Dominique Vanneste

Tourism has proven to be highly vulnerable to external disruptions, particularly in communities with low levels of tourism development. In this context, this study examines residents’ attitudes towards tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic and assesses the impact of public and private initiatives in the Cajas Massif Biosphere Area (CMBA), located in southern Ecuador. Employing a mixed-methods approach, 825 surveys were conducted alongside 25 interviews with key sector stakeholders. The objective was to determine whether these attitudes reflect genuine resilience or merely a survival strategy in response to the crisis. The findings indicate that, despite some collective efforts and mitigation plans, the primary focus remained on short-term income preservation, while government policies prioritised tourism promotion over addressing structural needs, ultimately proving inadequate for tourism recovery. This scenario placed the burden of adaptation on residents, with expressions of solidarity that, however, diminished as the crisis subsided. This study concludes that reactive measures may be mistaken for genuine resilience, highlighting the need for comprehensive policies and more equitable stakeholder participation to strengthen social cohesion and ensure the viability of tourism in the face of future crises.

While the concept of a ‘buffer zone’ is clear and well defined, the role of the buffer zone is vague, especially because a buffer zone—if any—can take on very different sizes and shapes, while their status in terms of protection and rules is very different locally. In this article, we focus on buffer zones in an urban context and explore if these buffer zones have some tourism dedication. The latter is particularly interesting since many urban World Heritage sites suffer from over-tourism. With this, we enter the field of policy, management and governance. Therefore, we analyzed three urban World Heritage sites in Belgium and commented occasionally on two more using text analysis (application and policy documents) as well as interviews (11) of interviewees that are representative of governance and expert groups. The results reveal enormous complexity because buffer zones are considered a must in the application without being well thought-out and therefore suboptimal in terms of policy and management. Streamlining the significance of buffer zones by UNESCO as well as bridging the gap between heritage conservation and tourism on a policy level can prevent the agendas of different stakeholder groups and policy fragmentation from hollowing out its potential.

Tourism has proven to be highly vulnerable to external disruptions, particularly in communities with low levels of tourism development. In this context, the study examines residents' attitudes towards tourism during the Covid-19 pandemic and assesses the impact of public and private initiatives in the Cajas Massif Biosphere Area (CMBA), located in southern Ecuador. Employing a mixed-methods approach, 825 surveys were conducted alongside 25 interviews with key sector stakeholders. The objective was to determine whether these attitudes reflect genuine resilience or merely a survival strategy in response to the crisis. The findings indicate that, despite some collective efforts and mitigation plans, the primary focus remained on short-term income preservation, while government policies prioritised tourism promotion over addressing structural needs, ultimately proving inadequate for tourism recovery. This scenario placed the burden of adaptation on residents, with expressions of solidarity that, however, diminished as the crisis subsided. The study concludes that reactive measures may be mistaken for genuine resilience, highlighting the need for comprehensive policies and more equitable stakeholder participation to strengthen social cohesion and ensure the viability of tourism in the face of future crises.

The Editorial Board of the Revista Internacional de Turismo, Empresa y Territorio (RITUREM) formally announces the withdrawal of the manuscript: “Tourism Response and Recovery to Covid-19 in Historic Urban Destinations (Cases of Belgium and the Netherlands)” The withdrawal is solely due to an editorial error that resulted in the duplication of a version previously published in Via Tourism Review (DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.8393 ). We wish to make clear that the authors bear no responsibility for this situation, which stems exclusively from an internal administrative oversight. Editorial Board of RITUREM

Public health and care policies across OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries increasingly encourage aging in place, enabled by both formal care networks, and informal (family) care and social solidarity in the neighborhood. However, little is known about how a person’s neighborhood might affect their aging in place. The COVID-19 crisis unintendedly offered a good opportunity to observe the neighborhood’s role in the provision of care. Since formal care services were often limited during the lockdown, informal caregiving may have increased. However, intergenerational contacts in and outside of the household were strongly discouraged by governments worldwide, adding another layer of complexity to caregiving. The aim of this qualitative study was to assess how informal caregivers in Flanders managed to provide care to their care receivers, and what role the neighborhood played in this provision of care. Sixteen qualitative Skype and telephone interviews with informal caregivers were conducted between June and December 2020 to understand their experiences and coping strategies. Overall, most respondents increased their frequency of caregiving during the first lockdown. They took on the extra care needs during the lockdown themselves, and did not actively invoke any kind of neighborhood support. The significance of the neighborhood seemingly remained limited. This was often not because no help was offered, but rather due to a sense of pride or the fear of infection, and an increased effort by family caregivers.

This article investigates the role in practice of social capital in the success and perennity of European rural development projects, taking three Walloon LEADER projects as case studies. In the context of rural areas, that carry innate characteristics – proximity, sense of community – social capital is expected to play an important role in the success or failure of development projects. Yet, in theory, social capital is mentioned by the European Commission only when referring to outputs of the approach, never as an input. By investigating three LEADER projects that were developed between 2007 and 2013 in Wallonia through qualitative analysis, from the conception of the Local Development Strategy to the current situation of projects – more than 5 years after the end of funding – we confirmed the significance of trust as a lever for development, highlighted the importance of human capital and discussed the relevance of project time-scales.

To limit additional (net) land take for economic activities, the reality of space use needs to be properly understood. This was assessed by comparing the spatial patterns obtained from a field inventory with those from existing data for five case areas in Flanders (Belgium). Each case area is a transect from a high-density urban area to a suburban neighborhood or even a semi-rural zone. The statistics on these areas, based on official data, mostly derived from tax returns, social security contributions, and on commercial retail data, were checked with field observations. The location of economic activities and the patterns of space use vary in different settlement environments, resulting in the identification of typical characteristics for eight location environment types. While in, for example, core shopping centers a strong convergence can be noticed between existing statistics and the field inventory (71% of companies and 93% of parcels are detected on the field), in residential areas (21% of companies and 17% of parcels are detected on the field) the convergence is very limited. In other words, in some environments, (the combination of) data and statistics give a good understanding of the space use while, in other environments, gaps with realities in the field are obvious. Therefore, a field inventory system can enrich the picture and present another reality to complement both existing statistics and other land-use data methods such as remote sensing and web data extraction.

Purpose: In a current trend of a growing amount of short city trips, it becomes crucial to understand how local residents perceive the presence of tourists and tourism in their cities and how their socio-cultural context influences those perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this understanding which will enable the city planners to take actions to create the well-balanced and resilient communities in which the needs of residents and tourists are equally met. Design/methodology/approach: To understand residents’ perceptions’ about tourism in Bruges, this research applied photo-elicitation interviews with 28 residents who lived in various locations in the historical center to understand socio-cultural background of residents, their tourism-related concerns and whether they are in line with what is commonly perceived as problematic in Bruges. Findings: Results show that as long as residents can benefit from tourism and tourism-related infrastructure, they support tourism. On the other hand, tourism decreases the liveability of the historical center due to supersession of infrastructure serving the residents by tourist-oriented amenities. Practical implications: To build a sustainable and resilient city in the future, the authorities of Bruges should cease further “museumification” of the historical city by breaking the hegemony of tourism industry, providing affordable housing and rethinking the concentration model of tourism. Originality/value: The photo-elicitation method proved to produce rich content and good-quality data by stimulating respondents’ memories and evoking experiences and emotions. Thus, this paper recommends that future research about residents’ attitudes is developed around visual methods as they give voice to the residents and are able to uncover issues which are difficult to capture with other methods.

Crowding studies have a long history in urban geography and environmental psychology, although results are mixed at best. While crowding is found to influence residential quality and visitor experience and crowding perception models show some agreement on influential determinants, research is typically limited to a single setting, therefore minimising generalisability. To account for contextual effects, this paper tested a crowding perception model in two study areas: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Antwerp, Belgium. The results confirm that while most variables from earlier studies are significant, their effect on crowding perception depends largely on environmental context, with elements such as street layout, primary functionality of the area, and local culture affecting strength and direction of the relationship. The study reveals the importance of a case based approach to crowding perception, while demonstrating the overall applicability of the methodology and the possibilities of comparative analyses to suggest policy recommendations for specific areas.

Purpose: In the recent decades, an increasing trend has been observed in the steps North Korea has taken to open up to tourism. The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the influence the North Korean political ideology has on different aspects of international tourism. Design/methodology/approach: Apart from the scarce academic literature, news media and internet resources, fieldwork that includes interviews with two international travel companies and a trip to North Korea contributed to gathering information from different perspectives. Findings: It is not surprising that North Korean tourism cannot be divorced from its political context. By looking at the political influence exerted by the North Korean Government on the structure of the industry, tourism policies applied to the organization of tours and the content of tourism and marketing, this paper shows the existence of elements that remained unchanged in the last three decades, as well as new liberal elements that transform North Korea into a more open and versatile tourism destination. Originality/value: Based on an analysis of primary and secondary data, this paper makes original contributions to North Korea tourism studies by investigating the influence of the political ideology on different aspects of tourism industry and on tourist experience.