Seasonality of Overseas Tourism Demand in Scotland: A Regional Analysis

This paper examines patterns of seasonality in international tourism to the regions of Scotland. Quarterly numbers of overnight stays are disaggregated by trip purpose. Seasonality in vacation tourism to Scotland is shown to be defined by more than a simple rural–urban division. Overseas visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism is largely an urban phenomenon and is consequently less seasonal than vacation tourism. Lower seasonal concentration of VFR tourism is not uniform across the regions. Although levels of seasonal intensity of business tourism to the three principal cities of Scotland are approximately the same, there are noticeable variations over time

Drivers of grassland loss in Hungary during the post-socialist transformation (1987–1999)

The increase in the speed of land-cover change experienced worldwide is becoming a growing concern. Major socio-economic transitions, such as the breakdown of socialism in Europe, may lead to particularly high rates of landscape transformations. In this paper we examined the loss of semi-natural grasslands in Hungary between 1987 and 1999. We studied the relationship between 9 potential driving forces and the fate of grasslands using logistic GLMs. Grassland loss was found to be very high (1.31 % per year), which is far higher than either before or after this period. The most influential predictors of grassland loss were environmental and landscape characteristics (soil type, area of remnant grassland patches), and the socio-economic context (distance to paved road, and nearest settlement, human population density). Several processes and relationships can only be understood from a historical perspective (e.g. large extent of afforestation, strong decrease of soil water table). Grassland loss during the study period emerged as a consequence of survival strategies of individual farmers seeking adaptation to the changing environmental and socio-economic conditions, and not urbanization and agricultural intensification which are the main underlying drivers for the ongoing landscape transformations in most parts of the developed world. Though globalization increasingly influences local land use decisions , reconstructing and modelling recent landscape changes cannot be done without a proper understanding of local history and culture. Our analysis shows the importance of large-area yet high resolution landscape change research, which may reveal unexpected patterns of land cover change, undetected at coarser scales

From places to non-places? : Landscape and sense of place in the Finnish and Estonian countrysides

v2006okK Soin

Peculiarities of Development of Tourism in Sumy Region in the Conditions of War and Prospects for the Future

Sumy region has significant resources for the development of various types of tourism. Due to the war, tourism has suffered considerable losses, although it continues to work. The aim of the article is to study the peculiarities of the development of tourism in Sumy region in the conditions of war and post-war reconstruction on the basis of a sociological survey of representatives of the tourism sector and defining future prospects. The study is based on the data of a sociological survey, which was conducted from the 2nd of February to the 15th of February, 2023 as a part of the Estonian-Ukrainian research project «The Development of Ukrainian Frontline Communities and Tourism Business under War Conditions and Strategies for the Future», which is being implemented on the basis of the Landscape and Culture Center of the School of Humanities of Tallinn University. The number of respondents was 144 people from 5 regions of Ukraine, including 29 (20.1%) people from Sumy region. The respondents are representatives of the tourism sector. The sociological survey included 25 questions of closed and open type using the Google Form tool in various areas of tourism business. The Microsoft Excel 2010 computer program and the SPSS Statistics V21.0 program were used for calculations and graphical constructions. Before the war started, the main type of tourism activity for the respondents of Sumy region was cultural and educational, festival and event, sports and active tourism. Among the main changes that have taken place in the tourism sector in Sumy region communities since the beginning of the war, the respondents note the following: the level of interest in visiting tourist sites has decreased, attractive tourist sites have stopped functioning or receiving tourists; the level of population paying capacity has decreased and some tourist sites have been damaged significantly. Among the problems that enterprises of Sumy region tourism sector had to face, the respondents note: the tourist sites which the business was connected with fell into the zone of occupation or active hostilities and became inaccessible; reorientation of tourism activities to another direction; cessation of tourism activities, etc. The interviewed representatives of the tourism sector believe that in order to create new tourist locations in communities, it is necessary: to restore infrastructure, to establish a peaceful life; to create new tourism clusters, new jobs; to found museums, memorials, expositions, memorable places; to develop industrial tourism; to start community tourism brands; to introduce digitalization of business; to cooperate with tour operators from different countries; to implement a cluster model for organizing tourism activities