J. Andres Coca-Stefaniak

• DProf, MSc, BEng (Hons), FHEA
• Professor (Full) and Associate Head of School for Research and Knowledge Exchange at University of Greenwich

Purpose – Globalisation as a competitive marketing strategy can only offer a limited explanation for the behaviour of organisations. This is particularly applicable in the case of business and marketing strategies for small and medium‐sized organisations in the retail sector. Terms such as “localisation” have been coined by researchers but the conc...

Purpose – The Light Night initiative currently under development in the UK offers an innovative approach to revitalising town and city centres by involving residents and visitors through culture and the arts. This initiative is based on the successful Nuit Blanche (White Night) culture‐led urban revitalisation model tested in cities like Brussels,...

In this paper we start by outlining the continued decline of the small shop in Britain. The decline is seen as especially severe in the truly independent/non-affiliated sector and we look at trends in decline but also the methodologies used to analyse this. Since a key current theme in European integration policy is for exchange of experience and b...

Town centre management (TCM) has evolved considerably over the last 25 years in terms of both its purpose and methods. Whilst most reviews of TCM to date have focused on its development within the Anglo-Saxon world (typically North America and the United Kingdom), comparatively little attention has been given to other models of place and town centr...

Purpose Town centre management (TCM) schemes in Spain have generally evolved primarily from a retail perspective, led by small and medium sized (SME) retailers. However, their development has often focused on business goals (e.g. profit, increase in footfall, etc). In doing so, they have often overlooked the very social issues that have embedded re...

Introduction In 2023, air traffic reached 88.6 % of pre-pandemic (2019) levels (IATA, 2024), with global tourism cities as key beneficiaries (Graham, 2023; Marchesani et al., 2023). Similarly, theme parks have been found to be a major attractor for urban destinations globally (Liang & Li, 2023; Luo & Li, 2024) and catalysts for economic development...

The Handbook of Sustainable Urban Tourism focuses on an important topic, sustainability in urban tourism destinations, which is an under-researched area of study. Cities, in particular large cities, are important destinations that attract many types of visitors due to their complex characteristics and the variety of attractions they offer. However,...

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...

Sustainability has grown to become a major body of knowledge in tourism research (Espiner et al., 2019) since the advent of the first definition of sustainable development, coined by the United Nation’s Brundtland Commission Report (WCED, 1987). In 2005, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) developed a definition for sustainable to...

City destination branding is "the steps city destination management organisations take to develop and communicate particular identities and personalities for city tourism that are different from those of all competitors” (Morrison and Maxim, 2022, p. 139). What is the relationship between city destination branding and sustainable urban development?...

The concept of sustainable tourism emerged in the 1970s (Serrano et al., 2019), with early research in this field led initially by geographers and environmentalists to discuss sustainable development from an environmental perspective (Butler, 1999). Over the time, sustainability grew in importance and became increasingly embedded in tourism researc...

The number of tourist arrivals nearly trebled (+172%) in the period from January to July 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data published by the UNWTO’s Barometer, which effectively amounts to 60% recovery on pre-pandemic levels (UNWTO, 2022). This is a very positive sign for a sector key for the e...

The future of cities is important to everyone and to every sector of the economy, and not just tourism. Why is this? One reason is that the number of people living in urban areas is constantly increasing. Cities also produce most of the gross domestic product (GDP) in countries. Along with that, they are the greatest sources of greenhouse gases (GH...

Crisis events of various types (e.g., natural disasters, terrorism attacks, pandemics, economic downturns, political instability) can adversely affect the development of tourism destinations in the short to medium term. However, there needs to be more scholarly research on the classification attributes, spatial distribution, and impact structure of...

The main purpose of this chapter is to propose a conceptual model of transformational tourism. The transformational process for tourists is explored through an analysis of tourism experiences in Sri Lanka. Based on a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews, two themes were identified: (1) The healing and inspiration of Sri Lanka; and (2) self-refl...

Purpose – This article examines critically the literature on transformational tourism and explores a research agenda for a post-COVID future. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review of the transformational tourism literature is performed over a 42-year period from 1978 to 2020. Findings – Further research is required in terms of how t...

The sharing economy is at the centre of current debates involving new technologies, sustainability, big data and stakeholder engagement. This edited volume encourages new theoretical and empirical development on sharing economy studies in the service industries field.

Today, over half of the world’s population lives in cities and the United Nations has forecast this to increase to two thirds by 2050. Yet, despite the key role that global tourism cities play in urban tourism, relatively little research exists on the challenges they are increasingly facing. This entry explores the concept of the tourism city. It a...

Crisis management has developed as an established field of scholarly research in tourism over the last three decades. More recently, the concept of resilience has emerged within this body of literature as a longer-term planning process. However, significant knowledge gaps remain, especially regarding the strategic responses of small tourism busines...

This conceptual research article considers the concept of socially sustainable tourist behaviour. It explains the critical role of this behaviour in two parts (themes and behaviours), highlighting the lack of adequate research to date on this concept and the role of the social dimensions in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). T...

Purpose: This study investigated the consumer acceptance of robots in hotels before and after COVID-19, with a specific emphasis on whether COVID-19 had a significant effect on the acceptance of robots by hotel guests, and whether guests had higher levels of acceptance of hotel robots since the initial COVID-19 outbreak was brought under control in...

Medical, health and wellness tourism and travel represent a dynamic and rapidly growing mul-ti-disciplinary economic activity and field of knowledge. This research responds to earlier calls to integrate research on travel medicine and tourism. This research critically reviews the literature published on these topics over a 50-year period (1970 to 2...

This study provides a prompt understanding of actual travel behaviours during and after a real time pandemic building on an earlier published study of intended behaviours. Quantitative online survey data gathered during China’s first national multi-day holiday - Golden Week (October, 2020) - since the lifting of the country's stringent travel restr...

Destination image and city branding are accumulating a growing body of knowledge in urban studies and tourism literature. Although several visitor destination image models have been proposed, the most prevalent in Asia remains the comprehensive destination image model. This is the first research to test the applicability of this model beyond the Un...

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of online brand community (OBC) engagement on strategic aspects for the brand supporting the community. A total of 628 valid responses were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The authors tested the proposed model using structural equation modeling. The results show that OBC engag...

The moderation roles of empathy and perceived waiting time (PWT) on post-pandemic travel intentions have not as yet been investigated. This study of 684 Chinese resident respondents elicited how COVID-19 risk messages affected post-pandemic travel intentions. The results showed that people exposed to messages in the risk-amplifying frame had lower...

Although the significance of tourist risk perceptions is well documented, perspectives on risk associated with major pandemics such as COVID-19 remain poorly understood, especially from the viewpoint of destination crisis management. This research measured risk perceptions among Chinese residents related to travelling to Wuhan after the outbreak of...

Purpose - The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of socially- responsible human resource management (SRHRM) on employee fears of external threats during the COVID-19 outbreak, based on social support and event system theories. COVID-19 caused sharp profit declines and bankruptcies of hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies....

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of hotel safety leadership on employee safety behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mediation role of belief restoration and the moderation role of perceived risk between safety leadership and behavior were also investigated. Design/methodology/approach The COVID-19 outbreak serve...

The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities presents an up-to-date, critical and comprehensive overview of established and emerging themes in urban tourism and tourist cities. Offering socio-cultural perspectives and multidisciplinary insights from leading scholars, the book explores contemporary issues, challenges and trends. Organized into four par...

This chapter reviews some of the key parallels between the concepts of smart cities and smart tourism destinations. Evidence of new trends in the smart concept as well as the widening of the smart tourism destination concept to neighbouring regions of established smart tourism cities are discussed with reference to examples from practice in Europe...

Transport and tourism enjoy a very close relationship. This is especially the case when the means of travel turns into the tourism product itself; for instance, a scenic seaplane harbour take-off and landing in British Columbia (Yeoman, 2012). Similarly, from a tourism development perspective, transport also plays a key role in the planning and man...

Tourism destinations and destination management organisations (DMOs) today face a myriad of challenges. These include, but are not limited to, overtourism, rapidly changing trends in visitor behaviour and expectations, increased pressures on local resources, growing imbalances between the conservation of heritage and its exploitation for new genera...

Views from the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Tourism Cities As our International Journal of Tourism Cities approaches its third “birthday”, we asked the members of IJTC’s editorial advisory board to share their views on trends likely to affect the future of urban tourism over the next ten years and the role of the Interna...

As the Co-Editors-in-Chief of the International Journal of Tourism Cities (IJTC), the Editors of the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities have a deep and long-term interest in urban tourism research and tourism cities. The main aims of the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities are to:  Review contemporary issues, trends and challenges in urban tour...

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) by consumers is regarded as a key strategic goal for the reduction in transport-related air pollution levels. Although sales of EVs continue to rise year on year, generally, the attainment of the strategic goals set by various governments for the adoption of EVs remains a distant target. The purpose of this s...

Since its outbreak in Wuhan (China) in early January 2020, the COVID-19 strain of the novel coronavirus has spread rapidly across China and around the globe with a major resulting impact on travel and tourism. As a response to this outbreak, China was effectively the first country in the world to impose a mandatory nation-wide self-quarantine betwe...

The main purpose of this research was to illustrate how companies contributed to employee psychological capital in tourism during the COVID-19 crisis based on the conservation of resources theory (CoR). Psychological capital including self-efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism is a key source of support at work, especially during challenging even...

This study focuses on the embryonic stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, where most people affected opted to abide by the Chinese government’s national self-quarantine campaign. This resulted in major disruptions to one of the most common market processes in retail: food retailing. The research adopts the theory of planned behaviour to provide...

Full article (free access) available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-11-2019-0130 Purpose – Building on exponential trends of technological change affecting our cities and urban tourism destinations, avenues for further research and practice are explored in the context of smart tourism destinations. Design/methodology/approach – The literature o...

The sharing economy continues to develop in the tourism sector as a convenient - and even personalised - choice in the search for more authentic experiences by tourists with a wide range of disposable incomes (Paulauskaite et al., 2017). This breakthrough innovation has changed the tourism ecosystem as well as tourism destinations at all levels. Ne...

This special issue has now been published in the International Journal of Tourism Cities (Dec 2019). Its editorial article (free to access until 30 Jan 2020) can be downloaded at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJTC-12-2019-163/full/pdf?title=marketing-smart-tourism-cities-a-strategic-dilemma

There is a growing consensus among scholars in neuroscience with regards to the adverse effects of technology on the cognitive functions of the human brain (Loh and Kanai, 2016). These include the processing of emotions, memory and the storage of lived experiences. In fact, this has been shown to be particularly applicable to regular users of smart...

Festivals have come to play an important role in tourism, and managing their legacy has become an important challenge for governments and the events industry. Festivals typically take place over limited periods of time, but they also bring longer lasting legacies for the economy, local communities and the environment. Festival legacies are characte...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which are small retail shops, remain the largest employer in the western world. Yet the financing of their fixed and working capital investments remains under-researched. This study focuses on this topic by examining Eurozone wholesale and retail SMEs enterprises at the peak of the 2008 financial c...

SMEs remain the largest employer in the Western world. However, the financing of their fixed and working capital investments is one of the least understood processes in finance and policy research. Analysing six working hypotheses, this study focuses on this topic through the prism of eurozone wholesale and retail enterprises at the peak of the las...

SMEs remain the largest employer in the Western world. However, the financing of their fixed and working capital investments is one of the least understood processes in finance and policy research. Analysing six working hypotheses, this study focuses on this topic through the prism of eurozone wholesale and retail enterprises at the peak of the las...

Internal combustion engine vehicles are a key source contributing to urban air pollution. In order to reduce noxious emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, governments and the automobile industry have started promoting the adoption of electro mobility (EM) options over the last few years, albeit with limited success in terms of market penetration....

Article available free to download until 6 August 2019 at: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZEuMy5jOZE9d This research applies a unique conceptual model and methodology incorporating popularity, commitment, and virality to measure the social media engagement with residents and visitors of smart cities and how they communicate ‘smart’ elements and...

Spiritual capital is a key benefit that religion brings to people and societies (Malloch, 2005 &2008). As faith plays a critical role in Christian peoples’ life; it extends to the exchange of goods and services. However, how Christian entrepreneurs engage with their faith to further their business objectives has not been clearly understood. In this...

Is terrorism the ultimate test of a city brand's resiliency? How can tourism cities deal with fake news related to terror in social media? Should events and tourism destinations plan for cyber-terrorism? How does all this impact on travel planning and visitor expectations? This editorial article explores some of these topics and introduces the con...

Full article available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275117309769 Abstract For eighty years, UK government policy related to urban sprawl, town centres and high streets in England and Wales has been dominated by planning/land-use control. In the post-war period, retail developments have often been discussed in the lit...

Terrorism attacks in major cities (e.g. New York, Paris, Brussels, London, Barcelona) and their impact on the image of these global tourism destinations is a topic of growing interest to academics, industry practitioners and policy makers worldwide. The impact of recent terrorist attacks may extend beyond immediate image issues and to wider longer-...

Full article available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jtr.2134/full# Travellers are demanding authentic, experientially-oriented opportunities with more meaningful interactions with locals. The sharing economy has emerged partly as a response to these consumer trends with major potential impacts for tourism. This research investigat...

Full article available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275116305522 Although the knowledge about place branding and place management is growing, there is a substantial gap in the understanding of place branding among professionals responsible for the management of town and city centres, including private-public partnership...

This paper posits that the contemporary city should be viewed as a common space that needs the effort of many various stakeholders in order to satisfy the diverse (and changing) needs of its stakeholders. Yet, achieving this effectively requires active management and coordination of a range of activities. This paper discusses three examples of rece...

Hotel booking decisions are increasingly influenced by consumer feedback available on social media sites. Using data submitted by customers on TripAdvisor, this study analyzes the customer satisfaction ratings posted for 2,211 hotels. The study provides four key contributions to our knowledge on this subject. Firstly, a comparative analysis was con...

How important are visitors and tourists to Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)? How can BID strategies develop to maximise the contribution of visitors to the local economy? This report presents the initial findings of a new research project that aims to provide guidance for BID managers on how to engage with their local visitor economy.

This paper posits that the contemporary city should be viewed as a common space that needs the effort of many various stakeholders in order to satisfy the diverse (and changing) needs of its stakeholders. Yet, achieving this effectively requires active management and coordination of a range of activities. This paper discusses three examples of rece...

This paper outlines some of the key issues affecting town and city centres today, and provides glimpses of new challenges and opportunities for researchers and practitioners in this field. These include the strategic positioning of town centres, managing the evening and night-time economies effectively, the growing role of the experience economy to...

Purpose – Dark tourism and, more specifically, visitor experiences at Nazi concentration camp memorials are emerging fields of research in tourism studies and destination management. This paper builds on this growing body of knowledge and focuses on the World War II Nazi concentration camp at Dachau in Germany to explore the psychological impact of...

Paper presented at the 3rd Institute of Place Management Conference, Poznan (Poland), 6-9 May, 2015 Abstract The management of town centres and marketing of destinations is a constantly evolving field of practice-based knowledge subject to influences at local, regional, national and global levels. In line with this, previous studies (e.g. Molinil...

The management of town centres and marketing of destinations is a constantly evolving field of practice-based knowledge subject to influences at local, regional, national and global levels. In line with this, previous studies (e.g. Molinillo-Jimenez, 2001; Seisdedos, 2007) have shown that there is a multitude of approaches to the management of plac...

The effect of the global economic downturn of 2008 on town and city centres in the UK - and much of the western world - has been swift, enduring and a major challenge to accepted wisdom in the management of town centres. Not surprisingly, issues such as economic resilience and its reincarnations in the form of future proofing or even town centre pe...

International approaches to city centre management and place management practice have evolved considerably over the last 40 years. Parallel to this, there has been a rising level of interest among academics and practitioners alike in the concept of place branding. This paper explores some of the parallels and knowledge gaps in the development of bo...

Urban regeneration – which in the UK has traditionally favoured physical revitalisation as opposed to more integrated strategic approaches adopted elsewhere – has evolved considerably in its outlook and philosophy. Place-making, for instance, has been linked to parallel place-branding processes. 3 Bradley et al. 4 argue that much of the supposed tr...

A recent special issue of Scientific American proclaimed on its front cover 'We have seen a brighter future, and it is urban'. Indeed, if current projections are anything to go by, 70 per cent of the global population will be urban by 2050. Although our changing climate, war, famine, global pandemics, potential major environmental disasters and maj...

As this issue goes to print, our Journal of Town & City Management celebrates its first birthday. Since June 2010, not much has changed in the world . . . or has it? In our special editorial with views from JTCM's Editorial Board on international trends in city management, 1 few could have predicted quite what a test the European Union would face i...

Urban revitalisation has been key to urban planning and the management of cities in Poland since the rebuilding of the country after World War II. It is only relatively recently, however, that strategic interpretations and practical applications of this concept have embraced its multifaceted nature beyond purely physical regeneration. Similarly, to...

Purpose Il Cuore di Novi is an example of an innovative way of regenerating and revitalising a town centre in Italy in the face of intense competition from large out‐of‐town retail and residential developements. This has been achieved through a combination of research surveys linked to an organic approach to marketing strategy and effective engagem...

This paper focuses on the perceptions of Andalusian retailers towards the current state of small independent retailing in their city/town and their feelings about the future. The paper reports on the findings of 70 structured interviews with small urban independent retailers covering retail districts in the town/city centres of Almeria, Ubrique and...

Boulby Mine, at 25 years of age, is one of the UK's mature deep mining operations and is the country's only potash producer. Since its difficult beginnings in the early 1970s Cleveland Potash has established itself as a reliable supplier with a 55% share of the UK's potash market and a constantly expanding customer base overseas. A brief review of...