Jose Andrés Coca-Stefaniak

In this chapter, the concepts of social and cultural sustainability are defined within the context of urban destinations. Key stakeholders are also identified and discussed. A framework of ten dimensions of urban, social and cultural sustainability is proposed, with case study examples of the proposed dimensions for social and cultural sustainability in urban settings. The cases outlined in this chapter span several countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, India, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and Vietnam. Indicators are derived from these case studies and future trends are also discussed, including challenges affecting the socio-cultural sustainability of urban tourism, adopting PESTEL-RVS as a framework for analysis.

Tourist behaviour has always been a core concern of tourism management. Achieving sustainability in tourism development requires engagement from all stakeholders, including tourists. However, scholarly research on sustainable tourist behaviour has only emerged relatively recently within the context of sustainable tourism, though over 80 per cent of published research in this field has been dominated by environmental sustainability. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence of research related to social sustainability issues, our understanding of the factors involved in achieving more socially sustainable tourist behaviours still needs to be improved. This chapter reveals a gap between practitioner approaches to fostering sustainable tourist behaviour and academic research in this context. Gaps in the understanding are discussed within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals framework. It is argued that issues such as social equality, poverty, and employee wellbeing, among others, are rooted in the interactions tourists have with their hosts. Changes to current academic research in this field are suggested to bring it more in line with the challenges faced by tourism practitioners. Based on the findings of the analysis of the literature and to formulate a research agenda for the future, the authors suggest a higher level of collaboration between scholars, more studies adopting residents’ and practitioners’ perspectives, and the need for more research in the world’s developing economies.

This chapter comments on the outlook for sustainable urban tourism until around 2030. All Co-Editors collaborated by offering their opinions on how urban tourism will change (or stay the same) for the next approximately seven to ten years. Chapter 40 begins with a review of the forecasts for the future of cities from a variety of academic and other sources. The academic contributions cover the themes of urban futures, urban governance, sustainable urban transport, energy consumption in urban areas, smart cities, creative cities, and urban inequality. These commentaries are followed by 20 recommendations for future sustainable urban tourism contributed by the four Co-Editors. Several of these urban initiatives are already underway, while others are on the cusp of being introduced (such as ‘flying taxis’).

This chapter commences by comparing destination branding with place branding and city branding, three parallel streams of scholarship. The concept of green destination branding is discussed as a trend emerging among cities. It then reviews the relationship between city destination branding and sustainable urban development. Evidence is drawn of the strategies used by specific cities to demonstrate their sustainability and stewardship commitments. After that, a set of cities that are renowned for their greening and social-cultural responsibility efforts are reviewed in more detail. These include Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Oslo, Singapore, Stockholm, Vancouver Island (Nanaimo), Vienna, and Wellington. The analysis of these cases is used to produce a set of actions for sustainable city destination branding. The implications for stakeholders are then discussed. The chapter closes by arguing that tourism cities’ marketing, branding, and communications in future years will need to evolve towards a new paradigm that addresses climate change, pollution, crises and disasters, resilience, overtourism, rising sea levels, and other sustainability challenges.

The last decade has witnessed an exponential growth in published research related to smart tourism in general and smart tourism destinations in particular. A literature search using the keyword combinations ‘smart destination and sustainable’ and ‘smart city’ and sustainable’ covering a ten-year period leading to December 2021 and using the Web of Science and Scopus databases rendered 1,693 and 2,206 publications, respectively. This chapter outlines key research themes in this area and discusses emerging trends adopting a holistic approach to smart tourism research with a focus on urban tourism and tourism cities. It is posited that there is a growing relationship between smart tourism destinations and sustainability in urban environments, which will impact future scholarly research as well as practice. Málaga (Spain), one of Europe’s most innovative smart cities and a key international tourism destination, is also discussed as a case study.

Sustainable tourist behavior is a rapidly growing field within sustainable tourism. This study contributes to this emerging body of knowledge through a systematic literature review combining bibliometric and qualitative analysis of 331 publications. Key themes in sustainable tourist behavior research, including intended and actual behaviors, were identified with scholarly debates in this field discussed critically. Sustainability topics widely studied in other disciplines have been overlooked from a tourist behavior perspective, including waste classification and recycling, as well as applications of sustainable design to the management of the visitor economy. Additionally, this analysis revealed imbalances in sustainable development practice and research related to the visitor economy and gaps in theory development. This study builds on these findings and discusses an agenda for future research in sustainable tourist behavior. The findings contribute to shaping the conceptualization of sustainable tourist behavior, recognizing its dynamic nature, providing an overview of theories and antecedents, and underscoring the significance of considering diverse factors in future research. They also suggest that decision‐makers in tourism should prioritize understanding tourist sustainable behavior through market segmentation, incorporate design and technology into sustainable initiatives, and align strategies with the specific needs and requirements of tourists for effective and sustainable tourism development.