Rural Tourism Fostering Welfare Through Sustainable Development

In the past decade, we could see a myriad of efforts in fostering rural development. Two critical elements in travel, tourism, and leisure activities are the traveler's wellbeing and resident's welfare, which are inherent factors of rural tourism. Despite the importance of rural areas to tourism development, the focus of the studies on wellbeing usually is resident or employee oriented. There is a lack of inquiries trying to understand the relationship between rural tourism and welfare on tourism. In this sense, this study aims to connect the topics on welfare and tourism in rural areas to provide a theoretical starting point for future studies. The authors unravel essential elements in the pursuit of enhancing tourist's welfare on rural tourism by providing a visual conceptual model that provides guidelines for tourism stakeholders to enhance tourists' welfare while mitigating negative crisis impacts. They expose the central elements of the graphical model and the actions required to enhance welfare on rural tourism as well as their interrelationships.

Mixed Realities as the New Reality in Tourism

This chapter proposes a comprehensive approach to understand not only how augmented reality and virtual reality operate within the tourism industry, but also how mixed reality can contribute to enhance the visitor experience and how tourism organizations can move beyond traditional communication and physical experiences into a new type of tourism approach that helps them stay relevant in the long term, as well as in the mid-term. Since the tourism industry is amongst the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, changes are essential to ensure an adequate adaptation to the ‘new normal'. Technology enables various tourist organizations to generate greater value creation and opens possibilities to be able to extend the visit beyond physical presence, to ensure the safety of workers and visitors, to improve processes, and to make them more competitive overall. If this is carried out in collaboration with all stakeholders, one destination can generate a solid network to promote itself and become competitive during travel restrictions and in preparation for a post-pandemic new normal.

Contributions of Neurosciences to Studies of Well-Being in Tourism

The SWB covers individuals' emotional and cognitive assessments and the conceptualization of happiness, satisfaction with one's life, and quality of life. Thus, an exploratory and descriptive study based on a bibliography survey and textual analysis was developed, and it was possible to understand that (1) tourists were the focus of the studies analyzed, so the understanding of their behaviors is essential; (2) emotion is still a gap that can be fill in research on tourism and well-being from the standpoint of the neurosciences; (3) the experience construct is significant but subjective so that the neurosciences can contribute to the understanding of the tourist experience related to SWB; (4) technological advances in neuroimaging can contribute, but this depends on adequate financial and human resources.

Selected Happiness-Increasing Interventions for Tourism and Hospitality Workers

This chapter describes evidence-based happiness techniques that are highly relevant for workers in the tourism and hospitality industries. Although happiness creates success for many stakeholders, there is limited evidence on how to increase the happiness of workers in these industries as the focus has predominantly been on the happiness of the customers. The authors fill this gap in the literature by presenting three proven interventions that are particularly relevant to these sectors: job crafting, acts of kindness, and gratitude exercises. The chapter explains what these concepts are and how they work. It also provides specific examples of how they can be implemented into tourism and hospitality organisations.

The Influence of Tourist Characteristics on the Perceived Quality of Hostels in Portugal

The hostels sector in Portugal, despite its late appearance compared to other countries in the world, has registered an expressive development. However, the observed growth is not properly accompanied by research that supports and helps in understanding the sector and its future perspective. The chapter intends to be a contribution in this area, having as central focus the analysis of the influence of the characteristics of the tourists in relation to the expectations and perceptions regarding the service quality provided in a hostel in Portugal. The methodology used is a descriptive nature of a quantitative nature, based on an online questionnaire survey. The questionnaire essentially applies the SERVQUAL model, not fully following the original structure, presenting reformulated statements that are adequate to the hostel service in dimensions such as tangible aspects, reliability, empathy, promptness, and security.

Nautical Sports Tourism

While positive news on COVID-19 vaccines has boosted the hopes of the travel and tourism sector (T&T), the pandemic scenario has brought new concerns to tourists and different motivations to travel. For instance, safety, health, and hygiene are paramount. Moreover, as the pandemic impacted not only the physical, but also the mental health, wellness has been acknowledged as a key ingredient for the T&T recovery. The appreciation of nature surroundings and the practice of outdoor activities are the new trend in the post-COVID-19 world. As such, the nautical tourism with special interest in sports has the potential to become very popular. Thus, with the purpose to identify managerial, governmental, and academic opportunities for this sector, a literature review on nautical sports tourism was developed. The analysis revealed that there is still a long way for this literature research to reach maturity. Nevertheless, it was observed that the combination of sports and tourism in nautical environments opens a myriad of possibilities for places to enhance their public welfare.

Social Entrepreneurship Activities in the Tourism Sector

Social entrepreneurship is a frequently encountered and increasingly popular concept. Although there are some differences and difficulties in defining the concept, the main reason why it has become such a frequently heard concept today is the social purpose inherent in it. The ability of social entrepreneurship activities to find a place in the tourism sector will make it easier for both social entrepreneurship activities and the tourism sector to achieve their goals. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to reveal the required fields of study by determining how the concept of social entrepreneurship is handled in the field of tourism with bibliometric analysis. In line with the purpose, 43 studies including the determined keywords were reached. When the methodologies of the articles were examined, it was concluded that empirical studies were in the majority and most of these empirical studies were prepared by using the qualitative research method.

Happiness

This chapter presents happiness from the perspective of a public good, that is, of collective character understood as the basis for the constitution of public policies in tourism. Thus, the intimate relationship between tourism, happiness, and tourism development is recognized. The reflection undertaken on public policies in tourism is based on the analysis of the capacities to generate happiness in society and on the offer of a proposition that state interventions, whether of distributive, redistributive, regulatory, or constitutional nature, under pressure from collective needs, must attend to the tourism development process and sustained in a humanistic conception. Therefore, it is believed that tourism, in its various aspects, will only achieve the happiness of a tourist destination if it meets the premises of sustainable development to the extent that the citizen residing at the tourist destination feels part of the decision-making process and the formation of public policies.

Wellness Tourism

Crisis, social discontent, and dissatisfaction among people lead to a greater interest in relaxing the soul, body, and mind as a refuge within tourism. Thus, there are changes and new trends in international health tourism's demand and supply conditions. Even before the deep crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in 2020, people increasingly turned to health and wellness activities while traveling, especially using tourist activities to achieve health. Since consumption patterns are changing among travelers, such as the growing popularity of wellness tourism, new forms of tourism may stimulate future tourism activities, and the changes are expected to push businesses to reevaluate their service designs and distribution channels. When the recovery of the tourism sector is under discussion, it is worth questioning how wellness trends could help tourism and what the perspectives are for the future. Therefore, this chapter makes recommendations based on new tourists' demands and new processes and protocols for the operation of wellness tourism services.

Pilgrimage Routes to Happiness

The chapter investigates the topic of happiness and quality of life in the slow-tourism context, with specific reference to the pilgrimage tourism phenomenon. The Camino de Santiago and the Via Francigena are analysed through explorative research with the aim of understanding the effects of pilgrimage on individuals' levels of well-being and its implications for peoples' lives. The results reveal several differences in motivations and benefits obtained according to the pilgrimage road undertaken, with a more existential connotation tied to personal happiness in the Camino de Santiago pilgrim group and a more experiential connotation tied to wellness in the Via Francigena pilgrim group. These findings provide new insights into contemporary pilgrimages in a comparative perspective.