Mediterranean Islands And Sustainable Tourism Development

Due to their fragile economies and infrastructures, research on Mediteranean islands reveals a great deal about the impact of tourism. This volume focuses on issues specific to tourism in the Mediterranean, with contributors from the United States, the United Kingdon and continental Europe.

This multidisciplinary volume dicusses the impact of tourism on sustainable development in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Mediterranean. Bringing together scholars, development practitioners, international experts, and professionals, the contributors discuss the issues from a holistic and transnational perspective. This work provides a much-needed, thorough understanding of the interplay among economic, cultural, environmental, and public health parameters. The contributors provide a workable definition of sustainable development that can be understood, conveyed, and implemented by policy makers, development practitioners, and tourism professionals. Among the special issues addressed here are the role of women in tourism, the contradictions inherent in cultural tourism, the hegemony of tour operators, disease mapping and risk assessment, and island community involvement in tourism-related land-use planning.

Sustainable Tourism Practices in the Mediterranean showcases and examines the current and future trends in sustainable tourism in this popular region where tourism is one of the leading determinants of economic development. This volume examines the effects of specific recent events including terrorism, financial crises and various political changes in the Mediterranean region. Looking at a range of destinations, island and mainland, urban and rural, summer and winter and emergent and declining zones, it provides a comprehensive overview of this area. It also draws on a number of wide-ranging themes such as gastronomy, (corporate) social responsibility, entrepreneurship, ethical issues, service quality, health and the slow city, offering an insightful study of the challenges the Mediterranean region faces and the sustainable practices that can be implemented in order to overcome them. Written by leading academics in the field, this book will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers and academics in Tourism, Development Studies and Geography.

This book comprises studies that reflect on various influences of excessive tourism development in protected areas, and solutions designed and initiated to mitigate such challenges. A large proportion of tourism in Mediterranean destinations constitutes nature-based tourism, in particular, tourism in parks and protected areas. As a destination experiences higher intensity and density of tourism, the potential conflict between maintaining a healthy natural environment and economic development also increases. This has urged planners and decision-makers to devise and adopt innovative approaches that seek to strike a balance between tourism development and nature conservation. This book demonstrates the importance of collaboration across and beyond disciplines and of all groups of stakeholders for maximization of societal impacts and tourism-related benefits.

Tourism in the Mediterranean Sea: An Italian Perspective is the product of a collaborative group of experts in the field of tourism. Academics, whose research focuses on regional tourism system governance, alongside several experts from the tourism sector, contributed to the volume with distinct issues related to the tourism industry.

Although sustainable tourism is a widely adopted notion for achieving a more balanced environmental, social and economic form of tourism, few examples or case studies of successful implementation exist. This purpose of this book was to examine if sustainable tourism policy is being achieved in practice and if not, what the reasons were for failure. Comparing two Mediterranean islands: Calvia(Mallorca, Spain) and Malta, case study research was undertaken to determine barriers as well as mitigation strategies for successful policy implementation. These destinations were the focus of this study as both destinations implemented a sustainable tourism policy, offer similar product/distribution systems, have comparable development patterns and have faced a loss of tourists and increased competition. This research concluded that although tourism has been recognised as a major economic contributor to economies and is also a strong tool in the social and infrastructural development of a destination, it is often not considered within the political contexts in which tourism operates, nor in the power struggles that play a critical role in hindering effective sustainable tourism policies."

This book sheds new light on the current and future challenges faced by cities, and presents approaches, options and solutions enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the smart city context. By focusing on sustainability objectives within a rapidly changing social, economic, environmental and technological setting, it explores a variety of planning challenges faced by contemporary cities and the power of smart city developments in terms of providing innovative tools, approaches, methodologies and technologies to help cities cope with these challenges. Key issues addressed include smart city (e-) planning and (e-)participation; smart data management to facilitate decision-making processes in cities and insular communities on a variety of topics; smart and sustainable management aspects of climate change, water scarcity, mobility, energy, infrastructure, tourism, blue growth, risk assessment; etc. The book presents current and potential pathways and applications for the evolution of smart cities and communities, taking into consideration the unique problems and opportunities emanating from their specific geographical location. The case study examples mainly concern small and medium-sized cities and communities as well as insular areas in the Mediterranean region, while also incorporating lessons learned from other parts of the world. Their focus is on the specific opportunities and threats emerging in these urban and insular environments, which are characterized by their role as globally known tourist destinations, their coastal or port character, and unique cultural resources, as well as the high rated vulnerability in very many sustainability respects (social, economic, biodiversity, urbanization, migration, poverty, etc.) to be found in the Mediterranean region at large

Le tourisme comme secteur crucial de l'économie dans nombre de pays de la Méditerranée. Cet ouvrage analyse de ce secteur à partir de l'exemple des politiques de développement soutenable menées par l'ile grecque de Rhodes et la ville de Tyre au Liban.

This book addresses the issue of smart and sustainable development in the Mediterranean (MED) region, a distinct part of the world, full of challenges and risks but also opportunities. Above all, the book focuses on smartening up small and medium-sized cities and insular communities, taking into account their geographical peculiarities, the pattern of MED urban settlements and the abundance of island complexes in the MED Basin. Taking for granted that sustainability in the MED is the overarching policy goal that needs to be served, the book explores different aspects of smartness in support of this goal’s achievement. In this respect, evidence from concrete smart developments adopted by forerunners in the MED region is collected and analyzed; coupled with experiences gathered from successful, non-MED, examples of smart efforts in European countries. More specifically, current research and empirical results from MED urban environments are discussed, as well as findings from or concerning other parts of the world, which are of relevance to the MED region. The book’s primary goal is to enable policymakers, planners and decision-making bodies to recognize the challenges and options available; and make to more informed policy decisions towards smart, sustainable, inclusive and resilient urban and regional futures in the MED.