An Overview of the Tourpedia Linked Dataset with a Focus on Relations Discovery among Places

Tourpedia (http://tour-pedia.org) is an open initiative which contains a linked dataset of tourism places, i.e. accommodations, attractions, points of interest (POIs) and restau- rants. Tourpedia extracts and integrates information about places from four different social social media: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Places and Booking.com. The resulting knowledge base currently consists of more than 6M RDF triples and describes almost 500.000 places, each of which is identified by a globally unique identifier, which can be dereferenced over the Web into a RDF description. This paper gives an overview of the Tourpedia knowledge base and illustrates how new relations are discovered among places through Named Entity Recognition (NER) tools.?

The value of traditional rural landscape and nature protected areas in tourism demand: A study on agritourists' preferences

This study focuses on how traditional rural landscape and proximity to a Natura 2000 Site of Community Importance (SCI) might influence consumers\u2019 choice of an agritourism farm for a weekend stay. Data were collected in Umbria region\u2019s (Italy) agritourism farms in 2014 by interviewing 160 tourists. Results from a discrete choice experiment reveal that the most important feature affecting the interviewees\u2019 propensity to pay a premium price to stay in an agritourism farm is the well-preserved traditional landscape (willingness to pay 32.32\u20ac/night for two people), followed by the availability of a swimming pool (willingness to pay 20.95\u20ac/night for two people), the proximity to a historical village (willingness to pay 18.37\u20ac/night for two people) and, the location in a Natura 2000 SCI (willingness to pay 13.57\u20ac/night for two people). Furthermore, the results underline how the preservation of the traditional landscape and protection of the surrounding environment play a strategic role in developing agritourism and provide economic benefits to local communities

Enogastronomic products and territory: local specificities and global opportunities for tourism development

openDottorato di ricerca in Scienze manageriali e attuarialiopenCiani, Stefan

Authenticity and Product Geography in the Making of the Agritourism Destination

Agritourism is emerging as a common solution to sustain agriculture-based communities bereft of economic viability. Drawing from the intersecting literature of product country-of-origin and destination branding, we use a case study to show how agritourism in Messinia, Greece, creates and houses a multitude of meanings suitable for tourism consumption. The study highlights the challenge for the destination to sustainably convey experiential authenticity and interpreting its role in a greater product geography to sustain that capability. The agritourism destination must develop consistency in addressing the multitude of meanings it embeds while simultaneously addressing its stakeholders' divergent needs

Food and Gastronomic Tourism for Developing Rural Areas Around the Via Francigena in Tuscany

The paper reports results from an explorative research on the socio-economic opportunity that the presence of pilgrims and tourists along the Tuscan section of the Via Francigena can be for local communities. The aim is to deepen the actual and future opportunities that gastronomy represent for the development of tourism around the Via Francigena, with a special attention to destinations out of the beaten tracks. The research has been carried out merging different sources of information, including scientific literature, news, media, direct observation and personal experience, and performing a dozen of face-to-face interviews to key-informants, selected within socioeconomic actors involved in developing tourism around the course of the Via Francigena in Tuscany. The interviews have been carried out during the last six months, involving farmers, wine producers, restaurant owners, tourism and rural tourism entrepreneurs and local administrative offices. Local communities have already understood the strategic importance to sustain their socioeconomic activities with the development of pilgrimage and tourism along the Via Francigena. The rich variety of local gastronomy can satisfy both frugal needs of pilgrims and those of visitors more interested in gourmandizing. Food and gastronomy could be a strong leverage to increase tourist presences out of the beaten tracks

Using farmhouse and food to enforce a tourism sustainable development model: empirical evidence from Italy

Environmental sustainability plays a crucial role in influencing policy actions and people's behavior. The 2030 Agenda highlights the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which can be achieved through tourism, particularly in its most sustainable form, such as ecotourism. Ecotourism provides an ideal platform for experimenting with new lifestyles oriented towards sustainability and well-being. Additionally, ecotourism emphasizes territorial identities, particularly through the promotion of food and wine, which can contribute to the creation of sustainable tourism areas. Food quality production serves as evidence of the attention paid by producers to the sustainability of territories and a lifestyle that prioritizes well-being. European citizens are increasingly recognizing the environment as a resource for good living. In Italy, agritourism, which includes activities offered by 25 certified quality agricultural producers, is becoming increasingly popular among tourists. Within this context, sustainability can be experienced through tourism, which offers an opportunity to live differently. This paper examines two Italian regions (Tuscany and Apulia) where farmhouse, food and tourism (FFST) areas have been successfully implemented as a form of sustainable tourism. The study demonstrates that FFST areas can be defined using spatial analysis, and then can become a model for sustainable tourism development. In conclusion, environmental sustainability holds ethical significance and can be achieved through tourism, specifically through ecotourism and FFST areas, which enable tourists to experience sustainable lifestyles while emphasizing territorial identities

Bicycle tourism, from pandemic to sustainability: “Terre di Casole Bike Hub” project

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns have impelled us to question and reconsider our standards, schedules and lifestyle. One of the market sectors that was most affected by the mobility reduction was tourism. Its demand in 2020 showed indeed a significant change: tourists opted for unusual destinations, presumably less crowded, favouring smaller villages and mountain areas. Moreover, tourists have chosen destinations that feature the possibility to do sports, especially trekking and cycling. Considering these trends, this paper focuses on the bicycle tourism in Italy and analyses its development potential. More specifically, it analyses the “Terre di Casole Bike Hub” project as an example of best practices to promote the territory through cycling, aiming to support the territory recovery in the post-pandemic tourism.L'apparition du Covid-19 et les confinements qui en ont résulté nous ont amenés à questionner et reconsidérer nos standards, échéances et modes de vie. L'un des secteurs du marché le plus affecté par la réduction de la mobilité a été le tourisme. Les demandes en 2020 ont en effet considérablement changé : les touristes ont opté pour des destinations inhabituelles, censées être moins fréquentées, avec une prédilection pour les petits villages et les zones montagneuses. Les touristes ont également privilégié des destinations offrant la possibilité de pratiquer un sport, en particulier le trekking et le cyclisme. Partant de ces constatations, cet article est consacré au cyclotourisme en Italie et à son potentiel de développement, plus précisément autour du projet « Terre di Casole Bike Hub » en tant qu'exemple de pratiques visant à promouvoir le territoire à travers le cyclisme, dans le but de soutenir la réhabilitation du territoire dans un tourisme post-pandémie

Measuring societal awareness of the rural agrarian landscape: indicators and scale issues

The work presented in this report is part of the effort to define the landscape state and diversity indicator in the frame of COM (2006) 508 “Development of agri-environmental indicators for monitoring the integration of environmental concerns into the common agricultural policy”. The Communication classifies the indicators according to their level of development, which, for the landscape indicator is “in need of substantial improvements in order to become fully operational”. For this reason a full re-definition of the indicator has been carried out, following the initial proposal presented in the frame of the IRENA operation (“Indicator Reporting on the Integration of Environmental Concerns into Agricultural Policy”). The new proposal for the landscape state and diversity indicator is structured in three components: the first concerns the degree of naturalness, the second landscape structure, the third the societal appreciation of the rural landscape. While the first two components rely on a strong bulk of existing literature, the development of the methodology has made evident the need for further analysis of the third component, which is based on a newly proposed top-down approach. This report presents an in-depth analysis of such component of the indicator, and the effort to include a social dimension in large scale landscape assessment.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource