Papers in Proceedings of International Conferences
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Tourism can play a major role in the sustainable economic and social development of hosting areas. However, the structural problems which arise during the tourism development process, and the views of the parties involved on those issues, frequently differ quite intensely over the spatial - geographical layout and typology of tourism destinations. The objective underlying, and basic hypothesis examined in this paper, based on field research carried out in the study area of the Prefecture of Arcadia in Greece, is to explore the structural problems and prospects for tourism development in the study area, but mostly to examine the possible divergence of views among the parties involved in various geographical and spatial units within the Prefecture (urban, seaside and mountainous areas). The conclusions that emerge based on descriptive statistics and statistical inference and use of suitable statistical hypothesis-testing criteria (Chi Square Test ...
2016-07-12
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Low Cost Carriers have penetrated the European Airline Market since the early 90s when the deregulation of the European airspace started spreading throughout the continent influencing the regional airline network behaviour. The innovative business idea of providing travelers with considerably cheaper airline tickets by diminishing the “on-board” frills along with pioneering pricing policies, experienced rapid expansion in many European countries. By studying the air traffic statistics we aim to quantify the Greek & Spanish airline market characteristics, the level of LCCs penetration in both countries and the impact upon traditional flag carriers. This paper asks whether the evolution and the growth that LCCs accomplished in Spain, have respective potentials in Greece. In particular, we investigate which Greek tourism destinations currently not served on a regular basis by LCCs, are the most likely ...
2016-07-25
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The rationale behind the formation of airline alliances includes the reaping of scale and scope economies and the acquisition of marketing and branding advantages. To really add value to the airline customer, however, alliances should consider the purpose of travel, i.e. they should appreciate and understand the derived nature of the airline product. The relevant literature seems to understate this issue or at best focus on business passengers. Given the rising importance of leisure travel and tourism in the world economy, its implications should be explicitly assessed. The emergence of low cost carriers and the subsequent simplifications in the holiday packages offered by charter airlines have played a major role in boosting leisure travel in Europe at least. Still, the intelligent management of frequent flyer programmes and the creation of a seamless network in long haul (or even intercontinental) air travel may ...
2016-07-25
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Film and television activity is expanding rapidly at a global level. Media-related tourism involves visits to places celebrated for associations with books, authors, television programmes and films. In recent years, there has been an increasing research interest in film-induced tourism: this focuses on how films may shape destination images and resulting tourist expectations, behaviour and numbers. In fact, film induced tourism may have serious economic, social and environmental implications and raise significant policy issues. To validate this argument, our empirical research focuses on the area of Heraklion in Crete (Greece), where the movie “EL GRECO” was filmed. This is a biographical film-documentary of the famous Cretan painter and shows different aspects of the Cretan landscape in the past. The fieldwork involves structured and semi-structured questions addressed to travel agencies in Crete regarding ...
2016-07-25
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Air transport has traditionally been the link between tourism generating and destination regions in Europe. Intra-European leisure tourism is highly dependent on air transport services especially between North-South. Incoming leisure tourists in South Europe are using mostly air services to reach their holiday destinations. The charter airline industry has historically been far more liberal than the scheduled sector moving from a highly regulated protectionism in early 1980s, to gradual relaxation in mid 1980s, to full Third Package implementation in 1998, to low cost carriers’ evolution today. This paper examines and analyses the supply of air transport services in Greece focusing in particular on regional airports and their serving destinations. The size and origin of the incoming leisure market will be discussed, measuring the correlation of the frequency of services to the country of origin. Furthermore ...
2016-07-25
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Regional development in Greece, including tourism development in certain areas, is still at a low level. Apart from the lack of targeted and consistent tourism policy, quality standards in tourism are applied only in a small number of cases. In this paper, the subject of promoting the competitiveness of the Greek tourism product at the level of a specific prefecture will be discussed. The case of the Prefecture of Evia, the second largest Greek island, has been chosen given that it is characterised by many idiosyncrasies and has not yet been explored as far as tourism development is concerned. The analysis has taken into consideration the current situation of tourism demand and supply in Evia. Therefore, tourism demand will be presented and evaluated first, and then tourism supply will be analysed. SWOT analysis has been used to describe the micro and macro-environment of the Prefecture. For the purposes of this paper ...
2016-07-25
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This paper discusses the evolution of tourism development in the eastern Balkan states of Bulgaria and Romania and its relation to air transport accessibility. Both countries inherited some tourism infrastructure from the socialist times albeit of poor quality and low service standards. The initial euphoria about the transition to the market economy has been replaced with scepticism on how to face the emerging challenges. Still the forthcoming accession of the two countries into the European Union may act as a boosting mechanism to the economy. As part of adopting the Acquis Communautaire both countries should liberalise their air transport market with interesting implications for traditional scheduled, charter and low cost air services. The paper examines such aviation issues using traffic between Greece and these countries as a case study. Following a period of stagnation, traffic has surged over the last few years ...
2016-07-25
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The completion of the aviation liberalisation process in April 1997 transformed the business environment in the European Union enabling free market entry and exit, seat capacity determination and fare setting. The relevant literature confirms that the post-liberalisation European aviation scene is more competitive with a plethora of airlines entering the market and charging lower fares. Although this is undoubtedly a positive development, care must be taken to ensure that increased tourism flows are accommodated in a sustainable manner. Such issues are especially important for islands and small states where carrying capacity limits are usually binding. This paper aims at evaluating the possible impacts of aviation deregulation with emphasis on tourism using Cyprus as a case study. The island-state joined the EU in 2004 and is highly dependent on the tourism industry. Transport and tourism executives were interviewed ...
2016-07-25
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Primary objective of this paper is to study the transport sector as part of the economy, emphasizing issues of market dominance and its abuse. A company with a dominant position controls over 25% of its relevant market; although there is nothing wrong with dominance as such, companies should not be allowed to apply anti-competitive practices. The paper uses the Athens – Chios route in Greece as a case study and concludes by recommending appropriate strategies which could prove particularly useful to public authorities wishing to set benchmarks for excellence in safeguarding competition in the transport for tourism sector.
2016-07-25
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Most advanced market economies have institutional frameworks to safeguard competition and protect consumers against abuse of market power. While competition policy has traditionally focused on heavy industries, the importance of the service sector is now acknowledged. The emergence of large conglomerates in tourism necessitates the study of market structure, business conduct and industry performance and their implications for consumer welfare. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom of backyard capitalism in tourism. It theorizes first on market dominance and merger activity and then focuses on competition issues in major tourism sectors. The implications of air transport deregulation and cruise industry concentration are examined in the transport for tourism section. Subsequently, the role of hotel chains and the vertical integration practices of major tour operators are emphasized in the discussion on hospitality ...
2016-07-25
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Aviation deregulation is usually a challenging and demanding task and accession to the European Union requires that all candidate states should harmonise their legislation in the context of the European Common Aviation Area. Malta and Cyprus, the small Mediterranean island-states to join the EU in 2004, will have to abandon any protectionist policies in favour of their flag-carriers and let them survive in a liberal framework. The paper discusses the implications of this regime change for civil aviation in Malta and Cyprus and in addition to the airline industry, it examines the impacts on the complementary tourism sector. Unless carrying capacity limits are understood, the islands may become victims of successful airline liberalisation. The paper concludes by stressing the need for sustainable development and active policymaking.
2016-07-25
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Forecasting is an essential analytical tool in tourism policy and planning. This paper focuses on international tourism arrivals and receipts at nominal, real and per capita levels. It uses modern time series techniques based on the period 1960- 2000 to produce forecasts for 2001-2010 in the six major World Tourism Organization regions and the world collectively. The initial diagrammatic analysis of existing data suggests that despite conventional wisdom, evolution in the mass tourism era has not been rosy. Performance differs dramatically among the regions, fluctuations are sharp and negative tourism growth is not unusual in real and per capita terms. Similarly, the subsequent forecasts have negative signs occasionally. Policymakers should, therefore, take action to increase revenue generation but not at the expense of sustainable tourism development.
2016-07-25
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This paper raises important policy conclusions based on a diagrammatic analysis of international tourism series for the period 1960-2000. While the mainstream framework focuses on the evolution of total international tourist arrivals and receipts, the weight is currently put on real per capita tourism receipts, as this series shows the individual direct economic impact of a tourist on a destination. Both the world and regional analyses show that despite the dramatic growth of other series, real per capita tourism receipts have not a clear upward trend. In other words, post-war tourism growth has been merely based on scale - not quality - and this has serious implications for sustainable tourism economic development.
2016-07-25
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Since the Second World War, the managerial thought in tourism has followed, albeit with a lag, the fashions prevailing each period in the aggregate economy: over the last fifteen years, it has been characterised by the blow of market deregulation and liberalisation gales. Early results from such practices have been impressive; nowadays, however, the neo-classical euphoria is more modest. This increasing scepticism stems from the inability of market mechanisms to operate efficiently in de facto non-competitive environments. Interestingly, this also seems to be the case with the tourist industries, where, in contrast to the common belief, contestability conditions do not hold. More specifically, the conference paper argues that a number of evolutionary mechanisms has resulted in the creation of an asymmetric market structure, which is characterised by the co-existence of large (trans)national tourism oligopolies/oligopsonies ...
2016-07-25
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In spite of its relative homogeneity in consumer patterns (i.e. the 3S product), tourism in the Mediterranean island destinations is characterised by a notable spatial asymmetry at different levels of territorial scale. For example, the Spanish islands are in aggregate more popular than the Greek ones; within Greece the Cyclades host more tourists than the islands of Northern Aegean; similarly, Mykonos is highly developed compared to Naxos. Although in some cases, these differences are the outcome of historical accidents and self-fulfilling expectations, to a great extent, this flow asymmetry may be attributed to actual geographical disparities: physical and built environment as well as issues of accessibility play an important role. In fact, the latter are particularly crucial in the context of island tourism, which depends fully on the use of mass transport means (e.g. airplanes and ships) that require heavy and ...
2016-07-25
