Within the dynamic global tourism industry, understanding the reasons for a destination's competitiveness is essential in order to enhance its performance, facilitate more effective destination management, and inform its overall sustainable economic development. This paper applies Kim and Wicks' (2010) tourism cluster development model to Bali -a small, mature destination in the developing economy of Indonesia. It demonstrates that there are complex relationships between: (i) cluster actors; (ii) barriers preventing effective networking; and (iii) the significance of these interactions for the local host community. This paper contributes to the debate by addressing new and different attributes and actors such as transnational corporations (TNCs), universities, and the concept of co-opetition, as being significant attributes in Kim and Wicks' initial model. Through a qualitative approach involving n=23 semi-structured interviews, 2 this paper illustrates intricate issues and relationships that are identified in Bali, a small mature destination. Purposive sampling methods were employed to generate a range of key stakeholders who informed our understanding of 'cluster actors' in Kim and Wicks' terms. The systematic examination of these key tourism elements provides a detailed analysis of the destination's strengths and weaknesses, and a more nuanced understanding of what facilitates a destination's competitive position.Key words: destination competitiveness; cluster theory; impacts; island tourism; Indonesia As part of this, we explore the elements within Porter's Diamond (reformulated by Kim and Wicks); the relationship of cluster actors ( Figure 1); and how such factors affect the competitiveness of a small developing destination. This analysis illustrates complex relationships and linkages between cluster actors; barriers preventing effective networks; and highlights the significance of those interactions, which leads to wider understanding of the socioeconomic implications for the host community. Our analysis enables tourism policymakers to develop a more comprehensive understanding to enable strategic planning; helps identify destination strengths and weaknesses; as well as identification of barriers to progress.The paper is divided into six sections. First, we explore and critique the key literature relating to competitiveness models, rationalising the application of the Kim and Wicks (2010) model for this research. Second, a description of tourism in Bali is presented, followed by the methodology and research approach used. The main findings are analysed, highlighting destination competitiveness issues specifically for Bali, followed by a discussion. The paper concludes noting how this framework provides academics and policymakers with a useable tool to understand certain complexity, destination dynamics, and main actors. Literature Review of Competitiveness modelsMost academic work on destination competitiveness models (Dwyer and

The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the travel and tourism industry, economies, livelihoods, public services, and opportunities globally. This is also observed in the small country of Brunei. As one of the few countries that have successfully mitigated COVID-19 transmissions, Brunei is slowly rebuilding its tourism industry through its community-based tourism (CBT). Following Sharma et al.’s resilience-based framework for reviving the tourism industry post‑COVID-19 established in 2021, this study incorporates responses from semi-structured interviews with 16 local CBT owners on the challenges, the management, and the CBT initiatives during the height of the pandemic until today. These initiatives include diversifying more tour packages and utilising local resources and products. Despite the lockdown imposed by the government, which suspended businesses and restricted all travelling, local CBT operations flourished, generated more income for the owners, and created job opportunities for the community. Such efforts have caused the public to appreciate local cultures, the environment, and ultimately increase CBT experiences in the country. While shedding light on Brunei’s unique management of its tourism industry during the pandemic, this paper also demonstrates theoretical and conceptual contributions to the recent literature of resilient and transformational tourism and provide suggestions on how to manage CBT operations during these challenging times.

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This paper is particularly focused on film-induced tourism investigation as well as its cultural promotion and cultural change effect that impact on both the tourist destinations and the tourist demands. The case studies include the famous Transylvania, Romania as well as the two comparative destinations in Southeast Asia namely Bali in Indonesia, and Penang in Malaysia. Although tourism planners have limited control over the content of the films produced in the respective destinations and how the destinations are being portrayed in films, it is reflected in our studies that, the imaginary, visual representations of the destinations, albeit negative or distorted from their original identities, are still useful and viable to promote the tourist destinations. The three discussion cases form up the stratification of multiple stages in terms of implementing film-induced tourism strategies to promote their destinations, spanning from one of the oldest film-induced tourist destinations Transylvania, to an over decade-long film-induced destination Ubud in Bali, to a sprouting film-induced destination George Town in Penang. Such a stratification of three comparable destinations leads to both the vertical and horizontal evaluation of the effectiveness of film-induced tourism strategies. Hence, a methodology of multiple-case study with mixed-methods characterised by a set of differing qualitative research approaches will be adopted to the three distinctive destinations, respectively. Emerging markets require new techniques and strategies of marketing, especially in the unsettled post-COVID-19 era. Findings may be useful to destination managers in planning an effective destination image strategy in order to achieve the most sustainable positive impacts and aligning the films’ image of the destination with the desired image and the potential audience reach.

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Film has been the main medium for accessing the mass population that can play a significant role in influencing travel or tourist decision making. It is argued that film-induced tourism delivers a permanent image of the destination and could be a more economical strategy for destinations to promote themselves. This paper, therefore, looks at the potentiality of film-induced tourism in Brunei. This paper will illustrate case studies, e.g. Matamata, a small town in New Zealand from Peter Jackson's The Hobbits trilogy, that have made it a popular tourist destination that attracts travelers from around the world. Furthermore, local Bruneian films such as Ada Apa Dengan Rina, Rina 2 as well as a horror trilogy made by Tutong-based filmmaker Abdul Zainidi will also be discussed. This paper will explore whether Bruneian local production films trigger any interests in visiting the film's portrayed locations and whether filming in a certain attraction has different impacts on tourists' decision making. In addition, based on a survey and semistructured interviews, this paper will also investigate if film genre or character/story affects the typology of tourists to understand the connection between the tourism and film industry better. Analysis of this study will be twofold: one from data collection while the other from textual analysis.

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