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The tourism industry has long been recognised for supporting women in achieving economic empowerment and social freedom through entrepreneurial and employment opportunities. Widely recognised as a women‐dominated sector, tourism is deemed to be a facilitator of women's development following the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the existing literature suggests, women's involvement in tourism activities supports local economic growth and development, while facilitating social transformation that enables them to create their own identities. Despite these achievements, several studies noted the persisting issues women face in participating in tourism. With the goal of contributing to existing discourses, this paper aims to analyse their experiences in community entrepreneurship by examining several community‐involved tourism enterprises in the Philippines. The findings of this study reveal that women have been largely involved in tourism activities in that country, yet their experiences working in these enterprises vary. The opportunities and challenges identified in this study can serve as a springboard for further analysis of the experience of women working in the Philippine tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to UNESCO's World Heritage Site (WHS), the FAO's Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) certification has the potential to draw large numbers of tourists. In the literature, however, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the GIAHS's contribution to rural development through tourism in comparison to WHSs. Thus, this study compares official documents between WHSs and GIAHSs. Specifically, a comparative analysis was made on their definitions, selection criteria and monitoring, and the official description of actual sites that are designated by both schemes. Through the comparison, some implications are made for rural development through tourism. First, the utilization of local resources as tourist attractions is easier in WHSs than in GIAHSs. Whereas the properties are well defined in WHSs, GIAHSs have abstract aspects. Thus, GIAHS local communities need more creative strategies to characterize their features. Second, in rural areas where handicrafts are made for souvenirs, it is popular to use WHS properties as models. However, in GIAHS sites, it is more difficult to make handicrafts based on the idea of a system itself, unless some popular tangible elements of the system have already been used as symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attracting tourists to a destination through favorable imagery is an essential part of the transfer of knowledge in the tourism and hospitality industry. Destination image is defined as the expression of objective knowledge, imagination and the subjective emotional thoughts of an individual or group. In turn, social media is profoundly changing not only the way we communicate, but also the way human beings interact with this imagery and their travel environment. Therefore, in order to become more competitive, many firms are seeking to leverage the power of social media to gain insights into customer cognition and behavior. Social media is beginning to be used for in predicting customer behavior in a wide range of industries, including restaurants, retailing, and the hotel industry. By analyzing a collection of search engine queries, and historical Twitter data, this paper investigates the competitive intelligence of two different groups of hotels in Philadelphia, USA. Further the paper provides an analysis of the correlation between social media and hotel occupancy rates, and proposes a methodology to predict future lodging demand from empirical data in line with the objectives of the t-Forum. Our previous research has shown that mining of social media can be used to explain and forecast social and business trends in tourism. In this paper, we extend this research to evaluate the transfer of knowledge in the industry. It is hoped that our comments will enable t-forum to come up with advice on the transfer of knowledge about destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]