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One of the remaining gaps in the extant entrepreneurship literature relates to the insufficient understanding of the role of culture, and the need for elucidating its effects on the entrepreneurial process dynamics. Despite the crisis, Greece experiences a vibrant start-up scene and the entire capital city of Athens is buzzing with activity. Despite cultural differences between the North and South of Europe, it seems that there is a lot of cooperation between young people wanting to create their own businesses, since young Greeks are well-educated, speak English very well and like to get into business. Game-changing innovators drawn from many disciplines such as technology, tourism and entertainment, design, the sciences, the humanities, the arts, NGOs, business and more, coming from around the country, seem to join internationally renowned speakers and research centers from Universities from all of Europe by creating incubators and positively affecting interpersonal trust and the allocation of entrepreneurial action over newly emerging independent businesses and established organizations in society. This paper will address the issue of the making of an entrepreneur in Greece and the role of ICTs using case studies and the Greek tourism and transport sector. Characteristics of the people engaging in starting up a business will be discussed and the implications for policy makers will be analyzed, so as to help create more start-ups and improve the chances of survival of existing ones.

Sport tourism has enjoyed a plethora of definitional and theoretical perspectives over the last three decades proposing a dynamic alternative to mass tourism with specific structural features and modus operandi. However, studies examining or suggesting the basic body of knowledge that would satisfy the educational needs of participants in this complex tourism form are lacking. The present study - through an analysis of the involved conceptual fields - aims to minor the gap between theoretical support and direction for tourism academics and the realistic skills needed by the sport tourism industry. The main focus of the study is to provide a theoretical platform based on the available paradigms that would facilitate the build of sport tourism related curriculums. The study embraces an analysis of available secondary sources, academic course outlines, official university’s sites, policy declarations, etc. and parallels theoretical models to produce the basic thematic dimensions of a relevant conceptual framework. Hopefully, the result will offer a vision on the further development of sport tourism education to meet the needs of one of the most promising leisure forms., El turismo del deporte ha disfrutado de una plétora de perspectivas de definición y teóricas durante las tres últimas décadas, proponiendo una alternativa dinámica al turismo en masa con características estructurales específicas y modus operandi. Sin embargo, faltan estudios que examinen o sugirieran el los conocimientos básicos que satisfagan las necesidades educativas de los participantes en esta forma compleja de turismo. El presente estudio, a través de un análisis de los campos conceptuales involucrados, pretende reducir la brecha entre el apoyo teórico y la dirección para el turismo académico y las habilidades realistas necesarias para la industria del turismo deportivo. El objetivo principal del estudio es proveer una plataforma teorética basada en los paradigmas disponibles que facilitarían la construcción de currículos relacionados con el turismo deportivo. El estudio abarca un análisis de fuentes secundarias disponibles, esquemas de recursos académicos, sitios oficiales de la universidad, declaraciones de políticas, etc. Y modelos teoréticos paralelos para producir las dimensiones temáticas básicas de un marco conceptual relevante. Esperamos que el resultado ofrezca una visión sobre el desarrollo la educación del turismo deportivo para satisfacer las necesidades de una de las más prometedoras formas de ocio.

Greece is experiencing a deep economic crisis while seeking for new sources of revenues. Nowadays, medical tourism seems to be an effective mean of economic growth, which could facilitate the way out of the crisis. The aim of this paper is to investigate tourism companies’ readiness to invest in medical tourism in Greece and the ICT infrastructure underlying it. For this purpose, a nationwide survey was carried out in 2012. The target population consisted of all the 337 5-star hotels across the country and 28 companies-members of the Hellenic Association of Professional Congress Organizers (HAPCO). Data was gathered by emailing a structured questionnaire to the executives of the abovementioned companies, which investigated the executives’ opinion and experience regarding the characteristics of the tourism facilities of their company, their evaluation of the existing medical tourist infrastructure in Greece and perspectives for future investment in the field. Descriptive and econometric analyses have been performed and logistic regression was applied. According to our findings, high class hotels seem to be willing to invest in medical tourism, since they have the ability and the relevant infrastructure to develop it. Obviously, medical tourism in Greece could constitute an important source of national income and consequently, an alternative for the country to exit the economic crisis, provided care is given to ICT infrastructure and legislation procedures.

Advances in electronic-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) are rapidly transforming social and economic conditions across the globe. As the cost of ICTs continues to fall and their capabilities increase, their applications are becoming even more vital to all sectors of the economy and society. Developments and continued growth in ICT and its application in the tourism sector have empowered the tourism consumer and are driving significant change within the tourism industry. The increasing spread and uses of ICT create new opportunities for countries to harness these technologies and services to promote social and economic development and human justice. Given the growing importance of technology in all organizational functions and areas, organizations can either adapt to technological changes or will have to face a decline in their organizational viability. This article is concerned with the administration of ICT in tourism regional planning and the concept of organizational change. The paper explores areas of ICT literacy, and concludes that a number of challenges must be addressed if the full benefit of the use and application of ICT in tourism. The article draws the attention of all the stakeholders in the tourism sector to the need to support and promote ICT as the most effective tool for tourism regional planning, tourist information access and dissemination as well as the tourism regional development participants need for organizational change.

This article identifies typical patterns of information sourcing behavior in the travel decision process of the cultural traveler. Trip characteristics, degree of packaging, choice of accommodation and sociodemographic variables are also discussed. Using data from the province of Arcadia, Greece, which serves as the research field of a longitudinal study, the present article provides some new insight into how information search affects cultural travelers. Tourists interested in learning about the local culture/history would primarily seek information on their destination place from recommendations made by friends and family and secondly by looking for information on the Internet. The findings suggest strategies for marketing management decisions and a comprehensive understanding of the cultural travel market segment from a consumer behavior perspective.

Głównym celem autorek artykułu jest interdyscyplinarne spojrzenie na turystykę i jej diachroniczne wątki tekstualne w prototurystycznych pismach Pauzaniasza – greckiego autora opowieści o podróżach. Korzystając z periegetycznych tekstów podróżniczych, zaczerpniętych z jego obszernego dzieła Wędrówki po Helladzie (Periegesis tes Hellados; II w. n.e.), będącego punktem wyjścia do rozważań, autorki zamierzają pokazać, że strategie tekstualne Pauzaniasza wciąż stanowią podstawę współczesnej serii przewodników turystycznych, zapoczątkowanej przez K. Baedekera w XIX w. Celem opracowania jest również wykazanie, że po Baedekerze tradycyjne teksty podróżnicze Pauzaniasza nadal mają wpływ na epistemologię współczesnej turystyki: interakcje między tekstami podróżniczymi, zawierającymi informacje turystyczne, a kanałami dystrybucji prowadzą do pojawienia się generycznych hybryd, a starożytni greccy autorzy podróży utorowali drogę do tworzenia cyfrowych opowiadań, sieci i globalnych platform turystycznych.

The key aim of this article is to provide an interdisciplinary look at tourism and its diachronic textual threads bequeathed by the ‘proto-tourist’ texts of the Greek travel author Pausanias. Using the periegetic, travel texts from his voluminous Description of Greece (2nd century CE) as a springboard for our presentation, we intend to show how the textual strategies employed by Pausanias have been received and still remain at the core of contemporary series of travel guides first authored by Karl Baedeker (in the 19th century). After Baedeker, Pausanias’ textual travel tropes, as we will show, still inform the epistemology of modern-day tourism; the interaction of travel texts with travel information and distribution channels produces generic hybrids, and the ancient Greek travel authors have paved the way for the construction of networks, digital storytelling and global tourist platforms.

This paper dwells upon transmedia storytelling as a cutting-edge tourist-oriented approach to promote a territory in a smart perspective with a focus on the power of a hashtag campaign within a pilot Instagram tour occurred in 2015. Starting from the belief that involvement, participation and sharing are useful key to most industries and sectors, and especially to tourism, we study in-depth Salentoupndown case, as a successful example of 2.0 initiative in terms of creating new models for public engagement, visitor meaning-making (i.e. travel generated content) through the application of the “legal informatics by design and by default” logic, on the assumption that no digital solution today can be conceived without assessing it as by law enacted. Data collection and analysis show how Salentoupndown becomes, in terms of reach, exposure and engagement through the social media channels, a viral tourism web-based event. By integrating the conceptual discussion on the adoption of technology-based innovations in the tourism sector with a 2.0 tourist-oriented empirical experience, the study provides useful insights on the practical implementation of future location-based transmedia storytelling projects

Social networks have a significant role in the tourism sector: both on the demand and on the supply. They are an important information source for travelers, allowing destination makers to ‘socialize’ and share information and comments with users and possible visitors. Leveraging off social media to market destinations has proven to be an excellent strategy as largely recognized in several studies focused on the comprehension of importance of social media in the online tourism market (Chung and Buhalis, 2008; Inversini and Buhalis 2009; Xiang and Gretzel 2010). Following these developments, tourism managers have started to put in practice new strategies that exploit social media tools in order to promote and incentive tourism in the area. Therefore, the primary purpose of the study is to show how digital strategies and, especially, the use of social media tools, may be critical to enable tourism destination competitiveness. The main objective is to analyse a destination digital strategy aimed to define the best features to perform a winning digital strategy that allows to promote and market a tourist destination on the web. Framed in the above premises, a benchmark of some Italian e-destinations best practice examples [ENIT 2015 Blogmeter 2015 have been conducted with the aim to comprehend trends and main features of the use of technologies and applications. The chosen cases are, then, analysed more in depth, through a qualitative online exploratory survey. The results obtained from a contemporary and successful Italian DMO, evidence the criteria enabling a competive 2.0 tourism strategy.

Despite the recent growth of research into dark tourism (Dale & Robinson, 2011; Lennon & Foley, 2000 Thomson, 2000; Stone, 2013; Tarlow, 2005) and the growth of the dark tourism market (Biran & Hyde, 2013; Stone, 2005; Stone & Sharpley, 2008), there has been little interest shown in understanding the relationship between dark tourism and urban tourism (Page & Hall, 2002). This paper presents the initial findings of a research project that investigates the dark tourism products offered by European cities. A series of keywords were developed following a review of the dark tourism literature and this was used carry out a content analysis of the Destination Marketing Organisation websites for Europe’s ten most visited cities. The content analysis used Stone’s (2006) Dark Tourism Continuum to evaluate the dark tourism products offered in each destination and to present a descriptive overview of Europe’s city-based dark tourism offer. The paper concludes that there are a wide range of dark tourism products available to urban tourists in Europe, but that these are rarely conceptualised as such. The mixture of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ dark tourism products presents difficulties in categorisation and standardisation of the urban tourism offer, but this is a potential area of new product development for DMOs across Europe.

Tourism and its importance to the Russian Federation are very much in the headlines at present. Considering the huge investment made in facilities for the Winter Olympics, the building of new sports facilities for such mega events as the Football World Cup, and the status of St Petersburg as a candidate city for the 2028 Olympics, it is clear that Russia has long term plans to attract visitors to their sporting events. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research agenda to explore the potential of artistic gymnastics, a sport in which the Russian Federation has excelled for many years, as an agent of tourism development. \ud \ud The paper will take a case study approach, considering the nature of fandom and identifying features of artistic gymnastics as cultural heritage and sports tourism product. The national and international environment within which it is set are examined, prior to the development of a research agenda. A detailed review of literature on the historic, current and emerging trends in Russian artistic gymnastics; the place of artistic gymnastics in tourism development and sports tourism in Russia will be carried out. \ud \ud The paper’s findings will include considerations of:\ud • The nature of gymnastics fandom, both in Russia and internationally\ud • The nature of sports tourism development in the Russian Federation\ud • The nature of gymnastics as a sport and its competition cycle\ud • Artistic gymnastics as cultural heritage, and its potential as an autonomous means of promoting Russian national identity\ud • The relationship between Russia’s sometimes fading gymnastics competition results, and its potential to leverage the sport for tourism interest\ud • The potential for tourism product development linked to artistic gymnastics in the Russian Federation.\ud The paper contributes to the literature on the nature of sports tourism as it relates to artistic gymnastics in the Russian Federation in particular.