New frontiers in tourism: destinations, resources, and managerial perspectives. [Editorial]

The recent changes in data availability, new research methods, and fresh conceptual developments based on emotions challenge research in many fields including tourism (Bigné, 2016). We aim to stimulate new research on tourism as reflections of the three guest editors. Considering its challenges and opportunities, tourism research is a highly dynamic activity featured by its multidisciplinary view. Research in tourism is benefited from this cross-disciplinary view, which elicits more vibrant discussion and integrative frameworks. Researchers in each field of specialization in tourism must adopt integrative views in order to capture the real domain of tourism. This holistic view is not incompatible with specialization, but fosters a much richer progress in the discipline. Conferences on tourism typically reflect this multidisciplinary view, where the specializations meet each other. Such interdisciplinary conferences enhance the quality of the discussion and promote readability of future papers across the sub-disciplines of tourism. EJM & BE wants to contribute to this multidisciplinary view by attracting papers from the different sub-domains and specializations in tourism. For instance, to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of tourism research, the literature suggests that an area should have the following characteristics to be considered as a tourist destination: a variety of natural, social and cultural resources and services, other economic activities, host community, a local council, an active private or public sector (Davidson and Maitland, 1997). As stated earlier, a destination’s performance is mainly related to the performance of these elements. When something is wrong with any of these elements, the outcome would be negative which will be reflected back to these elements. In such a case, tourists do not want to come back. The local community’s quality of life would be negatively affected due to poor service standards. They would also earn less from the tourism industry. Employees would fear losing their jobs resulting in lower satisfaction with their jobs. Suppliers would earn less. Most importantly, all the cultural, economic, and physical resources would be negatively affected if potential consumers withdrew, as there would be less capital for reinvestment. [...]