, sports, or similar organisation (Flor-
jančič et al., 2004). They are also presented as work
force that can be regarded as macro-meso-micro con-
ceptualisations of the tourism workforce phenomena
(Baum et al., 2016). Employees are the most essential
element of each organisation, and they are involved in
the process of achieving a group or individual goals
(Bratton & Gold, 2012).
Thus, employees represent the human capital of the
organisation deriving from their knowledge and expe-
rience, education, professional competence, psycho-
metric features, personality characters and abilities,
entrepreneurial enthusiasm, innovation and creativ-
ity, satisfaction, ability to adapt to changes, and similar
(Moustaghfir, 2014; Armstrong, 2012). Human capital
creates the value of an organisation and, therefore, it is
necessary to manage it strategically. Moreover, recent
studies emphasise that sustainable human resource
management (Baumet al., 2016; Baum, 2019; Robinson
et al., 2019)will replace strategic human resourceman-
agement. Thus, a higher level of quality and practices
that are responsible toward the environment, local so-
ciety, culture, and economy should be also introduced
in human resources management. This includes jus-
tice and equality, transparent hr practices, profitabil-
ity, and employee well-being (Wikhamn, 2019).
Mihalič (2006) summarises Ulrich, stating that
human capital management represents overall edu-
cation and training of employees, developing their
skills for them to contribute to the goals and needs
of the company in which they work, and create added
value. Similarly, Nickson (2013) states that successful
human resources management leads to the organisa-
tion’s success via appropriate recruiting, introducing
new employees to their work, education and train-
ing, rewarding, and motivating employees. Human
resources development takes place through the ed-
ucation and training processes, which represent the
acquisition of new skills through various training pro-
grammes, courses and workshops (Heery & Noon,
2008; Wilton, 2016). This is particularly important in
the tourism sector, in which employees have constant
contact with customers and are continuously under
the tourist gaze (Urry & Larsen, 2012) of their cus-
tomers. In the case of industrial tourism, employees
in production organisations also become visible. The
most visible to visitors are the factory tour guides,
which are representatives of the organisation. They
must represent organisational values (Gorenak, 2019)
and the organisation itself at its best with their knowl-
edge, behaviour, and attitude. However, this requires
proper education and training.
Education and Training of Tourism Personnel
The process of permanent education within the or-
ganisation can be defined as a network of events and
activities for the development of the person’s distinct
abilities (Florjančič et al., 2004). We can also use the
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 53
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
term ‘training’ for a systematic and planned prepa-
ration of the learning process, acquiring the knowl-
edge and skills necessary to achieve the goals of the
organisation (Boštjančič, 2011). Nickson (2013) defines
training as activities with a focus on immediately im-
proving employee performance by developing certain
skills, acquiring knowledge and competences. Nick-
son (2013) also states that organisations in the tourism
and transport sectors allocate the most resources for
education and training to improve customer service
and at the same time follow strict legal regulations on
safety, health and nutrition standards. Another reason
is the high rate of employee turnover, which requires
the organisations to continuously educate new and in-
experienced staff.
According toMihalič (2006) and Bratton andGold
(2012), the goal of education and training is to increase
the competency of employees for the work they do,
and consequently increase their efficiency and effec-
tiveness at work. In doing so, employees effectively
develop their ability to adapt quickly and respond
to changes that have occurred and to learn for the
contemporary and future increasingly turbulent en-
vironment of modern organisations (Wojtczuk-Turek
& Turek, 2015). This promotes innovation, productiv-
ity, and employee satisfaction, their affiliation to the
organisation, personal career development, the pro-
motion of individuals and the organisation as a whole.
All of this is also essential in the tourism sector, which
requires educated, well-trained, intelligent, energetic
employees with entrepreneurship skills and knowl-
edge of several foreign languages in order to provide
high-quality customer service, and hence efficiency
and profitability of the tourist services (Gupta, 2011).
The acquisition of knowledge can be divided into
external (implemented outside the organisation) and
internal (implemented within the organisation) (Mi-
halič, 2006), but we can also define formal and in-
formal acquisition of knowledge. Formal education
and training of workers usually takes place outside
the workplace (Florjančič & Vukovič, 1999), is pre-
planned and structured. Informal acquisition of knowl-
edge takes place in the form of information exchange,
mutual assistance and joint problem solving (Frazis
et al. in Rozman & Kovač, 2012). Methods and forms
of acquiring knowledge are highly diverse: lectures,
discussions, demonstrations, conferences, case stud-
ies, teamwork, role-playing (simulation), computer-
assisted learning (cai), simulations, manager games,
e-learning, video lectures, courses, seminars, work-
shops, symposiums,meetings, and consultations (Flor-
jančič et al., 2004; Mihalič, 2006). However, organi-
sations are currently increasingly less inclined to use
classical education methods. Modern forms of knowl-
edge acquisition, such as e-learning, coaching, men-
toring, simulation learning, job shadowing, rotational
education, independent learning and other similar
forms of new employee training methods are increas-
ingly in use (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2013). Re-
search shows that advanced foreign organisations use
only ten per cent of classical forms of acquiring knowl-
edge to educate their employees (Mihalič, 2006). As
Bhattacharya andCohen (2017)write, English-langua-
ge literature indicates the characteristics of a worker
that can be acquired through learning with the abbre-
viation ksa: knowledge – skills – abilities/attitudes.
Likewise, we can label all of these characteristics as
an employee’s competence.We follow the definition of
competences as a pool of knowledge, abilities, skills,
experiences and values of the individual collected dur-
ing education and career (Gorenak, 2013).
Competences
Competences have been studied and defined by sev-
eral authors. The beginnings of the use of this term
date back to the early 1970s, when David McClelland
introduced the concept to improve the process of se-
lecting personnel (Thanopoulos et al., 2011; Brophy
& Kiely, 2002; Gelhard, 2017). McClelland has identi-
fied competences as knowledge, skills, traits, attitudes,
self-concepts, values or motives directly related to job
performance or critical life outcomes and shown to
differentiate between superior and average perform-
ers (Thanopoulos et al., 2011). Svetlik (2005) proposes
a definition according to which competences are de-
fined as the ability of the individual to activate, use,
and connect the acquired knowledge in complex, di-
verse, and unpredictable situations. Rozman and Ko-
vač (2012), Jauhari (2006), Kohont (2005) and others
also cite similar definitions.
54 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
The literature presents several approaches to the
concept of competences. Competences are considered
to be an individual’s capacity, as an organisation’s abil-
ity, and as a tool for better communication between
the education system and the labour market (Kalargy-
rou & Woods, 2011; Fominiene et al., 2015). In human
resources, competences are used primarily to describe
employees and estimate their ability to perform pro-
fessional duties in different situations; according to
employee competence, we can distinguish between
average and above average employees; organisations
can better achieve their strategic goals when recruit-
ing employeeswith appropriate competences (Judrups
et al., 2015).
To recognise the capabilities of employeesmore ef-
ficiently, competencemodelswere designed. Swiderski
(1987 in Thanopoulos et al., 2011) proposed three ba-
sic clusters: hard, soft, and conceptual competences.
The first one includes technical and administrative
skills; soft competences are also known as interper-
sonal skills, which include sensitivity, adaptability, cre-
ativity and flexibility; conceptual competences can be
defined as critical thinking, problem-solving, judg-
ment and decision-making.
In contrast, Spencer and Spencer (in Thanopou-
los et al., 2011) distinguished two categories of compe-
tences. The first are threshold competences (like writ-
ing skills) that every employee must have; they are not
exceptional behaviour. The second are differentiating
competences (like decision-making ability) that show
the difference between an average and extremely suc-
cessful individuals.
Mihalič (2006) divided the basic competences into
three sets. The first set are personal and behavioural
competences (decision-making ability, strategic think-
ing, ethics, the ability of analytical and creative think-
ing and expression). The second set is the compe-
tence to work with people (the ability of interpersonal
communication, public speaking, delegating, conflict
management, negotiation, teamwork). The third sec-
tion covers competences forworkingwith information
(project management ability, knowledge of business
processes, sense of space, accuracy and promptness).
Regarding competences, one of the most impor-
tant factors is that the organisation determines the
basic competences that are crucial for all employ-
ees and the additional competences that employees
need in certain positions or departments of the or-
ganisation (Moustaghfir, 2014; Stevens, 2012; West-
eren, 2017). In the tourism sector, high-quality staff
is of key importance, as tourism is a service activity
that largely depends on the capable and hospitable
employees (Gupta, 2011; Nickson, 2013). Gorenak and
Gorenak (2012) analysed the competences needed by
tour guides while performing a guided tour. There
are different requirements among the European coun-
tries, since some emphasise theoretical knowledge of
history and geography while others emphasise com-
munication skills, managerial skills, foreign language
knowledge, planning and problem-solving skills. As
the basic competence of tourist guides, they cite ex-
cellence in tour-guiding techniques and communica-
tion competences. Fominiene et al. (2015) also confirm
that the developed personality characteristics and in-
terpersonal communication are the most important
competences in the tourism sector.
Therefore, soft skills (hospitality, kindness, com-
passion) are farmore important than hard or technical
skills (knowledge of information technology), and this
is reflected in the tourism industry. Employers state
that their employees must not only know their profes-
sional field and theoretical content perfectly, but also
have to respect themselves and others, be indepen-
dent, responsible for their activities and end-results, be
innovative, adaptable, be team-players, be able to com-
municate, participate, think critically and constantly
set new goals.
Baum (2015) suggests that changes in the world
contribute to shifts in the workforce skills demands
while employersmove their focus from technical skills
to soft skills, for example. social media management
knowledge, a wider portfolio of language, cultural and
green skills. Moreover, employees must have a broad
skillset; thus, they can performaflexible range of tasks.
Therefore, to enhance this skill set, training is vital.
The Aims and Purpose of the Research
and Research Questions
As we wrote in the literature review, employees are a
key element of the organisation’s performance. This is
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 55
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
particularly true in the tourism sector, which is a ser-
vice activity and, as such, is even more dependent on
the employees themselves: on their knowledge, skills,
character, characteristics and also on their current
well-being. Several research studies have already ad-
dressed various groups of tourism professionals, such
as managers and tourist guides. However, we were in-
terested in the state of industrial tourism employees.
Industrial tourism is a relatively less explored area of
tourism; at the same time, it is a mix of tourist services
and factory production processes. Regarding this fea-
ture, we wanted to explore who is performing indus-
trial tourism (or who is guiding factory tours), what
competences are required for this work, and how they
gain necessary knowledge. Considering that there is
not a large number of organisations in Slovenia that
allow visitors to view their production processes, we
decided to focus the study on individual cases of pro-
duction factory tours. We have designed the following
research questions:
rq1 Who performs industrial tourism in organisa-
tions (organisation employees or is industrial
tourism arranged by outsourcing another or-
ganisation)?
rq2 What are the responsibilities of industrial tour-
ism employees (is this their basic job or do they
have other tasks)?
rq3 Which competences and what knowledge should
the industrial tourism employees have?
rq4 How is the organisation concerned with knowl-
edgemanagement of industrial tourism employ-
ees (do they arrange training)?
Methods Used
After reviewing the existing literature in the fields of
human resources and industrial tourism, observation
with participation in the process of viewing the pro-
duction process itself was used as a method of re-
search. We decided to visit four Slovenian companies
that offer factory tours, since industrial tourism in
Slovenia is in the emerging stage and thus provides
different case studies to examine. Our research sam-
ple was composed of four companies that advertise
this product on their web sites and are among large
companies in the country. The tours were held on 24
April 2018 at the location of Revoz (Renault automo-
bile production), Novo mesto; on 21 May 2018 at the
location of Pivovarna Laško Union (Union Brewery),
Ljubljana; on 26May 2018 at the location of Pivovarna
Laško Union (Laško Brewery), Laško; and on 1 June
2018 at the location of the company Droga Kolinska,
Food Industry (production of Argeta pâté), Izola. We
told companies that we would take part in the factory
tour, but to ensure greater credibility of the tour per-
formance, we always joined a group that was already
on the schedule. This was not possible at Revoz, be-
cause the company was in the confidentiality phase,
and visits were not possible, except in specific circum-
stances. However, the tour of Revoz took place just as
if a random group of visitors had attended it. During
and after the end of the visits, we made notes about
the delivery of the tour and double-checked the infor-
mation at the end with the tour guide.
As a method of data acquisition, we also used a
semi-structured interview with representatives of the
departments responsible for industrial tourism plan-
ning (see list of informants in Table 1). At Revoz, we in-
terviewed a representative of the Communication and
Public Affairs Department; at Pivovarna Laško Union,
we interviewed the head of the Corporate Events De-
partment and the Union Experience (this person is re-
sponsible for industrial tourism in both visited brew-
eries); at DrogaKolinska, the questions were answered
by the head of production and by the marketing de-
partment. The basic questions were sent to the com-
panies’ representatives first via e-mail; they also an-
swered additional questions after the factory tour was
conducted. If factory tours were performed by another
person and not by the company’s industrial tourism
representative, we also asked tour guides some of the
same questions and obtained their answers.
Findings
We have found that each company has a different
personnel policy in the implementation of industrial
tourism. Thus, we can identify four types of industrial
tourism human resources from our studied cases:
1. Staff, employed for the sole purpose of imple-
menting industrial tourism.
56 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
Table 1 List of Study Informants
Respondent Company Department in the Company Work tasks in industrial tourism
Respondent A Revoz Communication and Public Affairs De-
partment
Strategic planning, reservations, visitor
communication, tour guiding, presenting.
Respondent B Pivovarna Union Corporate Events Department and the
Union Experience
Strategic planning, recruiting tour guides.
Respondent C Pivovarna Laško Corporate Events Department Strategic planning, communication with
outsourcing organisation.
Respondent D Droga Kolinska Marketing department; Production Strategic planning, scheduling production
workers for guiding tours.
2. Staff, employed in Communications, pr, Mar-
keting, and similar departments.
3. Staff, employed in the production process.
4. Staff from outsourcing organisations.
Theworkplace of the first type of industrial tourism
employees is the post of industrial tourism operator.
Thismeans that people are employed as hostswho take
care of regular factory tours, visitor programmes, and
presentation of the company. In the case of Pivovarna
Laško Union, this type of employees can be found at
the Union Brewery in Ljubljana. Their hosts are stu-
dents or people on working contracts. Nevertheless,
these employees have no influence on the content of
the factory tour or on the strategic decisions regarding
industrial tourism. The decision-makers in this pro-
cess are themanagement of the corporate relations de-
partment and the company’s management itself. The
workplace of the second type of industrial tourism
employees is in the department for communication,
public relations, marketing and similar. Such an ex-
ample can be found at the automotive company Revoz
in Novo Mesto, where the representative of the Com-
munications and Public Affairs Department conducts
factory visits, represents the company and is in con-
tact with visitors. The reasons that this is under their
department are given by Respondent A:
We used to have a network of tour guides who
were experts from the production departments.
But it turned out that visitors were not inter-
ested in technical details as in an interesting and
fun presentation itself. So, we made the deci-
sion to hand over tour guiding to the communi-
cation department. Why? As a department, we
are constantly near information, factory inno-
vations, and we have excellent communication
skills.
Their work also includes planning and strategic in-
sight into the implementation of industrial tourism
and, as such, are also responsible for the future devel-
opment of this kind of service. Nevertheless, the com-
pany’s management confirms the final strategic deci-
sions.
As a third type of industrial tourism employees,
a person who is employed in production can carry
out industrial tourism. An example is the production
of Argeta pâté plant in Izola, Droga Kolinska Com-
pany. There, the visitors are welcomed by a person,
employed as a technologist in production, which is, in
fact, the position of the company’s production process.
Respondent D explained the process of selecting tour
guides.
Factory tours are guided by those employees,
who know the production process and speak
the language of the visitors. Usually, this is done
by the head of production, but we also make
daily agreements who gets to guide which tour,
since this is related to our ongoing activities that
we perform besides factory tour guiding.
This person pauses his/her professional obligations
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Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
at the time of carrying out the factory tour, takes over
the group, takes it through the production premises,
and presents the company and the production process.
In doing so, he/she can use his/her expertise, which
he/she uses in everyday work. However, this person
does not participate in the strategic planning of the de-
velopment of industrial tourism. For this, the heads of
production and marketing department are responsi-
ble.
The last type is cooperation with external organ-
isations who carry out factory tours. This form of
outsourcing can be found in the company Pivovarna
Laško Union, more precisely in the brewery in Laško.
There, employees of the public institution ‘Centre for
Sport, Tourism, Information andCulture Laško’ (Cen-
ter za šport, turizem, informiranje in kulturo Laško –
stik) carry out the factory tours. Their tasks include
contacting and guiding visitor groups, presenting the
company and its production processes. They are in
contact with the company Pivovarna LaškoUnion, but
do not influence the strategic decisions regarding the
implementation of industrial tourism. The decision-
makers in this process are the management of the cor-
porate relations department and the company’s man-
agement itself. After the interviews, we could see com-
panies’ need for different employees’ competences.
Thus, in the Union brewery, where we detected the
first type of industrial tourism human resources, they
highlight competences, such as the expert knowledge
of the factory history and the process of brewing beer.
In addition, the guides need to have good communi-
cation skills and a good sense for people. For visitor
groups, requiring specific knowledge of production
processes, production employees, who can provide
more detailed information on professional issues, are
recruited as tour guides.
Most of the groups are guided by our presenters;
these are students or contract workers. When
hosting specific groups (Biotechnical Faculty,
Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Biotechnical
educational centre, . . .) I ask for help from other
production employees, like engineer officers,
energetics expert, microbiologists or food sci-
ence experts. [Respondent B]
It is also desirable for a factory tour guide to be in-
ventive and adjustable to the group needs in order to
choose an appropriate way of guiding. For example, it
is possible to select only an oral representation of the
factory or visitors can participate in a treasure hunt
where information is thus conveyed in a fun manner.
In doing so, the guide must have the skills to perform
the playful treasure hunt. The knowledge of foreign
languages (Slovene, English, Croatian) is also impor-
tant.
The second type of industrial tourism human re-
sources, carried out by Revoz, highlights the impor-
tance of knowing the production process, the knowl-
edge and use of ict (PowerPoint, video, headphones),
the time availability of the guide and his/hers tour
guiding experience. Since the guide is responsible for
the whole process from booking to guiding, he/she
must also master communication skills, know how to
make a system announcement, check the operation
of ict and security equipment, know the procedures
for arranging a possible catering offer for certain visi-
tors, and personally engage in the performance of the
tour itself. Furthermore, since the guide is also re-
sponsible for the development of industrial tourism,
it is expected that he/she also has the skills of strategic
planning, is creative, and takes initiative. As the most
important element, they point out that a person who
carries out factory tours must have good communica-
tion skills, as well as sense for people in order to judge
what a particular group is more or less interested in,
so that the guide can adjust explanations accordingly
(e.g., students compared to business partners).
Moreover, he/she has to know the production pro-
cess, be aware of the innovations in production, and be
widely educated. If there is a group that requires more
specific knowledge of the company, one of the produc-
tion employees also joins the tour and gives more de-
tailed information. The factory set up this system after
production employees first performed the tours, but it
turned out that visitors were not interested in many
technical details. They much more prefer an interest-
ing and attractive interpretation of a tour guide with
excellent communication skills.
In the case of industrial tourism in the production
of Argeta pâté, where we detected the third type of
58 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
industrial tourism human resources; important com-
petences are knowledge of the production process,
safety and sanitary rules, knowledge of the visitor’s
language and time availability of the guide with regard
to his/hers other duties.
The fourth type of industrial tourism human re-
sources was found in the Laško brewery. The guides
must have guiding expertise and especially good com-
munication skills, according to Respondent C:
Groups that stik brings to the Laško Brew-
ery are guided by their tour guides, who are
trained for the job. In addition to expert knowl-
edge about the production process, they have to
have foremost a good sense for communication
with people.
For groups requiring specific information about
the production processes, they invite additional pro-
duction employees (e.g., technicians) to provide more
detailed information on professional issues. Since the
factory is located near a health resort and a spa, host-
ing tourists fromdifferent countries, knowledge of for-
eign languages, such as Italian, English, Spanish, Ger-
man, and Serbian, is also essential. They also point out
the flexibility of the guide to the situation and to the
group needs, as well as the guide’s administrative skills
needed to carry out visits booking and collect entry
fees.
Companies also take care of the knowledge devel-
opment of their industrial tourism employees. In the
Union brewery, training is carried out at the annual
level or, if necessary, each time there is something new
in the production process. The new guides are intro-
duced to industrial tourism in such a way that they
firstly attend a factory tour as visitors, when someone
else guides a tour. Further, it is recommended to use
‘job shadowing’ and monitor experienced employees
at the workplace. Then they receive a text with the in-
formation data that they have to learn for their presen-
tation. Prior to their first officially executed tour, they
conduct an internal factory tour for their co-workers
to check their knowledge and skills. In addition, guides
also conduct haccp training and practice their skills
of how to pour a beer correctly. Guides hold regular
meetings on current affairs, occasionally attend vari-
ous training courses, such as psychological lectures on
people skills, training on gamification, branding, and
similar.
Revoz does not organise special training for guides.
Before new guides begin with the factory tours, they
can study a guidebook with the main information
about the company and the factory tour process. They
used to have regular meetings with tour guides, but
since guiding has been taken over by the communica-
tion department, there are no more such meetings, as
there are not many people involved in the process.
We don’t have trainings for factory tour guides.
In the past, we used to have regular meetings
with tour guides, when there was still a network
of tour guides. But since communication de-
partment took that over, that is gone. [Respon-
dent A]
For guides who are conducting the tour of Ar-
geta pâté production, the company does not carry out
training or has no introduction lessons. There are only
regular short coordination meetings about the divi-
sion of groups among different guides and other spe-
cial arrangements. In contrast, the Laško brewery pro-
vides annual training sessions for their tour guides and
especially when there is something new in the produc-
tion process. Furthermore, the guides coming from
stik must take part in the training for local tourist
guides; before they start conducting factory tours, they
study literature about the brewery, so they can learn as
much about the factory and the production process as
they can.
Discussion
Companies use different types of industrial tourism
human resources, which is mainly dependent on the
availability of personnel and the degree of importance
that industrial tourism has for the company itself. Re-
garding staff availability, the most basic type of in-
dustrial tourism human resources could be identified
as employees working only for the purpose of imple-
menting factory tours, as the staff is most easily acces-
sible.
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Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
The importance of industrial tourism is reflected
in the significance of this offer for the company. The
product is most important in companies for which the
supply of industrial tourism is considered as a self-
contained product, and is not just a marketing tool
but can become a self-standing tourist attraction of
the destination. Thus, in the Union brewery, they offer
a unique experience product, ‘Union Experience,’ for
which they employ staff solely for implementing in-
dustrial tourism. Since the product is regularly accessi-
ble to visitors, there is also a need for a greater number
of employees. In addition, the product is designed and
adjusted to different groups of visitors; thus, employ-
ees should consider this characteristic while preparing
for a factory tour. This type of human resources seems
to be most appropriate, since employees best know
their work tasks; they specialise in group tours and
develop all the necessary competences for conducting
industrial tourism. However, in the case of this com-
pany, tour guides do not participate in the strategic
planning of industrial tourism: they are only service
providers. Here, the company should consider how to
incorporate guides into strategic planning, since they
know both the situation in the production areas and
the characteristics, needs, and wishes of the visitors
with whom they are talking during the tours.
For the other three types of industrial tourism hu-
man resources, employees’ time is much less available,
since their basic tasks are in other areas, or they are not
employed at the factory and thus are not permanently
present. The importance of industrial tourism is re-
flected in the strategic plans for industrial tourism and
employee involvement in these decisions. This was the
highest in the case of Revoz, where the tour guide also
develops the product of industrial tourism itself, as
the company wants to develop a factory tour as a self-
contained product in the future.
As we have found in the study, the competences
of industrial tourism employees are critical. Among
them, the most outstanding is the knowledge of the
production process itself that all companies require
from their tour guides. Communication skills, for-
eign language skills, and flexibility were also common
responses, which means that companies expect their
employees to master soft and hard skills (according to
Swiderski, 1987 in Thanopoulos et al., 2011) or compe-
tences for working with people and for working with
information (according toMihalič, 2006). In one com-
pany (Revoz), the employee is also responsible for the
development of industrial tourism, so that personality
and behavioural competences are also expected (ac-
cording to Mihalič, 2006), which shows that the em-
ployee is capable of decision-making, strategic think-
ing, analytical and creative thinking. According to
these findings, companies that offer industrial tourism
can search for potential employees who already have
communication skills, speak foreign languages, and
are willing to learn about the company itself and the
production process. Since we suggest that guides are
also involved in the strategic development of the prod-
uct, potential employees may also have characteristics
of creativity, planning skills, and the like.
While the desired competences of employees in
all companies are similar, the situation is different
when examining the field of knowledge development
among companies. Basic training is mainly placed at
the beginning of the work when an employee is in-
troduced to industrial tourism. At that, either compa-
nies time carry out internal training or employees read
the guidebooks on industrial tourism in the company.
Later, only one company responded that employees
also organise additional training in the areas of people
skills, brand knowledge, gamification, and others. Two
companies also prepare training for the introduction
of new features production, which potentially influ-
ence the course and content of the factory tours.
It can be noted that companies that see industrial
tourism as a stand-alone product are investing more
in the development of the knowledge of industrial
tourism employees. Thus, the Union’s Union Expe-
rience is currently a stand-alone product: a tour of the
Union brewery, forwhich guides are systematically ed-
ucated about the production process and guiding skills
while the company simultaneously takes care of the
development of their soft competences. This could be
followed by other companies that plan to introduce a
self-contained tourist product. At the beginning, they
would prepare the introduction courses for the new
guides, prepare a guidebook with basic information,
and instruct and train the employees in the field of soft
60 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
skills, since they all stated that the ability to commu-
nicate is the most important. Hence, soft skills should
be more emphasised in employee training. All of these
findings are summarised in the model of industrial
tourism personnel, which is presented in Figure 1.
As shown in the model, we start with proposed
three sets of competences that employees in indus-
trial tourism need. These include the necessary com-
petences for working with people, for working with
information, and for personal and managerial compe-
tences. According to the obtained data in the literature
and the study, we propose three types of workplaces
that deal with industrial tourism. They are an inde-
pendent department for industrial tourism, industrial
tourism as part of the marketing and pr department,
and the participation of an outsourcing organisation.
The independent industrial tourism department
consists of the head of the department and factory tour
guides. The head is responsible for the development of
the industrial tourism product, but he/she should also
include guides in strategic decisions, although they
have a more operational role to play. This form is used
when the product of industrial tourism is already well
developed.
In the second form, a factory tour guide is also a
person who is responsible for the development of the
product; that person is a member of another depart-
ment, presumably marketing or public relations de-
partment. This form of industrial tourism workplace
is used when the product of industrial tourism is in
the development phase.
The third form of industrial tourism organisation
is the outsourcing to an external organisation that pro-
vides guides for the factory tours and other assign-
ments. Meanwhile, a person who takes care of the de-
velopment of the industrial tourism product is amem-
ber of another department (presumably marketing or
public relations). This form of industrial tourism or-
ganisation is used when the product is in the develop-
ment stage, and there is a simultaneous lack of avail-
able company staff to conduct tours.
In all three cases, we propose a system of train-
ing for all personnel involved in industrial tourism.
First, training should be prepared prior to the begin-
ning of work, where more emphasis is placed on pro-
fessional knowledge about the factory and about guid-
ing techniques. Then, during the implementation of
factory tours, a number of additional training sessions
should be prepared annually, which focus on soft com-
petences. Based on this model, the organisation can
select the most suitable employees for the implemen-
tation of industrial tourism, place them to the appro-
priate workplace, and continuously care for the devel-
opment of their knowledge.
Conclusion and Implications
In this study, we focused on industrial tourism and
industrial tourism human resources. Regarding the
situation in the four studied cases at the companies
(Revoz, Pivovarna Laško Union (Union and Laško
Brewery) and Droga Kolinska), we can summarise
our findings and answer our research questions. In
response to the first two research questions, four types
of industrial tourism human resources can be identi-
fied: staff employed only for the purposes of industrial
tourism; staff employed in the communication, pr, or
another department; staff employed in core produc-
tion process; staff outsourced from an external organi-
sation. The first three types are represented by employ-
ees working in the parent organisation, while the latter
type includes employees who primarily work outside
the parent organisation. Employees duties include vis-
itor guiding and presentation of the factory, while the
other type of employees (employees coming from the
communication or pr department) also strategically
plan the product development. In other cases, strategic
planning is a part of management tasks.
Further on, we were interested in which knowl-
edge and competences industrial tourism employees
should possess. Here we have found that the critical
competences are, first of all, professional knowledge
of the production process. Communication skills, for-
eign language skills, and flexibility were also common
responses; hence, soft skills are also very important in
industrial tourism as in other tourismworkplaces (Fo-
miniene et al., 2015; Baum, 2015). Such competences
are required primarily with factory tour guides that are
in direct contact with visitors. The guides embody the
company and, therefore, they need to know accurate
and interesting factory technical information and use
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 61
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
Competences for working
with people
Competences for working
with information
Personal and managerial
competences
• Communication skills
• People skills
• Flexibility
• Team work
• Knowledge of production process
• Knowledge of safety regulations
• ICT knowledge
• Accuracy and promptness
• Decisionmaking ability
• Strategic thinking
• Creativity
• Analytical thinking
Industrial tourism human
resources
Workplace 1:
independent industrial
tourism department
Workplace 2:
part of PR or marketing
department
Workplace 3:
outsourcing
Training
Before starting
at industrial tourism
workplace
During position
at industrial tourism
workplace
• Professional knowledge about the company
(seminars, guidebooks)
• Guiding skills (workshop, job shadowing)
• Fluent in foreign languages (attending course)
• Knowledge of safety regulations (seminar)
• Upgrading communication skills (workshop, simulation)
• Learning about visitor’s psychology (seminar, role playing)
• Encouraging creativity (teamwork, visiting comparable products)
• Strengthen knowledge of strategic planning (consultation, workshop)
• Refresh the knowledge of production processes and novelties (meetings)
Figure 1 Industrial Tourism Human Resources
the correct way of presenting this information in order
to attract the visitors.
All in all, one of themotives for the implementation
of industrial tourism for the studied companies ismar-
keting of their basic product, which is also done by the
factory tour guide. In addition to the guide, industrial
tourism also needs people who are strategically devel-
oping this tourism product. In one case, this person
is also a guide; in other cases, this person is a part of
management from marketing or pr department. Per-
sonnel at such positions also need the competence of
strategic planning, analytical thinking, and creativity,
which ensures that operational employees can provide
quality industrial tourism services and strive for its
continuous improvement, so that the product will be
even more impressive for visitors and will represent
the excellency of the visited company.
For employees to achieve basic competences, the
final research question was addressed. The key find-
ing is that studied companies provide a short list of
required trainings. In companies that offer training, it
is primarily placed at the beginning of an employee’s
job in industrial tourism, so he/she can acquire some
expertise for the factory tour. This is done in the form
of self-learning from a guidebook or with the help
of experienced co-workers. Especially coaching and
mentoring are among highly used new learningmeth-
ods, which is characteristic of industrial tourism em-
62 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Barbara Pavlakovi and Eva Jereb Human Resources in Industrial Tourism
ployee training as well as for general employee train-
ing (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2013). Insofar as in-
dustrial tourism has been developed as a stand-alone
product of the company, the company offers more
training possibilities, which are also aimed at the at-
tainment of other competences not just professional
knowledge of the factory. Thus, the guide can also be
trained in communication skills and the psychology
of visitors.
As shown in the literature review, studies about
industrial tourism neglected this specific viewpoint;
thus, research about human resources in industrial
tourism brings new insight into the field. Based on the
presented findings, we can propose that companies
wishing to develop an independent industrial tourism
product strategically plan for the staff they need for the
implementation of it. They can follow the proposed
model in Figure 1 and, according to the availability of
employees, choose themost appropriate type of indus-
trial tourismhuman resources. It is recommended that
the guide, insofar as it is an independent workplace or
an outsourced co-worker, will also be involved in the
strategic planning of the development of this product,
as it is he/she who daily encounters visitors and knows
their needs and the situation of the premises where the
tour occurs. By selecting a type of human resources,
the company must also be aware of the competences it
seeks for these employees.
Considering that, we recommend the involvement
of guides in strategic decisions; the company should
also look for personal and behavioural competences
in guides in addition to the competences for working
with people and the competences to work with infor-
mation.
In any case, the company must provide constant
employee training. Before starting their position in
industrial tourism, employees must be equipped with
professional knowledge of the company, knowledge
of foreign languages and security provisions. Prior to
starting work and during the course of work, the or-
ganisationmust provide for the improvement of com-
munication skills, people skills, as well as competences
for encouraging creativity and knowledge of strategic
planning. Therefore, the organisation should have a
training plan for new and existing industrial tourism
employees. When providing personal and knowledge
development, the organisation will direct its focus to-
wards sustainable human resource management and
thus secure better working conditions for its employ-
ees.
The study has shown that there are quite a few dif-
ferences between companies, as well as some similar-
ities, based on which we revised the human resources
in industrial tourism. The proposed industrial tourism
human resources model could be used by organisa-
tions that want to improve their industrial tourism
process or are only beginning to implement industrial
tourism, thus choosing the type of human resources
best suited to their situation and capabilities.
The researchwas conducted on the small sample of
Slovenian companies that carry out industrial tourism.
The sample itself is a considerable limitation of this
research, since the number of factory visits should be
higher to strengthen the results. In addition, multi-
ple visits to each factory would provide greater insight
into the process itself; however, due to the time limi-
tation of the study, only one visit per factory was con-
ducted. Nevertheless, we presume that the results are
representative of the studied issue and provide a gen-
eral picture of industrial tourism employees. Despite
the fact that the situation is expected to be similar in
other factories and countries, we propose that further
research would be directed to companies abroad. In
particular, the most important findings will be from
the case studies of companies that have a long tradi-
tion of implementing industrial tourism and offer it
as a stand-alone product. Furthermore, they can pro-
vide an environment for a more in-depth study of the
industrial tourism employees not only focusing on
their skills or training but also on their other char-
acteristics, their background, the conditions in which
they work, their performance, and service/experience
delivery.
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Original Scientific Article
Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas
Management
Stanislava Pachrová
College of Polytechnics Jihlava, Czech Republic
stanislava.pachrova@vspj.cz
Petr Chalupa
College of Polytechnics Jihlava, Czech Republic
petr.chalupa@vspj.cz
Eva Janoušková
College of Polytechnics Jihlava, Czech Republic
eva.janouskova@vspj.cz
Alice Šedivá Neckářová
College of Polytechnics Jihlava, Czech Republic
alice.sediva@vspj.cz
Leoš Štefka
pla Administration Moravský kras, Czech Republic
leos.stefka@nature.cz
This article reviews the possibilities of using visitor monitoring in the management
of a protected area in the example of the Moravian Karst Protected Landscape Area
(pla). TheMoravian Karst is the largest andmost significant karst area in the Czech
Republic. Its location near a large city and its easy accessibility mean that some of
the pla’s parts are faced with the negative impacts of overly intensive tourism on
rare natural sites and protected species. While the presence of visitors in a protected
area is desirable, it is necessary to regulate their activities in the area. The pla man-
agement needs quality information for its decision making, such as on the current
characteristics and behaviour of visitors. To obtain this information, primary mar-
keting research was carried out at selected pla sites from May to September 2018.
A questionnaire survey was used to obtain data from 2,100 visitors and to define the
Moravian Karst visitor profile. We found that most visitors were attracted to caves
open to the public and the Macocha gorge and that almost a quarter of respondents
were planning to return to the pla within six months of questioning. Amajor chal-
lenge for the sustainable development of tourism in the area will be the fact that vis-
itors to the caves are not interested in visiting other localities in the pla. The data
obtained about visitors will be used by the pla management to formulate measures
to redirect visitors from the most-visited locations to the less-visited ones.
Keywords: sustainable tourism, marketing research, visitor profile, destination
management, protected landscape area, Moravian Karst
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.67-79
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 67
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Introduction
According to the unwto, sustainable tourism can
be simply defined as ‘tourism that takes full account
of its current and future economic, social and en-
vironmental impacts, addressing the needs of visi-
tors, the industry, the environment and host com-
munities’ (unep & wto, 2005, p. 12). When focus-
ing on rural areas, where most protected areas are lo-
cated, tourism has gained significance in recent years
(Sánchez-Hernandéz et al., 2016). Sustainably manag-
ing tourism is a fundamental objective for most des-
tinations. Tourism is often used as a tool for local de-
velopment. Sustainable tourism brings advantages for
all tourism stakeholders and society as a whole; for
example, it helps to create jobs or to generate income.
Staying in protected areas significantly improves the
physical and mental state of visitors who relax there
and learn interesting facts about the area (e.g., through
a guided tour in a cave). This interesting and pleasant
experience creates positive attitudes in visitors towards
the protected area and contributes to the preserva-
tion acceptance of these areas by the general public
(Pachrová et al., 2019). Tourists’ encounters with na-
ture also lead to their pro-environmental behaviour
and activities (Mensah, 2019, p. 54). To strengthen the
positive impacts of tourism on a rural destination, it
is necessary to conserve resources and appreciate the
existing heritage. For this purpose, a proactive aware-
ness is promoted in the environmental area (Gallardo
Vázquez et al., 2014). However, tourism also creates
certain negative impacts, mainly when the carrying
capacity of the destination is repeatedly exceeded (e.g.,
by excessive numbers of visitors); these aspects include
pollution, increased erosion, and reduced population
or even the extinction of various species can result
(Pásková, 2008; Hübelová et al., 2016).
Managing protected areas has to combine both na-
ture protection and the interests of visitors to ensure
the sustainable development of the areas. Achieving
sustainable tourism is a continuous process, and it re-
quires the constant monitoring of impacts (unep &
wto, 2005). Monitoring and research in protected ar-
eas have the potential to describe these various im-
pacts of tourism, to decipher the causes and contexts,
to use the acquired knowledge to stimulate desirable
behaviour, and to optimise the activities of not only
the protected area management but also all the rele-
vant stakeholders, including visitors to the area (Ze-
lenka et al., 2013, p. 61).
Finally, the local population should be managed
so as to achieve sustainable development of protected
areas, too. As mentioned by Sevšek and Slavič (2017)
(among others), locals represent a long-term develop-
ment factor of protected areas, and they should ac-
tively participate and cooperate with a protected area
administration.
This article discusses some possibilities of using
visitor monitoring in the management of a protected
area in the example of the Moravian Karst Protected
Landscape Area (pla). We focus on the possibility of
obtaining important, topical, and relevant data for the
pla’s management decision-making from primary
marketing research; this data describes the current
characteristics of visitors and their behaviour. The au-
thors would like to inspire the managers of other pro-
tected areas to use marketing research as an effective
tool for visitor management and to intensify the dis-
cussion among tourism experts on the increasing and
severe problem of overtourism in the most attractive
nature areas.
The Moravian Karst is the largest and most sig-
nificant karst area in the Czech Republic. Its location
near a large city and its easy accessibility mean that
some parts of the pla face the negative impacts of too
intensive tourism on rare natural sites and protected
species. While the presence of visitors in a protected
area is desirable, it is necessary to regulate their activ-
ities in the area. The pla management needs quality
information for its decision-making, such as on their
characteristics and behaviours. To obtain this infor-
mation, a questionnaire survey among 2,100 visitors
was carried out in 2018, and the Moravian Karst visi-
tor profile was defined based on it.
The present paper is structured as follows: the in-
troduction is followed by the theoretical framework
and a brief description of the pla Moravian Karst.
Next comes the methodology used, and the stated
null hypotheses are described. Selected results of the
case study and their discussion are then presented.
The conclusions underscore the principal results and
68 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
contributions of the paper. Research limitations and
future research lines are also provided.
Visitor Management as an Integral Part
of Protected Areas’ Management
According to Eagles (2007) and confirmed by other
authors on tourism, such as Balmford et al. (2012), or
Prouza (2019), the number of visitors to protected ar-
eas is increasing. This is especially true for the most
attractive locations. Frequently, the number of visi-
tors exceeds the limits recorded in the previous years.
With growing numbers of visitors to protected ar-
eas, the burden that tourism puts on treasured sites is
sharply increasing; therefore, the importance of man-
aging protected areas is also increasing, and alongwith
it the task to ensure not only the protection of nature
and the landscape for future generations, but also to
ensure the sustainable use of the area by the general
public and thus the adequacy of tourism itself. Visitor
management is an integral part of protected areaman-
agement and, after the creation of a protected area,
management specifying human use of the area is de-
veloped (Newsome & Moore, 2017, p. 264). In pro-
tected areas, there is not only unique nature but also
places with sites of cultural heritage (e.g., caves with
archaeological points of interest). Visitormanagement
of protected areas should, therefore, not forget that
some visitors have culturally oriented tourist motives
(Belij, 2017).
Currently, destination management is considered
the most effective way of planning and managing the
sustainable development of tourism in any area. The
basic principle of destinationmanagement is coopera-
tion (Wang, 2008). General cooperation should ensure
cooperation between all stakeholders in the tourism
of the destination through the destination manage-
ment organisation, which maintains mutually effec-
tive communication and facilitates the coordination
of the activities in planning, organising, and decision-
making that take place in the destination (Holešinská,
2012, p. 47). The management of the protected area
should cooperate in various ways with the local des-
tination management organisation in the destination
management area, while not excluding that the organ-
isation engaged in protected area management sepa-
rately undertakes the activities of destinationmanage-
ment in that area. Also important is the cooperation
between nearby destinations (Ness et al., 2014), as well
as those with protected areas; networking can help to
solve many problems because it enables them, for ex-
ample, to share good cases of management measures.
Recently, the attention of professionals has often been
focused on modern technologies and many changes
they bring to tourism, including new models of desti-
nation management (Donald et al., 2019; Ivars-Baidal
et al., 2019).
Destination management and, therefore, the man-
agement of the tourism of protected areas should al-
ways include visitor management in their activities.
Sustainable visitor management is, according to New-
some and Moore (2017, p. 261), achieved as a com-
bination of different approaches (e.g., controlling the
size, type and spatial extent of visitor activities in com-
bination with various educational programmes) and
the application of modern technologies. Basic visitor
management attempts to guide the flow of visitors in
the time and space of the destination in such a way
as to minimise the negative impacts of tourism on
the area. Visitormanagement simultaneously attempts
to positively motivate visitors on how to behave with
concern for the environment in the given area.
Visitor management of the protected area can use
many tools, for example, the marking and mainte-
nance of hiking trails, the building of visitor centres,
offering guided tours, introducing/regulating admis-
sion to the protected area, introducing limits on visitor
numbers to the most vulnerable parts of protected ar-
eas, providing clear and up-to-date information avail-
able on the website of the protected area, among oth-
ers.
A significant current challenge is using modern
technologies for visitor management in protected ar-
eas, such as mobile learning in environmental inter-
pretation and visitor education (Tan & Law, 2016). A
tool that has not been mentioned yet, but is signif-
icant for decision-making processes in the manage-
ment of protected areas, is primary research. Research
should be done on various topics, such as natural and
landscape conditions and their development, includ-
ing changes caused by tourism activities in an area.
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 69
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Uncontrolled and unmanaged visitors can easily
and adversely affect the core values of a protected area.
As revealed by Foin et al. (1977), visitors can cause
changes in density and species composition of vegeta-
tion and animal populations. Protected area manage-
ment sometimes has to control the resource damage
from tourism being restrictive even if it can lead to
backlash responses from visitors (Bixler et al., 1992).
Typical measures of visitor management in karst areas
are restrictive. Tour guide services are provided as the
only legitimate way to visit caves (Tomic et al., 2019)
and the determination of a maximum visitor capacity
per one cave tour (Calaforra et al., 2003).
Visitor Monitoring in Protected Areas
For visitormanagement to be done effectively and effi-
ciently, the management of the protected area needs a
great deal of information about visitors. For this pur-
pose, visitor monitoring within the protected area is
carried out. Summary reviews of the locations where
visitor monitoring studies were conducted over the
past ten years, were given by Pickering et al. (2018).
The monitoring of visitors in protected areas is a
specific and multidisciplinary field of research. Ze-
lenka et al. (2013, p. 232) state that the monitoring
of visitors to the natural and treasured landscapes of
the area can vary according to the measurements con-
ducted:
• monitoring the flow of visitors,
• monitoring the activities of visitors,
• monitoring the behaviour of visitors and conflicts
between them,
• monitoring the characteristics of visitors and
their segmentation.
The first mentioned type of visitormonitoring (i.e.,
monitoring the flow of visitors) is the one most widely
used in the protected areas of the Czech Republic,
which is usually narrowed down to monitoring the
absolute numbers of visitors at selected locations. At
present, mainly data from mobile operators or differ-
ent visitor counters placed in the ground and oper-
ated by specialised firms are used for this purpose. In
many national parks of America, moreover, the self-
registration of visitors to the area is also common. A
purely European approach is, for example, data taken
from summit books (Muhar et al., 2002, p. 3). In the
case in which entry to some locations in the protected
area is not free, the data on the number of tickets sold is
used to record the number of visitors (e.g., caves open
to the public). Integrated visitor monitoring, moni-
toring using a combination of several methods for
obtaining data (long-term video monitoring, counts
by human observers, specific visitor interviews and
route analysis by the gis tools, etc.) seems to be the
most effective approach (Arnberger & Hinterberger,
2004). This is very interesting, because a cost-effective
approach to visitor monitoring can be using crowd-
sourced data (Rice et al., 2019).
Other types of visitor monitoring, especially mon-
itoring the characteristics of visitors and segmenting
them, are much more difficult to implement system-
atically for protected area management. The data can
be obtained, for example, from primary marketing re-
search, while the disadvantage in obtaining data is the
need for more time, personnel availability, expertise,
and financial resources. Another innovative source of
information about visitors is an analysis of big data
from social media (Pickering et al., 2018). Supporting
information is also usually provided by tourist infor-
mation centres in the area, by the visitor centres of pro-
tected areas, or by the wardens and staff of protected
areas.
As mentioned by Ballantyne et al. (2011), a visitor’s
experience can impact their future behaviour. Visitor
satisfaction is the best tool for their attachment to the
place (Trakolis & Harding, 1981). The quality of the
experience and visitors’ satisfaction with the services
provided in protected areas should form the basis of
visitormanagement. These two factors should system-
atically be surveyed as part of visitor monitoring (Ea-
gles, 2007; Tonge & Moore, 2007; Huang et al., 2008;
Samuel et al., 2008; Musa et al., 2017; Oviedo-Garcia
et al., 2019).
Moravian Karst Protected Landscape Area
The Moravian Karst pla is located in the south-east-
ern part of the Czech Republic, close to Brno. The pla
was declared there in 1956, covering an area of almost
100 km2; it is the largest and most extensive karst area
70 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
in the Czech Republic, and more than 1,100 caves are
located in Devonian limestone. Five cave systems are
open to the public and are visited every year by ap-
proximately 400,000 people (see http://moravskykras
.ochranaprirody.cz).
Karst areas are not typical tourist attractions; most
of them have extraordinary scientific and social im-
portance, not only because they represent remark-
able geological and geomorphological phenomena,
but they also preserve valuable evidence about the ori-
gin and evolution of life or the origin and development
of human culture. The Moravian Karst area is a good
example of this. From the scientific perspective, it is
valuable, but for visitors to the area, the surface and
subsurface of the karst landscape offer highly attrac-
tive features (extensive cave systems, abyss, sinkholes,
sinking and gaining streams of water, deep canyon
gorges, etc.). In addition, the pla is interesting in
that there are 21 species of bats and many invertebrate
species unique in the world (endemic) have been de-
scribed here. In 2004, the Punkva cave system was
included by the Ramsar Convention among interna-
tionally significant wetlands. From the cultural and
historical points of view, the importance of the Mora-
vian Karst pla is that it offers various evidence on the
development of human society from the Palaeolithic
Age to the present (Hübelová et al., 2017; Chalupa &
Veselovský, 2018).
In the surveyed area of the Moravian Karst, the
trend of increasing numbers of visitors can be seen:
visitors to the caves increased between 2010 to 2018 by
more than 22 (Štefka, personal communication, July
12, 2019). As stated by Pachrová et al. (2019), one of
the main problems of tourism in the Moravian Karst
is its pronounced seasonality: most visitors come to
the pla in the summer to visit the accessible caves
and the Macocha gorge. In these locations, the inten-
sity of tourism is already too strong, and damage is
occurring to this unique environment. The pla man-
agement, therefore, needs to take corrective measures
within the visitor management of the area.
Mass tourism and insufficient protection of the
unique underground of the Moravian Karst has de-
stroyed more than half of the dripstone decoration in
some parts of the caves (Štefka, 2013). Now, all drip-
stone decoration is strictly protected, and visitors are
not allowed to touch it. The needs of visitors and needs
of nature protection had to be harmonised regarding
the use of lights in the caves. The extremely negative
impact of excessively intensive lighting in the caves
was described by Štefka (2016): the lights used for
enabling visitors to see in the caves caused the ap-
pearance of green plants in large parts of the visited
underground. This factor, absolutely foreign for the
cave environment, had to be cleaned away. Unfortu-
nately, cleaning caves was done by furbishing or by us-
ing chemicals that harmed the sensitive environment.
As a result, rules for lighting in the caves, including
the timing of light periods and the intensity of light,
are carefully managed now.
The importance of setting strict limits for num-
bers of visitors per day to the caves was proved Lang
et al. (2017), who discovered that when visitors were
present the anthropogenic co2 flux in Výpustek Cave
exceeded all other co2 fluxes and that intervals be-
tween visitor groups would have to be up to six hours
long if the cave environment were to return to natu-
ral conditions. Karst places decorated with ice during
winter (small caves near the surface) are also very at-
tractive for visitors. As stated by Ždímal (2015), some
visitors to the Moravian Karst crawl through small
tunnels and destroy valuable local plant and animal
communities.Moreover, new tourism activities poten-
tially dangerous for the environment are being devel-
oped in the Moravian Karst now, such as single trails
for mountain bikers (Fialová et al., 2019). The need for
visitor management in the researched area is obvious.
Nevertheless, according to Leslie (2015, p. 56), people,
in general, express their support for all environmental
initiatives, including conservation measures. Loren-
cová et al. (2014) conducted a questionnaire survey
among visitors ofMoravian Karst and stated that most
tourists do not feel limited by conservation measures,
which is a very positive finding for the pla’s Admin-
istration and sustainable development of tourism in
the area.
Methodology
This paper aims to review the possibilities of using
visitor monitoring in the management of a protected
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 71
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
area in the case study of the Moravian Karst Protected
Landscape Area in the Czech Republic. The authors
would like to inspire other protected area manage-
ments to use marketing research more often, because
it gives unique and valuable data on visitor manage-
ment. The results of the research will be used by the
pla Administration to create measures that will lead
to a greater spread of visitors throughout the pla
to relieve congestion at the most attractive locations
and will also lead to shifting more visitation to the
spring and autumn months. The profile of the visi-
tor to the Moravian Karst will serve as background
material for creating the management strategy for the
protected area in question. The pla Administration
asked for information about the characteristics of vis-
itors and information about their values, attitudes,
and behaviour. For effective visitor management, they
need to know, for example, if there is a difference in the
main reason for visiting the pla between visitors who
come for the first time and those who are returning to
the area. For mostly marketing communication of the
pla, it is crucial to knowwhere the visitors come from
and if people from closer areas return to theMoravian
Karst more often. Based on the mentioned needs of
the pla Administration, we stated and tested two null
hypotheses (h0):
h01 There is no significant difference in the main
reason for visiting the Moravian Karst pla be-
tween first-time visitors and those who are re-
turning to the area repeatedly.
h02 For visitors to the Moravian Karst, there is no
dependence between repeat visits to the pro-
tected area and the distance of the home of the
respondent.
This article presents selected results of extensive
primary research among visitors to theMoravianKarst.
The research was carried out by the Department of
Travel &Tourism at the College of Polytechnics Jihlava
(všpj) in cooperation with the pla management of
the Moravian Karst. The research was carried out
using a quantitative survey method of standardised
questionnaires fromMay to September 2018. The ques-
tionnaire had a total of 19 questions (closed, semi-
closed, scaled) and was distributed in four languages
(Czech, English, German, and Polish). Data were ob-
tained using the face-to-face survey with visitors at ten
designated pla locations throughout the protected
area. The data collected by trained interviewers were
anonymous, with the choice of respondents consis-
tently random. In order to prevent any distortion of
the surveyed results, for example due to bad weather,
the data was collected on different days of the week at
different times of the day. A total of 2,100 question-
naires, properly completed, were obtained.
To verify the stated null hypotheses, attention will
be given to the geographic, psychographic, and be-
havioural characteristics of the respondents. The ini-
tial data obtained were processed, analysed, and in-
terpreted with mathematical and statistical methods.
Concerning the methods, analysis and synthesis were
used. Microsoft Excel and Statistica 13 software were
used to process the data.
The existence of a conclusive dependence between
the selected characteristics of the respondents was
proved using the Pearson’s chi-square test of indepen-
dence (χ2), provided that a maximum of 20 of the
expected frequencies was less than 5. For the Pear-
son statistic χ2, the number of degrees of freedom
(df) is also given for completeness. On the basis of
the probability of the distribution of chi-square, the p-
value was observed for the null hypothesis (assuming
the independence of the two selected signs), which is
the lowest level of significance for which the null hy-
pothesis can be rejected (p < 0.05). The observed χ2
was then interpreted using the method of correspon-
dence analysis. Correspondence analysis is a multi-
variate statistical method that allows the display and
summary of a set of data in a two-dimensional graphic
form. It is traditionally applied to contingency tables;
correspondence analysis decomposes the chi-squared
statistic associated with this table into orthogonal fac-
tors. The distance between single points is defined as a
chi-squared distance. This analysis aims to reduce the
multidimensional space of row and column profiles
and to save as much of the original data as possible
(Hebák et al., 2007). The total variance of the data
matrix is measured by the inertia (Greenacre, 1984),
which resembles a chi-square statistic but is calculated
based on relative observed and expected frequencies.
72 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Table 1 Sociodemographic Structure of Respondents
Respondents characteristics N 
Gender Women , 
Men , 
Total , 
Age Up to  years  
– years  
– years  
– years  
+  
Total , 
Education Without high school  
High school , 
University  
Total , 
All tables and figures in this article are the joint
work of the authors.
Results and Discussion
During the primary research carried out, 2,100 ques-
tionnaires properly completed by visitors to theMora-
vian Karst were obtained (N = 2,100). The socio-
demographic characteristics of the respondents are
shown in Table 1, which indicates that, in a represen-
tative sample of visitors to the pla, the share of men
is 51 and women 49. It can be concluded from this
result that men and women visit the Moravian Karst
in equal proportion.
All age categories were represented in the research.
People aged 35–49 were the predominant group in the
structure of visitors, accounting for 40 of the total
number of respondents (Table 1). Nearly a quarter of
visitors (24) are in the age segment of 25–34 years
old. The age categories of 24 years old and less, and
50–59 had an equal share of 14 of the total number
of respondents. The least numerically represented age
category of visitors were seniors (i.e., 60 and older).
The age structure of visitors is very similar to the one
observed by Lorencová et al. (2014) in 2013, so we can
conclude that in a long-term view a majority of the
pla’s visitors is between 25 to 49 years of age.
The structure of visitors to the pla according to
the highest level of education reached shows that al-
most 80 of visitors had at least a high school degree,
and one fifth of the total number of respondents had
a university education (Table 1). The remaining fifth,
(i.e., 452 respondents) had a basic education or ap-
prenticeship. This number, however, included 195 sec-
ondary school students (9 of the total respondents),
who can be expected to continue with their education.
The results of our research show that visitors to the
surveyed pla are mostly well educated, which con-
firms the trend of tourism in protected areas as pub-
lished byEagles (2007) and confirmed byZelenka et al.
(2013, p. 70), as well as Newsome and Moore (2017, p.
261). These authors suggest that protected areas are ex-
ploited mainly by educated people expecting an expe-
rience full of interesting information and things to do,
but who also expect sophisticated services and man-
agement of the area. Visitor management of theMora-
vian Karst should take this into account, because the
right choice of marketing tools and provision of qual-
ity services could quite easily motivate this group of
visitors to make repeat visits, even outside the main
summer season; it is also possible, given these visitors’
interest in new information and experiences, to redi-
rect them to less exposed tourist parts of the pla.
Due to the age structure of the respondents (Ta-
ble 1), it is not surprising that the Internet is the main
medium from which visitors to the pla get informa-
tion for their visit (31 of respondents). The second
most important source of data (27 of respondents)
is information from friends and relatives, transmitted
not only by word-of-mouth but also through various
social media, which underscores the need of visitor
management of the protected area to have a clear, up-
dated, and interesting presentation of visitor services
on the internet, as well as the need to provide quality
services to receive positive reviews and recommenda-
tions. For visitor management of the researched area,
it is crucial to recognise that the combination of these
two sources of information makes it possible to reach
themajority of visitors, and some of themcan certainly
be motivated to visit (e.g., a selected cave in winter),
when they will have the unique experience of the karst
in wintertime with a minimum number of other vis-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 73
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
itors, and the cave will probably be pleasantly warm
(compared to outdoor temperatures).
In the context of the geographic structure of re-
spondents, whether they came from the Czech Re-
public or abroad was determined. The questionnaire
showed that theMoravianKarst is a destinationmainly
for domestic tourism. Of the total respondents, only
4 were foreign visitors. In the structure of foreign
visitors, most respondents were from Slovakia; the
second most frequently cited country of origin was
Poland; the third was Russia. The largest representa-
tion of Slovaks among visitors from abroad also prove
Lorencová et al. (2014). It can have various reasons,
for example, not too great a distance of the Mora-
vian Karst from Slovakia, or that many Slovaks live
in the Czech Republic. In the ratio of Czech and for-
eign visitors, the results of our research contradict the
information of the Moravian Karst Cave Adminis-
tration, which indicates that visitors from abroad ac-
count for approximately one-third of the total number
of visitors to the area (Enviweb.cz, 2017). It needs to
be taken into account, however, that the information
from the cave administration is based on the tickets
sold to publicly-accessible caves, while our data were
obtained at various locations throughout the protected
area. Both sources of information nevertheless agree
on themost common countries of origin of foreign vis-
itors as well as on the fact that the number of visitors
to the pla, for whom the main reason for their visit
to the protected area is a tour of the caves, accounted
for less than half of the total number of visitors to the
area (Table 2). This agreement confirms, among other
things, the relevance of the results of our research. The
authors of the paper are, therefore, inclined to see the
results of their research as corresponding better to the
real situation in relation to the entire pla, and so the
share of foreign visitors to the Moravian Karst is sig-
nificantly lower than the overall number of visitors
given by Enviweb.cz (2017).
For visitor management and maintaining the sus-
tainable tourism of the pla, the research implies the
positive fact that almost 70 of visitors return to this
protected area, 30 even repeatedly (i.e., they had
been there at least five times at the time of data col-
lection) (Table 2). Of the total number of respondents
Table 2 Reason for Visiting the Moravian Karst pla
in Dependence on the Frequency
of the Destination Visit
Reason for visit () () () () ()
Exploring natural
attractions (caves)
a    
s . . .
Sightseeing a    
s . . .
Relaxation a    
s . . .
Hiking, cycling, etc. a    
s . . .
House of Nature of the
Moravian Karst
a    
s . . .
Sport a    
s . . .
Work a    
s . . .
Entertainment a    
s . . .
Visit to relatives/friends a    
s . . .
Transit a    
s . . .
Total a    ,
r    
s    –
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) frequency: a –
absolute, s – column relative (), r – relative (), (2) 1st
visit, (3) 2nd–4th visits, (4) 5th and further visits, (5) total.
χ2 = 167.2909, df = 18, p = 0.0000.
(N = 2,100), 650were visiting the area for the first time,
(i.e., 31).
The statistical processing of the null hypothesis
h01 with Person’s chi-square test showed a significant
dependence between the main reason for visiting the
Moravian Karst and the frequency of visiting this pro-
tected area.When testing the independence of the two
variables, the values of the test statistic χ2 = 167.2909
and p = 0.0000 were calculated; the h01 null hypoth-
74 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Figure 1 The Correspondence Analysis: The Dependence
of the Reason for Visiting the Moravian Karst
pla to the Frequency of the Destination Visit
(2d plot of row and column coordinates,
dimension: 1× 2; input table (rows × columns):
3× 10; standardization: row and column profiles;
dark – visit frequency, light – reason for visit)
esis was rejected at the level of significance of 5 (Ta-
ble 2). The corresponding analysis of examining both
variables suggests that there is a significant difference
between the main reason for visiting the destination
among first-time visitors and among visitors repeat-
edly coming back (i.e., those who have been to the
area at least five times) (Figure 1).
The first visit to the pla is most often logically fo-
cused on becoming acquainted with the most famous
attractions in the area (i.e., the caves), while for repeat
visitors the predominant reason is the desire for active
leisure in the beautiful natural environment, whether
for relaxing walks, hiking, or biking. While the major-
ity of first-time visitors (55.4) said their main reason
for visiting the pla was to ‘explore natural attractions
– caves,’ it was the reason for only 27.9 of repeat vis-
itors.
In contrast, only 26of first-time visitors indicated
active leisure in the pla natural environment, but it
was the reason for 52.3 of repeat visitors to the area
(Table 2). Moreover, one quarter of respondents were
planning to return to the pla within six months of
questioning, and 52 of respondents want to come
Figure 2 The Correspondence Analysis: The Dependence
of the Distance from Visitor’s Residence to the
Frequency of the Moravian Karst pla Visits (2d
plot of row and column coordinates, dimension:
1× 2; input table (rows × columns): 3× 4;
standardization: row and column profiles; dark –
visit frequency, light – residence distance)
back too, but not so soon. A major challenge for the
sustainable development of tourism in the area will be
the fact that visitors to the caves are not interested in
visiting other localities in the pla during their visit.
For visitor management of the pla, these research re-
sults are significant in that they demonstrate that re-
peat visitors are greatly interested in other locations
of the protected area than the accessible tourist caves
and the Macocha gorge, and they need much more
attention in the visitor management in future.
We can also see that Moravian Karst has some spe-
cific characteristics in terms of the main reasons for
visiting this area. Visitors come here mainly to explore
the natural attractions, then to relax and to do sports.
Entertainment was the main reason for less than 3 of
respondents. In contradistinction,Navrátil et al. (2015)
revealed that most important for tourists in the pro-
tected areas in the southern part of the Czech Republic
are relaxation, entertainment, and recreational sports
activities.
Furthermore, the stated h02 null hypothesis was
tested, forwhich the assumptionwasmade that among
visitors to the Moravian Karst pla, repeat visits to the
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 75
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
Table 3 Distance from Visitor’s Residence in Dependence
on the Frequency of the Moravian Karst pla
Visits
Residence distance () () () () ()
Up to  km a    
s   
– km a    
s   
– km a    
s   
Above  km a    ,
s   
Total a    ,
r    
s    –
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) frequency: a –
absolute, s – column relative (), r – relative (), (2) 1st
visit, (3) 2nd–4th visits, (4) 5th and further visits, (5) total.
χ2 = 548.398, df = 6, p = 0.0000.
area are not dependent on the distance of the respon-
dent’s home. Pearson’s chi-square test showed a signif-
icant statistical dependence of both variables, because
χ2 = 548.398 and p = 0.0000 (Table 3); we, therefore,
reject the h02 null hypothesis at the significance level
of 5. Figure 2, a biplot created using the correspon-
dence analysis method, shows that respondents resid-
ing within 20 km of the surveyed site are clearly the
most frequent visitors to the Moravian Karst. Two-
thirds of repeat visitors to the area reside within 50 km
of the pla. Interestingly, more than a fifth of repeat
visitors to the surveyed area come from a distance of
over 100 km. Almost 70 of first-time visitors come
from a distance of over 100 km from the pla (Table
3). For visitor management of the protected area, it is
recognised that people not only from the surround-
ing area are repeatedly returning to the pla, again im-
portant information. This fact confirms the high at-
tractiveness of the area for tourism, and management
could use it in their marketing activities, especially in
an effort to disperse visitors across the pla, ideally in
combination with the previous finding regarding the
main reasons for repeat visits by the respondents.
Conclusion
Protected areas around the world are seeing a growing
public interest in visiting them, and in many places
valuable natural and landscape features are under
threat from overly heavy a tourist burden. This is
the current problem of the Moravian Karst pla, the
largest and most popular karst area in the Czech Re-
public.
This article shows the possibilities of using visitor
monitoring in the visitormanagement of the protected
area in the example of the Moravian Karst Protected
Landscape Area and serves as a case study that could
inspire other protected area managements to use pri-
mary marketing research more often as an effective
tool for obtaining data needed for sustainable tourism
management of the given area. The data obtained di-
rectly from visitors enables not only the creation of
their exact profiles and segmentation of them, but also
provides valuable data on the motivation to visit the
area, data on the planned and real behaviour of visi-
tors, their satisfaction with their stay in the destina-
tion, and similar.
The results of the research into the Moravian Karst
Protected Landscape Area showed that this protected
area is visited by men and women in balanced propor-
tion and that the structure of visitors is significantly
predominated by persons aged 35–49. Furthermore,
almost 80 of visitors to the surveyed pla have at
least completed secondary education. This fact should
be exploited by the visitor management of the Mora-
vian Karst pla, as this group of visitors can be easily
motivated for repeated visits and can be redirected to
less exposed parts of the pla. The results of the re-
search also show that the surveyed area is primarily
a destination for domestic tourism and that the main
motive for visiting the destination is, for almost half
of the total number of visitors, to become acquainted
with tourist–accessible caves. The vast majority of vis-
itors (almost 70) return to the Moravian Karst pla
and 30 of the total number even repeatedly.
The stated h01 null hypothesis, which assumed
there is no significant difference in themain reason for
visiting the Moravian Karst pla between first-time
visitors and those who repeatedly return to the area,
was not confirmed. The statistical processing of the
76 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Stanislava Pachrová et al. Monitoring of Visitors as a Tool of Protected Areas Management
data by Pearson’s chi-square test showed a significant
dependence between both variables analysed. It has
been proven that the first visit to the pla is most of-
ten focused on becoming acquainted with the most
famous attractions of the area (the caves) while repeat
visitors are mostly motivated by the desire for active
leisure (relaxing on walks, hiking or biking). This re-
sult for visitormanagement of the pla is significant in
that repeat visitors have shown great interest in other
areas of the protected area than the tourist-accessible
caves and the Macocha gorge.
The stated h02 null hypothesis, which assumed
that repeat visits to theMoravianKarst pla donot de-
pendon the distance of the respondent’s residence,was
also not confirmed. Pearson’s chi-square test showed
a significant statistical dependence of both variables.
Respondents residing within 20 km of the place of in-
quiry are clearly the most frequent visitors returning
to the pla. With the combination of the knowledge
that returning visitors to the pla are more interested
in getting to know new sites of the protected area, vis-
itor management of the Moravian Karst pla should
also work on trying to relieve the most burdened sites.
Our article has provided much new information
about the profile of visitors to theMoravianKarst pla,
which is practical in the management of visitors to
this area. The primary limitation of the research con-
ducted is that the data collected in the field was not
year-round and did not cover at least onewhole tourist
season. However, due to the chosen methodology of
data collection and well-trained interviewers, our re-
search results are sufficiently representative. The con-
tinuous collection and subsequent evaluation of data
on visiting a destination are essential for the sustain-
able management of tourism in any area. Our research
should, therefore, be followed up by further research,
which would be conducted throughout the year and
provide, for example, information on the prevailing
motivation to visit the pla outside the main tourism
season and during the winter.
Acknowledgments
The paper was created with the financial support of
project No. 1170/026/013 of the College of Polytechnics
Jihlava.
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Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 79

Original Scientific Article
Congress Destination Attractiveness:
The Case of Supply-Side of Business Tourism
in Slovenia
Marijana Sikošek
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
marijana.sikosek@fts.upr.si
The purpose of the article is to research which attractiveness attributes of a congress
destination are those that are important for visiting the congress destination and
association meeting, namely from the point of view of the supply-side of business
tourism, meaning meeting planners (buyers), suppliers, intermediaries and special
agencies. The article redefines the dimensions of visiting a congress destination and
the research concept of the supply-side of business tourism. On this basis, we devel-
oped a newmultidimensional construct (model) of congress destination visit, which
takes into consideration three aspects: the destination, venue and business event as-
pects as the foundation of the supply-side of congress tourism. Based on previous
research, we developed a model of attractiveness attributes for each individual as-
pect which contributes to the visiting of the congress destination. The aim of the
research is to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the supply-side
of congress tourism in a multidimensional analysis of attractiveness attributes of a
congress destination which constitute important factors for visiting.
Keywords: congress destination attractiveness, business tourism, conference
attributes, congress destination attributes, venue attributes, congress destination
visit
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.81-95
Theoretical Background
In the last decades, there has been an exponential
growth in the number of events, which also applies to
business events and congress tourism in general (Getz
&Page, 2016). According to the icca (see http://www
.iccaworld.com), the period between 1963 and 2017
shows a considerable growth, both in terms of inter-
national associationmeetings as well as the number of
attendees.With the advent of the economic crisis over
ten years ago, a decrease in the number of meetings
was recorded as well, which, however, has been on the
rise again in the last few years (The Global Association
of the Exhibition Industry, 2016).
It was the growth in the volume of business meet-
ings that prompted researchers to explore both the rea-
sons and the attributes of attractiveness of a congress
destination. This is the central space where a business
meeting (conference) takes place and where suppli-
ers, organisers and attendees meet. There are differ-
ent definitions in literature in the conceptualisation of
the congress destination (Oppermann, 1996a, 1996b;
Oppermann & Chon, 1997; Rogers, 1998; Crouch &
Ritchie, 1998; Swarbrooke & Horner, 2001; Petersen,
2005; Davidson & Rogers, 2006; Rogers, 2008), and
these are often not uniform, especially when defin-
ing its dimensions and spatial framework. A review of
literature shows that a congress destination can be de-
fined as a spatial, substantive and service entity. Clas-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 81
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
sifying congress destinations based on the substan-
tive principle means classifying them according to the
different types of business meetings (Swarbrooke &
Horner, 2001), such as congress destination, incen-
tive destination, or exhibition destination (Lu & Cai,
2009).
A narrower understanding of a congress destina-
tion as a spatial entity means understanding a desti-
nation as a location where a congress will take place
(Rogers, 1998; Baloglu & Love, 2005; Millar & Kerr,
2009; Shin, 2009; Del Chiappa, 2012). A destination is
defined in a broader sense by Swarbrooke and Horner
(2001), who understand it as the central location or
place of business travel with the purpose to attend a
business meeting. At the same time, they point out the
need to distinguish between the terms ‘congress des-
tination’ and ‘congress venue,’ as a destination is to be
understood as an area, whereas a venue is to be seen as
an independent unit of said area, meaning a ‘destina-
tion’ is considered to be a broader term compared to
a ‘venue.’ Nevertheless, we found quite a few examples
in literature where a congress venue is interpreted as a
destination (Robinson & Callan, 2005; Millar & Kerr,
2009; Shin, 2009; Del Chiappa, 2012). Oral and Whit-
field (2010) use the terms ‘macro-destination,’ which
includes the attributes of a broader destination, and
‘micro-destination,’ including venue, accommodation
and restaurant services.
To view the concept of a congress destination in a
more complex manner, the destination should also be
understood as a space that provides suitable services
and amenities for a business meeting. Literature thus
most oftenmentions the concept of a congress destina-
tion as a space that acts as a host destination for the or-
ganisation of congresses (Oppermann & Chon, 1997;
Rogers, 1998; Swarbrooke & Horner, 2001; Rogers,
2008). However, according to Davidson and Rogers
(2006), and Rogers (2008), a destination is also re-
ferred to as a combination of different attributes, fac-
tors, attractions, services and stakeholders in a specific
space or location.
Fundamental to the existence of a congress destina-
tion and congress tourism is the content of its services,
meaning congress-related products. The congress pro-
gramme can be understood as the essence of a business
event, as content is what defines it. The latter is also
the basic motive for the travel of the business tourist,
and the basic motive of the meeting planner (organ-
iser) for the organisation of the conference. Zhang et
al. (2007) view the core congress product in a similar
way, arguing that the essential product of a conference
is its programme.
The understanding of the attendance of a confer-
ence and destination is often associated with the un-
derstanding of the motives and factors contributing to
the decision to attend a conference and thus to visit
the destination. In congress tourism, attendance as a
quantitative category is very often mentioned in rela-
tion to the performance of either the meeting planner
(organiser), supplier or the destination. The criteriawe
see is either the number of attendees or, more often,
the number of conferences held over a given period
(Crouch & Ritchie, 1998; Nelson & Rys, 2000; Fawzy
& Samra, 2008; Elston & Draper, 2012). In terms of
content, attendance is a category that means attend-
ing a conference (Crouch & Ritchie, 1998; Rittichain-
uwat et al., 2001; Comas & Moscardo, 2005; Petersen,
2005; Robinson & Callan, 2005; Severt et al., 2009;
Lee & Back, 2010; Tanford et al., 2012; Ramirez et al.,
2013), meaning that an attendee is understood as a
person who attends the conference programme. Op-
permann and Chon (1997) already mentioned differ-
ent segments of meeting participants and the related
different activity of attending or visiting both the con-
ference and the destination, so the attendance cate-
gory can be understood in two manners. In a narrow
sense, the attendance of a conference is understood
as the attendance of a conference participant in the
substantive program of the conference taking place
in a specific venue; more broadly, it also means visit-
ing a congress destination. As authors (Oppermann &
Chon, 1997; Upchurch et al., 2000; Rittichainuwat et
al., 2001; Tanford et al., 2012; Oral & Whitfield, 2010;
Del Chiappa, 2012) often point out destination attrac-
tiveness attributes as important factors as well, atten-
dance is understood in its broader meaning.
As Getz and Page (2016) point out, researchers pay
considerable attention to questions about reasons and
motives for attending (visiting), loyalty, or attractive-
ness attributes of attraction of a congress destination.
82 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
We find that the authors were looking for models and
approaches that would provide the most comprehen-
sive answer and solutions that would give the meeting
planners and suppliers at the destination a competitive
advantage and have a positive impact on the visit and
experience of all destination stakeholders. DiPietro
et al. (2008) believe that the primary goal of meeting
planners is to find a destination that meets the goals
of the planned congress, as this is what the number of
attendees will depend on. Breiter and Milman (2006,
p. 1370), however, are convinced that ‘the destination
where the congress will take place is important for a
participant in decidingwhether or not to attend’Whit-
field et al. (2014) found that research usually includes
three most important directions, namely, research of
the process of choosing a location or venue (Crouch
& Louviere, 2004; Robinson & Callan, 2005; Fawzy &
Samra, 2008); research of the attractions of the desti-
nation or venue for the participant (Breiter &Milman,
2006; Whitfield &Weber, 2011; Weber & Chon, 2002),
or research of the congress destination image (Op-
permann, 1996b; Baloglu & Love, 2005). Considerable
research has also been dedicated to satisfaction and
loyalty to the destination (Choi, 2005; Lu & Cai, 2009;
Lee & Back, 2010; Tanford et al., 2012).
The analysis of the selected papers of research on
destination attractiveness attributes from the point
of view of the meeting planner shows that they are
most often associated with the attributes of accom-
modation and congress venue capacity, as they ap-
pear in all research. Hotel and venue services are of-
ten considered simultaneously, confirming the pro-
fessional practice that most congresses take place in
hotels (Rogers, 2008; Robinson & Callan, 2005). In
terms of frequency, following immediately behind is
the cost/expense aspect, especially the costs within
the destination, the cost of the venue and the accom-
modation. Attributes related to the attractiveness of
congress halls ranked third in terms of frequency, with
the capacity and services provided being the leading
attributes. Destination attributes are very often associ-
atedwith the accessibility of the destination itself; only
four of the studies analysed do not mention accessi-
bility as such (Edelstein & Benini, 1994; Robinson &
Callan, 2002). The accessibility attribute is not always
understood in terms of physical accessibility, but also
as an attribute of destination affordability (Nelson &
Rys, 2000). Other less frequentlymentioned attributes
of destination attractiveness are out-of-congress facili-
ties, the image of the destination, security, professional
congress staff, local hospitality, attractions, local sup-
port and others.
On the other hand, we were also interested in es-
tablishing how the attributes of destination attractive-
ness were evaluated from the point of view of the at-
tendee, that is, the one who was already perceived by
Var et al. (1985) as an important factor when decid-
ing to attend a conference and thus visit the destina-
tion. In an analysis of selected studies, we established
that the most important attribute of attractiveness or
motive for attending is the destination or conference
location; Mair and Thompson (2009) are in fact con-
vinced this is one of the most important attributes,
with accessibility and attractiveness being at the fore-
front. It is closely related to the dimensions of acces-
sibility and attraction of a destination, which are, as
a redefinition of the Oppermann-Chon model (1997),
supported by Zhang et al. (2007). The dimension of
accessibility is often expressed by the distance to the
host destination, the travel time, and transport con-
nections, as well as the formalities that need to be ar-
ranged to enter the country, whereas the dimension of
attraction is expressed with the image of the destina-
tion, its climate, the hospitality of the locals, and the
culinary and leisure selection at the destination, aswell
as the past experience of an individual. According to
Jago and Deery (2005), the attractiveness of a desti-
nation is also an important element for meeting plan-
ners, who, as a result of its attractiveness, attract more
visitors at the conference and thus higher revenue. In
terms of content, the destination is also associatedwith
its image, environment and climate and, ultimately, its
reputation (Whitfield et al., 2014). As emphasised by
Rittichainuwat et al. (2001) andWhitfield et al. (2014),
the opportunity to visit a destination is not to be ne-
glected as an additional form of motivation to visit.
One of the most common attributes is the attractive-
ness of the content or the conference program. This
is closely linked to the attributes of networking and
professional development, career opportunities, vali-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 83
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
dation and reputation in the profession, and personal
advancement (Rittichainuwat et al., 2001; Lee & Back,
2008; Yoo & Chon, 2008; Mair & Thompson, 2009;
Shin, 2009; Whitfield et al., 2014).
Another important attractiveness attribute is the
cost of attending a conference at a destination, in par-
ticular the amount of registration fees, transportation
and accommodation (authors). Important attributes
that attendees think of are also those that may lead
them not to attend the conference, and were referred
to as ‘intervening opportunities’ by Oppermann and
Chon (1997, p. 186). Thesemay bemore attractive con-
ferences with more prominent key-note speakers, or
those taking place at the same time, as noted by Mair
and Thompson (2009). Authors also classify in this
same group the overlaps with the holidays of an indi-
vidual (Oppermann & Chon, 1997; Zhang et al., 2007;
Mair & Thompson, 2009), whereas some also include
the health of the individual (Rittichainuwat et al., 2001;
Mair & Thompson, 2009) or overlaps with other con-
ferences in this category (Mair & Thompson, 2009),
especially as it is often pointed out that participants are
‘time-poor’ (Jago & Deery, 2005; Yoo & Chon, 2008).
An overview of research shows that the content
representation of individual attractiveness attributes is
very diverse and structured differently.We found that,
in terms of meaning, they could be split into multiple
dimensions, such as destination, conference/content,
and venue attributes. Whitfield et al. (2014) also noted
that attractiveness attributes could be divided into des-
tination attributes, event attributes, and facilities at-
tributes.
We found that in the research done so far, the
biggest gap can be seen in the approach when con-
sidering the attributes of destination attractiveness.
Firstly, there is no approach that would simultane-
ously check the willingness to visit a congress desti-
nation through the various groups of attractiveness
attributes that are typical of a congress destination.
Secondly, there is no approach that would verify the
attributes of attractiveness based on the opinions of
the supply-side of business tourism as a whole, as it is
composed of meeting planners (buyers), suppliers, in-
termediaries, and special agencies as defined by Swar-
brooke and Horner (2001), although Var et al. (1985)
Conference
attributes
Venue
attributes
Destination
attributes
Congress
destination
visit
Figure 1 Multi-Dimensional Construct of Congress
Destination Visit
already pointed out that the common goal of both the
associations (organisers) and the host destination of-
fering congress services, is maximizing the number
of conference attendees. Our way of thinking is sup-
ported by the findings of some authors (Oppermann
& Chon, 1997; Jago & Deery, 2005; Yoo in Chon, 2010;
Whitfield et al., 2014), who state that the factors and at-
tributes of a congress destination should be evaluated
from different perspectives.
The main purpose of business travel is precisely
to travel to a destination for business interests, where
business travellers meet as part of the event by attend-
ing a congress (event) held at a congress venue at the
congress destination. On this basis, we assume that
the visit of the congress destination is the result of a
combination of three factors – destination, venue, and
the conference (event) – and introduce a multidimen-
sional congress destination visit construct consisting
of the group of destination attractiveness attributes,
the group of conference attractiveness attributes, and
the group of venue attractiveness attributes.
Methodology
The purpose of the research is to find those factors
of attractiveness of a congress destination that service
providers and organisers of business meetings con-
sider to be important in choosing a congress desti-
84 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
nation. We designed a multidimensional construct of
congress destination attractiveness as a starting point
for empirical research. The necessity for designing
a multidimensional construct was also based on the
opinion of the authors of Whitfield et al. (2014), who
propose to address the attractiveness attributes on sev-
eral levels.
Based on the substantive analysis of the literature
we incorporated different aspects in each group of at-
tractiveness attributes within the construct, and iden-
tified them with individual elements. The group of
destination attributes thus included destination acces-
sibility, attractiveness, services and conditions at the
destination, as well as the reputation of the destina-
tion. The ones we classified as venue attributes include
venue services, accommodation, type of venue, venue
accessibility, congress hall features, and venue reputa-
tion. The elements of the group of attractiveness at-
tributes include business opportunities, networking,
intervening opportunities, the content of the confer-
ence and its reputation.
The multidimensionality of the construct of con-
gress destination attractiveness was tested using Ex-
ploratory Factor Analysis (efa). In general, factor
analysis is used to analyse phenomena that cannot be
directly measured. The purpose of exploratory factor
analysis was to identify relevant factors by individual
attractiveness groups. Given the relatively large num-
ber of researched attributes, dictated by the complexity
of the case under study, factor analysis was performed
separately for individual attribute groups.
Research Sample and Instrument
The research sample consisted of organisations on
the supply-side of business tourism in Slovenia. Their
number can roughly be estimated based on the results
of the Congress Capacity Study of Slovenia (Sikošek
et al., 2014). Congress venue suppliers account for the
largest number, estimated at 208 in the research; there
are far fewer other supply-side organisations, such
as professional congress organisers (pcos), destina-
tion management companies (dmcs), incentive travel
agencies, convention visitors bureaus (cvbs), carri-
ers, caterers, and event agencies. It is difficult to esti-
mate the volume of meeting planners, as it is usually a
trade secret of suppliers. Robinson and Callan (2002)
encountered the same dilemma of determining the
population of meeting planners, where they reported
on the absence of a central client list. The sample of
meeting planners includes those who organised asso-
ciation meetings at least in the last year, or are suppli-
ers of congress services in the territory of Slovenia.We
obtained their addresses based on our own research;
part of the meeting planners’ addresses were obtained
with the help of pcos, cvbs and dmcs. The ques-
tionnaire was sent to 1558 addresses.
The introductory part of the questionnaire was
aimed at obtaining data on the profile of the respon-
dent with closed-ended questions. The central part
was substantive in nature, and was divided into three
sets of statements, separated into: destination attri-
butes, conference attributes, and venue attributes.
Surveys were conducted over a three-week period
using the online survey technique using the 1ka web
application. After three weeks of surveying, after hav-
ing exhausted thewillingness of respondents to partic-
ipate, we received 171 returned questionnaires, which
represents a 10.8 response rate. Out of 171 question-
naires received, 49 were excluded as ineligible for fur-
ther analysis due to the excessive number of miss-
ing answers. Thus, 122 survey questionnaires were in-
cluded in the analysis. The data were analysed using
spss version 22.
Results
Sample Profile
Out of the 122 respondents, 75were women, and 25
were men. Their age structure indicates that most of
them are in their work intensive period: 35 are be-
tween 31 and 40 years old, 27 are between 41 and 50,
26 of people in the sample are over 51, while at least
11 are in the 18–30 age group. Nearly half (46) of
respondents have a college or university degree, fol-
lowed by those with a postgraduate degree (18), and
only 2have a high school degree, and no one has only
a primary school education.
The results also show that the respondents have
extensive work experience in the organisation where
they are currently employed: the largest proportion of
respondents have more than ten years of experience,
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 85
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 1 Working Time (Period of Employment)
of Respondents in the Current Organisation
Period of employment (in years) f 
No answer  .
Up to  year  .
More than  year up to  years  .
More than  years up to  years  .
More than  years up to  years  .
More than  years  .
Total  .
Table 2 Current Position of the Respondents
in the Working Organisation
Job position f 
Middle management position  .
Upper/high management position  .
Researcher, professor, teacher  .
Congress management  .
Marketing, sales  .
Other  .
No answer  .
Total  .
and almost a quarter have between five and ten years
of work experience in themeetings industry. Other re-
searchers (Baloglu & Love, 2005) provided similar re-
sults.
Most of the supply-side organisations surveyed
(22.1) hold a leading position, such as area manager.
Those in managerial positions, such as directors, ac-
count for 16.4. Researchers, professors and teachers
account for 15.6 (Table 1). There are 13.9 of employ-
ees in congressmanagement, such as organisation, ad-
ministration, technical service, etc., while a slightly
lower percentage is employed in marketing and sales
(12.3). For 13 of the service providers, we were not
able to obtain data on their workplaces.
In identifying the specifics of the sample, we were
also interested in the type of supplier. Respondents had
the possibility to answer several questions at once, as
practice shows that each supplier could perform sev-
eral activities simultaneously (e.g. venue and pco).
Table 3 Type of Supply-Side Organisation
Type f 
Meeting planner (‘buyer’)  .
Science/research institution  .
Venue  .
cvb/dmo  .
pco  .
dmc, incentive, teambuilding services  .
Other  .
On average, they stated 1.3. The structure of supply-
side organisations indicates that a considerable pro-
portion of survey participants were meeting planners,
as in 36.2 of cases, the respondents stated that they
were either clients or organisers of themeetings (Table
3). More than a quarter (26.7) of respondents work
in a scientific research institution, and these are of-
ten meeting planners. Slightly fewer (25.9) are venue
suppliers, who, however, stated that they were repre-
sentatives of a hotel with conference facilities (n = 14),
a congress hotel (n= 5), a congress or exhibition centre
(n = 4), or a special venue (n = 1).
Further on, we were also interested in how many
conferences are organised by the respondents. Half of
them stated that their organisation organises up to five
conferences annually, and just under a fifth (18.0) be-
tween 6 to 10 conferences. More than a tenth of the
participating organisations (11.5) organise from 11 to
30 conferences, 5.7 organise from 31 to 50, and a tenth
(10.7) of them organise more than 50. For 4.1 of re-
spondents we were unable to obtain this information.
Factor Analysis Results
Considering that a similar multidimensional attribute
model for the attractiveness of the congress destina-
tion with three groups of factors has not yet been
constructed, it was necessary to form a set of state-
ments related to each group of attributes for the pur-
pose of this research.We thus classified the statements
into three groups. Due to the complexity of the stud-
ied problem, we decided to perform a separate factor
analysis for each group. The statements were checked
the same way in each group: with a Likert-type scale,
86 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
where the respondents rated agreement with each
statement, where a score of 1 meant they ‘completely
disagree,’ a score of 2 meant they ‘disagree,’ a score
of 3 meant they ‘partially agree,’ a score of 4 meant
they ‘agree’ and a score of 5 meant they ‘strongly agree.’
We deliberately formed some statements with a nega-
tive meaning. In this case, we reversed the rating scale
so that the higher value was always associated with a
stronger agreement with the importance of the item
being evaluated. We marked such elements with (R).
Destination Attractiveness Attributes
In the final model 13 of the original 19 statements were
used. The adequacy of variable inclusion in the final
factor model was verified by kmo statistics; its value
amounted to 0.74, which indicates themedian suitabil-
ity of the data (kmo > 0.7) for further factor analysis.
The adequacy of the data to obtain the final factor so-
lution is further confirmed by Bartlett’s test of spheric-
ity (p = 0.0). The eigenvalue diagram showed one
more prominent factor and three slightly less promi-
nent ones. The results therefore show that the opin-
ions of the surveyed suppliers regarding the attractive-
ness attributes of the destination can be explained by
four common factors, all of which together account for
53.3 of the total variance explained, which is an ac-
ceptable value. To obtain a clearer structure of the final
solution, we carried out a rotation using the varimax
method. The final factor solution is shown in Table
4. To achieve better clarity, only those factor loadings
that show a significant impact are shown (<–0.3 or
>0.3). We added the calculated proportion of the total
variance explained to the structure of factor loadings,
as well as Cronbach’s coefficient of reliability of an in-
dividual factor, which ranges between 0.74 and 0.77
in the case of three factors, which is considered very
good, whereas for the fourth, 0.83 indicates exemplary
reliability.
The results of the factor analysis showed that a total
of four factors can determine attractiveness. Accord-
ing to the respondents, these are the factors that are
important in choosing a host destination for the or-
ganisation of the conference, and thus for attracting
potential visitors to the destination. According to the
suppliers, the evaluation of the attractiveness of the
destination as the place where the conference is organ-
ised refers to the reputation of the place, the attractions
of the destination, its accessibility and leisure activities
available at the destination.
The first factor is the one that explains the largest
proportion of the total variance, namely 16.2. Ac-
cording to the content of individual variables, which
stand for the general characteristics of the place where
the conference is organised, we named this factor rep-
utation. It is most strongly defined by the destination
security variable, followed by the attitude of the locals
towards the conference guests and the development
of local infrastructure. According to the suppliers, the
reputation of the destination is also indicated by the
good opinion of the professional public about the des-
tination, which facilitates the decision to organise the
conference at the destination itself, and is also a result
of a stimulating economic environment.
The second factor was associated with attractions,
and it accounts for 12.9 of the total variance. It is de-
termined by the culinary selection of the destination,
the sights at the destination and the favorable climatic
conditions.
The third factor, which accounts for 12.2 of the
total variability, is the factor related to the accessibility
of the destination, in which case its attractiveness is
reduced by a great distance from the original destina-
tion, which is usually associated with high transporta-
tion costs to the host destination. Last but not least, a
destination may be less accessible and thus, according
to the service providers, also less attractive due to the
time-consuming arrangement of formalities to enter
the country.
The fourth factor is associatedwith leisure activities
at the destination, which accounts for 12 of the total
variance. The result is almost somewhat surprising,
as organisers have not paid much attention to ‘non-
congress’ activities so far. It is true, however, that such
activities are becoming increasingly more attractive
for the organisation of the conference at the destina-
tion.
Venue Attractiveness Attributes
The final factor solution retained ten variables out of a
total of 22 originally included. The kmo statistic value
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 87
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 4 Rotated Factor Solution: Destination Attributes
Item (variable) () () () ()
When organising a conference, it is better if a destination is considered safe. .
It is better to have locals with a positive attitude towards guests (they are hospitable, kind,
fluent in foreign languages) when organising a conference.
.
When organising a conference, it is better if a destination has a well-developed local
infrastructure.
.
If the professional public (journals, online journals, professional associations, social
networks) has a positive opinion about a destination, the decision for organising a
conference is faster, easier.
.
It is important that the economic environment of a destination is encouraging. .
It is important that a destination has a well-developed culinary offer. .
When deciding to organise a conference, it is important for a destination to offer tourist sites
and attractions.
.
Favourable climate/weather conditions at a destination facilitate opting for the organisation
of a conference.
.
Remoteness of a destination makes it less attractive for organising a conference there. .
High transport costs make a destination less attractive for organising a conference there. .
Time-consuming arrangement of formalities when entering a country (obtaining visas,
procedures at crossing borders) makes a destination less attractive for organising a
conference there.
.
When deciding whether to organise a conference, it is irrelevant whether a destination offers
good possibilities for shopping.
.
When deciding whether to organise a conference, it is irrelevant whether a destination offers
a variety of leisure activities (night clubs, bars, theatres, . . .).
.
Total variance explained () . . . .
Reliability Coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) . . . .
Notes Factors: (1) reputation, (2) attractions, (3) accessibility, (4) leisure activities.
amounts to 0.81, which means it is estimated as suit-
able to be included in the model. The adequacy of
the data to obtain the final factor solution is further
proven by Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p = 0.0). In esti-
mating the proportion of total variance explained, we
found that a total of three factors account for 44.4
of the total variability in the sample. The final factor
solution was formulated by three common factors and
is presented in Table 5. To achieve better clarity, only
those factor loadings that show a significant impact
are shown (<–0.3 or >0.3). The calculated proportion
of the total variance explained and the Cronbach’s al-
pha were added to the structure of factor loadings for
each individual factor. This amounts to 0.70 for the
first one, which can be estimated as good reliability,
whereas for the other two factors, the value is 0.66 for
the second and 0.67 for the third factor, which can be
estimated as moderate reliability (Nunally, 1978).
The first factor, which accounts for 18.1 of the
variability in the sample, is the organisation of the
venue, which can be associated with the professional
work of the staff at the venue, as well as the efficiency of
the registration process and the speed of entry or exit
from the venue, and last but not least, the adequate ar-
rangement of conference facilities, such as their clear
labelling. Ensuring security is also one of the parame-
ters of the organisation of the venue.
The share of the total variance explained for the
88 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 5 Rotated Factor Solution: Venue Attributes
Item (variable) () () ()
It is expected of the staff at the venue to be professional. .
It is expected that a venue offers a possibility to organise an effective registration process and a fast
entrance to/exit from the venue.
.
A pleasant atmosphere at a venue is not important. .
It is not important that a venue offers additional services, for example the possibility to use their
offices, wardrobes, carrying as well as storing of materials and similar.
.
When organising a conference, it is important to have an appropriate number of hotel rooms
(rooms for accommodation) with respect to the size of the conference.
.
It is important that a venue offers good connections for local transport. .
It is better if accommodation is as close as possible to the conference venue (facilities in which the
conference takes place).
.
The size and number of halls have to be appropriate for the size of a conference (the number of
attendees).
.
Conference facilities at a venue must be appropriately organised (markings, interior design, toilet
facilities).
.
Safety at a venue is important. .
Total variance explained () . . .
Reliability Coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) . . .
Notes Factors: (1) organisation, (2) infrastructure, (3) additional services.
second factor amounts to 13.8, and is associated with
the infrastructural arrangement of the venue. It is de-
fined by variables relating to conference facilities as
such on the one hand, and to accommodation on the
other. Conference facilities at the venue should have an
appropriate ratio between the size and number of halls
and the volume of the conference, which undoubtedly
facilitates its organisation. The results also show that
the infrastructure arrangement of the venue is deter-
mined by its distance to local connections. It is not
surprising that accommodation can be linked to the
venue, as we established both in theory and in practice
that the venue and accommodation are often linked
together in a meaningful whole. The characteristics of
the individual variables that are linked within the fac-
tor of infrastructure lead us to think that these are the
characteristics of the venue that facilitate the organi-
sation of the conference.
A somewhat smaller proportion of the total vari-
ance explained (12.4) is associated with the third fac-
tor, which is related to additional venue services. It
refers to elements that facilitate the organisation of the
conference and include those venue services that typi-
cally represent the ‘invisible’ hand of the organisation.
In fact, the results show that this refers to a pleasant
atmosphere created by the venue and a variable that
reflects the technical nature of the organisation, such
as the possibility to use an office, changing rooms, and
material storage facilities.
Conference Attractiveness Attributes
After a substantive analysis, we decided to include 12
variables in the final solution. The relevance of in-
clusion is confirmed by kmo statistics, amounting to
0.793, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p = 0.00). The
assessment of the total variance explained and the
eigenvalue of the individual factors showed that the
attractiveness of the conference can be explained by
four factors, their total variance being 58.2. The fi-
nal factor solution after rotation is shown in Table 6.
The calculation of the reliability coefficient indicates
exemplary reliability in the opportunity factor (0.83),
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 89
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
whereas the reliability in the reputation and network-
ing factors is very good (0.79 and 0.78 respectively). In
terms of the content factor, the Cronbach’s coefficient
in the amount of 0.60 is at the border of moderate
reliability.
The factor loadings matrix shows that the first fac-
tor is defined by four variables. This is related to con-
ference opportunities and accounts for 18.5 of vari-
ability in the sample. From the organisers’ point of
view, the opportunity factor should be understood
primarily as creating an opportunity for the attendee,
and thus fulfilling the basic mission of the confer-
ence, which is primarily meant to be a place for busi-
ness meetings between individuals. From a service
provider’s perspective, conference opportunities are
those that allow for the exchange of experience, the
search for new opportunities and contacts, and the ac-
quisition of knowledge, and ultimately an opportunity
to meet experts.
The second factor, accounting for 15.2 of the total
variance explained, was the factor associated with the
reputation of the conference, which is determined by
exactly the same variables as we had anticipated in the
design phase of the survey. Reputation is a conference
factor that relates to the opinion of the external pub-
lic. This is the opinion that former attendees and the
professional public have of the conference, and pos-
itive past experiences of the attendees with the con-
ference, which should contribute to the efforts of sup-
pliers to optimize the organisation of the conference,
which can lead to better opportunities in conference
selection and attendance.
The third factor, which accounts for 13.2 of sam-
ple variability, is associated with networking. It is
linked with opportunities to find new business part-
ners and meet existing ones.
The fourth factor of conference attractiveness is
associated with conference content, and accounts for
11.3 of the variability in the sample. According to the
suppliers, the content of the conference is most de-
termined by interesting contributions or content ap-
pearing in the conference program, especially if they
represent something original in comparison to pre-
vious conferences, and by the presence of prominent
speakers at the conference.
Findings and Discussion
Our starting hypothesis is based on the realization that
visiting a congress destination is possible due to the
existence of attractiveness of the congress destination,
which is not a unique construct, but is defined by three
groups of attractiveness attributes that arise from the
necessity for the existence of three fundamental com-
ponents of a congress destination: attractiveness of the
destination as a place, attractiveness of the venue and
attractiveness of the conference.We examined it using
the results of exploratory factor analysis by individual
groups of attractiveness of a congress destination. The
summary of results is shown in Table 7.
The results show that destination attractiveness is
determined by the reputation of the destination, the
attractions at the destination, accessibility to the des-
tination and leisure activities at the destination, char-
acterized by 13 variables. Cronbach’s coefficient values
for these factors express very good or exemplary reli-
ability, as they range between 0.74 and 0.83, indicating
that individual dimensions of destination attractive-
ness on the service provider’s end define the construct
appropriately.
According to the results of the analysis, the attrac-
tiveness of the venue is linked with the organisation
of the venue, the infrastructure and the additional ser-
vices of the venue, characterised by a total of 10 vari-
ables. Considering the values of the reliability coeffi-
cient, which ranges from 0.66 to 0.70, we can sum-
marise that they indicate appropriate result character-
istics, meaning the individual dimensions of venue at-
tractiveness on the part of the providers define the
measured construct with adequate reliability.
The analysis has shown that conference attractive-
ness can be defined by a total of four factors, includ-
ing conference opportunities, the reputation of the
conference, networking and the substantive aspect
of the conference, which is described by 12 variables.
Cronbach’s coefficient values for each individual factor
range between 0.83 and 0.60, which indicates a good
reliability of the conference attractiveness construct.
The results of exploratory factor analysis are only
partially in line with the anticipated theoretical con-
cepts, as it was set out at the beginning of the study
that the attractiveness of a destination would consist
90 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 6 Rotated Factor Solution: Conference Attributes
Item (variable) () () () ()
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for participants to share experience. .
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for seeking new possibilities (markets,
research, companies, cooperations etc.) and contacts.
.
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for participants to obtain new knowledge. .
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for participants to meet specialists within
their field.
.
It is important for organisation that past participants have a positive opinion about
a conference.
.
It is important for organisation that the professional public (journals, online journals,
professional associations, social networks) has a positive opinion about a conference.
.
If participants have had a good experience with a conference, it is easier for them to decide
to attend it.
.
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for participants to search for new business
partners.
.
Attending a conference is a great opportunity for participants to meet business partners. .
If the programme, content of a conference represents a novelty with regard to the previous
ones, it is easier/faster to get participants to attend a conference.
.
Interesting contributions (topics) in the programme increase the number of participants
at a conference.
.
The presence of respectable speakers inside a field increases the number of participants
at a conference.
.
Total variance explained () . . . .
Reliability Coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) . . . .
Notes Factors: (1) opportunity, (2) reputation, (3) networking, (4) content.
of four factors (accessibility, attraction, services and
conditions at the destination, reputation of the des-
tination) and five factors of venue attractiveness (ac-
cessibility, accommodation, special conference facili-
ties, venue services, accommodation and reputation)
and conference attractiveness (business opportunities,
networking, intervening opportunities, content and
reputation). The research shows that attractiveness
factors are shaped differently by individual attractive-
ness groups. We identified a total of 11 attractiveness
dimensions, which are described by a total of 34 ele-
ments, and are classified within three groups of attrac-
tiveness.
The results of exploratory factor analysis conducted
between suppliers and meeting planners undoubtedly
indicate themultidimensionality of the congress desti-
nation attractiveness construct, defined by destination
attractiveness, venue attractiveness, and conference
attractiveness, as it turned out that there are a total of
11 dimensions defining it. These are the factors that
are important in choosing a congress destination, and
thus for attracting potential visitors to the destination.
The results also indicate that it would be difficult to
separately consider the different items of attractive-
ness of a congress destination as a factor in visiting,
and they should therefore be considered as a compre-
hensive concept, which, given their multidimensional
nature, dictates the simultaneous consideration of all
aspects of attractiveness.
Based on the results of the analysis, our thesis can
be confirmed, as it turned out that it is possible to de-
termine 11 attractiveness dimensions within individ-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 91
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 7 Summary of Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis by Individual Dimensions
Category Item α Dimension
Destination Reputation . Safety of the destination
Positive attitude of locals
Well-developed local infrastructure
A positive opinion of the professional public
Encouraging economic environment
Attractions . Well-developed culinary offer
Offering tourist sites and attractions
Favourable climate/weather conditions
Accessibility . Remoteness of a destination
High transport costs
Time-consuming arrangement of formalities
Leisure activities . Shopping
A variety of leisure activities
Venue Organisation . Professional venue staff
Effective registration process
Appropriately organised conference facilities
Safety at a venue
Infrastructure . Good connections with local transport
Appropriateness of the size and number of halls
Vicinity of accommodation
Appropriate number of hotel rooms with respect to the size of the conf.
Additional services . Pleasant atmosphere
Technical services
Continued on the next page
ual congress destination attractiveness groups, which
points to the multidimensionality of the congress des-
tination attractiveness construct.
Conclusion
This paper highlights the multidimensionality of ad-
dressing the attractiveness of a congress destination,
and points out the need to address it in a comprehen-
sive manner and, ultimately, to interpret the attrac-
tiveness of a congress destination as a factor in visit-
ing. It was established that it would be difficult to ad-
dress individual attributes of attractiveness separately
or as an individual entity, but must be viewed in the
light of complementarity that gives the items of attrac-
tiveness of a congress destination a multidimensional
character. The congress destination thus cannot be un-
derstood as an individual entity, but as a managerial
and organisational compound of different stakeholder
groups, which neverthelesswant to accomplish a com-
mon goal: to hold the conference as its core product,
taking into account the attributes of attractiveness that
determine both the conference and the venue where
it takes place, and considering the attributes of attrac-
tiveness of the destination acting as the host location
for the conference.
The novelty of the research lies in the changed,
more comprehensive view of the attractiveness of the
congress destination, which arises from the three con-
92 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
Table 7 Continued from the previous page
Category Item α Dimension
Conference Opportunities . Sharing experiences
Seeking new possibilities
Obtaining new knowledge
Meeting specialists within the professional field
Reputation . Positive opinion of past participants
Positive opinion of professional public
Good past experiencies
Networking . Searching for new business partners
Meeting existing business partners
Content . Novelty of the content
Interesting topics
The presence of respectable speakers
ceptual cores or ingredients required in organising
the conference: the attractiveness of the destination
as a host destination, the attractiveness of the venue
as the location where the conference is held, and the
attractiveness of the conference as the core product.
The research is based on the thinking of Whitfield
et al. (2014), who argue that the attractiveness of a
congress destination should be considered in the con-
text of three different, but interacting levels. This way,
through the construction of a new model and with a
newly designed measuring instrument, we tested and
confirmed the multidimensionality of addressing the
attractiveness of a congress destination.
The restriction of the research is certainly the fact
that it was conducted on the territory of Slovenia and
on the sample of the association segment, so we were
limited to the Slovenian market of association confer-
ences. By expanding the research into a region, such as
Southeastern Europe as an important congress desti-
nation, we could get a different view of the researched
case. Due to the complexity of the model tested, an-
other restriction was that the research does not in-
clude members of international congress committees
that decide on the destination at transnational level, as
highlighted by Crouch et al. (2019).
It is, however, definitely a contribution to address-
ing the attractiveness of a congress destination with
a changed view of the things that make it attractive,
which requires the construction of a newmodel, mea-
suring instrument, and its verification. In addition to
designing a new,multidimensional construct of attrac-
tiveness of a congress destination, our view of under-
standing the offer on the congress market as a sample
onwhich we tested themodel, has also changed. Based
on themodel first developed byOppermann andChon
(1997), which is also supported by the recommenda-
tions of unwto (United NationsWorld Tourism Or-
ganization, 2016), we also included suppliers as well
as meeting planners. These two groups are in fact the
ones which organise the conference with the aim of
attracting as many attendees as possible, as Var et al.
(1985) were among the first to point out.
The research possibilities are presented in the fol-
lowing parts of the paper using a developed measur-
ing instrument on the example of individual congress
destinations, and on the example of conference and
businessmeeting types. This wouldmake it possible to
also gain insight into the special preferences leading to
the choice of a congress destination for different, spe-
cific segments of congress participants within the as-
sociation market that our research was aimed at, and
to confront them with the guidelines that organisers
and suppliers follow when organising business meet-
ings. In the light of determining the attractiveness of
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 93
Marijana Sikošek Congress Destination Attractiveness
a congress destination in a multidimensional model,
it would also be reasonable to explore the specifics of
smaller destinations.
Finally, the proposed construct of congress desti-
nation attractiveness could be applied to other types
of events as well, because, as Getz and Page (2016) ex-
plain it, business events are one of the specific types
of planned events in addition to sport events, fes-
tivals and other cultural events, and entertainment
events. By appropriately modifying the measuring in-
strument, the existing construct would thus be tested
on other types of events and at different destinations,
which would contribute to a broader understanding
of the attractiveness of different types of events.
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Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 95

Review Article
Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement,
and Innovation in Tourism: The QCII Model
Dejan Križaj
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
dejan.krizaj@fts.upr.si
This article focuses on the search for intersections of quality management, continu-
ous improvement systems, and innovation in the field of tourism. It contains intro-
ductory theoretical insights in all three areas and (in the research section) considers
professional media to find validation for theoretical starting points and further de-
velopment guidelines, additionally obtained through examples of good practices and
their following of key trends. Through connections between theories and practical
examples, the basis for the links between sustainability, quality, improvements, and
innovation in tourism are introduced, followed by the resulting qcii model for im-
proving and innovating quality tourism offerings at the destination. The suggested
model should be (spontaneously or through careful planning) evolved to follow the
concepts of smart tourism, both in terms of new technologies and their balanced de-
ployment, and in terms of the harmonisation of interests and connections between
all components of the destination system.
Keywords: quality, continuous improvement, innovation, smart tourism
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.97-110
Introduction
The answers to this paper’s questions (where does
the boundary lie between quality and innovation in
tourism and what is the related role of promoting con-
tinuous improvement?) are dealt with at three lev-
els: through a theoretical overview, a case analysis,
and the proposal for the synthesis of findings in the
form of a model. The model suggests the roles of the
tourist system’s stakeholders in improving and inno-
vating tourism processes and offerings. In the theoret-
ical part, the areas of innovation, internal and external
aspects of quality, and related continuous improve-
ment concepts are discussed.
In the analytical work, examples from practice ac-
quired in professional media were used: the case of
stimulating innovation in Slovenia at the national level
and in a large Slovenian tourist company; an exam-
ple of quality management in one of the largest in-
ternational hotel corporations; a set of tools for inter-
nal promotion of continuous improvement in the or-
ganisation; and various approaches for external trans-
parency and the involvement of stakeholders outside
the organisation in its processes of improvement and
innovation. The findings are summarised in three
schematic diagrams: one of the links between inno-
vation, quality and sustainability, one of the links be-
tween quality, innovation, and continuous improve-
ment, and a model for introducing these concepts into
a tourist destination. The links in the diagram and the
model are based on trends and values, streamlined
in the concept of smart tourism: a term that carries
a double meaning related to smart technologies and
their smart usage.
Theory
In a review of the various research stages of service in-
novation, Coombs andMiles (2000)mention the stage
of synthesis in which it is possible to develop an inno-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 97
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
vation categorisation model that would be suitable for
all economic sectors, including tourism. To achieve
this stage, the authors reduce the influence of the clas-
sical technological approach on measuring innova-
tion, supported by (Camisón & Monfort-Mir, 2012),
which argue that there are hidden and unexplored
fields (also) in the field of innovation in tourism. The
key field for them is innovation through organisational
learning based on internal (embodied) and external
(disembodied) knowledge. The former type of knowl-
edge is the acquired experiences, skills, and technolo-
gies that are owned by the company, while the latter
are various external sources for acquiring knowledge.
With the help of both types, tourist companies im-
prove and innovate their intangible (and difficult-to-
quantify) services that they offer on the market and
which address key added value(s) for their customers.
There are many different approaches to measure-
ment and more or less complex categorisations of in-
novation in tourism (Camisón & Monfort-Mir, 2012;
Pikkemaat & Peters, 2005; Bieger & Weinert, 2006;
Hall & Williams, 2008; Hjalager, 2010). Although,
the two-core innovation model approaches the issue
with only two dimensions (Daft, 1978; oecd, 2005;
Camisón &Monfort-Mir, 2012), the model focuses on
two key operational areas of each company: the tech-
nological core (technical part) and the administrative
core (social part). The technological/technical focus is
usually divided by the development of new product-
and process-related factors (Abernathy & Utterback,
1978) and the analysis of the degree of innovation in-
troduced at the incremental-radical interval (Aber-
nathy&Clark, 1985;Damanpour, 1991;Hjalager, 2002).
In the social/management field, the focus is on innova-
tions that change the social structure of the company,
meaning changes of interactions with the internal and
external environment (Damanpour et al., 2009).
Another partly related approach to describing in-
novation analyses the form of innovation and its im-
pact on the system to which it belongs (Hall & Willi-
ams, 2008). The form of innovation describes its com-
position, and the impact describes the degree of in-
fluence of innovation on a global, national, regional,
or sectoral level (Hall &Williams, 2008) or, according
to the Oslo Manual definition, at the company level
(oecd, 2005). The described two-dimensional ap-
proaches (Križaj et al., 2014) can be summarised into
two groups: content and appearance. The characteris-
tics of content define the type of innovation: product,
process, organisational, marketing and other related
ways of describing the form of innovation. Features
such as the incremental or radical level of innovation
and the degree of impact define their appearance.
The ‘content’ of innovation is described by differ-
ent categorisation schemes. The ‘appearance’ of in-
novation is divided into its appearance within the
company (as it was perceived within innovation and
what has changed within its boundaries) and outside
the company (how innovation has been perceived by
customers, suppliers and competitors, and what has
changed for this reason). In the field of project man-
agement and quality management, a similar role is
played by efficiency and effectiveness (Sundqvist et
al., 2014), the first in terms of finding optimal internal
configuration, i.e., the ‘content’ of the object of obser-
vation, and the second in terms of its ability, external
‘appearance.’ The quality domain focuses on a similar
internal and external view of the (still) non-optimal
objects, analyses diverse related human activities and
looks for ways to better implement them and improve
their results.
One of the fundamental approaches that attempt to
identify key quality areas is the gaps approach (Para-
suraman et al., 1985; Kandampully, 2007; Uran, 2010).
The proposed service quality model identifies its key
dimensions, its measurement, and the reasons for the
problems in achieving quality. It focuses on external
aspects (customer expectations, perception and expe-
rience of service) as well as internal ones (the opera-
tion of devices and employees, their level of knowledge
and skills, and their ability to manage, implement, re-
spond and communicate).
In tourism, service quality is a basic element of
tourism productivity (Sainaghi et al., 2017). The most
critical role in tourism is played by employees who,
during interactions with customers, have a decisive
influence on the level of service quality, customer sat-
isfaction, their loyalty and, consequently, the perfor-
mance of the company (Schneider et al., 2005; Uran
Maravić, 2016). For the implementation of high qual-
98 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
ity and recognisable services, tourism companiesmust
recognise their competitive advantages and key com-
petences that need to be constantly upgraded (Ţîţu
et al., 2016). In addition to the internal analysis, it is
essential to analyse customer satisfaction and other
factors in the environment in which the company
operates (Tasci, 2016). In the aforementioned ‘con-
tent/appearance’ relation, therefore, we can also refer
to the ‘content’ of activities in the field of quality in
tourism, with which we ensure such (higher) quality,
as well as internal and external ‘aspects’ of such efforts.
Internal Aspects of Quality
The internal aspects of service quality and gaps be-
tween them are systematically addressed by the above-
mentioned model (Parasuraman et al., 1985) and its
later versions, which are discussed in later sections.
Prior to this, in the field of internal aspects of quality,
we shouldmention the concept of continuous improve-
ment process (cip). One of the early works in this field
(Deming, 2000), published for the first time in 1982,
places the process of constant improvement in the core
activity of each organisation, where the feedback ob-
tained from its processes and from its customers is
compared with the goals of the organisation and fur-
ther development steps are defined according to that.
As part of the management and improvement of or-
ganisational systems, the concept of ‘Business Process
Management’ (bpm) is also used (Ko, 2009), in which
the emphasis is on tracking the hierarchy of processes
that bring added value rather than the social hierarchy
of the organisation itself.
bpm and similar quality management systems fo-
cus on business process analysis, identification, and
measurement of their key performance indicators, and
measures for continuous improvement and innova-
tion. In such activities, which are derived primarily
from conventional manufacturing companies, there
is a danger of too much focus on exclusive processes
and technology and their structuring, standardisation,
and automation; especially when there is an increasing
number of creative, personalised, and complex service
processes involved (Brocke et al., 2016). It is important
to focus on the context of each such process (Brocke et
al., 2016) and to the appropriate choice of approaches
to achieve the desired quality of the offered products
and services, and outwardly invisible business pro-
cesses as well (Sujová & Marcineková, 2015). It is all
about the quality of the goods sold and the appropri-
ate level of quality of all direct and indirect processes
that take place in the company and which reach be-
yond the classical (standardised) quality assurance, as
they are directed towards an all-encompassing bal-
anced and sustainable operation (Broman & Robèrt,
2017).
These guidelines are also being followed by newer
versions of the already well-established approaches to
quality management and continuous improvement:
Just in Time, Total QualityManagement, Kaizen, Lean
Manufacturing, Business Process Reengineering, Six
Sigma among others (Delgado et al., 2014). In addition
to measuring the in-house characteristics of the pro-
cesses themselves and collecting suggestions for em-
ployee improvements, these approaches are also more
or less actively focusing on the opinions of their cus-
tomers. One such example is a business process man-
agement system based on the methodical processing
of user feedback, the so-called Voice of the Customer
(Pyon et al., 2011), which is a quantitative and quali-
tative marketing tool for the systematic and in-depth
collection of feedback from customers about expecta-
tions, desirable and unwanted characteristics, experi-
ences and feelings related to the ‘content’ of the offer
and the ‘appearance’ of the company. Feedback is or-
ganised within a system in a hierarchical structure, in
line with the strategic priorities of the company. The
processed information serves as a basis for all deci-
sions on the further development and improvement of
internal processes. It is especially important thatmem-
bers of the development department and production
staff be included throughout the process, from the col-
lection of feedback and their processing onward; that
is, internal and not only external marketing staff has
to be included in the whole process (Pyon et al., 2011).
External Aspects of Quality
With the last example of the approach to internal
planning of business process improvements, we have
switched to another, external quality perspective: the
perspective of the users of the business processes’ re-
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 99
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
sults. Users opt for the services of the company if they
see value in them, whereas the value is difficult to
understand with a uniquely manageable concept in a
globalised and fragmented offer, as well as in the abun-
dance of increasingly diverse lifestyles (Tasci, 2016).
The usual variables that companies with which want
to master value include customers’ opinions about
quality, satisfaction, trust, and price compliance. All
of these variables affect the first and continuing visits
of the tourist company and the tourist destination in
which the company is located; this is so before (Kim et
al., 2011), during, and after the buying decision (Han
& Hyun, 2015).
As in all other service sectors, quality in tourism
also has two main dimensions, the quality of the ser-
vice process, and the quality level of the provided ser-
vice itself, that is, the final market goods bought by the
tourist, experienced and compared with pre-purchase
expectations (Butnaru et al., 2014). All this ismeasured
using variousmethodological approaches (servqual,
servperf, sictqual, giqet, etc.), which are used
in various service sectors: health, education, banking,
telecommunications, sales, transport, delivery (But-
naru et al., 2014; Parasuraman et al., 1985; Zeithaml et
al., 1990; Cid-López et al., 2015; Saraei & Amini, 2012).
The main variables that are measured by serqual’s
most established methodological approach are tangi-
bility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empa-
thy (Zeithaml et al., 1990).
With the emergence of ubiquitous information tech-
nologies, not only the processes and businesses them-
selves changed but also the cultural habits and value
systems of (potential) customers. New channels for
tourism companies and new channels for the flow
of quality information are thus opened (Berne et al.,
2012). Such new channels allow new ways of select-
ing and purchasing tourist services, enabling new ap-
proaches to the marketing and creating of new types
of demand. Therefore, Pearce (2008) suggests that old
and new sales channels are to be intertwined and used
as a network of opportunities that, in new ways, mea-
sures, defines, and targets customer values and thus
also affects perception and upgraded understanding
of quality.
One of the approaches to this is smart tourism
(Wang et al., 2016), based on the conceptual founda-
tions of smart cities (Buhalis & Amaranggana, 2015)
and the data networks used in them together withmo-
bile technologies, artificial intelligence, cloud comput-
ing, and the Internet of Things. Perhaps such inten-
sive integration of information technologies currently
looks just like an overly pushy principle of sales pro-
motion, but as Buhalis and Law (2008) pointed out
some ten years ago, more demanding tourists want
to organise travel (at least in part) by themselves, are
more impatient and informed, intensively compare
the prices of competitive offerings, communicatemore
intensively with each other, share negative and posi-
tive opinions in publicly accessible online places, and
also want instant access to any information, even dur-
ing the trip. All this requires smarter tourism, smarter
supply, and a smarter approach to ensure the adequate
quality of basic tourist services and the quality ofmany
new details that tourists require on the wave of cur-
rent information technology development and other
trends.
A vital new aspect of quality is, for example, in-
formation quality and its impact on user satisfaction
(Ghasemaghaei & Hassanein, 2015), which is still be-
ing mostly discussed in theory and less in practice
(Ghasemaghaei & Hassanein, 2016). However, already
very present and influential is electronic word ofmou-
th (ewom) whose three main areas of influence (the
content of such messages, the consequence of con-
sumer behaviour, and the impact of published reviews
on the performance of companies (Kim & Canina,
2015) are already well researched both at the level
of companies and destinations, and different tourist
segments (Abubakar & Ilkan, 2016). Still, more and
more ingenious users and ever-smarter technologies
draw a thin line between when ewom is controlled
by tourism companies, and when ewom is control-
ling them (Litvin et al., 2008).
Innovation
The answer to the management of diverse (yet) un-
manageable situations lies in innovation: the search
for new and better solutions, which bring added value
to the onewho introduces or accepts these innovations
(Rogers, 2003). The basic aspects of innovation and its
100 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
two-dimensional content/appearance scopes were pre-
sented at the beginning of this paper. On the one hand,
we are therefore questioning what and how we are in-
troducing, and on the other, what the appearance of
that which was introduced through all the effects and
added values brought about by the innovation is. In
tourism, the key issue (in addition to the company’s
existence and well-being) is how to effectively tar-
get the values and needs of customers, i.e., tourists,
through the offerings of the company. These tourists
are increasingly involved in or co-create tourist prod-
ucts that are purchased from tourism and tourism-
related companies (Malone et al., 2017). The term ‘in-
creasingly involved’ targets the findings from the sec-
tion on smart tourism, that is, the new, even more
fragmented conditions in which an individual tourist
company operates, forming one of the pieces of the
tourist mosaic at the destination (Chapman & Light,
2016; Zach & Hill, 2017).
The concept of public-private innovation networks
and services (ppins) (Djellal & Gallouj, 2013) con-
firms that the mosaic paradigm is not just a phe-
nomenon that we find in tourism. As in other eco-
nomic sectors, there is the same global and techno-
logical pressure that encourages individual economic
and non-economic entities to connect to larger in-
novation networks. The principle of such networks
has been known for a long time (Powell et al., 1996),
but ppins point to the growing phenomenon of non-
technological innovations and to the changing para-
digm that innovation is exclusively an in-house high-
tech process in which the public sphere has no role to
play. This change was indicated by the democratisa-
tion of innovation (Hippel, 2005) and open innovation
(Chesbrough, 2003), although the openness of the in-
novation field is even more strongly reflected in the
aforementioned smart cities and in the increasingly
ever-present principle of the sharing economy (Ac-
quier et al., 2017).
After the transition from a closed high-tech inno-
vation paradigm to the openness of the innovation
process, the innovation intermediaries were the first
to take care of the flow of knowledge and resources
among the involved companies in controlled innova-
tion networks (Gómez et al., 2016). With the increas-
ing transition to online environments, open innovation
platforms (oip) have also emerged enabling searching
for the missing parts (employees, knowledge, part-
ners, etc.) of the innovation process, and fostering
partnerships and finding the necessary professionals.
By opening platforms for the general public and end-
users, there were opportunities for free trading with
development solutions, organising development chal-
lenges, voting for the best solutions, among others.
The main reasons for active participation in such plat-
forms, as providers of knowledge and solutions, are
earnings and reputation (Abbate & Souca, 2013) or the
mutual interest of companies and customers in seek-
ing better user solutions and their marketing (Sigala,
2012). By actively participating in such ecosystems, as
with the sharing economy, a loop between providers
and consumers is tightly closed. The boundary be-
tween one and the other is blurred, which does not
mean that chaos has arisen and we do not know who
drinks and who pays, but this is a clear message that
tourism providers must also ‘open and democratise’ in
innovation.
One of the ways of opening up innovation pro-
cesses is to find cross-sections between quality man-
agement, continuous improvement processes, and in-
novation. In their study, Kim et al. (2012) confirm
that the introduction of quality management meth-
ods positively correlates with the introduction of all
the main categories of innovation. Similarly, a positive
correlation between employee performance, innova-
tion and quality management has been revealed by the
work of Sadikoglu and Zehir (2010) and Terziovski
and Guerrero (2014). More detailed analysis of the
links between innovation and various ‘hard and soft’
quality management approaches (statistical analysis
of process variables, human capital management, fo-
cus on customer needs) also confirmed the positive
impact on the degree of business innovation (Zeng et
al., 2015). An example of the development of a system
that promotes the spreading of the general innova-
tion culture of the company by encouraging continu-
ous improvement has been described by Ross (2016).
Through analysing a few case studies in the fields of
tourism, quality, and innovation, this article also deals
with this kind of opening and connecting approaches.
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 101
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
Case Studies
Based on the presented theory, the analysis of selected
cases is presented, which in the field of tourism in-
dicate partial links between quality, continuous im-
provement processes, and innovation. Examples are
selected in four areas. The first part deals with exam-
ples of promoting tourism innovations and improve-
ments in the local, national environment. The sec-
ond one deals with the situation in one of the largest
tourist global corporations. Then, a groupof ict tools
to stimulate the improvements in implementation and
the developmental involvement of entire organisations
is presented. The final part of the case analysis contin-
ues with the transparency of production and develop-
ment processes both inside and outside the organisa-
tion.
Since 2004, the Slovenian Tourist Board, in part-
nership with the Ministry of Economic Development
and Technology, and the University of Primorska’s
Faculty of Tourism Studies Turistica, has been sys-
tematically promoting the innovation of Slovenian
tourism through the Sower and Creator Awards and
the Bank of Tourism Potentials (btps) platform, for
which they have received several international ac-
knowledgements (un wto, oecd, eu). Sower and
Creator are annual awards for realised tourism prod-
ucts and still unrealised tourist ideas. The btps is a
tourism innovation platform, on which information
about tourism trends and ideas is published, and their
authors and potential investors can connect in order to
realise their ideas (Križaj &Zakonjšek, 2011). Themost
remarkable example of these activities is the creation
of a new niche tourist agency for sustainable tourism;
the co-investor found the idea of the agency and con-
tacted the author through the btps.1
Sava tmc, a part of Slovenia’s largest chain of ho-
tels and spa resorts Sava Hotels & Resorts, applied for
the 2011 Sower Award, with their Network of Innova-
tion (Sava tmc, 2011). In a similar way, as suggested
in the theoretical part of this paper by Berne et al.
(2012), they have recognised the interconnection of
1 Information about this example was obtained during the in-
terview between the author of the article and the author of
the niche sustainable tourism agency idea.
new information channels that can also be exploited
in tourism for both conventional production activi-
ties and the quality management with continuous im-
provements process. The latter was addressed by Sava
tmc, which managed the network through three sub-
systems for (1) promoting and capturing innovation
proposals, (2) effective handling of innovation pro-
posals, and (3) implementing innovation proposals
and measuring impacts. The size of the organisational
team shows their large-scale approach: six represen-
tatives of the management, six representatives of the
dislocated companies, a joint innovation coordinator
and two representatives of support processes (person-
nel, information support). According to their applica-
tion documentation (Berne et al., 2012), the number of
improvements proposals increased from 29 to 1,471 in
two years. At the time of the application preparation,
over 900 innovations were proposed in their company
in the first quarter of 2011, of which more than half
were accepted for immediate introduction. The num-
ber of proposals per employee increased from 0.02 to
1.22 proposals per employee. According to their inter-
nal estimates, the effect of the innovations introduced
before and after the introduction of the system rose
from €6,000 to almost half a million euros a year.
A similar, global example is related to Starwood
Hotels, one of the largest hotel networks with over 30
leading service brands and over 5,700 locations. On
the blog of a provider of an application development
platform (Quick Base, 2016), an interview was pub-
lished with the administrator of the Six Sigma Star-
wood Hotels programme for North America. After
deciding that his group would become responsible
for operational innovation, the interviewed admin-
istrator’s team was caught in a trap by running long
lists of what was being improved, but not what has
actually been accepted into the daily business from
these lists. They found that they undertook too many
projects at the same time, but did not devote enough
attention and time to the people in the organisational
structure of their companies to become accustomed
to and adopt all the innovations. As a result, the num-
ber of projects decreased, and an analysis of the be-
haviour and reactions of employees to the innovations
was introduced (Rogers, 2003), which set the admin-
102 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
istrator’s project in the right direction. In addition to
pointing to meaningful and contextual (Brocke et al.,
2016) work with information related to the introduc-
tion of innovations, the interview emphasises the im-
portance of project sponsors (Sense, 2013) who, in ad-
dition to project managers in charge of introducing
improvements and innovations, check and influence
the proper climate in all key departments and the hier-
archical levels of the company to which the innovation
is being introduced.
The third area in the Quick Base interview, re-
lated to the change management and the ever-smarter
technologies (Buhalis & Amaranggana, 2015), was the
Citizen Development concept. The concept serves as
an approach to the production of software according
to the ‘Lego’ principle, in which the in-depth knowl-
edge of computer programming languages is not im-
portant, because the new internal/business or exter-
nal/user applications are created with pre-prepared
software modules. The approach is particularly inter-
esting for smaller (tourist) providers who do not have
such complex internal structures as large corporations
(Bloomberg, 2016), although also the StarwoodHotels
Six Sigma administrator believes that such tools can
contribute to a more agile daily deployment of process
improvements, as they reduce dependence on internal
or external professional computer programmers.
Quick Base itself offers a tool based on the Citizen
Development concept (see http://www.quickbase.com
/about-us). It is primarily aimed at managing busi-
ness processes, automating them, capturing data, and
generating analytical reports on the operation of busi-
ness systems. More specifically, it is focused on quality
and, like the presented example of the Sava Innovation
Network are ict tools, is represented by KaiNexus
(Kutscher, 2016). They are based on one of the con-
tinuous improvement approaches (Kaizen in the case
of KaiNexus) and allow employees throughout the
organisation to participate in the exchange of ideas
to reduce costs, increase sales, or increase user satis-
faction. These are web and mobile platforms, which,
through various methods, stimulate the active partic-
ipation of all employees in the business system. Ac-
cording to KaiNexus, 3  of submitted proposals are
implemented in systems with a classic physical sug-
gestion mailbox and, for their system, they claim that
80  of the proposed improvements are introduced
(Kutscher, 2016). There are many versions of this kind
of tools available online for ‘each-and-every’ employee
integration in the analysis of performance and opera-
tional quality, and continuous improvements process
(Hyphen, Treehive, Vibecatch, Teamphoria, etc.); one
of their main features is to increase the transparency
of operation and cooperation within the organisation
(Piccolo et al., 2015).
An additional step forward is external transparency
(Heimstädt, 2017), in which the clients also obtain in-
sight into the operation of the company. Usually, such
systems are predominantly based on ewom, for which
the goal is not somuch to inspect the quality of service
process as to look at the quality of the service (But-
naru et al., 2014). However, with available online plat-
forms strongly equipped with customer review func-
tionality, such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com, and Yelp,
ever-resourceful tourists are gaining an ever greater
insight into not only what they are or will buy, but
also what the company is doing ‘behind the curtains.’
One example of a ‘wide-open curtain’ is shown in the
article on a carpenter’s workshop from Buenos Aires,
which was promoted on several crowdfunding plat-
forms, transmitting live work processes of the crowd-
funded products in the workshop (Peters, 2016). One
of the platforms, Kickstarter, soon also offered Kick-
starter Live services to all projects published on their
platform (Hughes, 2016), confirming that this can be
an important message in terms of the transparency
and quality of innovation production processes.
External transparency and simultaneous opportu-
nity for crowdfunding of improvements focused on
exclusively tourist providers are offered by the Trav-
elStarter platform (Tourmag, 2015); in exchange for
financing providers’ development activities, crowd-
funders are offered diverse packages of benefits for
existing and emerging tourist products. In the area
of smart cities and their external visibility, the good
practice example is the city of Vienna, which recently
offered residents a mobile application to propose im-
provements during their everyday use of city infras-
tructure (der Standard, 2017). The received proposals
are publicly available, as well as their implementation
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 103
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
Figure 1
Tourism qis
Coordinate System

i
S
Q
statuses, and are part of a larger data network through-
out the city. Specifically, the wien.at site offers over
600 e-government services and records eight million
pageviews permonth, thus confirming the importance
of transparency of the information and the consid-
eration of ‘each-and-every’ member of large human
networks in development and service quality-related
activities.
Discussion
Based on the presented theories and analysed exam-
ples, the basis for thinking about new development
guidelines in the current global technological and eco-
nomic cycle is sustainable development, which in-
cludes elements of innovation and quality manage-
ment (Broman&Robèrt, 2017; Bourke & Roper, 2017).
In tourism and beyond, therefore, the priority axes can
describe the so-called tourism qis coordinate system
(quality – innovation – sustainability).
Considering the existing or emerging tourist of-
ferings, in view of the shown priority axes, one fo-
cus should on: (S) sustainability – by which in the
widest possible meaning of the word everyone checks
whether he plays an optimal and fair game towards all
the building blocks of the systems he is part of; (Q)
quality – by which the companies are thinking about
whether and how the guest will get what she expects
In
no
va
tio
ns
Im
pr
ov
em
ents
M
in
im
iz
e
va
st
e
Q= V
Figure 2 Values Target
from them; and (i) innovation – by which companies
consider how they can positively surprise their guest.
Depending on which axis the company is more or less
attentive, it is positioned in the indicated qis coordi-
nate system.
Quality and innovation are intertwined in the ef-
fort to maximise the satisfaction of tourists, as illus-
trated by the proposed values target (Figure 2). At the
core of each tourist company’s focus are the values and
expectations of the targeted customer (Malone et al.,
2017). Companies attempt to identify them as much
as possible in the process of the fulfilment of the cus-
tomer’s needs. While doing so, the company is guided
with strategic decisions about internal (written or un-
written) quality standards. To achieve theQ =V equa-
tion, the company has to operate in accordance with
the basic principle of most quality managementmeth-
ods: ‘minimise waste.’2 In the process of identifying
with the client and optimising its own performance,
the company tackles two levels of this minimisation.
At the first level, it seeks to minimise any harm-
ful or unnecessary elements that impede the achieve-
2 Kaizen, for example, talks about the elimination of waste
(Hanebuth, 2002), but since the Q = V quest is a perma-
nent, never completed optimisation process, the minimisa-
tion seems a more appropriate term in this case.
104 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
ment of Q = V by continuously improving existing
business processes and final products. On the second
level, it seeks to introduce new processes and prod-
ucts in order tomaintain a balance between the offered
quality and the (changed) values of the clients. Dur-
ing the optimisation, the values and expectations of
the clients can also be exceeded (positively), which can
mean that (1) despite its larger investments as competi-
tors, it maintains its competitive advantage, (2) com-
pany is expanding or upgrading the targetmarket seg-
ment due to exceeding Q > V , or (3) company un-
necessarily invests and drains itself more than needed.
Because of all of this, Figure 1 is shown as a target. The
goal of the company is to reach the status Q = V : at
the daily level it attempts to achieve this with minimal
corrections to the existing offer and processes, and oc-
casionally, also by innovating to test the opportunities
for targeting additional markets or merely redirecting
the focus due to changes in trends and values.
The difference between the two levels, the intro-
duction of improvements and innovations, is ade-
quately explained for the purpose of this contribu-
tion by Harvey (2007). In the case of introducing im-
provements, the question is easy: ‘Can the process be
improved?’ In the case of innovation, the question is
more fundamental: ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ If a
company is too intensely focused on the existing pro-
cesses, there is a risk of overlooking the fact that the
process as such has become inadequate and needs to
be rebuilt. Thus, the question at the second innovation
level withdraws from the current mode of operation
and improvement and encourages rethinkingwhat the
target’s core is (Figure 2). In doing so, it is important to
overlook the existing structures in the company and
focus on the target values and customer needs; and in-
stead of focusing on the process improvement focus on
process design (Tussyadiah, 2014). For such activities,
more knowledge and more risk are required, but the
company should decide what will generate greater or
optimal added value.
The arguments presented thus far lead to the con-
struction of a final proposal for the systematic intro-
duction of quality principles, continuous improve-
ment and innovation in a tourist destination (qcii
model). The tourist company is part of a (geographi-
cal) tourist destination, which is (the destination, not
the tourist provider) usually perceived as the vacation
target to tourists. This mechanism directs all desti-
nation stakeholders, including academia (Onn, 2018),
towards networked coopetition thinking (Chim-Miki
& Batista-Canino, 2017). The qcii model shown in
Figure 3 must (spontaneously or through careful plan-
ning) evolve into a content- and business-networked
destination (Pearce, 2008), which wants for its offer to
follow the changing trends and values of guests.
The starting point of the picture is represented by
the existing business processes of tourist companies,
which are usually or regularly improved to ‘minimise
waste’ – from the smallest tourist providers to chains,
such as Sava Hotels & Resorts and Starwood Hotels.
The first source of information for such activities are
the employees, motivated by tools and methods simi-
lar to the KaiNexus tool. Due to the principles of smart
networking, as well as internal and external trans-
parency, we are looking for approaches that go even
further and are captured in the proposed qcii model.
The first requirement is that it must enable tourist
providers to obtain the feedback of experts, customer
opinions, potential ‘coopetition’ partners and poten-
tial investors in a simple way during the minimisation
process.
Investors (financial or with other incentives and re-
wards) are those individuals and private and public or-
ganisations that are in the interest of: (1) participating
in the profits of the investee, or (2) the higher qual-
ity and performance of the investee, which in return
raises the reputation and attractiveness of the entire
destination. The investors of both types (1 and 2) are
included in the Bank of Tourism Potentials of Slove-
nia on the national level. The first type is the men-
tioned example of investing in a sustainable tourism
agency. The second type is the financial and promo-
tional awards granted by the state for the purpose of
bigger b2b and b2c (both between the competition
and among tourists) recognition of the most success-
ful companies and themost promising ideas. Investors
of Types 1 and 2 may be interested in both improving
and innovating the tourist offer.
In the same way, as in process improvement, the
qcii model must be able to connect all thementioned
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 105
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
Existing processes
Unique traits
Customer values
Minimize vaiste Improve design
Improvements
Innovations
Employees Experts Customers Partners Investors
=
Figure 3 qcii Model of Systematic Introduction of Principles of Quality, Continuous Improvement and Innovation
in the Tourist Destination
stakeholders in the case of innovation. In accordance
with the basic principles of quality management and
the presented difference between improvements and
innovations, the process begins with the identification
of the key competitive advantages, knowledge, previ-
ous experiences and vital processes of the company. In
the second step, the company attempts to harmonise
all of these with the key and perspective values and
needs of the targeted customers and, on the basis of
these findings, develop a new or radically renewed
tourist offering through the partnership development
process with all the listed stakeholders.
There is no need to emphasise that the presented
qcii model can only function successfully if it is com-
posed of motivated stakeholders from all depicted
groups. Nor is it necessary to additionally emphasise
that qcii must be part of smart networks, which will
not be just another current craze but will be part of a
living system that is understood and adopted by most
of its population.
Conclusions
The tourist qis coordinate system (quality – innova-
tion – sustainability), the values target, and the qcii
coopetition model have shown general and tourism
specific links between quality management, contin-
uous improvement and innovation. Connections are
based on the previously presented theoretical founda-
tions and examples of good practices of following the
current development trends. One such already men-
tioned trend is the concept of smart tourism, which
emphasises ubiquitous opportunities to connect both
technological capacities and business interests of the
systems of which we are part. Another more recent
andwider trend that confirms ‘smart’ orientation, sug-
gested throughout this paper, is ‘service encounter
2.0,’ where new business configurations stem in multi-
organisation service systems built from employees,
technology and customers (Larivière et al., 2017).
If a shift in the minds of understanding of the des-
tination management principles was required a few
years ago (that the company is part of a larger tourist
destination and has to act accordingly), a similar shift
is taking place today in understanding the concepts of
universal and multi-layered sustainability. The tech-
nological capabilities and the values associated with
global accessibility (as well as the footprints of the hu-
man civilisation on Earth and beyond) underline the
need for thoughtful linking of the tourist company
with stakeholders in the domestic tourist destination
and around the world. Such content- and technology-
related smart operation is expected from the tourist
company and its processes of following the values and
needs of its customers. The same applies to all other
qcii stakeholders.
Based on the analyses carried out, this article pro-
poses guidelines for further development steps and
collaboration, while it should not be taken for granted
that all current key trends to follow are correctly in-
cluded in the utilised forecasts. As with the hitting
the target with innovations, there must also be a cer-
tain degree of caution present when taking this article
into account in the sense that innovation is never a
completely predictable process. It is more like a new
106 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Dejan Križaj Integration of Quality, Continuous Improvement, and Innovation in Tourism
opportunity, potentially useful for the next turn on
the road, which we do not yet see absolutely clearly.
The aim of succeeding research beyond this point is to
additionally clarify the picture and add other current
and future trends to further conceptual thinking and
empirically verify the individual parts of the proposed
qcii system. The future studies should include analy-
ses of the capabilities, opinions and intentions of all of
the listed stakeholders, as well as analyses of their de-
velopment and collaboration activities and the effects
achieved. All this is facilitated by internal and external
sources of knowledge, with the mention of which this
article started and ends in the same tone – a prerequi-
site for achieving quality and innovation (in tourism)
is a smart relationship between the exploitation of in-
ternal and external knowledge.
Acknowledgments
This paper is a part of the project v5-1511 (Total Qual-
ity Programme in Tourism) which was financially sup-
ported by the Slovenian Research Agency.
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110 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Research Note
Hotel Employees and Corporate Social
Responsibility: The Case of Portorož, Slovenia
Tanja Planinc
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
tanja.planinc@fts.upr.si
ZoranaMedarić
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
zorana.medaric@fts.upr.si
Kristina Bogataj
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
kristyna.bogataj@gmail.com
Corporate social responsibility has been widely researched in recent decades across
different industries. This paper attempts to explore the social aspects of corporate
social responsibility in the hotel industry, focusing on the awareness of csr of em-
ployees in the selected case-study of a hotel company in Portorož, Slovenia. Specif-
ically, their awareness of csr activities oriented towards the local community was
researched. A questionnaire survey was conducted among employees, investigating
their awareness of the hotel company’s attitude towards the local community. Results
show that it is crucial for employees to be employed in a company that participates
in the development of a local community. However, they often do not know how
their employer carries out activities that are related to the social aspects of corporate
social responsibility.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, employees, hotel industry, Portorož,
Slovenia
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.111-116
Introduction
This research paper aims to present the results of
quantitative research regarding the social dimension
of corporate social responsibility (csr) in the hotel
industry in Portorož, Slovenia. csr can be defined
as a contribution of businesses to social, economic,
and social development (Garay & Font, 2012). Such
contributions were often on a voluntary basis, but be-
cause of recent legislative changes, csr involvement
is becoming mandatory. Companies have been engag-
ing in csr activities, because doing so brings benefits
to companies, the environment, and society at large
(Carroll, 2015). In recent decades, csr in general and
specifically in the hospitality sector has become an in-
teresting research field with several different aspects
being researched (De Bakker et al., 2005). Researchers
have attempted to determine the motives for imple-
menting csr activities and the consequences of such
actions on financial performance, organisational com-
petitiveness, brand image, employees’ and customers’
loyalty, and other factors (Garay & Font, 2012; Lee,
2016).
In the hotel industry, csr aspects concern hu-
man resources, the local community, the environment,
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 111
Tanja Planinc et al. Hotel Employees and Corporate Social Responsibility
and similar (Holcomb et al., 2007; de Grosbois, 2012;
Font et al., 2012; Garay & Font, 2012; Tsai et al., 2012;
Sasidharan& Križaj, 2018). Hospitality (and especially
the hotel industry) is characterised by high employee
turnover, seasonality, and low wages, and csr pro-
vides an opportunity for companies to mitigate these
(negative) characteristics.
In the tourism industry, the hotel sector is largely
integrated into the local environment; it is inherently
connected with it, and it simultaneously depends on
the society in which it operates (Abaeian et al., 2014;
Mackenzie & Peters, 2014). It is, therefore, not surpris-
ing that hotel chains were often among the first to in-
troduce initiatives and policies of social responsibility
(Kasim, 2006). The number of surveys dealing with
the issue of corporate social responsibility in tourism
has increased significantly over the previous 15 years
(Farrington et al., 2017); however, there is relatively lit-
tle research on the issue of social aspects of csr in
hotel companies. In particular, there is little research
that deals with the relationship between hotel compa-
nies and the local community (Chen & Lin, 2015; de-
Miguel-Molina et al., 2018).
The hotel industry has acknowledged social sus-
tainability as a strategically important factor, but the
environmental aspect remains predominant, mainly
because of its most visible economic benefits. Never-
theless, in the previous decade, there has been a grow-
ing body of good practices and research, which also
focus on the social aspects of csr, such as the atti-
tudes towards employees or the local community (Bo-
hdanowicz & Zientara, 2008; Levy & Park, 2011; Sku-
diene & Auruskeviciene, 2012; Abaeian et al., 2014; Im
et al., 2017; Mohammed & Rashid, 2018). We aim to
provide an insight into the social aspect of csr from
the perspective of hotel employees since employees are
acknowledged as one of the key stakeholders in the re-
search of csr activities (Kim et al., 2017). In addition,
according to Kang et al. (2010), csr activities in the
hotel industry lead to positive changes in employees’
mindsets. Several authors (Heslin & Ochoa, 2008; Lee
et al., 2013; Youn et al., 2018) have determined that
companies’ csr activities significantly contribute to
employees‘ satisfaction and lower employee turnover
rates. In this research paper, we present a case study
of one hotel company, located in Portorož, Slovenia.
Based on the literature review, two research questions
were formulated:
rq1 What is the employee’s awareness of the com-
pany’s csr activities oriented towards the local
community in the chosen hotel company at the
destination Portorož?
rq2 How important is it for employees to work in a
company that is actively involved in such activ-
ities?
Methodology
To obtain answers to our research questions, a quanti-
tative method was employed, the results of which will
be presented. Based on the literature review, the ques-
tionnaire was developed and distributed among the
employees in a chosen hotel company.
The questionnaire for employees was developed
based on the literature review (Carroll, 1979; Lux et
al., 1996; Back et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2013); it consisted
of 11 questions, of which eight were closed, and three
were open. Employees’ awareness was measured on
a Likert-type ordinal scale with a neutral value (with
values: 1 ‘not true at all,’ 2 ‘not true,’ 3 ‘neither,’ 4 ‘true,’
and 5 ‘absolutely true’). The statements related to the
company’s attitude towards the local community also
had an option ‘I do not know/cannot answer.’ The
questionnaire was tested on a small group of hotel em-
ployees and adjusted slightly, according to their com-
ments. The survey was conducted in May 2018. The
hotel company employed 452 employees in 2018; all
employees were invited to participate in our research,
and random sampling was consequently employed. A
total of 105 employees (23.23  of all employees) com-
pleted the anonymous questionnaire. For the analy-
sis of the data gathered, spss statistical software was
used. Descriptive statistics employed for the sample
description and the correlation analysis were used to
determine the possible relationship between (1) the
employee’s awareness of the hotel company’s attitude
towards the local community and the importance of
being employed in a company that participates in the
development of a local community, and (2) the em-
ployee’s awareness of the company’s attitude towards
112 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Tanja Planinc et al. Hotel Employees and Corporate Social Responsibility
Table 1 Employee Awareness of Hotel Companies’ csr Activities towards the Local Community and Level of Information
about These Activities
Statements () () () () () () () ()
Our company helps solve various social problems (financial assistance to
employees in distress, employment of disabled people).
      . .
Our company devotes funds for philanthropic (humanitarian) purposes.       . .
Our company encourages the participation of employees in volunteer activi-
ties (voluntary participation at local events).
      . .
Our company supports sport, cultural, and other projects/activities in the
local community.
      . .
Our company cooperates with local organisations (local community, local
tourist association, local tourist organisation).
      . .
I am regularly informed about the developments in the company (in meet-
ings, through newsletters etc.).
     – . .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) not true at all, (2) not true, (3) neither, (4) true, (5) absolutely true, (6) do not
know/cannot answer, (7) arithmetic mean, (8) standard deviation.
the local community and how informed they are re-
garding company’s csr activities.
Results and Discussion
To analyse the respondent’s demographic characteris-
tics, descriptive statistical analysis was used. Most re-
spondents were female (almost 64 ), they fell in the
age group between 26 and 36 years (32 ) and had a
secondary school education (almost 45 ). Nearly half
(48 ) of respondents work in the food and beverage
sector (cooks, waiter, etc.), followed by receptionist (30
). The rest work in wellness, animation, housekeep-
ing, etc. Almost 47  of respondents have an employ-
ment contract of indefinite duration. The remaining
have a fixed-term employment contract or work as a
student. A little over 70  of respondents have up to
10 years of working experience in the company.
While all employees were invited to participate
in the research, not everyone took part in it. How-
ever, random sampling does not necessarily imply a
match in the characteristics of the sample and popu-
lation. According to the publicly available data, more
than half of all employees had secondary school ed-
ucation (three or four years), which is in line with
the education level of employees in our sample. The
same is true also for the gender of the employees (see
https://www.ajpes.si/jolp).
The results presented in Table 1 show that the
highest-rated statement refers to the fact that the com-
pany cooperates with local organisations (mean 3.96),
closely followed by the statement that refers to sup-
porting sport, cultural, and other activities in the local
community (mean 3.91). According to the standard
deviation value, respondents have relatively unani-
mous opinions regarding both statements (s = 0.823
and 0.836, respectively). The statement with the low-
est average value is the one referring to solving the
social distress of employees (mean 3.18) and, accord-
ing to the value of standard deviation (s = 1.185), the
respondents’ opinions are not so unanimous.
One interesting result is also the fact that many re-
spondents do not know in what way their employer
cooperates with the local community. This is particu-
larly true for the first three statements, which deal with
solving social problems, allocating funds for humani-
tarian purposes, and encouraging employees to partic-
ipate in volunteer activities.
The last statement shows how employees are in-
formed about the csr activities of their company. Al-
most 56  of respondents agree with the statement
that they are informed, while the rest believe that they
are not regularly informed. The standard deviation
is 1.114, and this suggests that the respondents’ opin-
ions are not so unanimous. Five respondents did not
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 113
Tanja Planinc et al. Hotel Employees and Corporate Social Responsibility
Table 2 The Importance of Being Employed in a Company that Participates in the Development of a Local Community
Statements () () () () () () ()
It is important for me to work in a company that participates in the development
of a local community.
     . .
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) not true at all, (2) not true, (3) neither, (4) true, (5) absolutely true, (6) arithmetic
mean, (7) standard deviation.
provide opinions for this statement. One of the pos-
sible conclusions is that the hotel company does not
pay sufficient attention to informing their employees
about how they work with the local community. Busi-
nesses need to be aware of the importance of inform-
ing employees about socially responsible activities, as
also noted by Bhattacharya et al. (2008).
Table 2 shows whether it is important for respon-
dents to be employed in a company that participates in
the development of a local community.More than half
of the respondents (51.4 ) agree with this statement.
In this case, too, we can say that respondents are not
so unanimous (s = 1.054). Four respondents did not
provide an opinion for this statement.
These findings are in line with previous research
in which the authors confirmed the connection be-
tween the implementation of social aspects of social
responsibility and lower fluctuation rates of employ-
ees and the more significant affiliation of employees to
the company (Heslin & Ochoa, 2008; Lee et al., 2013;
Youn et al., 2018).
We have also checked for correlations between the
employee’s awareness of the hotel companies’ attitude
towards the local community and how informed they
are regarding the company’s csr activities. For the
analysis, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was
used and, as expected, the analysis resulted in weak
positive but statistically significant correlations be-
tween variables. The highest correlationswerewith the
csr practice regarding solving various social prob-
lems and supporting sport, cultural, and other projects/
activities in the local community (ρ = 0.358, sig. =
0.000, and ρ = 0.302, sig. = 0.003, respectively). This
is an important aspect for the hotel companies to con-
sider.
We have also analysed the correlations between the
importance of being employed in a company that par-
ticipates in the development of a local community and
employee’s awareness of the hotel company’s attitude
towards the local community. Contrary to our expec-
tations, there were weak positive correlations only be-
tween two csr practices and the importance of being
employed in a company that participates in the devel-
opment of a local community. The two practices refer
to solving various social problems and devoting funds
for philanthropic (humanitarian) purposes (ρ = 0.288,
sig. = 0.005, and ρ = 0.271, sig. = 0.009, respectively).
We assume that the weak correlation between the im-
portance of being employed in a company that is com-
mitted to csr practices and the awareness of practices
can be attributed to the fact that only the part of csr
oriented towards the local community was explored
and not, for example, csr activities oriented towards
the employees themselves.
Conclusion
To answer our research questions, we can say that em-
ployees of the chosen hotel company are not aware
how the activities related to the social aspects of cor-
porate social responsibility are implemented; in con-
trast, it is important for them to be employed in a com-
pany that participates in the development of a local
community, which is in line with findings of previ-
ous research, for example, the research done by Tsai et
al. (2012) that showed that hotel employees are often
not familiar about hotels’ csr activities, whilst Sinha
(2017) concluded that whether their employer is active
in the field of corporate social responsibility is impor-
tant for the employee. The results confirm previous
theoretical findings and also contribute to the body of
knowledge regarding the social aspects of csr.
Based on research results, several suggestions for
the hotel company arise. The hotel company should
explain the importance of crs to employees and, in
114 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Tanja Planinc et al. Hotel Employees and Corporate Social Responsibility
the next phase, the employees should be more ac-
tively involved in csr activities. Informing employ-
ees about csr activities through internal newsletters
is perhaps not sufficient, so the hotel company should
consider other communication channels. According
to Schein (2004), individuals, such as department and
business managers, play an essential role in influenc-
ing employees‘ mindsets and behaviour, so informing
as well as motivating employees within their work-
groups may be of crucial importance in the successful
implementation of csr activities.
This research has some limitations that must be
considered. Themost obvious one is the fact that it ex-
amined only one side (that of the employees) and that
it is concerned with only one hotel company. There-
fore, the findings cannot be generalised. In the future,
it would be interesting to examine the opinion of the
employer and then to compare the gathered data. In
addition, it would be an added value to broaden the
research tomore hotel companies within Slovenia and
perhaps also nearby across the border.
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Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
Zaznana grožnja COVID-19 in prihodnje izogibanje potovanjem:
rezultati zgodnjega primernega vzorca v Sloveniji
Maja Turnšek, Boštjan Brumen, Marjetka Rangus, Mitja Gorenak, Janez Mekinc
in Tanja Lešnik Štuhec
Ta študija ponuja posnetek dojemanja slovenskih turistov v zgodovinsko edinstve-
nem obdobju – zgodnjih dneh karantene, povezane s covid-19. V študiji smo, v
povezavi s turizmom, merili zaznano nevarnost za zdravje, ki jo predstavlja covid-
19, in sicer v dveh dimenzijah: resnost bolezni in dovzetnost za bolezen. Na podlagi
spletne ankete, opravljene marca in aprila 2020, študija ponuja prve vpoglede v za-
znane grožnje turistov in kako so te odvisne od njihove demografije in preteklih po-
tovalnih izkušenj ter kaj si v tem določenem času mislijo o prihodnjem izogibanju
potovanjem. Rezultati so pokazali, da starost vpliva na obe dimenziji zaznane gro-
žnje in prihodnje izogibanje potovanju, vendar le pri ženskah. Poleg tega za ljudi, ki
so v preteklosti največ potovali, obstaja manjša verjetnost, da bi se izognili potova-
nju zaradi pandemije covid-19. Tisti bolj izobraženi pa po drugi strani zaznavajo
večje tveganje, vendar pa izobrazba nima nobene vloge pri njihovem prihodnjem iz-
ogibanju potovanjem. Rezultati tudi kažejo, da je moralna obveznost skrbi za druge
lahko zelo pomemben element dejavnika uspeha ukrepov covid-19 in s tem v pri-
hodnje pri povečevanju privlačnosti turistične panoge. Nenazadnje rezultati kažejo,
da ne moremo enostavno napovedati, kako se bo splošna populacija obnašala glede
prihodnjega izogibanja potovanju, saj mnenja niso skrajno polarizirana. To pa kaže,
da bodo ljudje verjetno dovzetni za kontekstualne dejavnike njihovih odločitev, kot
so prihodnja zagotovila turistične industrije o zdravstveni varnosti.
Ključne besede: covid-19, turizem, percepcija grožnje, prihodnje izogibanje
potovanjem, apeli strahu
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 3–19
Povezava turizma in gospodarske rasti v Latinski Ameriki in karibskih državah:
dokaz s panelnim ARDL
José Alberto Fuinhas, Matheus Belucio, Daniela Castilho, Joana Mateus
in Rafaela Caetano
Raziskava se osredotoča na turizem kot način za spodbujanje gospodarske rasti v
državah Latinske Amerike in Karibov. Vpliv turizma na gospodarsko rast naj bi imel
kratkoročne in dolgoročne učinke. V skladu s tem je bila uporabljena ekonometrična
analiza, in sicer model ardl, ki omogoča to časovno razgradnjo. Rezultati za dva-
indvajset držav so pokazali, da investicije v turistični kapital na prebivalca, prihodi
turistov (število oseb), poraba električne energije na prebivalca in realni devizni tečaj
kratkoročno statistično značilno in pozitivno vplivajo na gospodarsko rast. Po drugi
strani pa imajo dolgoročen vpliv le prihodi turistov in poraba električne energije na
prebivalca, kar je pozitivna gonilna sila gospodarske rasti na prebivalca. Oblikovalci
politik bi morali še naprej razvijati in izvajati ukrepe za privabljanje čim večjega šte-
vila turistov ob spodbujanju naložb v turistično industrijo. Vendar pa morajo biti
pozorni tudi na druge gospodarske sektorje, da ne bi postali izjemno odvisni zgolj
od turistične dejavnosti.
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 117
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
Ključne besede: kapitalske naložbe, turistični prihodi, gospodarska rast, Latinska
Amerika in Karibi, ardl
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 21–34
Erasmus+mobilnost: empirična raziskava vedenja turistov Erasmus+
Miha Lesjak, Emil Juvan in Eva Podovšovnik
Študenti Erasmus+ predstavljajo velik podsegment izobraževalnih turistov, kar sle-
dnjega pozicionira kot atraktiven trg za univerze in destinacijske turistične orga-
nizacije. Turistično vedenje študentov Erasmus+ v času njihove mobilnosti je rela-
tivno slabo raziskano, zato pričujoča raziskava stremi k razširitvi empirično podpr-
tega znanja o turističnem vedenju študentov v času mobilnosti Erasmus+ mobino-
sti. Podatke smo zbirali s pomočjo spletne raziskave med vsemi prijavljenimi štu-
denti Erasmus+ v študijskem letu 2016/2017 v Sloveniji. Rezultati kažejo, da je v času
mobilnosti kar 93 anketiranih študentov potovalo. Stopnja študija in spol vplivata
na turistično vedenje študentov Erasmus+ študentov, zato ti dve značilnosti pred-
stavljata zelo koristna atributa pri oblikovanju turistične ponudbe med turisti Era-
smus+. Upoštevajoč zaznane atraktivne značilnosti destinacije ugotavljamo, da mo-
ški pretežno iščejo destinacije s privlačnim nočnim življenjem, ženske pa enostavno
dostopne, varne in destinacije s privlačno kulturno ponudbo. Ugotovitve nakazujejo,
da morajo turistični ponudniki, destinacijske organizacije in univerze tesno sode-
lovati pri oblikovanju personalizirane turistične ponudbe ter njene promocije med
študenti Erasmus+. To je pomembno tako v fazi načrtovanja mobilnosti Erasmus+,
ko študenti izbirajo destinacijo in univerzo mobilnosti, ter tudi med samomobilno-
stjo, saj študenti Erasmus+ med mobilnostjo aktivno potujejo.
Ključne besede:mobilnost Erasmus+, izobraževanje, mednarodni študenti,
privlačnost destinacij, vedenje turistov
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 35–50
Človeški viri v industrijskem turizmu
Barbara Pavlakovič in Eva Jereb
Industrijski turizem se je kot vrsta turizma pojavil pred več kot sto leti, vendar pa se
raziskave pojava izvajajo šele v zadnjem času. Večina sedanjih raziskav je usmerjena
bodisi na dediščinski industrijski turizem bodisi na več posameznih vidikov, kot so
značilnosti obiskovalcev, odnos do lokalnega gospodarstva in podobno. Ta članek
poskuša osvetliti kadrovski vidik industrijskega turizma v različnih organizacijah.
Naši osnovni raziskovalni metodi sta bili opazovanje z udeležbo (udeležba na orga-
niziranih ogledih po podjetjih) in polstrukturirani intervjuji s predstavniki podjetij.
V raziskavi smo opredelili različne obstoječe oblike kadrovskih modelov industrij-
skega turizma organizacij, ki ga izvajajo, potrebne kompetence za ta delovna mesta
in metode izobraževanja zaposlenih v industrijskem turizmu. Na podlagi zbranih
rezultatov predlagamo nekaj smernic, s pomočjo katerih lahko podjetja sledijo obli-
kovanju lastnega produkta industrijskega turizma.
118 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
Ključne besede: človeški viri, kompetence, izobraževanje, industrijski turizem,
model človeških virov
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 51–65
Monitoring obiskovalcev kot orodje za upravljanje zavarovanih območij
Stanislava Pachrová, Petr Chalupa, Eva Janoušková, Alice Šedivá Neckářová
in Leoš Štefka
Članek analizira uporabnost spremljanja obiskovalcev pri upravljanju zavarovanega
območja na primeru območja zaščitenega krajinskega območja Moravskega krasa
(pla). Moravski kras je največje in najpomembnejše kraško območje na Češkem.
Njegova lega v bližini velikega mesta in lahka dostopnost omogočata, da so nekateri
deli pla izpostavljeni negativnim vplivom, ki jih ima intenzivni turizemna naravne
znamenitosti in zaščitene vrste. Medtem ko je prisotnost obiskovalcev na zavarova-
nem območju zaželena, je treba ustrezno regulirati njihove dejavnosti na območju.
Vodstvo pla potrebuje kakovostne informacije za svoje odločanje – npr. ažurne in-
formacije o značilnostih obiskovalcev in njihovem vedenju. Za pridobitev teh infor-
macij so bile od maja do septembra 2018 na izbranih lokacijah pla izvedene pri-
marnemarketinške raziskave. Za pridobitev podatkov o 2.100 obiskovalcih in za do-
ločitev profila obiskovalcev Moravskega krasa je bil uporabljen anketni vprašalnik.
Ugotovili smo, da večino obiskovalcev najbolj pritegnejo jame, odprte za javnost,
in soteska Macocha, ter da se skoraj četrtina anketirancev namerava vrniti v pla
v naslednjih šestih mesecih. Velik izziv za trajnostni razvoj turizma na tem obmo-
čju predstavlja dejstvo, da obiskovalci jam niso zainteresirani za obisk drugih krajev
v pla. Podatke, pridobljene o obiskovalcih, bo uprava pla uporabila za oblikova-
nje ukrepov za preusmerjanje obiskovalcev z najbolj izpostavljenih lokacij na manj
obiskane.
Ključne besede: trajnostni turizem, tržne raziskave, profil obiskovalcev, upravljanje
destinacij, zaščiteno krajinsko območje, Moravski kras
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 67–79
Privlačnost kongresnih destinacij: primer ponudbe poslovnega turizma
v Sloveniji
Marijana Sikošek
Namen članka je raziskati, kateri atributi privlačnosti kongresne destinacije so ti-
sti, ki so pomembni za obiskanost kongresne destinacije in kongresne prireditve kot
njenega temeljnega produkta, in sicer z vidika ponudbe oziroma s stališča ključnih
deležnikov, ki na kongresni destinaciji ustvarjajo ponudbo kongresnih prireditev: to
je ponudnikov kongresnih storitev in naročnikov kongresa. V prispevku redefini-
ramo dimenzije obiskanosti kongresne destinacije in koncept kongresnih ponudni-
kov. Na tej osnovi smo na novo razvili večdimenzionalen konstrukt (model) obi-
skanosti kongresne destinacije, ki upošteva tri vidike: vidik destinacije, prizorišča in
kongresne prireditve kot temeljne celice kongresne ponudbe. Za vsak vidik posebej
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 119
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
smo na osnovi predhodnih raziskav razvili model atributov privlačnosti, ki prispe-
vajo k obisku kongresne destinacije Z raziskavo želimo prispevati k bolj celovitem
razumevanju kongresne ponudbe in večdimenzionalni obravnavi atributov privlač-
nosti kongresne destinacije kot pomembnih dejavnikih njene obiskanosti.
Ključne besede: privlačnost kongresne destinacije, poslovni turizem, atributi
privlačnosti konference, atributi privlačnosti kongresne destinacije, atributi
privlačnosti prizorišča, obiskanost kongresne destinacije
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 81–95
Povezovanje kakovosti, stalnih izboljšav in inovativnosti v turizmu:
QCII metoda
Dejan Križaj
Članek se osredotoča na iskanje presekov med upravljanjem kakovosti, sistemi stal-
nih izboljšav in inovativnostjo v turizmu. Vsebuje uvodne teoretične vpoglede v vsa
tri področja in (v analitičnem delu) obravnava strokovno in znanstveno literaturo z
namenom iskanja teoretičnih izhodišč ter nadaljnjih razvojnih smernic, pridoblje-
nih s pomočjo analize primerov dobrih praks in relevantnih trendov. Ugotovitve so
povzete v predlagani metodi qcii za izboljševanje in inoviranje kakovostne turi-
stične ponudbe. Poseben poudarek je namenjen vključevanju konceptov trajnosti in
pametnega turizma: tako z vidika novih tehnologij in njihove uravnotežene uporabe
kot z vidika pazljivega usklajevanja interesov ter povezav med turističnimi podjetji
in njihovim okoljem.
Ključne besede: kakovost, stalne izboljšave, inovativnost, pametni turizem
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 97–110
Zaznavanje družbene odgovornosti med zaposlenimi v hotelskem podjetju:
študija primera v Portorožu, Slovenija
Tanja Planinc, Zorana Medarić in Kristina Bogataj
Družbena odgovornost podjetij je v zadnjih desetletjih pogosto obravnavana tema-
tika v znanstveni literaturi. V prispevku je predstavljen socialni vidik družbene od-
govornosti podjetij v hotelirstvu, s poudarkom na zavedanju zaposlenih o družbeni
odgovornosti v izbranem hotelskem podjetju v Portorožu v Sloveniji. Rezultati ka-
žejo, da je za zaposlene pomembno, da so zaposleni v podjetju, ki sodeluje pri razvoju
lokalne skupnosti. Po drugi strani pa pogosto ne vedo, kako njihov delodajalec de-
jansko izvaja aktivnosti, ki so povezane s socialnimi vidiki družbene odgovornosti
podjetij.
Ključne besede: družbena odgovornost podjetij, zaposleni, hotelirstvo, Portorož,
Slovenija
Academica Turistica, 12(2), 111–116
120 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
Instructions for Authors
Aim and Scope of the Journal
Academica Turistica – Tourism and Innovation Journal
(at-tij) is a peer-reviewed journal that provides a fo-
rum for the dissemination of knowledge on tourism
and innovation from a social sciences perspective. It
especially welcomes contributions focusing on inno-
vation in tourism and adaptation of innovations from
other fields in tourism settings.
The journal welcomes both theoretical and appli-
cative contributions and encourages authors to use va-
rious quantitative and qualitative research methodo-
logies. Besides research articles, the journal also pu-
blishes review articles, commentaries, reviews of bo-
oks and conference reports. Purely descriptive manu-
scripts which do not contribute to the development of
knowledge are not considered suitable.
General Guidelines and Policy of the Journal
Manuscripts are accepted in both American and Bri-
tish English; however, consistency throughout the pa-
per is expected. All manuscripts are subject to an ini-
tial editorial screening for adherence to the journal
style, for anonymity, and for correct use of English.
As a result of this your paper will be either accepted
for further consideration or returned for revision. To
avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to
have your manuscript proofread.
Manuscripts should be organized in the following
order: title, abstract, keywords, main text, acknowled-
gements, references, and appendixes (as appropriate).
Reviewing. Each manuscript, meeting the technical
standards and falling within the aims and scope of the
journal, will be subject to double-blind review by two
reviewers. Authors can propose up to two reviewers
for revision of their work and also up to two reviewers
they would like to avoid.
The referees are chosen by the Editorial Board. As-
sessments by the referees will be presented anonymo-
usly to the author and, in the case of substantial reser-
vations, the article, with the list of corrections needed,
will be returned to the author for correction. The cor-
rected copy of the article with the list of corrections
on a separate page should be returned to the Editorial
Board.
Permissions. Authors wishing to include figures, ta-
bles, or text passages that have already been published
elsewhere, are required to obtain permission from the
copyright owner(s) and to include evidence that such
permission has been granted when submitting their
papers. Any material received without such evidence
will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Submission declaration. Submission of a manuscript
implies that it has not been published previously
(except in the form of abstract or as part of a publi-
shed lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under
consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publi-
cation is approved by all its authors and tacitly or expli-
citly by the responsible authorities where the workwas
carried out. The corresponding author should ensure
that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate
co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-
authors have seen and approved the final version of
the paper and have agreed to its submission for publi-
cation.
Conflict of interest. All authors are requested to dis-
close any actual or potential conflict of interest inclu-
ding any financial, personal or other relationshipswith
other people or organizations within three years of be-
ginning the submittedwork that could inappropriately
influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.
Manuscript Preparation
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the style
prescribed by the Publication Manual of the Ameri-
can Psychological Association (American Psychologi-
calAssociation, 2009; see also http://www.apastyle.org).
Language and style. The first author is fully respon-
sible for the language and style in the context of the
instructions. A good scientific standard command of
grammar and style is expected.
Text formatting. Please, use the automatic page num-
bering function to number the pages. Use tab stops or
other commands for indents, not the space bar.Use the
table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables. Use
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 121
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
the equation editor or MathType for equations. Whe-
never possible, use the si units (Système international
d’unités).
Thetitlepage should include the title of the article (no
more than 85 characters, including spaces), full name
of the author(s), affiliation (institution name and ad-
dress) of each author clearly identified; linked to each
author by use of superscript numbers, corresponding
author’s full name, telephone, and e-mail address.
Abstract. The authors are obliged to prepare two ab-
stracts – one in English and one (translated) in Slo-
vene language. For foreign authors translation of the
abstract into Slovene will be provided.
The content of the abstract should be structured
into the following sections: purpose, methods, results,
and conclusion. It should only contain the information
that appears in the text as well. It should contain no re-
ference to figures, tables and citations published in the
main text, and should not exceed 250 words.
Beneath the abstract, the authors should supply
appropriate keywords (3–6) in English and in Slovene.
For foreign authors the translation of the abstract into
Slovene will be provided.
The main text should contain a coherent and logi-
cal structure preferably following the imrad format
(Introduction, Methods, Research [and] Discussion).
However, other structures are also welcome (e.g. In-
troduction, Development and Conclusions) as long as
the text maintains its logical structure and focus. Ac-
knowledgments are optional.
The length of the articles should not exceed 9,000
words (including tables, figures, and references), dou-
ble spaced, using Times New Roman font sized 12.
Tables. Each table should be submitted on a sepa-
rate page in a Word document after References. Each
table shall have a brief caption; explanatory matter
should be in the footnotes below the table. The table
shall contain means and the units of variation (sd,
se, etc.) and must be free of nonsignificant decimal
places. Abbreviations used in the tablesmust be consi-
stentwith those used in the text and figures.Definition
symbols should be listed in the order of appearance,
determined by reading horizontally across the table
and should be identified by standard symbols. All ta-
bles should be numbered consecutively (Table 1, Table
2, etc.).
Figures. Captions are required for all Figures and shall
appear on a separate manuscript page, beneath table
captions. Each figure should be saved as a separate
file without captions and named as Figure 1, etc. Files
should be submitted in *.tiff or *.jpeg format. Pho-
tographs should be saved at at least 300 dpi. Line art
images should be saved at 1200 dpi. Lettering (sym-
bols, letters, and numbers) should be between 8 and
9 points, with consistent spacing and alignment. Font
face may be Serif (Minion) or Sans Serif (Myriad).
Line width should be 0.5 point or greater. Any extra
white or black space surrounding the image should be
cropped. Ensure that subject-identifying information
(i.e., faces, names, or any other identifying features)
is cropped out or opaqued. Prior to publication, the
author(s) should obtain all necessary authorizations
for the publication of the illustrative matter and sub-
mit them to the Editorial Board. All figures should be
numbered consecutively (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). The
journal will be printed in black and white. If the pa-
per contains graphs, we would appreciate that you also
e-mail them in a separate Excel file.
References
References should be formatted according to the Pu-
blication Manual of the American Psychological Associ-
ation (American Psychological Association, 2019).
The list of references should only include works
that are cited in the text. Personal communications
and unpublished works should only be mentioned in
the text. References should be complete and contain all
the authors that have been listed in the title of the ori-
ginal publication. If the author is unknown, start with
the title of the work. If you are citing a work that is in
print but has not yet been published, state all the data
and instead of the publication year write ‘in print.’
Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the
last name of the first author of each work. Do not use
footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference
list. Full titles of journals are required (not their abbre-
viations).
122 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
Citing References in Text
One author. Tourism innovation specific is mentioned
(Brooks, 2010). Thomas (1992) had concluded . . .
Two authors. This result was later contradicted (Swar-
brooke &Horner, 2007). Price andMurphy (2000)
pointed out . . .
Three or more authors.Wolchik et al. (1999) or (Wol-
chik et al., 1999).
If two references with three or more authors shor-
ten to the same form, cite the surnames of the first
author and of as many of the subsequent authors as
necessary to distinguish the two references, followed
by a coma and et al.
List several authors for the same thought or idea
with separation by using a semicolon: (Kalthof et al.,
1999; Biegern & Roberts, 2005).
Examples of Reference List
Books
American Psychological Association. (2019). Publica-
tion manual of the American Psychological Associ-
ation (7th ed.).
Swarbrooke, J., &Horner, S. (2007).Consumer behavi-
our in tourism. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Journals
Laroche,M., Bergeron, J., & Barbaro-Forleo, G. (2001).
Targeting consumers who are willing to pay more
for environmentally friendly products. Journal of
Consumer Marketing, 18(6), 503–520.
Wolchik, S. A., West, S. G., Sandler, I. N., Tein, J.–
Y., Coatsworth, D., Lengua, L., . . . Griffin, W. A.
(2000). An experimental evaluation of theory-
basedmother andmother-child programs for chil-
dren of divorce. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 68, 843–856.
Newspapers
Brooks, A. (2010, 7 July). Building craze threatens
to end Lanzarote’s biosphere status. Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/
nature/building-craze-threatens-to-end
-lanzarotes-biosphere-status-2020064.html
Chapters in Books
Poirier, R. A. (2001). A dynamic tourism develop-
ment model in Tunisia: Policies and prospects. In
Y. Aposotolopoulos, P. Loukissas, & L. Leontidou
(Eds.),Mediterranean tourism (pp. 197–210). Rou-
tledge.
Conference Proceedings
Price, G., & Murphy, P. (2000). The relationship be-
tween ecotourism and sustainable development: A
critical examination. In M. Ewen (Ed.), cauthe
2000: Peak performance in tourism and hospitality
research; Proceedings of the Tenth Australian Tou-
rism and Hospitality Research Conference (pp. 189–
202). La Trobe University.
Paper Presentation
Thomas, J. (1992, July). Tourism and the environment:
An exploration of the willingness to pay of the ave-
rage visitor. Paper presented at the conference To-
urism in Europe, Durham, England.
Theses andDissertations
Sedmak, G. (2006). Pomen avtentičnosti turističnega
proizvoda: primer destinacije Piran (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). University of Ljubljana.
Working Papers
Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S. W., Haddock, M. A., &
Tice, H. S. (2013). The state of global civil society vo-
lunteering: Latest findings from the implementation
of the un nonprofitt handbook (ComparativeNon-
profit Sector Working Paper No. 49). Johns Hop-
kins University.
Web Pages
Croatian Bureau of Statistics. (2001). Census of popu-
lation, households and dwellings. http://www.dzs
.hr/Eng/censuses/Census2001/census.htm
Manuscript Submission
The main manuscript document should be in Micro-
soft Word document format and the article should be
submitted to http://academica.turistica.si/index.php/
AT-TIJ/about/submissions
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 1, June 2020 | 123