Sustainable Ecotourism through Cutting-Edge Technologies

Tourism is a phenomenon that dates back to ancient times. Ancient Greek philosophers recognised, adopted, and promoted the concept of rest-based tourism. Ecotourism is a particular type of tourism that connects with activities that take place in nature, without harming it, along with the herbal and animal wealth. According to estimates, the global ecotourism industry is currently booming due to various reasons, and it is becoming an important factor of sustainable regional development. This article presents the vision, work, and outcomes of project AdVENt, a project focusing natively in sustainable ecotourism through natural science and technological innovation. AdVENt’s study area includes the National Parks of Oiti (or Oeta) and Parnassus in Central Greece, where there is a remarkable native flora with a high endemism rate integrated with areas of cultural value and national and European hiking routes and paths of varying difficulty.

The Digital Brand Marketing in the Azores Archipelago

The ultra-peripheral Portuguese region of Azores is considered one of the EU outermost regions. This insular region is widely recognized as a sustainable nature-based destination. Its remoteness and breathtaking landscape attributed the region a label of adventure tourism by global references as Bloomberg, Departures, BBC, Forbes, GeekyExplorer, Lonely Planet, among others. In this regard, this type of tourism incorporated with the digital marketing generated around it is seen as a vital channel for inspiring sustainable regional development. Consequently, it is possible to verify that the digital marketing created around this new typology of tourism along with the Azores' singularity as a destination could significantly influence the local socio-economy base to the sustained development growth of the region. Furthermore, it was identified that the most reasonable opportunities for slow and nature-based tourism were located in rural tourism.

Evaluation of Outranking Border Region Sustainable Development in Papua Province – Papua New Guinea Using PROMETHEE

The border area of Indonesia - Papua New Guinea is one of the border areas of Indonesia which has complex characteristics. Apart from differences in geographical conditions, this border region also has characteristics of customary territories that are not owned by other border areas in Indonesia. This complexity causes high variations in the performance of regional or district development in the RI-PNG border area. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of sustainable regional development through the PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Methods for Enrichment Evaluation) method. The results of the analysis show that areas that tend to be open with access to other areas in Indonesia such as Merauke and Jayapura tend to have better performance than other border areas. These results can be used as lessons learned in sustainable regional development planning in other border areas.

Neurocomputing for the Research of Sustainable Regional Development of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism in the Context of Ensuring the Quality of Human Capital

In today’s world, human capital is one of the key indicators of a country’s sustainable socio-economic development. We have used neurocomputing tools to study the current state of physical education, sports and active tourism in the context of ensuring the quality of human capital, in order to preserve the population’s health and increase life expectancy. The relevance of research in this field is determined by the importance of physical activity for the development of human capital, which is one of the central internal factors of countries’ economic potential. Human capital also plays an important role in ensuring national security and sustainable regional development. We have performed a cluster analysis of physical culture and sports data in Russian regions using the tools of neural networks, one of the branches of artificial intelligence. The proposed approach based on neurocomputing and neural network modeling can be helpful in informing strategy proposals and measures aimed at enhancing the sustainable development and the role of physical culture, sports and tourism to ensure the quality of human capital.

Trends in regional development in Slovenia in the light of the goals of sustainable development

Applying sustainable development into practice is an important national and regional policy goal in Slovenia; in addition, the country’s membership in the European Union further commits it to the goals of sustainable development. The research presented in this article is based on the use of a set of 32 economic, social and environmental indicators of sustainable development and the calculation of a synthetic indicator of sustainable regional development for all twelve Slovenian NUTS-3 regions in the period 2015–2019. In the final step, a synthetic assessment of the possibilities for implementing sustainable development in individual Slovenian regions is given, in which regions are classified into four different types. A comparison with the previous five-year period showed that Slovenia achieved progress in most of the socio-economic aspects of sustainable development analyzed, while the situation deteriorated with respect to environmental aspects. The largest differences among Slovenian regions were calculated in the economic area, and the smallest in the environmental area, which is also in line with the findings of previous research. There continues to be a development divide between the more prosperous western part of the country and the eastern part, which lags behind and for the most part also has poorer prospects for sustainable development. This trend is unfavorable for the balanced as well as sustainable development of Slovenian regions.

Future public policy guidelines for the sustainable development of Guaviare, Colombia for the year 2035

Purpose This paper aims to propose future public policy guidelines (FPPG) in sustainable regional development for Guaviare (Colombia) – a territory affected by environmental and social distress – for the year 2035. Design/methodology/approach Following collective action theory and sustainable regional development literature, a foresight exercise was conducted using site focus groups and semi-structured interviews with local participants to identify future strategic change drivers and the most relevant social actors for the attainment of economic, social and environmental development in the Guaviare through FPPG. Findings The findings suggest that the development of public policies regarding building consensus around Guaviare’s economic, environmental and social issues, reducing conflict between the region’s cultural and environmental ways, decreasing isolation from the centers of decision-making, increasing the transparency of public institutions and reducing insecurity to attract investments are all crucial to attaining sustainable regional development. Originality/value Interdisciplinarity is implicit in the local perspectives on the problem that impedes sustainable development in San José del Guaviare. The paper’s main contribution is the long-term vision that breaks away from the traditional short-termism in public policy guidelines in a Latin American context. Methodologically, the significant contribution is the convergent alignment of specific foresight methods toward public policy guidelines’ analysis and design processes.