Purpose – The impact of tourism is an ongoing research interest among scholars as it is directly related to the tourism development process. Residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts can indicate ...development guidelines if planners pay attention to them. Design – We examine residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts and their support for sustainable tourism development in two similar tourism destinations, Portorož and Opatija, based on their similarity, closeness, and connectedness through time to the present. Approach – There is an urgent need for a strategic development change for both destinations, which are coping with typical negative impacts of tourism, including seasonality, noise and, overcrowding. Methodology – Four hundred and forty-six residents surveyed indicated that tourism development is an important issue. Two databases were combined in order to conduct inference data analysis using SPSS 21 statistical software. Depending on the type of variables, t-test and ANOVA were used for the analysis in addition to the descriptive statistics. Findings – Residents point out a clear and strong message for the importance of their inclusion and active involvement in the decision-making processes of sustainable tourism development. Furthermore, our results revealed higher criticism of tourism impacts among those personally involved in tourism (employed or economically dependent on tourism) and among Portorož locals. Originality - We provide theoretical and practical implications of the research, especially suitable for planners of the destination development, who should be cautious about residents’ reaction to tourism at the destination.
Although much research has been performed on passengers' origin airport choice, there is little research on airports' catchment area size and even less on airports' catchment areas in cross-border ...regions. This paper addresses passengers' airport choice and analyzes airports' catchment area size and its homogeneity in the Upper Adriatic region. Using the results of passengers' survey at three regional airports (Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport (LJU), Venice Marco Polo Airport (VCE) and Trieste Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza Airport (TRS)) we have estimated the airports' catchment areas and airports market shares therein using multinomial logit (MNL) model structure. To additionally explore the passengers' airport choice behavior considering the different sensitivity across travellers to regional, demographic and airports attributes and account for preference heterogeneity in airport choice a mixed logit model was used. The results indicated that the three airports have relatively small core catchment areas and that the market share rapidly decreases with the increasing access time to airport. Partially, the results reinforced earlier findings showing that access time to airport is the most important determinant in airport choice for all segments (business/leisure and cross-border/domestic), however the sensitivity to access time is more pronounced in business and domestic group. Additionally, the results indicated pronounced loyalty to domestic airports and generally low importance of ticket prices, and show that in market conditions where all airports in the region have a low-cost carrier (LCC) the effect of LCC on airport choice is limited. Finally, the results indicated that the borders might have an influence on airport choice and that overall, in the cross-border regions the passengers’ airport choice process is even more complex than in non cross-border regions.
The purpose of this research was to determine social interaction between hospitality employees and their guests, and consequently assess how front-line employees categorize and stereotype hotel ...guests based on their facial attractiveness with reference to three main characteristics. Social stereotypes represent a means of information transmission in the communication process and can enable a more rapid transfer of information during the service delivery in the hospitality industry. The experimental research was conducted with 113 hospitality employees at seven hospitality organizations on the Slovenian coast. The results showed a correlation between the perception of hotel guests' facial attractiveness with their assumed characteristics that can lead to stereotyping. Hotel employees often link the guest's facial attractiveness with three common perceived characteristics – guests' propensity to spend, guests' predisposition to being demanding and guests' ‘kindness’, and tend to stereotype them on the same basis. These research findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex interactions that occur during a service encounter and show how facial attractiveness of guests plays an important role in the construction of stereotypes by the hospitality employees.
► Stereotypes affect social interaction between hotel employees and their guests. ► In the experiment three most common perceived guests' characteristics were examined. ► Guests are stereotyped by hotel employees according to their facial attractiveness. ► Facially more attractive are perceived as more demanding, kind and better consumers.
•Research is done as an experimental study with experimental and comparative groups.•The assessment of physical attractiveness is common in the service encounter.•There is a correlation between ...customer attractiveness and quality of service.•Employees should be trained not to allow guest appearance to influence the service.•Social workers are trained not to let clients’ appearance affect service rendered.
The purpose of this experimental study was to establish whether there is any correlation between guests’ physical appearance and the quality of service provided to them by front desk hotel staff. The two experimental groups used in this study consisted of hotel receptionists in Portorož, which is the largest hotel industry sector in the Slovenian part of the Adriatic Sea, and a comparative group made up of social workers from Slovenia's social work centres. The research results suggest that there is a positive correlation between the physical appearance of hotel guests and their satisfaction with the quality of service received. In contrast, within the group of social workers and their clients, there was no correlation between the physical appearance of clients and customer service satisfaction. In the study, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for testing the normality of the distribution, t-test for independent samples, Pearson's correlation test and descriptive statistics were used.
Court expertise dealing with the reconstruction of road traffic accidents often have to take into account the possibility that an accident could have been a set-up. Such suspicions can be eliminated ...only by considering all the evidence material from the accident scene. In case of photographic material experts come across the missing material, bad lighting, lack of contrast, different angle perspectives, blurring, omitting important details, etc. Therefore, different methods in forensics image processing have been developed. Most of these methods are primarily used in the processing of different types of photographic material, but some can be applied in the field of road accidents analyses. This paper shows the implementation of digital image processing methods used for processing of remotely sensed imagery.
Even though the photographic evidence is incomplete, it is possible to determine the position and dispersion of different materials. This gives the experts additional information that can help in understanding with relatively high probability if the collision between vehicles occured at all and if it did, where. The paper consists of the presentation and description of methods used for digital image processing in a real case study while reconstructing the road accident.
KEY WORDS: road traffic accidents, forensics, induced traffic accidents, image classification, digital image processing
Events industry plays an important role in nowadays economy and can have a substantial impact for a successful business; in addition, sustainability-oriented tourism is becoming an important ...component of development and planning of a tourist destination. Thus, organizing sustainability-oriented events is crucial and should focus on the zero waste event management and consider as many elements of sustainable development as possible. The same stands for organizing sports events. The aim of this paper was to find out to which level the organizers of existing sports events in Slovenia are taking into account different domains of sustainable development. Answering to a common questionnaire the organizers gave us a feedback considering four main areas: environmental, social, cultural, and economic criteria. The plan was to determine the level of sustainability of three sports events and compare them to each other according to the outstanding areas as well as to draw the attention to the importance of organizing sustainability-oriented sports events and minimizing negative effects of those. Since the field of research is complex, dynamic, and has an interdisciplinary character the results were attained using the DEX software which supports a qualitative approach and allows the modelling of complex decision-making processes with a large number of parameters and alternatives. Such methodology enables the input of a preliminary set of sustainability criteria and can be used as a support when deciding on the evaluation of sustainability of events in general.
KLJUCNE BESEDE cena stanovanja, vpliv avtoceste, prostorska soodvisnost, cenilka DID, severovzhodna Slovenija ABSTRACT This article presents the use of a spatial difference-indifferences (DID) ...estimator to measure the impact of new highways on residential property values in mainly rural NE Slovenian municipalities. More specifically, in the framework of hedonic price analysis, we use different spatial difference-in-differences model specifications to measure the apartment price rise and the price rise spatial spill-over effect as a result of the introduction of new highways. Residential property value impacts of proximity to transport infrastructure: an investigation of bus rapid transit and heavy rail networks in Brisbane, Australia. Combined impacts of highways and light rail transit on residential property values: a spatial hedonic price model for Phoenix, Arizona.