Edianny Carballo-Cruz

The economic diversification of rural territories specialised in olive growing is key to the sustainability and resilience of these communities. In this context, olive oil tourism is presented as an innovative strategy to add value to the oliv...

Spa tourism in Spain has not been addressed using a gender perspective. This situation has meant that the role of women in spas has been rendered invisible, and entailed negative consequences for rural development. The aim is to critically analyze, through a gender-based approach, the presence of women in the employment, use, and management/ownership of Spanish spas today, in order to identify the possible social, economic, and regional consequences. We have used a methodology based on triangulation, thus obtaining differentiated and more complete information. The results show a high degree of feminization of spa tourism in Spain, although female representation is unevenly distributed across the different components of the tourism system. We conclude with some strategies to promote the inclusion of women in spa tourism, fostering equality of opportunity and contributing to the development of sustainable and equitable tourism in rural areas in Spain with spas.

Recommender systems, as sucessful personalization tools, are focused on helping potential clients to obtain the information that best corresponds to their needs and preferences, in a search space overloaded with options. Properly, group recommender systems (GRSs) focus on suggesting certain types of item (products or services) that tend to be consumed in groups. This paper analyzes the use of GRSs in the tourism domain. It considers the most representative works in this area, highlighting the type of study and evaluation, the application scenario, its purpose, and the methodology used for the generation of recommendations. With this goal, the PRISMA methodology is used, being 1115 works initially identified in the Web of Science and Scopus, which are reduced into a set of 79 articles after the application of several inclusion and exclusion criteria. A comprehensive study of such works identifies three main working domains: 1) GRSs for restaurants, 2) GRSs for itineraries and points of interest (POIs), and 3) GRSs for destination and travel. An overview of the main methodologies and evaluation approaches in these works is also discussed. The analysis performed also identifies relevant research lines for future work.

This research aims to analyze the current state of the thermal tourism product in Spain. Although the literature has reported some research efforts in this direction, most of them are focused on providing partial analyses and, therefore, there is still a lack of works focused on a more comprehensive view and analyzed from different perspectives. Our work fills this gap by presenting a two-way methodology. First, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach is used for the identification and analysis of relevant research papers focused on Spanish thermal centers. In addition, data provided by the Spanish Association of Spas (ANBAL) are used as a base to contrast such relevant research with the information coming from the social network tool TripAdvisor. From the above, it is intended to provide a regional characterization of Spanish spas. A further discussion is also presented, as well as the theoretical and practical implications of the contribution. Esta investigación pretende analizar el estado actual del producto turístico termal en España. Aunque la literatura ha reportado algunos esfuerzos de investigación en esta dirección, la mayoría de ellos se centran en ofrecer análisis parciales y, por tanto, aún faltan trabajos enfocados a una visión más integral y estudiada desde diferentes perspectivas. Nuestro trabajo pretende cubrir esta brecha presentando una metodología bidireccional. En primer lugar, se utiliza el enfoque Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) para la identificación y análisis de los trabajos de investigación relevantes centrados en los centros termales españoles. Por otro lado, se utilizan como base los datos proporcionados por la Asociación Española de Balnearios (ANBAL) para contrastar dichas investigaciones relevantes con la información procedente de la herramienta de red social TripAdvisor. A partir de lo anterior, se pretende ofrecer una caracterización regional de los balnearios españoles. Asimismo, se presenta una discusión adicional, así como las implicaciones teóricas y prácticas de la contribución.

Recommender systems (RSs) are a relevant kind of artificial intelligence-based systems focused on providing users with the information that best fit their preferences and needs in a search space overloaded of possible options. Specifically, group recommender systems (GRSs) are a special type of RS centered on recommending items that are consumed in groups and not individually, being TV program and touristic packages key examples of such items. The current work is focused on proposing a content-based group recommendation approach (CB-GRS) contextualized to the restaurant recommendation domain. In contrast to previous content-based group recommendation models, the proposal incorporates novel stages such as restaurants feature imputation, the generation of a virtual group profile, the use of feature weighting, and the automatic selection of the most appropriate aggregation approach for composing group recommendations. The proposal is evaluated in an original recommendation scenario, related to restaurant from Havana City in Cuba, where several restaurant attributes are identified for applying the proposed CB-GRS approach. The experimental protocol evaluates individually each component of the proposal, evidencing their importance as part of the whole framework. Furthermore, the comparison with previous works has been also developed. The proposed approach can be applied in other recommendation scenarios, and in addition, the developed experimental protocol is generalizable for the evaluation of further content-based individual and group recommendation approaches in the tourism domain.

Innovation is an activity of vital importance for diversification and positioning in the hotel industry, in addition to its impact on customer satisfaction and the competitiveness of the tourism sector. This research focuses on the design of products, considering the requirements of innovation for the satisfaction of VIP clients in the northern keys of Cuba, with emphasis on the case study of the Hotel Memories Flamenco. For this purpose, the idea generation technique is used, with the relative importance index, the Zabotinsky Matrix and the Quality Function Deployment for Product Innovation (QFDPI) tool. As part of the results, 9 ideas for new or improved products for the design of the tourist package are obtained, as well as competitive advantages for the requirements and specifications of the products; in addition to the introduction of 10 new and/or improved Diamond services aimed at satisfying the VIP client.

The innovation of tourism products has marked the development of tourism due to its importance as a source of competitiveness and adaptation of the sector to changing scenarios. However, shortcomings are evident, revealing the limited systematization of innovation and its conception as an integral activity; its order and intensity vary depending on the needs and capabilities of the application context; it has a low level of adaptability and continuity in different scenarios. The objective of this research is to: implement the systematization of tourism product innovation, based on an innovation model for complex systems and on the procedure that implements it as a complex adaptive system, for generating competitive advantages with the new and improved products in hotel facilities and the complementary offer. For the design of the model, the complex systems approach is used. It is implemented using the proposed complex adaptive systems procedure through the properties of emergence, self-organization and co-evolution. Likewise, computational intelligence techniques are used to generate adaptive sequences of innovation together with a set of methodological tools to generate competitive advantages with new and improved products. As a result, the sequencing of innovation based on computational intelligence techniques has been obtained for each scenario studied, which synthesizes the systematization process, the generation of hotel tourism products, excursions and routes and competitive advantages associated with them. La innovación de productos turísticos ha marcado el desarrollo del turismo por su importancia como fuente de competitividad y adaptación del sector a escenarios cambiantes. No obstante, se evidencian carencias que muestran la limitada sistematización de la innovación y de su concepción como una actividad integral; cuyo orden e intensidad varía en dependencia de las necesidades y capacidades del contexto de aplicación; así como su escasa adaptabilidad y continuidad en distintos escenarios. El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en: implementar la sistematización de la innovación de productos turísticos, fundamentado en un modelo de innovación desde los sistemas complejos y en el procedimiento que lo implementa como sistema adaptativo complejo, para la generación de ventajas competitivas con los nuevos y mejorados productos en instalaciones hoteleras y la oferta complementaria. Para el diseño del modelo se utiliza el enfoque de sistemas complejos y para su implementación mediante el procedimiento propuesto, el de sistemas adaptativos complejos a través de las propiedades de emergencia, auto-organización y coevolución. Asimismo, se emplean técnicas de inteligencia computacional para la generación de secuencias adaptativas de la innovación y un conjunto de herramientas metodológicas para la generación de ventajas competitivas con los nuevos y mejorados productos. Como resultado se obtuvieron la secuenciación de la innovación basada en técnicas de inteligencia computacional para cada escenario estudiado, lo que sintetiza el proceso de sistematización; y la generación de productos turísticos hoteleros, excursiones, rutas y ventajas competitivas asociados a los mismos.