Evaluating Tourist Destinations & Trends: A Virgin Holidays Analysis

This report provides an analysis of tourist destinations, with a focus on the United Kingdom and India, for Virgin Holidays. It examines visitor statistics, revenue generation, and future trends in the tourism sector. The report also delves into the cultural, physical, and social characteristics of tourist destinations, comparing leading destinations like the UK with emerging ones like India. Furthermore, it discusses issues affecting the popularity of tourist destinations and explores the potential for responsible tourism to enhance host communities. The analysis includes data on visitor numbers, spending, and the impact of cultural and leisure experiences on tourism. Desklib offers a variety of resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in their academic pursuits.

VIRGIN HOLIDAYS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1..............................................................................................................................................4
LO1...................................................................................................................................................4
1.1 THE MAIN VISITORS DESTINATION AND GENERATORS IN TERMS OF TOURIST NUMBER
AND REVENUE OBTAINED............................................................................................................4
1.2 STATISTICS TO DETERMINE TOURISM DESTINATION TRENDS AND PREDICT FUTURE
TRENDS........................................................................................................................................7
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................10
LO2.................................................................................................................................................10
2.1 CULTURAL, PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL FEATURES OF TOURIST DESTINATION.........................10
2.2 COMPARISON OF BETWEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF EMERGENT AND LEADING VISITOR
DESTINATIONS...........................................................................................................................13
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................15
LO3.................................................................................................................................................15
3.1, 3.2 PRESENTATION............................................................................................................15
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................32
LO4.................................................................................................................................................32
4.1 ISSUES THAT AFFECT THE POPULARITY OF TOURIST DESTINATIONS..................................32
4.2 THE POTENTIAL FOR RESPONSIBLE TOURISM TO ENHANCE THE HOST COMMUNITY AT
WORLDWIDE TOURIST DESTINATIONS......................................................................................34
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................36
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................37
2

3

INTRODUCTION
This assignment is based on the various tourist destinations that support the economy of its
nations. Tourism not only helps to generate more revenue for any country but also helps to
increase the job opportunities for the local community and help them to generate more source
of capital. Also, government plays an important role in protecting and promoting these tourist
destinations at international level. This assignment will help to analyze the several factors that
are associated with travel and tourism. For any country, domestic tourism is advantageous as it
helps in generating more capital for the country that helps in more development of that nation.
This report will help to understand about the countries like France, Europe, UK etc. that are
declared as developed countries along with leading visitor’s destination while countries like
India, Thailand etc. are said to be developing countries as these countries are still struggling
with its resources and develop their country as developed tourist destination. This report
explains the factors that are present and influences in both the manner to this tourist
destination. Also, here discussion is done of the several tourist attractions that become a
reason to appeal the tourist by its features and attract them to that destination. Along with the
development of tourist destination is based on the capital obtained and the total tourist visited
that destination.
4

TASK 1
LO1
1.1 THE MAIN VISITORS DESTINATION AND GENERATORS IN TERMS OF
TOURIST NUMBER AND REVENUE OBTAINED
There are several tourist destinations in the United Kingdom and in all the parts of the world
that are the reason to gain the attention of visitors no matter what age group, gender they
belong to. It has been analyzed by the recent survey investigation by the UNWTO the reason
behind the visitors to travel to the UK is for major three purpose leisure tourist, business tourist
and tourist who visit to meet there friends and relatives (Paoli, et al. 2017). The strategy team
of the Virgin Holidays along with its product analyst member wants to evaluate and understand
about the extent of worldwide visitor’s destination including the tourism in the United Kingdom
so that it could be easy for them to understand about the factors that are linked to travel and
tourism. It is a deemed fact that any country generates its major part of revenue by the number
of tourists visiting that destination. This clearly indicates that the capital that is obtained is
directly proportional to the number of visitors visiting every year. Also, apart from the United
Kingdom, there are several nations where every year the visitors visit so feel and acknowledge
the beauty of those destinations that are present in different parts of the globe.
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FIGURE 1: UNTWO TOURISM TOWARDS 2030
{SOURCE: http://mrsatopic.com/2014/10/ebola-lands-in-dallas-texas-welcome-to-our-global-
village/}
The evaluation that is made by the Virgin Holidays tour operators it could be concluded that the
United Kingdom is the country where there is the maximum number of tourist visiting every
year whereas Germany is the nation with a maximum generation of visitors. There are many
places in the UK which people like to travel to and understand about those destinations and
culture such as Cotswold, Stirling Castle, Victorian and Albert Museum, Black pool etc. except
for the United Kingdom the other frequently visited tourist destinations are: Franc, Spain, US,
Chain, Paris, Italy, India, Thailand etc. (Highlights, 2015). A chart is presented below that
explains the difference in the number of visitors visiting variable countries and the total capital
generated by the country from the travel and tourism industry:
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NATION TOTAL
VISITORS
VISITED IN
2015 (IN
MILLIONS)
TOTAL VISITORS
VISITED IN 2016
(IN MILLIONS)
AN
APPROXIMATE
SPENDING (IN
BILLION)
DIFFERENCE IN
BOTH THE YEARS
(IN %)
SPAIN 68.5 75.6 60.3 7.1
The UNITED
KINGDOM
34.4 35.8 39.6 -1.4
INDIA 14.6 13.3 22.4 9.7
CHINA 56.9 59.3 44.4 5.3
GERMANY 35.0 35.6 37.4 1.7
{Source:http://people.unica.it/carlamassidda/files/2017/06/UNWTO_TourismHighlights_20
17.pdf}
The above chart displays the observation made by the tour operator Virgin Holidays in the
difference in the entrance of visitors in the years 2015 and 2016 in the following countries. This
chart also displays the income obtained by the travel and tourism sector in variant countries.
There is an increment in the finical status of the country by the availability of the heritage and
cultural sites in the variable areas of the country. Such aspects not only help the country but
also support tour operators like Virgin Holidays to plan about some packages and discount
offers to please the visitors towards choosing their company.
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1.2 STATISTICS TO DETERMINE TOURISM DESTINATION TRENDS AND
PREDICT FUTURE TRENDS
It is noted in the last few years the Tourism in the United Kingdom is increasing in a tremendous
amount with a constant proportion. There is nothing wrong to say that there are many
attraction g features in the UK that drives the attention of the visitors to the UK as a tourist
destination. The factors that attract the attention of the people are its night activities, party
life, cultural sites, customs, events, concerts, Heritage, cathedrals, old and architectural
buildings etc. (Mariani, et al. 2014). Above all the discussed key elements the major factor that
catches the attention of the millions of visitors is the cultural activities of United Kingdom. The
main reasons for the leisure tourism in the United Kingdom are as follows:
 Chain of fast food restaurants
 Library
 Theaters
 Historic Monuments
 Fun Events
 Campaign or mount climbing
 Sports programs
 Short holidays for change
 Nightclubbing and parting in disco, pubs
 Theme park
 Art gallery, museums
 Cathedrals
So the current trend has suggested the cultural and leisure experience within in the UK is the
main elements which gain the maximum tourist in these countries. It was estimated that on an
average of 40-50% of the tourist that visited for leisure to London visited mostly its cultural
sites those are historic buildings, monuments, art galleries, museums, churches, heritage and
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cultural mansion, castle etc. It is also noted that the people belonging to age group in between
30-40 years are the one who constantly at times found visiting UK the being fascinated by its
cultural and heritage destinations.
FIGURE 2: KEY FEATURES OF PEOPLE VISITING LONDON
{Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/691938/event-tourism-spending-distribution-
by-visitor-type-london-uk/}
In the past few years, there is seen a drastic variation in the travel and tourism sector aligning
with the changing trends. So by the data collected by the Virgin Holidays; strategy team the
tourism sector is the one that contributes the most to the nation in order to improve the
country. In order to understand the trends in future in the tourism sector, it is necessary to
evaluate the tourist attraction of the UK. The future trend is expected in the tourism industry
to reduce the number of unemployed people in the country. The rising trends in tourism that is
the main reason of people travelling to the United Kingdom are noted to them because of the
medical tourism which is around 150000 visitors in the year 2016 and is expected to grow up to
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8% in the upcoming five years (de la Hoz-Correa, et al. 2018). The reason for London to grow as
medical tourism is its extra good facilities to the patients and the use of the advanced
technologies to cure the patients that result in 80% of its visitors satisfied by the medical
approach. The other two rising future trends that are observed are dark tourism where visitors
want to experience the places where some incident has taken place that took the lives of many
and the next is responsive tourism where visitors sitting in a ship or crew will experience all the
tourist destination of that pace without even visiting that place. So it is noted that tourism
business is growing frequently and the creativity in the services with enhancement in the
facilities given by the tour operators like Virgin “Holidays must be praised by the tourists all
around the globe (Edgell Sr, 2016).
10

TASK 2
LO2
2.1 CULTURAL, PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL FEATURES OF TOURIST DESTINATION
The tourism sector consists of many types of tourism such as cultural tourism that mainly
focuses on the cultural aspects of the tourist destination. The main reason for the visitors
getting attracted towards the tourist destination of UK is the cultural background of its tourist
destination. The cultural tourism is the reason that gains the attention of billion of tourist and
so to make the appeal to the tourist the strategic team along with its product analyst of Virgin
Holidays needs to analyze about the social, physical and cultural characteristics of the leading
and the emergent tourist nations. And to make the comparison the country as leading tourist
destination which is taken into consideration is the UK and the developing nation taken in India:
The major element of the tourist destination with regards to the UK is given below:
SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS
The people in the UK are separated on the basis of their class or must say the living style. This
segmentation is done on the grounds of the individual’s educational qualification, money or
monetary status, job profile etc. (Aitchison, et al 2014). Not only the citizens of London but also
the topmost authorities are separated on the grounds of above-mentioned factors. So the
strategic team of Virgin holidays also divides the consumers of London on these grounds and
makes the tactics to gain more customers.
CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS
The cultural aspects of any visitors destination are of the major value as it consists factors like
the language, tradition, music, art, dance, customs, beliefs of that place and people. The major
population of the London is Christian. The main factors of such people consist of activities such
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as dance, spoken language, festivals, foods, poetic literature etc. the culture of London is the
assortment of fun-loving atmosphere along with it the love for science and technology. For
example, the museums of London like British Museum, science museum, a museum of London
organizes several events, workshops for the visitors using the technological methods that gain
mostly the people who are in love with science and technology.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
The most common practice of the visitors in the UK is walking; the visitors enjoy the sites in
London by walking to places such as lakes, mountains, rivers, hills etc. There are many beaches
in the UK that are most loved by a tourist who comes to spend some leisure time in London.
The physical attraction of UK includes Jurassic Coast that is one of the biggest heritage sites,
Peak district national park, New Forest Park etc. (Bærenholdt, et al. 2017)
The major element of the tourist destination with regards to India is given below:
SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS
India is the country that is most known for its diversified nature as it has people who have
different beliefs, culture, customs and people of all the tradition resides here which impacts on
the socio-culture nature and living standards of the people. So the tour operators like Virgin
Holidays focuses mainly on planning packages that offer more experience of the tradition and
cultural site to the international visitors.
CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS
India is a country where people of many caste and culture lives and so the cultural features of
this country cannot be specified and with this great power of divergence yet a lot of unity in the
nation India is trying hard to be leading visitors destination (Benur and Bramwell, 2015 ). The
visitors visited here will learn and experience a lot about the culture of not a specified region
but of the diverse regions.
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PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
India in its physical appearance is segmented mainly into three portions such as Plains, Hills,
and Plateaus. As the country is so divergent so the physical characteristics of this country are
not limited to beliefs of one segment it consists of all the beliefs like Mosques, holy place,
cathedrals etc. The evidence of India as one of the most beautiful places to visit by tourist is the
Taj Mahal in Agra which is positioned in the Seven Wonders of the World.
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2.2 COMPARISON OF BETWEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF EMERGENT AND
LEADING VISITOR DESTINATIONS
Based on the previous section of this assignment this section will evaluate a comparison
between London as leading tourist destination and India as an emergent one. Here is the table
is given below that will compare both the countries with context to its features:
MAIN FEATURES LEADING VISITORS
DESTINATION LONDON IN UK
EMERGENT VISITORS
DESTINATION INDIA
EXPLANATION The term leading or
developed country is
explained as a country that is
more finically established,
industrialized, high in
technologies, infrastructure,
resources, GDP (Canavan,
2016).
Whereas the emergent
visitor's destination is
explained as the country
which is lacked behind with
other countries in terms of
monetary establishment,
GDP, resources, lifestyle,
technologies and the nation
has more people residing in it
as compared to the
generation of capital.
CULTURAL APPEAL The cultural appeal of the
London that attracts millions
of people is its literature,
history, music and art. The
major cultural attractions
here are London museums,
Science museum.
The cultural attractions of
India represent the stories of
past and main aspects of its
history such as the Hawa
Mahal, Taj Mahal, City Palace
etc. The cultural background
of India consists of sports,
folks, dance etc.
FINANCIAL GROWTH The finical growth of London The capital that is mainly
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is enormously developed in
accordance to GDP.
obtained in India is due to its
primary activity of farming in
the agricultural field.
SOCIAL DIVERGENCE The social divergence is less in
London as the mainly
consisted society here is
Christian and is divided into
variant subclasses.
The subdivisions present in
the population of India is
limited to specific locations
within the country (Page,
2014).
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TASK 3
LO3
3.1, 3.2 PRESENTATION
Slide 1
16

Slide 2
17

Slide 3
18

Slide 4
This slide will represent about the leading visitors destination that is taken into concern in the
context to UK and the emergent tourist destination that will be taken in the concern will be
India. As a Part of the tourist advisor in the travel company Virgin Holidays it is the foremost
necessity to understand about the recently developing and developed tourist nations around
the globe. The variant factors that will be needed in order to make the comparison between UK
and India are factors like social, monetary, cultural physical etc.
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Slide 5
This slide indicates about the statistical figure for the factors like total arrivals of visitors, GDP
contribution in both the countries by tourism. It is concluded by the slide above that there were
around 39.9 Million visitors visited UK in the year 2017 and is predicted to increase by
approximately 4.4% in the upcoming year according to the latest report whereas in India the
total number of visitors entered the country was 7.5 million in 2017. UK contributes to
approximately 15% in the GDP of the country while India contributes up to 7.5%.
20

Slide 6
This slide is the indication about the most essential factor that is the income generation on
which grounds the differentiation of the emergent tourist destination and leading tourist
destination is made. It is much obvious that as much as there will be increment in the number
of visitors there will be automatically more income generation. UK’s tourism sector provides
around £115 billion in income generation while in India it is around US $ 150 billion.
21

Slide 7
This slide is based on the basis characteristics that support the tourism of any country like its
availability of resources, culture, attractive locations, and monetary stability. The aesthetical
elements consist of living style, fashion, the past times, language, art etc. and the resources can
be evaluated by its powerful monitory status UK is leading tourist destination and has plenty of
resources while India is still struggling and is emergent tourist destination faces problem in the
supply of sufficient resources as compared to the demand.
22

Slide 8
This slide is the depiction of the most famous and majorly visited sites of UK which are the
major attractions for the tourist visiting to United Kingdom such as:
o Dartmoor National Park
o Cotswolds
o Stirling Castle
o Black Pool
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Slide 9
• The first picture in this slide is of the Dartmoor National Park
• The second picture in this slide is of Cotswolds
• The third picture in this slide is of Stirling Castle
• The fourth picture in this slide is of Black Pool
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Slide 10
This slide is the depiction of the most famous and majorly visited sites of UK which are the
major attractions for the tourist visiting to India such as:
 Amer Fort
 Quatb Minar
 Hawa Mahal
 City Palace
25

Slide 11
• The first picture in this slide is of the Amer Fort
• The second picture in this slide is of Quatb Minar
• The third picture in this slide is of Hawa Mahal
• The fourth picture in this slide is of City Palace
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Slide 12
This slide is the representation of the features of visitor’s attraction and the reason it appeals to
the tourist in regards to Cuba, Philippines, and Vietnam. In any country government is the most
significant working body that supports tourism. The main features of any tourist attraction are
the only reason for its appealing to number of tourist within the country.
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Slide 13
This slide is the depiction of the intervention of the government in the area of tourism. The
government of the countries like Cuba, Philippines, Vietnam is essential in promoting the
tourism in such countries by applying its various laws and policies that may not provide much
discomfort to the visitors.
28

Slide 14
The other aspect that may influence the appeal of the tourist attraction is the criminal acts that
should be considered and the unethical approach to conduct any activity. The most essential
factor is the safety of the visitors forms any criminal activities. As the government of Vietnam,
Cuba has special arrangements to provide its global visitors proper security so that they may not
have any fear in visiting such place.
29

Slide 15
The slide here depicts about some extra characteristics that are in regards to the tourist
destination they are:
 Marketing Tactics
 Resources available
 Legal aspects
30

Slide 16
31

Slide 17
32

TASK 4
LO4
4.1 ISSUES THAT AFFECT THE POPULARITY OF TOURIST DESTINATIONS
FIGURE 3: ISSUES THAT INFLUENCE THE REPUTATION OF VISITOR DESTINATIONS
{SOURCE: http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.tourism.20150402.01.html}
Country's development receives sufficient amount of help from the travel and tourism as I
support in enhancing the economics of the country by generating more and more revenue.
There are various different elements that affect the popularity of visitor's destination in both
positive and negative ways (Wachowiak, 2016). Here are few of those factors listed that left an
adequate impact on the tourist destinations:
TERRORISM: The factor that is majorly affecting the popularity of tourist destination n negative
ways is terrorism that is in many forms now like attacks, murder, robbery, kidnapping,
threatening by the terrorists to either the visitors or the local community etc. This makes so
obvious that visitors fear to visit such places and mostly avoid visiting such destinations which
in daily headlines due to frequent terrorist activities. Such the terrorist attack on November
13th, 2015 in France has affected the tourism in a tremendous way and the tourism rates have
fallen majorly after this incident (Morakabati and Kapuściński, 2016).
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RECESSION IN ECONOMY: The next factor that has a negative influence on the popularity of
visitor’s destination is due to declining in the financial system because as there is a rise in
recession in a finical system the prices of raw materials, goods, facilities, transportation arises
automatically that obstruct the tourism plans of the visitors.
POLITICAL FACTORS: The tourism is adversely affected by the effect of the unbalanced political
parties. As any balance political body may act effectively in planning and creating appropriate
laws and regulations regarding tourism whereas instability will lead to misbalance and visitors
might hesitate to understand the functioning as they belong to some other country which will
negatively affect the popularity of specific tourist destination (Mason, 2015).
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: Visitors destination involves the natural elements in it and with
the enhancement in the travel and tourism of any country it put a negative impact on it. The
increasing tourists number has given rise to major pollution problem and has increased in the
level of pollution in many countries and also some other activities that have affected the
atmosphere and so tourists do not want to visit places that is more of pollution as it affects
their health and this is also one of the reasons that affect the popularity of the tourist
destination.
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4.2 THE POTENTIAL FOR RESPONSIBLE TOURISM TO ENHANCE THE HOST
COMMUNITY AT WORLDWIDE TOURIST DESTINATIONS
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM: Responsible tourism is a type of tourism that is concerned with the
impacts of tourism and is used to plan methods that may reduce or minimize the negative
effects of any factors like financial, environmental, social, and cultural elements and focuses
more towards improving the positive effects of any type of tourism on the different tourist
places. It proves to be advantageous as it helps in generating more economy and also helps the
local residents and enhance the life of the community (Caruana, et al. 2014). This is the reason
why now a day’s many tour operators like Virgin Holidays is supporting and promoting
responsible tourism.
The Virgin Holidays has its long networking in several nations such as the USA, the Caribbean,
Africa, Middle East, India, Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Far East, Australia and the South
Pacific. And so it becomes a necessary part for the team of Virgin Holidays to study clearly the
several factors of responsible tourism that is a part of tourism majorly in order to enhance the
host society in the international and domestic tourist places. The major objective of Virgin
Tourism is to satisfy its customers by providing them such offers and packages which are within
there financial capacities and is justified to what the customers needed who want to travel and
experience a different part of the world and explore variable tourist destinations. The Virgin
Holiday should make the plans in a way that it provides its customer with the best experience
of visiting any tourist destination by watching the fauna and vegetation beauty but by not
harming the animals and causing damage to them (Goodwin, 2016).
The responsible tourism increases the roles and responsibilities of the local people of a specific
tourist destination. It is believed that the responsible tourism is one of the best types of
tourism that is offered by the local community to its international or domestic tourist so as to
fulfil the requirements of the visitors by giving them the best experience and premium facilities.
The Virgin Holiday is one of the recognized and famous travelling operators and so the
35

company must plan there working in a way that it could manage its image in both the markets
local as well as global as it serves worldwide. Virgin Holidays provides on an average up to 12
million local and international visitors to around 125 destinations worldwide. This brings the
company with great responsibilities and scope to improve much more and suggest the adoption
of responsible tourism to the countries where it has its facilities and achieve all the aims and
objectives of the organisation in an effective manner.
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CONCLUSION
This report discusses the different travel and tourism places in the UK as well as many countries
all over the world. By the end of this assignment, it could be concluded that developing travel
sector render several advantages of their inhabitant country like improvement in revenue
generation, enhancement in income generation, improvement in job chances and makes an
effort to strengthen the economy of the nation. This assignment evaluates about developed
countries such as France, UK, Europe etc and these countries are developed because they have
taken the advantage of the developed technologies and countries like India, Thailand etc. are
the developing nations that are also trying hard to develop in the tourism industry.
37

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tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 46, pp.115-129.
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trends in medical tourism research: A co-word analysis. Tourism Management, 65,
pp.200-211.
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tourism destinations: Key issues and current trends. Journal of Destination Marketing &
Management, 2(4), pp.269-272.
11. Mason, P., 2015. Tourism impacts, planning and management. Routledge.
12. Morakabati, Y. and Kapuściński, G., 2016. Personality, risk perception, benefit sought
and terrorism effect. International Journal of Tourism Research, 18(5), pp.506-514.
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UNWTO_TourismHighlights_2017.pdf}
14. Page, S.J., 2014. Tourism management. Routledge.
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15. Paoli, C., Vassallo, P., Dapueto, G., Fanciulli, G., Massa, F., Venturini, S. and Povero, P.,
2017. The economic revenues and the emergy costs of cruise tourism. Journal of Cleaner
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