The twenty-first century has brought new challenges for tourism. Climate
change, infectious diseases, economic crises, terrorism, globalisation, and
entrenched social problems pose threats and create an uncertain tourism
environment that affects destinations and their populations in virtually every
corner of the contemporary world. To keep pace with these challenges,
governments, businesses, communities, and tourism organisations need to
continuously assess environmental factors, to identify future trends and to
examine various response policies and management techniques to
decrease risk and uncertainty. Bearing all these in mind, ICOT 2011 aims
to contribute to the debate on tourism in relation to different aspects of
uncertainty, by stimulating discussion and exchange of ideas between
tourism professionals, academics, researchers, policy-makers, consultants,
practitioners, government officials and postgraduate students from tourismrelated fields