Tourism Research

In this domain, we study the challenges and opportunities of tourism, and its impacts on consumers, organizations and society. The 3 focus areas in tourism research and projects are: Sustainable Tourism and Transport, Social Impacts of Tourism, Digital Transformation of Tourism.

Tourism is a fast-growing economic sector and one of the world’s largest industries. Tourism offers numerous opportunities for destinations and businesses worldwide. Perhaps the greatest value is to tourists themselves, who depend on their holidays to experience the best moments of their lives. Tourism may contribute greatly to people’s overall quality of life. At the same time, continuous growth of tourism is not as obvious as it used to be.

Nowadays, tourism has to deal with major global challenges such as its environmental effects, including the share of tourism transport on climate change (e.g., aviation, cruise holidays). Also, unique ecosystems and vulnerable destinations may be negatively impacted by the growth of tourism. Sustainability of tourism and minimization of its footprint has become very important. Furthermore, the social impacts of tourism, sometimes lumped together under the term ‘overtourism’, are not to be denied. Lastly, digital transformation of tourism causes disrupting innovations and generates significant market changes for companies and challenges ethics and the privacy of consumers.

In our research, we aim to contribute to the understanding of these kind of impacts of tourism, and to support society and industry in determining strategies to manage these impacts.

Featured projects

PANTOUR

Boosting innovation to develop activities, strengthening partnerships and producing resources to implement the blueprint for sectoral skills development in tourism.