City and Tourism

CT - ISSN 2976-5897 - © ISTE Ltd

Journal issues

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Recent articles

The effects of covid-19 on the sport tourism sector in the main cities of Cambodia

Tourism has become the second-strongest industrial sector in Cambodia in 2018, and the number of tourists visiting the country has reached 6.2 million (Un & Lue, 2020). However, when the pandemic situation broke out, the government decided to close the borders for tourism. The main tourist destinations were forced to close tourist attractions such as museums, restaurants, sports clubs, and travel agencies that didn’t offer organized tours. Many tourist destinations, such as sports tourism sites have been suffering because of the lack of tourists. In the sector, a significant number of employees have lost their job. This study has focused on analyzing the effects of the pandemic situation on sport tourism services in Cambodia. The analysis was based on reviewing the changes in sports tourism elements, such as environmental changes, accessibility, becoming more complicated, and limited opportunities to attend sports events or participate in sports activities. It also analyzed how the Cambodian government reacted to the situation and how they supported initiatives to save the local tourism providers. A content analytic method was used mostly from governmental published sources for the general analysis. The perspectives of the visitors were analyzed by the feedback of travellers published on the international tourism homepages. The results stated that the tourism sector experienced an 80% drop in its international visitors and a loss of an estimated USD 5 billion in revenues. The travel restrictions significantly affected the tourism flow as of May 20th, 2020. Although the government introduced several projects to save this sector, still today’s recovery has not reached the number of tourists that came before Covid-19.But, the crisis presents an opportunity for the tourism sector through the improvement of its infrastructure and events. Sports tourism is becoming a lever for action and strategic support for the renewal of the Cambodia destination.

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Events in cities: between tourism attractiveness and negative externalities

Events in the city: between attractiveness and negative externalities. Through events, it is the staging, storytelling and production of a renewed tourist offer that is in question. The commercial, cultural and sports city questions in more ways than one. What are the lasting effects of the ephemeral in urban areas and for whom? Citizens, consumers, elected officials and national and international tourists show and think differently about the mega-event according to their interests and practices. The instrumentalization of events also involves pre and post-event assessments and support processes for infrastructures (convention and fair grounds or Olympic village) and public spaces bequeathed (seafront urban leisure facilities ) .The renewed attractiveness to attract more and more tourists comes up against the Sustainable Development Goals. The negative externalities mentioned in the various articles in this special issue of City & Tourism show that it is necessary to reflect upstream on the meaning that the actors wish to give to their event, its societal repercussions, and the limits, beliefs conveyed to this subject.

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Event and creativity in Saint-Etienne: Links, changes and conflicts in the fabric and practice of the urban

By adapting the creative city model to the local context, Saint-Etienne has been implementing an urban policy since the mid-1990s with the aim of renewing its urban tissue and producing a dynamic urban image. With design as a marker, local public and private actors have had recourse to events, emblematic architectural or urban achievements, a heritage policy of labelling and to the development of a creative tourism offer. By combining analyses of discourses and documents, observations of individual and collective practices during events or in transformed places with the analysis of the spaces themselves, this analytical and exploratory study discusses the articulations, transformations and tensions between the event-based and the creative in the thinking, the making and the practice of the urban.

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Residents’ perception, a key element of sustainable tourism associated with sports mega-events: The case of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro

Sporting mega-events, such as the Football World Cup and the Olympic Games, are among the major marketing tools for territories. However, they can generate innumerable problems when they are organized by developing or emerging countries. Indeed, in these countries, the impacts are greater because the supply of services and infrastructure is not yet sufficiently supported and only a limited range of the local population benefits from the investments made. The general objective of this article is to understand the perception of part of the local population of Rio de Janeiro of the sports mega-events in Brazil, from a socio-territorial point of view and in terms of tourism. From an ethnographic approach, we show that the most vulnerable groups suffer the negative effects of such mega-events (expropriations and evictions of the population residing in priority investment areas). The creation of a real state of exception in the territory of the city of Rio de Janeiro, combining gentrification and social sanitation, has caused conflicts between a city designed for inhabitants and a city designed for sports tourists. However, the planning and organization of these sporting events could have taken place according to other logics.

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Crowding out effects associated with the Olympics. Some lessons learned from ex ante surveys in Paris and Tokyo

The Olympic and Paralympic Games generate expectations in terms of tourist attraction, but the ex post literature relativizes them due to crowding out effects. In order to understand these possible effects in 2020 in Tokyo and those likely to take place in Paris in 2024, two surveys were carried out with 305 international tourists in Tokyo and 1,265 international and French tourists in Paris respectively. If the pandemic has called into question the interest of research for Tokyo, since the JOP, postponed to 2021, took place without spectators, these surveys nevertheless make it possible to draw a certain number of lessons on the type of tourists likely to divert from Paris in 2024.

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City & Tourism - Journal of City Tourism

Globalization has consequences for observable and quantifiable city tourism practices; the world’s major cities are similar - or not - in the approach and management of this urban tourism with touristic projects and infrastructure sometimes identical but also differentiated practices. In addition, small and medium-sized cities are experimenting with a new form of tourism and their territory. But even more, urban tourism does not become a major factor in the construction of the image of the city and sometimes the image of a country? City tourism is multiple, in connection with the economic activity of a city (business tourism), the organization of congresses and leisure activities for the general public. We must also highlight the challenge of moving towards more sustainable urban tourism through a good tourism practice that has significant consequences for our planet and its environment, especially by transport. This axiom is realized through sometimes remarkable phenomena of hybridization, standardization or differentiation. There are also endogenous and exogenous social events or productions that characterize or modify a tourist activity in the urban world. This leaves options or strategic axes based on differentiation with respect to the other, but also think of a necessary networking with the rest of the world and resulting in a multiplication of competition. The aim of the Journal City & Tourism is to work on different themes that are meaningful and emulate in the field of research disciplines. We favor two complementary approaches that will allow us to give a precise portrait of the tourist city, a marketing approach (economic, communication, management, CSR, branding and governance) and a geographical approach (spatial, human, cultural and environmental).

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Tourism development in the smart city: the case of the city of Marrakech

The great development of the New Information and Communication Technologies has facilitated the transition from the ordinary city to the smart city, a label that has been claimed in recent years by a lot of territories around the world. The Smart City concept represents the dominant direction of urban development based on the digital transformation of the city to respond to the local population and tourists needs about the mobility, the environment, the governance, the lifestyle, the economy-innovation and the culture and citizenship. This article aims to study the possibility to integrate the tourism in the smart city (Marrakech as an example) and to analyse the role of private and public actors in this integration. How can the local actors of the destination envisage this tourism development and through what will the approach? In order to answer to our subject and questions, we carried out in a first step, a documentary research, the goal is to have some information about Marrakech’s smart practices. In a second step, we developed a qualitative study with eleven actors in relation with our subject who responded to our interview guide. We glimpse the importance of the degree of connectivity as an indicator of possible synergies , but also to underline the fact of highlighting and including a cumulative process between human capital, culture, environment and urban governance, both tourist and administrative.

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Tangible heritage, intangible heritage and mass tourism in Luang Prabang (Laos): a triangle of incompatibilities?

In December 1995, Luang Prabang was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Based on a decentralized cooperation agreement with a french city named Chinon, a protection and enhancement program was initiated. In 2008, a report raised the alarm by pointing to the city’s drifts following the explosion of tourism and envisaged its decommissioning on the list of World Heritage in Danger. This article discusses the reasons for this development and takes stock of the current situation. From official documents, archives and minutes of meetings involving various stakeholders, it proposes a review (rereading) of this program, showing that instead of an approach imputing the drifts observed to the lao authorities, an explanation can be found in the lack of consideration, by cooperation providers, of the relationships between tangible and intangible heritage in a living city. While international cooperation targets an architectural and monumental Luang Prabang which sets off its tourist “take-off”, another Luang Prabang, immaterial and intangible, suffers from the tansformation of the structures of opportunity which result from it.