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With the growing popularity of heritage tourism throughout the world in recent years, international agencies have guided their member states to develop different forms of tourism, including cultural tourism, sustainable tourism, and local participation in heritage conservation and tourism development. This paper first reviews the concepts of cultural tourism, heritage, sustainable development, and sustainable tourism, upon which international guidance has been based and practiced. It then explores the interpretations and applications of international guidance by the Cambodian national authorities in the Angkor World Heritage site, and compares these to the responses and applications by local NGOs and social enterprises. Angkor World Heritage site demonstrates a highly controversial national interpretation and application of international guidance, which is complemented, but only somewhat, by the initiatives of local NGOs and social entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, sustainable tourism is a form of tourism that meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing the opportunity for the future. It is an industry that aims at having a low impact upon the environment and local culture, generating income and employment, and ensuring the conservation of local ecosystems. The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which the development and promotion of a new tourism product based on unique rural heritage and traditions contribute to the development of sustainable tourism strategies in Romania.Design/methodology/approach This paper includes a literature review on the topic of sustainable tourism in post-conflict destinations and provides arguments for the adoption and development of sustainable tourism. Using a case study methodological approach, this paper provides an example of a sustainable tourism destination from the Central development region of Romania (Alba County, Transylvania) to depict specific sustainable tourism practices and their impact on the place, in a post-communist and post-conflict context. The study uses a comprehensive desk-research based on secondary data from key industry and academic sources.Findings The research findings show that rural tourism can greatly support the (re)development of post-conflict destinations, and it makes a significant contribution to the sustainable development of the Romanian tourism industry, in general, and rural economies in particular, as shown in the case examined in this paper.Practical implications This paper illustrates that fostering the unique rural heritage and traditions of a post-conflict destination can contribute to the revival and sustainable development of the place. Sustainable tourism practices contribute not only financially to a destination but also to its social infrastructures, jobs, nature conservation, adoption of new working practices and the revitalisation of passive and poor rural areas.Originality/value This paper examines and depicts rural tourism development as an innovative and sustainable strategy for Romania, a post-conflict destination that experienced severe political and social turmoil during the communist regime, and ethnic conflicts and violent events in the 1990s. The research findings may be applicable to other geographic regions and post-conflict destinations with similar contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is increasingly recognised as a major threat to the sustainability of tourism, including heritage tourism. Yet, despite growth in literature on climate change and heritage, there is little specific literature on the relationship between climate change and heritage tourism. The paper introduces a special issue on heritage tourism and climate change. It briefly outlines the future challenges of climate change before commenting on tourism's role in climate change and the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Using UNWTO tourism estimates, a tentative figure of half of all emissions of tourism could be ascribed to heritage-related tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a special session on smart tourism that was held in Chengdu, China from September 14-15, 2017. It mentions that the session was jointly organized by the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) in collaboration with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Zhejiang DRORE Technology Co., Ltd, Zhejiang University, China. It states that the session aimed at the significance of latest digital technologies in tourism.

Children account for an appreciable proportion of total imported malaria cases, yet few studies have quantified these cases, identified trends, or suggested evidence-based prevention strategies for this group of travelers. [...]

This article addresses the challenges of long-term planning for a tourism workforce at a regional level, a significant yet underconceptualized area in the literature. We draw on Yeoman’s future thinking techniques to generate a four-quadrant matrix designed to facilitate the development of scenarios that identify workforce challenges the tourism sector in the Asia-Pacific is likely to face through to 2030. Applying a modified Delphi technique, an expert panel aided in the formulation of dimensions on which our matrix is based. Their inputs over three rounds informed the development of four scenarios for the future of the tourism workforce in the Asia-Pacific. Utilizing these scenarios or “possibility spaces,” the article provides a framework for discussion and a platform for workforce planning and policy within this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Envisaging the future of tourism anywhere is difficult but is amplified when making predictions for the dynamic and rapidly changing Asia-Pacific region. The purpose of this conceptual article is to problematize a 2030 Asia-Pacific tourism future by modeling one polarized and probable scenario, theoretically framed within the mobilities paradigm and the core–periphery model. This scenario proposes that planning for the development of Asia-Pacific tourism will be heavily influenced by a growing tourist trend for experiences in the “pleasure periphery” while the contemporary pattern of increasing urbanization will continue to mobilize the required workforce toward the core. This scenario models divergent tourist and worker mobilities between the core and periphery. By focusing a scenario on this increasingly important discrepancy between labor supply and tourism demand, we can identify the challenges for those areas representative of this divergence that tourism development and destination stakeholders must plan for before 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This opinion piece reviews the claim by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) that its Global Code of Ethics “is an important frame of reference for the responsible…development of world tourism”. Most of the prescriptions contained within the Code's 10 Articles and accompanying sections focus on human rights, freedoms and benefits and much less on specific aspects of the environment. The Code's overriding anthropocentric tone denies any chance for it to be a truly responsible creed. Being responsible should mean taking care of human needs,andthe needs of the millions of animals used in the tourism industry for human enjoyment and benefit. The code fails to be truly responsible: the “frame of reference” is not inclusive or protective of the welfare of those beings who, by their involvement as workers, entertainers and competitors, are an important part of the tourism industry's operations whether acknowledged or not. Animal ethics is an area of scholarship that is virtuallyterra incognitain tourism studies. The paper recommends that the UNWTO reconvene to amend the Code. Good practice is illustrated, and a draft Article 11 for a revised UNWTO Code is provided. Respect and animal welfare is advocated, but not the more extreme position of animal rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dengue is endemic in many countries visited by Swedish travellers. We aimed to determine the attack rate of dengue in Swedish travellers and analyse the trends over time and the geographical variation. Methods: We obtained the following data from the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control for the y 1995-2010: number of Swedish residents with confirmed dengue, the country and year of infection. We also obtained registers on the Swedish annual air traveller arrivals to dengue endemic areas from the United Nations World Tourist Organization for the time period. We estimated attack rates with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: In total, 925 Swedish travellers with confirmed dengue were reported. We found an increasing trend over time for most destinations. The majority of the dengue cases were acquired in Thailand (492 out of 925 travellers; 53%), with an attack rate of 13.6 (95% CI 12.7, 14.4) per 100,000 travellers. However, the 2 highest attack rates per 100,000 travellers were found for Sri Lanka (45.3, 95% CI 34.3, 56.4) and Bangladesh (42.6, 95% CI 23.8, 61.5). Conclusions: Information on attack rates in travellers is more helpful in guiding travel medicine practitioners than reports of absolute numbers, as the latter reflect travel preferences rather than the true risk. Although the majority of dengue infections in Swedish travellers were acquired in Thailand, the attack rates for dengue in travellers to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were much higher. These data aid in refining information on the risk of dengue in travellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to tourism worldwide as of 2014. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has accepted United Nations' (UN) request to support tourism through national and international policy agenda. UN World Tourism Organization (WTO) Secretary-General Taleb Rifai and French Minister of State for Tourism, Fleur Pellerin had a meeting in Paris, France to cooperate on a tourism strategy. The UNWTO has welcomed a law in Saudi Arabia which would protect antiquities and heritage.

The article offers information on several conferences and conventions including the fifth edition of the Tourism Investment and Business Forum for Africa (Investour) held on January 23, 2014 and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)-ASEAN International Conference on Tourism and Climate Change held from May 18 to 20 in Legazpi, Philippines, and Kwita Izina of the Rwanda Development Board as one of the UNWTO Ulysses Award for Innovation in Public Policy and Governance recipients.

The subject of analysis in the paper is economic impact of cultural tourism and identification of the main factors which directly affect cultural tourism revenues. Most countries do not have a statistical system of monitoring and analysing individual factors of cultural tourism such as the number of arrivals of cultural tourists and consumption of cultural tourists. Therefore, it is hard to assess the economic impact of cultural tourism. In cultural tourism, cultural assets are prepared and placed on the tourist market, i.e. cultural resources are transformed into cultural tourism products. The main objective is fulfilling tourists' needs, and achieving positive effects which includes economic effects. Identification of the economic impact of cultural tourism is important because cultural resources have an inestimable value for the local community. Tourism valorisation should be used in order to achieve the necessary maximum effects with minimum negative impacts which tourism may leave on cultural resources. The objective of the paper is to identify the economic contribution of cultural tourism in the Republic of Croatia and to propose a model of identification of economic impact of cultural tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT There is an urgent and growing need for local/regional/national/international peace and security. This may be broadly ascribed to the increasing conflicts arising out of social, economic, religious and political [...]

Utilizing data from the UNWTO, IMF, World Bank, and UNESCO, this article analyzes the global structure of travel and its deep asymmetries, revealing that travel is not global but is highly concentrated among a handful of countries. Furthermore, I find that the effects of globalization are neither universal nor consistent but depend upon the identities of countries involved and their relationships with one another. This article conceptualizes travel as a result of the relationship between country attributes within a given country-pair. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between travel and relative inequalities, institutional connections, and cultural wealth. I find that measures of inequality and cultural wealth differ depending on the relationship between country-pairs while institutional connections are significant across models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on the growth of international tourism in Malaysia. It explores how tourism industry has become a significant sector in Malaysia as one of the fastest growing economies in ASEAN and has surpassed petroleum related industries and other traditional commodities. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) ranked Malaysia in second place by international tourist arrivals in Asia and the Pacific region from 2005 to 2010.

The author argues that it is better to consider the ways by which tourism can be considered vulnerable rather than trying to determine if the industry is vulnerable. The author explains why it is more useful to consider tourism as an economic or a social phenomenon rather than looking at tourism as a business or economic sector. The author highlights the problem with the United Nations World Tourism Organization's (UNWTO) decision to talk about tourism in terms of its growth potential.

The article examines whether tourism is a vulnerable industry and investigates whether the sector is facing any serious threats now or in the foreseeable future. It discusses the significance of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the problems with the obsession with international tourism. It explains the vulnerability of the tourism databases of the UNWTO.

Information about several papers discussed at a symposium sponsored by the Akdeniz University with the Buckinghamshire New University on international tourism is presented. Topics include culture and event tourism, the importance of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, and destination tourism. The symposium featured several speakers including Professors Jafar Jafari of the University of Wisconsin-Stout and Mike Robinson of the London Metropolitan University, and Doctor Fevzi Okumus of the University of Central Florida.

This paper provides a critical review of the concept of "carbon neutrality" for tourism destinations within the framework of the UNWTO's Davos Declaration, a document ascribing responsibilities to various actors in the tourism industry to engage in greenhouse gas emission reductions. The paper assesses the planning frameworks of countries engaging with the concept, discusses the measures that can be taken to achieve "carbon neutrality", along with an evaluation of some of the theoretical and practical implications. An increasing number of destinations now plan to become "carbon neutral", often as a response strategy to pressure on the tourism industry to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. They aim to mitigate their contribution to global warming, and to develop their tourism industries by enhancing their image as being environmentally pristine and sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the agreement between the specialized agency United Nations World Tourism Organization and intergovernmental organization Turkic Council on strengthening collaboration in advancing tourism as a key factor of socioeconomic growth and inclusive development.

The article discusses the United Nations World Tourism Organization Regional Conference on Enhancing Brand Africa: Fostering Tourism Development on the importance of places in Africa to the potential of tourism to develop its economies that was held in Accra, Ghana from August 17 to 19, 2015.

The article discusses the 2015 United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) & Arabian Travel Market (ATM) Ministerial Forum on Intra-Arab Tourism that was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on May 5, 2015. Topics include tourism, visa facilitation, and Arab tourism strategy. The forum featured several attendees including Sheik Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UNWTO secretary-general Taleb Rifai, and Minister of Tourism of Lebanon Michel Pharaon.

The article offers information on the impact of wildlife crime such as poaching and illicit trade on the socioeconomic development of Africa as wildlife watching tourism was considered as one of the most significant tourism segments in the country. It mentions that the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) was increasing knowledge on the wildlife watching's economic value in the country as part of the organization's effort to support anti-poaching activities.

The article reports that the European Cities Marketing (ECM), United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and MODUL University Vienna have partnered to create a framework that aims to promote city tourism development as a driver of economic growth. Taleb Rifai of UNWTO cites the role of city tourism as a significant element in urban planning and management. Ignasi de Delàs of ECM says that the partnership could extend their expertise in measuring the global value of city tourism.

The article focuses on the World Tourism Barometer of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for 2015. cording to the report, there are 1,138 million international tourist arrivals in 2014, an increase of 4.7% compared in 2013. The report cites the Americas, the Pacific and Asia as having the strongest growth in terms of tourism industry.

The success of eco-tourism is bringing about a change in the attitudes of rural communities in Costa Rica, like this municipality of 55,000 in the country's northeastern jungle, 96 kms [...]