Issue #1 (Volume 2 2019)

Recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of foreign tourists and revenues from international tourism in Georgia. At the same time, it was noted that the country’s tourism potential is not being used effectively enough, and the main reason for this is the insufficient development of the infrastructure of the tourism industry. The main problems that hamper the development of international tourism in the country are identified. In order to enhance the competitiveness of the tourism industry in Georgia and to achieve its significant improvement, the relevant strategic objectives have been developed.

The customer loyalty plays a vital role within the Tourism and Hospitality industry. It is very important to make sure the customers are satisfied and remain as loyal as possible, because the loyal customers work as a good promotion tool as they spread the WoM (word of mouth) within their friends, family, relatives and others. On the contrary, not being satisfied to the service or product may translate into a negative feedback, which can lead to a bad image for the business of a certain destination. The main purpose of this study is to identify the variables that are significant to explain loyalty to Portugal, as a touristic destination. Moreover, this study also aims to quantify the impacts of those variables to the probability of different types of costumers being loyal to this destination. Based on an online survey which included significant number of travelers from six continents and travelers to Portugal were asked about their appreciation in different aspects. Then, all the data received through the survey was introduced in SPSS and analyzed using a binary logistic regression. Using the right modelling strategy, the authors have been able to find the appropriate model for the current study and that is overall high-quality infrastructure (transportations, gastronomy, information centers), appealing climate (humidity, temperature, sunny days) and satisfaction with price & marketing (travel packages, value for money, variety in travel products) can improve travelers’ loyalty to Portugal.

The article indicates the role of local authorities in influencing the development of tourism, including the creation of regional tourism products. The aim of paper is to define and characterize the capabilities of local authorities concerning the development of tourism, including legal, organizational, investment and promotional instruments. Also, the importance of regional tourism products was substantiated, including their structure, conditions and approaches to creation as well, as their role in regional development. The article is an introduction to in-depth research on the importance of regional tourism products in providing social and cultural security.

The tourism industry has been one of the leading service industries in the global economy in recent years and the number of international tourism in 2018 reached 1.4 billion. The goal of the research is to evaluate the performance of various methods for forecasting tourism data and predict the number of tourists during 2019 and 2022. Performance of 15 prediction models (i.e. Local linear structural, Naïve, Holt, Random walk, ARIMA) was compared. Based on error measurements matrix (i.e. RMSE, MAE, MAPE, MASE), the most accurate method was selected to forecast the total number of tourists from 2019 to 2022 to Kurdistan Region (KR), then forecasts were performed for each governorate in KR. The results show that among 15 examined models of tourist forecasting in KR, Local linear structural and ARIMA (7,3,0) model performed best. The number of tourists to KR and each governorate in KR is predicted to increase by most experimented models, especially those which demonstrated higher accuracy. Generally, the number of tourist to KR predicted by ARIMA (7,3,0) is a lot bigger than Local linear structure. Linear structural predicted the number increase to 3,137,618 and 3,462,348 in 2020 and 2022, respectively, while ARIMA (7,3,0) predicted the number of tourists to KR to increase rapidly to 3,748,416 and 8,681,398 in 2020 and 2022.

The hospitality industry is an increasingly developed sector in the international economy, and innovation and its results are relatively new subject of research. The purpose of this study is to identify the innovation initiatives that have been implemented in a particular sector, especially in the last decade, as well as those strategies and practices, which help to innovate in this sector worldwide. Based on an Online Desk Research, information was collected from some sources, i.e. electronic databases, business press and hospitality industry. The authors found out that these innovative activities include technological and non-technological activities that enterprises of the industry try to exploit and gain a competitive advantage in the market. A significant part of sector-specific innovation involves innovation implemented more on procedures and management than on the product itself. Technological or non-technological innovations have been used over the last decade by the hospitality sector enterprises to improve their ranking in competition. Operating several innovative activities of this kind should support businesses in the industry to gain one or more competitive advantages in the hospitality market, and the enterprises which are trying to innovate in this sector should implement a business growth strategy, but all of these activities need to be included in an integrated and appropriate business model.

The sustainable development of tourism, which provides for natural and cultural and historical resource-saving and increase, observing the environmental standards becomes dominant and is a requirement for tourism successful development. The main direction of sustainable tourism development within a certain country – national tourist system (NTS) is inclusiveness. According to the results of human and inclusive development indicators, the volumes of employment in tourism, there were defined the problems of Ukraine concerning the insufficient level of human development, the presence of displaced population from the military actions zone and the population that suffers from grievances and has features of poverty. It is emphasized that NTS can implement the inclusive business models through such key foundations: Particular attention is paid to substantiating the mutual satisfaction of the economic interests of stakeholders when forming the NTS inclusive business models. There was elaborated the vision of possible key strategies of business entities for expanding the economic opportunities in the context of inclusive development. According to the study results, there was presented the architectonics of the interaction of NTS subjects when implementing the inclusive business models, where the groups of stakeholders, directions, forms of activity, and possible effects of their implementation were defined. Attention is paid to the need for further systemic studies of the considered problem in response to challenges and threats to tourism as a global social, environmental, and economic phenomenon.