Daniel Miravet

Human mobility in mountain areas has received limited attention in academic research. Nonetheless, it has significant implications for inhabitants' quality of life, reflected in challenges such as social inequalities, limited public transport, and car dependency. This article aims, first, to identify and review relevant previous research contributions and, second, to examine and prioritize the most pressing issues that require researchers' attention. A scoping review was conducted following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The extant literature was mapped to examine the core research topics and contributions, identify research limitations and gaps through thematic analysis, and propose a research agenda. The findings of the study corroborate the growing, but still incipient, surge in interest during the last 5 years. Moreover, it becomes apparent that, geographically, research is skewed toward Europe's Alpine region and, to a lesser extent, other renowned mountain ranges, overlooking most mountain areas worldwide. Six future research lines are proposed, based on suggestions made in the reviewed works. Topics related to mobility that have not yet been addressed in the context of mountain areas, despite their critical impact on mobility dynamics and having been studied in other regions, are identified as research gaps. Finally, limitations regarding the methods applied and data used are emphasized. The result is an evidence-based research agenda for academics and policymakers seeking to address the complexity of sustainable mobility in mountain areas in the current context of decarbonization. To ensure a comprehensive and plural perspective, the present work was developed collaboratively by authors from different institutions and regions who contributed to the focus session “Mobility in Mountain Regions” at the International Mountain Conference 2025.

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the holiday plans of many people. Whether it was due to travel bans or the fear of contracting the infection, people modified, among other aspects, their chosen destination, travel transport, accommodations, length of stay, and activities to be undertaken during the stay. In this context, we aim to disentangle the effect of these changes on tourist satisfaction. Previous research on the effects of COVID-19 on the tourism sector has studied the shrinkage of tourism demand, changes in tourist behaviour and adaptation processes on the supply side. Nonetheless, few works have analysed changes in tourists’ plans. Two main hypotheses have been put forward. First, tourists might be dissatisfied given that they could not attain their holiday expectations. In contrast, the second hypothesis suggests that those individuals who changed their holiday plans might be more satisfied because they diminished their perceived risk of contagion. We have used data drawn from a survey of tourists (N = 2009) who visited Costa Daurada, a very popular Mediterranean coastal destination just after the end of the Spanish lockdown. Then, statistically significant differences in satisfaction levels between the groups that altered their plans and those who did not are assessed by means of Kruskal–Wallis and Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests. Results signal that tourists were not more dissatisfied when they had modified their initial holiday plans. Indeed, the overall satisfaction of those visitors who switched their initial destination to travel to Costa Daurada was slightly lower, and the difference was significant, compared to the ones who were planning to travel there from the very beginning. Satisfaction was not significantly lower for those who changed their holiday plans in the case of the rest of the items analysed (transportation, length of stay, accommodation, and overall activities). On the contrary, in the case of activities, changes apparently contributed to mitigate the risk perception and led to a better tourist experience. Results also suggest that tourists were willing to adapt to a new situation in order not to renounce their holidays. In terms of implications for destination management and stakeholders, the main conclusion is that continuous cooperation and mutual trust are key to adapting to turbulent environments in which risk perception becomes central.

This paper aims to explore if the presence of diverse tourist profiles staying in the same accommodation hub of a mature Mediterranean coastal destination also implies specific intra-destination visiting preferences. The study uses Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to detect tourist profiles according to their socio-demographic and psychographic factors, as well as their trip organisation characteristics. Then, selection corrected estimations are used to focus on the side trips each profile is more willing or reluctant to make from the accommodation hub. Results show a wide range of tourist profiles with a high level of heterogeneity regarding individual characteristics and intra-destination visiting preferences. This provides further understanding of tourist choices at a destination and empirical evidence that allows breaking away from the traditional static, beach-focused view of coastal tourists. In turn, this informs the destination and its stakeholders so that they can apply the appropriate planning, management and branding tools to adapt the destination and its products and services to the different tourism targets. The implementation of this kind of studies and the use of their results by local stakeholders as strategy for diversification and competitiveness growth would make the whole destination more competitive.

Walking for transportation has well-known environmental, social, and health-related benefits. However, its daily use may have been especially altered by restrictions to population activities and mobility during the post-lock-down phase of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In this study we aimed to explore how daily walking for transportation during a period of partial restrictions on mobility, and to evaluate whether its traditional individual and area-level determinants were modified during that period. We used an official travel survey in Southern Catalonia, which was deployed in two phases: right before (n = 9,065) and after the lock-down phase of the pandemic (n = 3,944). We observed not only that utilitarian walking frequency and time spent on daily walking trips had significantly decreased, but also did walking mode share. The positive association between age and walking not only remained unaltered during the study period but became stronger for those between 56 and 70 years old. During the pandemic, household income and area-level income inequality were no longer predictors of utilitarian walking. Policymakers will need to consider the possible mid and long-term behavioral changes derived from habits adopted during the different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially considering that restrictions on activities and mobility had a specific impact on sustainable and healthy forms of everyday mobility, and for specific groups of population.

This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on recreational walking while on vacation, a relevant activity among tourists especially in urban destinations. We surveyed visitors to Costa Daurada, an urban coastal destination in Catalonia in August 2020. Only 5% of participants reported lower recreational walking levels compared to normal circumstances; 75% reported similar levels; and 20% reported higher levels. Higher recreational walking levels were associated with visiting local amenities or strolling and with a higher level of perceived safety from COVID-19 when walking. Higher perceived overcrowding was associated with less recreational walking. The pandemic may have altered recreational behavior while on vacation in urban settings especially by increasing outdoor activities such as recreational walking. If persistent, such behavioral changes could have relevant implications for both the tourism and recreation sectors and for local policymakers who aim to promote walkability while managing tourist pedestrian flows.

The data generated in public transport systems have proven to be of great importance in improving knowledge of public transport systems, being very valuable in promoting the sustainability of public transport through rational management. However, the analysis of this data involves numerous tasks, so that when the value of analysing the data is finally verified, the effort has already been very great. The management and analysis of the collected data face some difficulties. This is the case of the data collected by the current automated fare collection systems. These systems do not follow any open standards and are not usually designed with a multipurpose nature, so they do not facilitate the data analysis workflow (i.e., acquisition, storage, quality control, integration and quantitative analysis). Intending to reduce this workload, we propose a conceptual framework for analysing data from automated fare collection systems in mobility studies. The main components of this framework are (1) a simple data model, (2) scripts for creating and querying the database and (3) a system for reusing the most useful queries. This framework has been tested in a real public transport consortium in a Spanish region shaped by tourism. The outcomes of this research work could be reused and applied, with a lower initial effort, in other areas that have data recorded by an automated fare collection system but are not sure if it is worth investing in exploiting the data. After this experience, we consider that, even with the legal limitations applicable to the analysis of this type of data, the use of open standards by automated fare collection systems would facilitate the use of this type of data to its full potential. Meanwhile, the use of a common framework may be enough to start analysing the data.

This article explores the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for public transport. Three elements are explored. Firstly, the short-term effects, including perceptions of public transport as a vector of virus transmission and shifts towards less-sustainable modes of transport. Secondly, we discuss key challenges such as the new difficulties of providing safe and reliable public transport services, the consequent barriers for the promotion of sustainable and healthy urban mobilities and the potential exacerbation of inequalities. Finally, we assess future research directions focussing on how pandemics should be monitored and the need to construct sustainable and human-scale cities.

Mobilities that take place in coastal tourist regions are not regular in time nor in space, since the arrival of tourists follows a distinctly seasonal pattern. A key agent in the mobility sector, such as the public transport, is directly affected by these alterations. This article aims at analysing this phenomenon from a geographical perspective, by means of the use of big (geo)data generated by travel cards that monitor the demand for interurban public transport in the region of Camp de Tarragona, in south Catalonia. The maps presented in this article constitute a first attempt to appraise the impact of seasonality of tourist activities on public transport demand in coastal tourist regions. They allow detailing large spatiotemporal fluctuations in the use of public transport between winter and summer periods, and also significant differences in daily time slots between both periods. The results are from interest to understand the mobilities in tourist regions and for agents involved in public transport provision and tourism management.