Open Voucher and the Tourist Season in Sardinia

In the year 2004 Portale Sardegna, an Italian online tour operator, launched a new product, Open Voucher (OV), with the bold objective of prolonging the tourist season on the island. The idea was conceptually simple: to create a Sardinian tourist product capable of attracting travelers to the island during the low season, while the implementation was quite difficult. Open Voucher attempted this de-seasonalization through the development of an Internet-enabled network of affiliated hotels providing availability of rooms year round and offering their product through the Open Voucher platform at a low, fixed rate. In the years ranging from 2004 to 2006, Open Voucher showed good traction in the marketplace, but in 2007 it began to record falling bookings and deteriorating results. What was happening? Had the leadership team defined the strategy to launch Open Voucher properly? Was it even possible to re-launch the Open Voucher product

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

The Impact of Covid-19 on Italian Accommodation: A Supply-Perspective

Purpose: The current COVID-19 pandemic has created an extremely dynamic and uncertain environment in which businesses find it very difficult to operate, particularly those in the hospitality industry. It is therefore very important to understand which actions hospitality businesses think the private and public sectors should adopt in order to cope with the pandemic and its impact. To facilitate this, this research adopted chaos theory to investigate Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the hospitality sector. Methods: A mixed method approach, based on a convergent parallel design data validation variant, was adopted. A survey with open and closed questions was developed and sent to a sample of businesses. 1,040 completed questionnaires were collected and analysed through descriptive statistics; in addition to these usable surveys, 361 open-ended answers were analysed thematically. Results: The results showed that Italian entrepreneurs and managers were over-relying on interventions from the public sector and that there was a lack of business actions being made, thus evidencing a deficit in terms of long-term strategic thinking and the innovation required during such turbulent times. Implications: Although these results cannot be generalised to the whole of the hospitality industry, they shed light on important elements that industry associations should take into account

The impact of COVID-19 on Italian accommodation: A supply-perspective

Purpose: The current COVID-19 pandemic has created an extremely dynamic and uncertain environment in which businesses find it very difficult to operate, particularly those in the hospitality industry. It is therefore very important to understand which actions hospitality businesses think the private and public sectors should adopt in order to cope with the pandemic and its impact. To facilitate this, this research adopted chaos theory to investigate Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the hospitality sector. Methods: A mixed method approach, based on a convergent parallel design data validation variant, was adopted. A survey with open and closed questions was developed and sent to a sample of businesses. 1,040 completed questionnaires were collected and analysed through descriptive statistics; in addition to these usable surveys, 361 open-ended answers were analysed thematically. Results: The results showed that Italian entrepreneurs and managers were over-relying on interventions from the public sector and that there was a lack of business actions being made, thus evidencing a deficit in terms of long-term strategic thinking and the innovation required during such turbulent times. Implications: Although these results cannot be generalised to the whole of the hospitality industry, they shed light on important elements that industry associations should take into account

Understanding the influence of socioeconomic variables on medicinal plant knowledge in the Peruvian Andes

In this study, we analyze the impact of 18 socioeconomic factors at individual, family, and locality levels to understand their influence on medicinal plant knowledge (MPK) in four provinces and 12 localities of the northern Andes of Peru. We interviewed 50 participants per locality (totaling 600 people) from lowlands and highlands ecoregions. The participants were balanced in terms of generations and gender. We performed multivariate statistical analyses—generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) and nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations—that showed the influence of each socioeconomic variable on the medicinal plant knowledge of people in the different sites. At the individual level, we found that most participants with higher MPK were women, elders, people with lower levels of education and job qualifications, non-migrants, and participants who have lived for a long period in the same region. At the family level, we found that participants living in low economic conditions with few material goods, including their means of transport, tools possession, access to technology, farm size, number of farm animals, and house quality, had higher MPK. At the locality level, we found that people living in more isolated areas with scarce regional services, such as access to paved roads, hospitals, big markets, tourist development, and chlorination of drinking water, had higher MPK. In short, people with less access to modern services and with low economic resources are the main depositaries of MPK. Policy makers and decision makers should consider the significance of MPK in alleviating health problems and diseases in Andean regions, especially for people with rural livelihoods. This local botanical knowledge of medicinal plants should be preserved in the area as a great natural heritage for humanit

The European Cycle Route Network, EuroVelo

This update of the 2009 study evaluates the challenges and opportunities of developing a cycle tourism network across Europe. It focuses on EuroVelo, a network of 14 long distance routes managed by the European Cyclists’ Federation which is being developed in different countries by a wide range of partners. The study reviews the market for cycle tourism and presents a model of demand for EuroVelo. It also evaluates the recent developments on the Iron Curtain Trail

Análisis multiescalar de los recursos vegetales medicinales en los bosques montanos del noroeste de Perú

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología. Fecha de lectura: 26-05-202