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The central approaches for public tourism policy, with the main goal of improving the competitive position of a country or a destination, largely correspond to the determinants of competitiveness. Important cornerstones for the formulation of possible key strategies concerning tourism policy are actions leading to a reduction in the dependency on seasonality, a continued internationalization process as well as an orientation towards quality, productivity and innovation (including research and education). The increased dynamic in the destination-building process and the improvement of the situation in education and research have an additional supporting effect.

Due to the increasing competition in the tourism industry, innovations become a key condition for sustainable success. Changing customer needs and new competitive products lead even in earlier successful destinations to stagnation and decline. There is a rich body of literature on innovation in tourism in terms of case studies and of conceptual contributions on various types and forms of innovation. However, the development mechanisms, the incentives with the expected returns and the incurring costs of innovation have been scarcely discussed and analyzed, so far. Meanwhile, particularly in Europe we observe an increasing intervention by the public sector in favor of innovation in tourism. This contribution analyzes the features of innovations in tourism. The paper focuses on the aspects of market failure and shows where public intervention in tourism becomes a necessity. A cross-case comparison between selected countries reveals that besides important commonalities there are differences according to the program and the country. A critical acclaim concludes with recommendations for an effective policy of support of tourist innovation.

The product life cycle is a well-known method in theory and practice for describing and finding the right marketing strategy. Normally it relates to a product and shows its sales and benefits over the lifetime (that means after products introduction). Typically it is described as a function of time. In this article the authors focus on two aspects. The first is discussing utility of the PLC and try to find a mathematical algorithm that eliminates the time as variable and shows influences by internal, external decisions and exceptional incidents. In the second step the results of the mathematical modelling of the PLC will be transferred to tourism sector, and will be discussed especially in urban tourism.

This article deals with the research question, if tourism exerts an influence on European identity development and if this often unexplored factor in psephology has a direct or indirect impact on participation at European elections. A theoretical model postulates an influence of three central tourist indicators (tourism intensity, travel intensity and outbound tourism in EU-27 states) on the cosmopolitan orientation and the identification of citizens with Europe (intermediate level) as well as on the voter turnout in European elections (dependent variable). The theoretical model is operationalized using national und regional indicators (NUTS II level) from four different data sources. The effects of tourist behavior and tourism intensity are measured with correlations on the national level and with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) on the regional level. Additionally, a sequential multiple regression analysis indicates that the direct influence of tourist indicators on voter turnout can be mainly explained by regional characteristics and specific effects in Eastern, Southern und Western Europe. The study can be seen as a first approach to measure the influence of tourism on European identity and voting behavior. Future studies on the individual level would be necessary to provide support for the results of this study and to enlighten the regional specifics in a differentiated perspective.

Despite repeated, convincing indications of the individuality of experience, experience research has long been characterised by the logic of the experience economy, which assumes a comparatively simple stimulus-response mechanism. This is a major reason why even today, we know surprisingly little about what tourists actually experience and what, for them, makes an outstanding experience. Calls for a new type of experience research are accordingly becoming ever louder. The article points out the requirements to be made of such a reorientation, which in particular shifts the interplay of individual and space to the centre stage. With a focus on the experience of specific places, the opportunity arises for Geography to make a contribution to the current debate. To investigate experience in the narrow spatial context, the method of moving in situ interviews was developed.

The abbreviations on German number plates are symbols of city labels. This analysis examines the marketing effect an abbreviations indicated on a number plate can have on the city label of the according city. A policy proposal therefore suggests allowing different abbreviations per district to enhance the marketing effect triggered by number plates.

Technological progress and tourism have been gone hand in hand for years. The use of mobile devices has increased at a phenomenal rate in recent years. An increasing number of devices is supporting Near-Field Communication (NFC), which is a short range and wireless technology for data transfer without physical touch. NFC technology will open up new opportunities for various stakeholders in destination management. In this article research on NFC technology is reviewed. In addition current and potential applications in tourism are described using existing case studies.