Competitiveness assessment of tourism in Sierra Leone : a cluster-based approach

Seven years out of brutal conflict, Sierra Leone is now a peaceful and stable country. Yet, its strides toward economic recovery and competitiveness have been modest even in sectors such as tourism, which used to be a major generator of foreign exchange revenues prior to the conflict. This paper presents a cluster-based analysis of the tourism sector in Sierra Leone. The analysis shows that tourism in Sierra Leone draws entirely on basic factor conditions such as natural endowments; high-end lodging, catering, and entertainment services are virtually nonexistent. The cluster mapping exercise reveals that several non-profit organizations are present and active within the Sierra Leone tourism cluster but that the role of commercial enterprises has been somewhat limited. A critical mass of basic service providers has emerged over time, but their functions are often hindered by the absence of a market-based incentive regime and weaknesses in backbone infrastructure services. There is a mismatch of effort by the public and private sectors. An important policy implication arising from the analysis is for Sierra Leone to initiate a joint action among tourism entrepreneurs and policymakers to develop a coherent business strategy toward overcoming the bottlenecks of skill deficiency, policy ineffectiveness, and lack of infrastructure and market access.Cultural Policy,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Cultural Heritage&Preservation,Tourism and Ecotourism,Accommodation&Tourism Industry

Tackling Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows by means of Ant Colony System

The Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (DVRPTW) is an extension of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), which takes into account the dynamic nature of the problem. This aspect requires the vehicle routes to be updated in an ongoing manner as new customer requests arrive in the system and must be incorporated into an evolving schedule during the working day. Besides the vehicle capacity constraint involved in the classical VRP, DVRPTW considers in addition time windows, which are able to better capture real-world situations. Despite this, so far, few studies have focused on tackling this problem of greater practical importance. To this end, this study devises for the resolution of DVRPTW, an ant colony optimization based algorithm, which resorts to a joint solution construction mechanism, able to construct in parallel the vehicle routes. This method is coupled with a local search procedure, aimed to further improve the solutions built by ants, and with an insertion heuristics, which tries to reduce the number of vehicles used to service the available customers. The experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive and effective, and on DVRPTW instances with a higher dynamicity level, it is able to yield better results compared to existing ant-based approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Eco-Tourism Resorts: A Case Study of Best Practices at the Hamanasi Resort in Belize

The objective of this research is to investigate best practice initiatives of sustainability involved in the successful development and management of Hamanasi Resort, an award winning eco-tourism resort located in Belize. The four phases of research at Hamanasi as originally proposed, found in Part I of the thesis, are outlined as follows: Phase one includes hands-on research through shadowing in different hotel departments, observation of management practices in Hamanasi, interviews conducted with employees, and questionnaires administered to guests; Phase two begins a study of the business and organizational model of Hamanasi along with an examination of the critical issues encountered during the start-up phases; Phase three is a SWOT analysis of Hamanasi and a market analysis of other properties that compete with the eco-resort; Phase four investigates eco-tourism promotions and policies in Belize and Hamanasi, and examines the different eco-certification practices. Part II of the thesis reports on the findings of this research with an emphasis placed on important findings