The underground city: the tourism potential of water and sewage infrastructure: the example of Poland

Industrial tourism and technical facilities are a fast-growing branch of tourism that contains areas of great growth potential. The article deals with one of them. The tourist potential of water and sewage infrastructure in selected Polish cities was analysed and assessed. The study covered 11 cities of diverse socioeconomic potentials around the country. For each city, data were collected that had various levels of detail with regard to visitor numbers, tourist types, facilities made available, events and other special celebrations. For supplementary data, unstructured interviews were also conducted with relevant employees identified in businesses. The analysis showed the studied form of tourism to have very high tourism potential. The work focuses on factors and features accounting for its currently low level of development. It is also emphasised that, based on current tourism trends, it should be expected to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years, and thus warrants further research.

Strategic Analysis of the Region's Competitive Advantages in the Context of Industrial Tourism Development

Introduction. Industrial tourism is a niche tourism area that combines a unique emotional experience, educational functionality, and cultural and historical component in a single tourist product. Government and business have realized the strategic importance of industrial tourism. Together with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), they are implementing comprehensive programs for the development of industrial tourism in regions with significant industrial heritage. Study objects and methods. The present research was based on the theory of strategy and methodology of strategizing developed by Professor V.L. Kvint. The authors performed an in-depth analysis of the competitive advantages and resource provision of the regions that signed an agreement with the ASI. Various economic, social, and other reasons force regional authorities to develop industrial tourism. However, unjustified development of industrial tourism may diffuse the limited regional, municipal, or company budgets. Results and discussion. Statistical indicators and strategic documents showed that the regions under discussion have certain industrial potential for the development of this type of tourism. However, poor transport infrastructure, transport accessibility, and tourist infrastructure reduce the chances to diversify the local economy through industrial tourism. Conclusion. Not all regions that have the ASI agreement have sufficient competitive advantages and resources for this strategic opportunity. New members must undergo a strategic analysis of the competitive advantages and priority directions. Regions with good competitive advantages should develop a special program or a strategy for the development of industrial tourism.

Application of experience economy and recommendation algorithm in tourism reuse of industrial wasteland

Industrial tourism is an important way for reuse of industrial wasteland. However, in China, reuse of industrial wasteland remain is in the exploratory practice stage, with problems such as lack of systematic planning, homogeneous strategies and inaccurate positioning of target customers. In this paper, we propose a method to reuse industrial wasteland by the combination of experience economy and recommendation algorithm. The industrial tourism product development direction is defined in the planning and design stage. The most relevant tourist-related features are extracted by establishing user profiles and experience economy-based questionnaires. The user-profile-based recommendation system generates a list of recommended tourist attractions. Finally, the recommendation-user-tag-project (R-UTP) algorithm is proposed and experimentally compared with UserkNN and ItemkNN algorithms. The R-UPT algorithm exhibits higher accuracy and has obvious advantages on recall ratio and novelty.

Post-Industrial Tourism as a Driver of Sustainable Development

The accepted Sustainable Development Goals aim at reorienting the tourism industry to sustainable tourism and enhancing post-industrial tourism. In this case, it is necessary to identify the statistically significant determinants which affect post-industrial tourism development. In this paper, we aim to analyse: (1) the impact of economic and environmental dimensions, and of digital marketing on supporting post-industrial tourism development and (2) the difference between attitude to post-industrial tourism on the gender, age, and education dimensions and digital channels on post-industrial tourism development. The data was collected from questioning 2334 respondents during April–November 2020. The study applied the following methods: frequencies, percentages, t-test, and one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analysis. The findings confirmed the statistically significant impact of the economic and environmental dimensions, as well as digital marketing on post-industrial tourism development. The results of the analysis justified that digital marketing was a catalysator of post-industrial tourism development. In addition, the findings confirmed that there is no difference in attitudes towards post-industrial tourism with respect to the dimensions of age, gender, and education.

Future strategies for promoting tourism and petroleum heritage in Khuzestan Province, Iran

PurposeIndustrial tourism not only strives to preserve industrial heritage, but can also be a strategy for being familiar with the history of industry and attracting tourists to new destinations. This paper examines the issue of promoting petroleum industrial tourism in the case of Khuzestan, Iran. The research aims at determining appropriate strategies for promoting petroleum industrial tourism.Design/methodology/approachThe data were analysed through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) model.FindingsThe results revealed the competitive strategy as the best. Lastly, strategies such as: concentric diversification, joint venture strategy, conglomerate diversification and horizontal diversification were proposed as key solutions. The results support the view that establishing an exploratory ecomuseum in the territory of Khuzestan Province can be a suitable concentric diversification strategy towards petroleum industrial sustainable tourism in the future.Originality/valueThe main originality of this paper includes linking tourism with the petroleum (oil and natural gas) industry and its natural landscapes for the first time in a case study. Therefore, the results of this research can extend the literature in this regards. Moreover, this paper attracts tourists to visit natural landscapes of petroleum heritage.

A Preliminary Study on Industrial Landscape Planning and Spatial Layout in Belgium

As the material carrier of industrial heritage, industrial landscape planning integrates industrial heritage, post-industrial, and industrial tourism landscapes. In this study, we define the concept of industrial landscape planning. As a subsystem of urban planning, we study industrial landscape planning by using the theories and methods of urban planning. As an example, we consider Belgium and identify the main categories of industrial landscape planning as industrial heritage landscape and industrial tourism landscape. We use an ArcGIS spatial analysis tool and kernel density calculations and reveal the characteristics of four clusters of industrial heritage spatial layout in Belgium, which match its located industrial development route. Each cluster has unique regional characteristics that were spontaneously formed according to existing social and natural resources. At the level of urban planning, there is a lack of unified re-creation. Urban planning is relatively separated from the protection of industrial heritage in Belgium.

Urban Industrial Tourism: Cultural Sustainability as a Tool for Confronting Overtourism—Cases of Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen

The chief objective of this research was to analyze how the industrial heritage of three European capitals—Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen—has been integrated into the dynamics of their urban tourism, thereby generating new resources and cultural spaces. In regards to the latter point, this study poses the working hypothesis that industrial heritage can function as a tool for cultural sustainability, which allows for deconcentration away from historic city centers subjected to significant overtourism. To verify this hypothesis, a methodology has been designed based on the selection of specific indicators and the creation of maps, taking as reference data from the Tripadvisor travel portal. The results obtained are truly encouraging, and it would be interesting to expand this study by incorporating new case studies to allow us to discern additional patterns of behavior around urban industrial tourism.