Fulltext search in archive

This article aims to provide an insight into the largely under-researched issue of river cruise tourism on the Danube through an explorative analysis. The focus is on attraction accessibility in the context of the three major cities of pan-European Corridor VII. (Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade), based on the adaptation of the accessibility model by Geurs & van Wee (2004). Expert and stakeholder interviews have been carried out and analyzed to understand the general problems and suggested solutions of port and attraction accessibility of these cities. Results indicate that accessibility is influenced not only by transport components: rethinking temporal and individual components as well as developing land-use and transport components may be relevant to overcoming key issues like low water level, overtourism, reliability of services, urban traffic congestion and parking problems on roads. Our research results can serve as a source for urban and transport development strategies and summarizes product development proposals of the members of the tourism sector for cruise tourism on the Danube to ensure accessibility.

Behind the selection of location choices for services and retail sector, many factors work in conjunction. This research tried to determine which factors had an influence on location choice and agglomeration and which factors worked together to decide the location choice. This study empirically tests location determinant hypothesis. Our findings suggested that infrastructure, corruption and law, labour law and workforce had a significant effect on location choice. Other factors such as trade regulation, competition, sales and supply, access to land and permit, access to finance, institutional administration and political constraint had the insignificant effect on location choice. Our research used the 2014 World Enterprise Survey data from World Bank, and it included the 2116 registered companies sample responses.

In this research, tourism was underlined as a health protection practice, which is focused upon the perception by individuals of Coronavirus-19 danger and uncertainty, particularly in Jordan perspective. The study investigates the effect on behavioral purpose on untact tourism of Coronavirus-19 risk perception and ambiguity, depended upon the theoretical models of the extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Health Belief Model (HBM). The online survey was conducted among Jordanian adults in April and May 2020. A total of 380 questionnaires about data collection were used. The results indicate that the perception of affective risk is a major precedent for attitude, while it has been shown that the perception of cognitive risk has a positive impact on attitude. There has also been a positive influence on perceptions on perceived ambiguity. This research has timely and insightful implications for tourism practitioners needed to prepare the post-corona sector for the new standard after the minimum living experience of an unexpected pandemic.

Tourism is an important industry which affects the profits of national economy. A strong tourism sector directly contributes to the national income of the country, combats unemployment and improves the balance of payments. Tourism demand is usually measured by the number of tourist visits from an origin country to a destination country, in terms of tourist nights spent in the destination country or in terms of tourist expenditures by visitors from an origin country to the destination country. The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of international tourism demand for Greece and to quantify their influences. Four econometric models have been developed with different combinations of countries, to estimate tourist inflow data from twenty-eight European and non-European countries, for the period 1996-2015. Various potential determinants are investigated, including gross domestic product, currency, the average per capita tourism expenditure and the marketing expenses to promote tourism industry. The empirical results indicate that the explanatory variables affect the tourism demand of Greece and play an important role in strategies that affect total cost, demand, and structure of the Greek tourism market.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are developing rapidly, but the deeper understanding of tourists' attitudes towards AVs is still little explored in social sciences. Bearing this in mind, this study aims to identify the expected changes in tourism arising from the technology, and the openness towards AV-based tourism services. For this, an online data collection (n = 671) has been completed among Hungarian tourists. Prior to the data collection, a literature review was conducted to identify and categorise the changes expected from the spread of AVs. Based on the empirical results, tourists would be willing to give up control to the AVs in a foreign environment, and so to pay more attention to the surroundings. The majority of respondents would be also open to participating in AI-based city tours, especially those with the "Extraversion" and "Openness to Experiences" personality types, based on the Big Five Theory. The findings can serve as a basis for practitioners in preparing for the technology and for the further analysis of attitudes towards tourism-based AV services (e.g., modeling of technology acceptance).

The hospitality industry plays a significant role in regional development as its services are a prerequisite for tourism growth, which on the premises of sustainability has become a major contributor to socio-economic growth. Unfortunately, the hospitality industry has been continuously struggling with high employee turnover and a significant "within" and "out of" labour mobility, regardless of the phase of the business cycle, time, or geographical region. This could be reasoned by employees historically viewing offered jobs in the hospitality industry as low-paid, with little or no promotion possibilities, giving the employees little or no room for self-development and realization of their full potential as human beings, and thus "labelled" as low social status jobs; yet seasonal, stressful, time demanding, and monotonous. Therefore, drawing upon Carroll's (2015, 2016) four-dimensional concept of corporate social responsibility, this study, using a set of multiple regression analyses, empirically examines the effect of each dimension (economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic) on hospitality industry employees' attitudes and behaviour such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which eventually lead to lowering employees' turnover intentions. The sample under analysis (n = 411) was collected from employees of 24 small- or medium-size lodging enterprises located in Prague, as the small- to medium-size businesses are the "backbone" of local economies. Results indicate a significant influence of corporate social responsibility on the above-mentioned employees' attitudes or behaviour. However, not all four dimensions play the same role in stimulating the desired employees' behaviour outcome. This study also contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility as scholarly literature gives it little room in relation to employees, especially in the Central European context.

The study summarises the main features of the urban structure of Romania, with a special focus on metropolitan development. Romanian settlement development since the regime change has been essentially urban-focused. Concentrated social, economic and environmental problems are identified at the urban level, which have facilitated the regional division and the designation of regional centres. These specific development areas have identified urban and rural problems for which coherent solutions have been sought. Urban areas of attraction are considered subordinate to the centre, with the exception of tourist destinations, where the geographical location of natural, historical, architectural or artistic assets opens up development opportunities for rural areas independently of cities. The Romanian system provides a starting point for further reflection on the spatial categories of Hungarian spatial development, as it considers the urban-rural functional area as the basic unit of development policy and does not rigidly adhere to the existing administrative structure. The paper presents a specific example of a regional centre, the gateway cities, as a changing development path.

The aim of the paper is to review the development of the five largest cities of Serbia in the post-Yugoslav period. In the introduction, the general development of the urban network and spatial structure of the Balkans will be presented in a historical context, as well as the geographical location and geopolitical situation of Serbia. Over the last three decades, the state structure of Serbia has undergone several fundamental transformations, which have had a significant impact on the development of these cities. This is analysed in terms of the transformation of administrative and spatial characteristics. Finally, the development, economic and demographic processes of Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Kragujevac and Subotica are examined in detail.

The aim of the study is to analyse the changes in the socio-economic performance of Hungarian regions in the previous decade. The first part of the paper deals with the epistemological and methodological questions of the analysis of temporal change of spatial differences of various individual and composite socio-economic indicators. In the second part the empirical analysis will be conducted at the county level (NUTS 3 level, 20 spatial units), including a wide range of economic, social and demographic variables. The analysis is concerned with processes over an eleven-year period, 2010-2020. Our methodology combines the analysis of individual indicators with the use of complex aggregated indicators composed of several indicators. Some of the counties show higher level of socio-economic performance with more developed infrastructure, higher quality of education and stronger economic base. However, the picture is not entirely uniform, there are small, moderately positive and negative movements compared to the national average.

The aim of this paper is to examine how small towns have tackled the economic transformation in the post-communist period. It aims to contribute to the comprehensive research of post-communist transformation at different hierarchic levels of settlement system. The study is spatially focused on the Lower Spiš region in Eastern Slovakia as it includes various kinds of small towns at relatively small area. Based on data provided by population censuses in 1991, 2001 and 2011, we assess development of economic performance of the towns by number of jobs, sectoral structure of jobs, ability to provide jobs for local economically active population, and spatial extent of commuting zones. The results prove that post-communist small towns remained important subregional centers of employment and commuting in general. They sustain even though some of them were affected by the recession of industrial sector and their economic base was established or substantially supported by the socialist industrialization. The growth of small towns' economic importance was recorded in the proximity of the major regional town - Spišská Nová Ves, mainly thanks to decentralization of economic activities.

Recent profound and fundamental changes in information technology and electronics have led to a change in consumer habits, which also characterizes the tourism sector. In the e-world, consumers' information search and communication habits are changing; we are living in an era of a communicational paradigm shift. Online Travel Agencies (OTA) are not only the dominant channels of booking and sales nowadays, but also the channels of information gathering and guidance in the accommodation-related information of the services. Some of the information on OTA is objective; others are subjective - the latter being consumer information and opinions. Subjective information about the accommodation is provided by guest reviews on the OTA websites.
The present research aims at comparing the guest review systems of Hungarian and international OTA websites, in terms of authenticity, scale, the applied system of criteria, and the possibilities of guest evaluations broken down by target groups. In addition, this paper presents the OTA guest ratings of two accommodation establishments of the same category - located in the same destination - on a case-by-case basis, seeking an answer to the question of how consistent the results - as a whole and in terms of criteria - are for the consumer facing the decision.
In the further primary research part of the study, the review rating and customer feedback for satisfaction analysis is also presented based on professional interviews with hotel professionals.
The results reveal that the guest ratings, which provide the OTA users concise information about the accommodation establishment, are influenced by the scale and the categories (besides the calculation of the overall experience score) applied by the OTA, and the number of reviews, because a higher number of reviews gives a less scattered, more correlated with the other OTAs ratings.