International tourism is expected to be a major vehicle of economic development in industrializing countries in the 21st century, especially for Asia. To generate long-term growth, countries with tourism-based economies must develop strategies for employing their comparative advantages to achieve competitive advantages. However, competitiveness in the tourist industry is multi-dimensional and complex. This study evaluates the competitiveness of the Taiwanese tourism sector by a multi-dimensional framework. The theoretical model proposes that the competitiveness of tourist destinations should be composed of Ricardian comparative advantages (like the conditions of natural endowments and the degree of technological change); Porterian competitive advantages; tourism management, i.e., providing high quality education and job training, public goods, support services and reduced transaction costs to enhance comparative and competitive advantages; and environmental conditions.

People do not buy products, or even services; they purchase the total experience that the product or service provides. Experience management is seen as the way to remain competitive in markets where globalisation and technology have turned products and services into commodities. This book draws together academic and practitioner insights into the consumer experience by combining the perspectives of the tourist consumer with that of experience managers, supported by examples from tourism, leisure, hospitality, sport and event contexts. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars, it is organised into three sections: understanding experiences, researching experiences and managing experiences. It aims to provide students, researchers and managers with a stimulating overview of the current research and managerial issues in the field and as well as a resource to guide their further reading.

Tourism development provides an avenue for overall economic development and a boost for local entrepreneurship activities. As a result, the encouragement of entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism development has emerged as core areas for policy support.

The purpose of this e-book is to provide a backdrop to tourism challenges and solutions in the Niagara Region, and to present the key points discussed during the 2007 WHATT roundtable discussion in the Niagara Region, Canada. The rationale for the e-book is that the private sector and academia must work together in identifying the root causes for key problems and then find practical solutions. Often it is the public sector that leads this process, but it was felt that the private sector and academia should become proactive in finding practical solutions.

Making Visitors Mindful sets out a series of principles to assist in communicating with visitors. These principles are applicable to a broad range of tourism and recreation settings and are based on a theory of how people deal with, learn, and use new information. This mindfulness/mindlessness model of human information processing has been tested and used in a range of business, educational, medical, and other social problems. Making Visitors Mindful offers: Principles and examples relevant and applicable to a broad range of tourism and recreation settings; directions for planning, design, and management of educational programs and other visitor communications services that are based on a large body of applied and relevant research evidence; and a theory which is easily assessable to managers and that can be used to generate ideas for communications with visitors in many different places.

The monograph Strategic directions of tourism development. The cases of Poland and Slovakia presents: - the important tasks in implementing tourism policy in the EU faced by each European country, - the differences in approach to tourism policy implementation in two selected European countries, despite the presence of the EU three-level system of tourism management in both of the chosen countries, - the complexity and difficulty of the systematic monitoring process of national and regional tourism products competitiveness in the context of creating the European tourist product