Scientific research into the effect of tourist traffic in a tourist area have shown that the excessive concentration of tourist traffic leads to overcrowding in attractive locations, over-advertising, and aggressive commercialization, which lower the aesthetic quality of tourists’ experiences and result in the degradation of natural and cultural resources. The effect of excessive tourist numbers is an increase in the price of services, rental fees, and real estate. In historical cities, it causes the gentrification of historical districts. One of the social effects of an increase in tourist numbers is a change in attitude amongst residents towards tourists. This change is dependent on how residents perceive the positive and negative effects of tourism. The appearance of a negative attitude among residents towards tourists is a result of exceeding the social carrying capacity limits, that is, the ability to accept changes as they take place. This article assesses the attitudes of residents and tourist service providers in Kraków with regard to increasing tourist traffic and the ongoing process of change in the cityscape leading to the gentrification of districts most often visited by tourists. On the basis of a study of 518 respondents, including 371 city residents and 147 representatives of the tourist industry (hotel owners, restaurateurs, and tourist service providers), an assessment is made of their attitudes towards the specific problems of tourism development in Kraków. The research results indicate a variety of attitudes among interested parties, thus confirming the research hypothesis that actors display varied approaches with regard to the further development of tourism in Kraków. The conclusions drawn could prove useful in shaping the city’s policy on tourism according to the idea of sustainable development, by taking into consideration the current and future needs of all interested parties.
The purpose of the study was to collect opinions of Krakow’s tourism entrepreneurs about the impact of the pandemic on their activities and their expectations concerning tools of marketing communication that could facilitate recovery. The respondents were asked to assess the drop in sales of tourism services, their opinions concerning the prospect of a tourist traffic recovery, possible measures that could facilitate the recovery and what they expected the local government to do in this respect. In recent years Kraków has become one of Poland’s most recognisable destinations, benefiting from increasing revenues generated by a systematically growing number of visitors. This growth has even prompted concerns about overtourism in Kraków. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the entire supply chain in the tourism industry, leaving the city empty of tourists and causing a financial breakdown for many companies. In order to diagnose the scale of the crisis triggered by the pandemic, the authors conducted a CAWI survey of Kraków based tourism entrepreneurs in the middle of March. The development of the epidemic and steps taken to protect the tourism sector from mid-March to the end of June 2020 were used to validate views formulated by the respondent. The results of the survey reveal the level of economic losses anticipated by tourism entrepreneurs and their predicted occurrence over time, opinions about the likely sequence in which particular tourism products in Kraków are going to recover, as well as expectations concerning the tools of marketing communication that could facilitate the recovery.
The tendency of enterprises to use open innovations can be seen in the literature in many areas of research and practical application. However, the use of the concept of open innovation in local administration entities is less noticeable. The research gap in this area prompts the authors to examine such a tendency among city representatives in the example of the Tourism Friendly Cities (TFC) group. TFC is a group of nine tourism destinations that are also European cities struggling with the impact of modern tourism. They take part in the URBACT program under the European Territorial Cooperation program. The goal of the article is to identify the basic problems of TFCs with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess the propensity of TFC representatives to transfer innovative solutions in the form of open innovation. The article presents findings based on interviews with 104 experts from these cities, consisting of representatives of the public and private sectors. Research results indicate that the key problems of modern tourism in TFCs include constraints related to the lack of parking spaces, high rents and high prices of land, and short-term rental housing. The experts recommend measures to increase resilience and competitiveness initiated by business owners and at the initiative of the local administration. Key tools in this regard include and local community communication and engagement, creating attractions that benefit both residents and visitors, and measuring and monitoring tourism. In all, 92.8% of the experts believe that the right solution for the development of methods and tools for stakeholder cooperation in TFCs is to share the developed solutions in the form of open innovation.
The freezing of economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused damage not only on the sales side but also on the labor market due to the outflow of staff from companies specializing in the organization of meetings. The return of the meetings industry sector to the development path will involve skillful change management, including in the area of competencies and skills. To inventory and assess the competencies of employees in the meetings industry, this study was carried out among specialized enterprises in the meetings industry in Poland, Hungary, and Ireland, on samples of two research groups, i.e. the Director General (CEO) and operational employees based on questionnaires and individual in-depth interviews (IDI). The obtained results allowed to establish the hierarchy of self-assessment of own managerial competencies, assessment of the competencies of the CEO by the employees, areas of increasing team competencies, and areas of staff development in the sector shortly, contributing to the recovery from the pandemic crisis. Raising the competencies and qualifications of employees is perceived as one of the most powerful tools for overcoming the pandemic crisis, obtaining 68% positive indications among CEOs in Poland, 77% indications in Hungary, and 84% in Ireland. In all analyzed countries, the meetings industry is indicated as a strategic product of the tourist market. Among the planned long-term actions aimed at overcoming the pandemic crisis, increasing employee competencies is perceived as an opportunity for the companies operating the meetings industry sector (90% in Poland, and 80% in Hungary and Ireland). AcknowledgmentThis study was done in frames of the project “Vocational competences in MICE sector” co-financed in frames of European Union program Erasmus + as part of the program The Dialog for Transformation, Erasmus+, 2020–2021.
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