The thesis inquires into the issue of involving stakeholders in the process of implementation of the regional strategy for tourism development, in which the priorities for the realisation of tourism politics in a given area are indicated. This process is being investigated in two domestic regions and one region abroad. The aim of this work is to formulate a set of measures based on identified good practices that will lead to an improvement of the process of involving stakeholders in the implementation strategy for the development of tourism in the South Bohemian Region. To achieve the objective, the thesis utilises findings from previous research, which is then developed towards the proposal and verification of the methodology for determining the attitudes of key groups of stakeholders towards the process of cooperation with the regional destination management organization during the implementation of the development strategy, or rather its priorities

The aim of the master thesis is to introduce Belgium as a tourist destination. The work is devided into 6 chapters giving the basic information about Belgium, describing its prerequisites and conditions for the development of the tourism and covering the relation between Belgium and the Czech republic. The responses of the questionnaire about the interest in mutual tourism are included. The last chapter presents the analysis of tourism in Belgium, also related to the Czech Republic.

The thesis is focused on a relatively new concept of wine tourism in France. The main aim of this work is to evaluate a current situation of wine tourism in a region of Burgundy based on existing demand and supply. A partial objective is to evaluate an organization and cooperation of entities within the destination. The theoretical part deals with basic characteristics of wine tourism and destination management. The practical part is largely based on the analysis of current wine tourism demand and supply leading to an overall evaluation of wine tourism destination of Burgundy.

This thesis is focused on the issue of tourism planning within the context of sustainable competitive advantage which can be reached by an engagement of regional stakeholders into the phase of strategy implementation. Its aim is to evaluate cooperation between regional destination management organization and destination's stakeholders during the implementation process of strategic priorities defined in the Tourism Development Strategy in the South Bohemia Region. The thesis utilizes information from representatives of the destination management organization and regional stakeholders to be able to realize so-called Stakeholder analysis. It analyses the destination stakeholders from the point of view of free key attributes. It also pays its attention to the forms of their involvement in the planning of tourism development and their experience with this process. On this basis it formulates the basis for future actions which should lead to an improvement of the current state of cooperation with key regional stakeholders.

Orientador: Rosane Freire Boina / Resumo: No processo de tratamento de água visando sua potabilidade é gerado um resíduo (lodo) cujo manejo e disposição são problemas de caráter urgente, principalmente, devido à escassez de soluções eficazes. Um desafio extra a esses problemas é que esse lodo pode possuir em sua composição uma concentração acentuada de alumínio (elemento com efeitos nocivos aos organismos e ao meio ambiente) devido ao coagulante utilizado no processo de tratamento. Recuperar e reutilizar os componentes coagulantes do lodo pode ser uma alternativa para a sua destinação. Assim, com esse propósito, será possível economizar no custo de dosagem com a reciclagem do produto obtido, além de possibilitar a diminuição do volume final do lodo devido à remoção de água durante o processo. O método consistiu na recuperação, via alcalina-ácida, do coagulante do lodo (desaguado) de duas ETAs distintas. Inicialmente, os lodos foram submetidos a extração em pH 12, com hidróxido de sódio (NaOH – 20%) e, posteriormente, extração em pH 2, testando o ácido sulfúrico (H2SO4 – 20%) e o ácido clorídrico (HCl – 20%). A proporção utilizada foi 1:10 (m:v). A reutilização dos coagulantes recuperados foi realizada em Jar Test utilizando água bruta de um dos pontos de captação do município de Presidente Prudente – SP. O efeito coagulante foi validado fazendo comparativo com o coagulante comercial PAC, por meio dos parâmetros turbidez (NTU) e cor (PCU), além da análise frente aos valores máximos permitidos (VMP) pelo Ministério da ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: In water treatment process, aiming at its potability, a residue (sludge) is generated, which management and disposal are urgent problems, mainly due to the lack of effective solutions. An extra challenge to these problems is that the sludge may have a high aluminum concentration in its composition (an element with harmful effects to organisms and the environment) due to the coagulant used in the treatment process. Recovering and reusing coagulant components of the sludge can be an alternative for its destination, since for this purpose it is possible to save the dosage cost by recycling the obtained product, in addition to reducing the final sludge volume due to the water removal during the process. The method consisted of recovering, through an alkaline-acid, coagulant from two different WTPs sludge. Initially, the sludge was subjected to extraction at pH 12, with sodium hydroxide (NaOH - 20%) and, later, extraction at pH 2, testing sulfuric acid (H2SO4 - 20%) and hydrochloric acid (HCl - 20%). The proportion used was 1:10 (m: v). The reuse of the recovered coagulants was carried out in Jar Test using raw water from one of the collection points in the city of Presidente Prudente - SP. The coagulant effect was validated by comparing it with the commercial coagulant PAC, using the parameters turbidity (NTU) and color (PCU), besides to the analysis compared with the maximum allowed values (MAV) by the Ministry of Health for the same parameters. The results showed that three of ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Current works of bike demand prediction mainly focus on cluster level and perform poorly on predicting demands of a single station. In the first task, we introduce a contextual based bike demand prediction model, which predicts bike demands for per station by combining spatio-temporal network and environment contexts synergistically. Furthermore, since people's movement information is an important factor, which influences the bike demands of each station. To have a better understanding of people's movements, we need to analyze the relationship between different places. In the second task, we propose an origin-destination model to learn place representations by using large scale movement data. Then based on the people's movement information, we incorporate the place embedding into our bike demand prediction model, which is built by using multi-source large scale datasets: New York Citi bike data, New York taxi trip records, and New York POI data. Finally, as deep learning methods have been successfully applied to many fields such as image recognition and natural language processing, it inspires us to incorporate the complex deep learning method into the bike demand prediction problem. So in this task, we propose a deep spatial-temporal (DST) model, which contains three major components: spatial dependencies, temporal dependencies, and external influence. Experiments on the NYC Citi Bike system show the effectiveness and efficiency of our model when compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Tourists seldom experience a destination with just one company, yet they often encounter a destination as a coherent entity. This results from the effort of different stakeholders who work together to develop a destination, despite often being competitors. These efforts make the tourism industry fertile for coopetitive relationships.  The high presence of coopetition has inspired researchers to study this phenomenon in the tourism sector. There is a solid academic understanding of the rationales behind coopetition and the factors influencing the level of coopetition within a destination. However, despite the academic interest, there is only limited research dedicated to the impacts of coopetition on destination development. This study responds to this shortcoming and investigates the impacts of coopetition between accommodation companies on the destination development of Saaremaa, Estonia. Given the exploratory nature of this study, a qualitative case study approach focusing on collecting original data required from primary sources has been used as the research method. The qualitative research is carried out via semi-structured interviews with two sources of data. The interviews were conducted with six representatives of accommodation companies and one representative of the local DMO. The study results provide supporting evidence that coopetitive relationships between accommodation companies have several impacts on the destination development of Saaremaa. Namely, these relations are impacting the economic development and strengthening the image of Saaremaa. Furthermore, the results show that coopetition increases the diversity and the quality of offered products and services. However, given the case study approach and the size of the research, caution is required in interpreting the study's results, especially when applying the results to other destinations.

Factors influencing tourist behavior have been a focal point in tourism research for decades. Efforts to unveil the determinants that shape travel behavior stem not only from pure academic interest, but from practical business considerations (Pizam & Mansfeld, 1999). Destination personality, self-concept, and congruence between self-concept and destination personality (SC-DP congruence) are among the factors that are believed to influence tourist behavior. However, little research has been undertaken to understand the impact of these factors on tourist behavior. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects destination personality, self-concept and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior. A theoretical model that attempts to investigate the influence of destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior was developed and tested empirically. Specifically, the model proposed that tourist behavior is affected by destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence. Particularly, self-concept consists of four aspects, including actual self-concept, ideal self-concept, social self-concept, and ideal social self-concept; hence SC-DP congruence also includes fours such facets. Furthermore, tourist involvement is examined to see whether it would moderate the relationship between SC-DP congruence and tourist behavior. Data were collected using an online panel survey in December 2008. A total of 663 usable responses were obtained. Pearson correlation, structural equation modeling (SEM), and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. For the SEM analysis, the sample was randomly split into two groups. One was used to test the model and the other was used for model validation. The findings suggested significant influences of destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior. Findings of this study also showed that there are significant and positive relationships between destination personality and self-concept. However, tourist involvement was found to have no moderating effect on the relationship between SC-DP congruence and tourist behavior. The study also provided managerial implications for destination marketers based on the research results. / Ph. D.

This study explores the branding, and promotion of tourist destinations in Cameroon. The research aims to identify strategies and challenges faced in positioning Cameroon as a competitive tourist destination and suggest areas for improvement. The research methodology employed a combination of content analysis, case studies, and interviews with industry experts. The findings highlight the significance of effective branding and promotion strategies in attracting tourists and creating economic benefits. Challenges such as language barriers and access to industry experts were encountered during the research process. The study recommends further research with a larger time frame to gain more insights. Overall, this research contributes to understanding the implications and opportunities for enhancing the branding and promotion efforts of tourist destinations in Cameroon.

Public transportation offers a crucial solution to the travel demand in light of national and global economic, energy, and environmental challenges. If implemented effectively, public transit offers an affordable, convenient, and sustainable transportation mode. Implementation of new technologies for information-harvesting may lead to more effective transit operations. This study examines the potential of automated data collection technologies to analyzing and understand the origin-destination flow patterns, which is essential for transit route planning and stop location placement. This thesis investigates the collection and analysis of data of passengers onboard San Luis Obispo Transit buses in February and March 2017 using Bluetooth (BT) and automatic passenger counter (APC) data. Five BlueMAC detectors were placed on SLO Transit buses to collect Bluetooth data. APC data was obtained from San Luis Obispo Transit. The datasets were used to establish a data processing method to exclude invalid detections, to identify and process origin and destination trips of passengers, and to make conclusions regarding passenger behavior. The filtering methods were applied to the Bluetooth data to extract counts of unique passenger information and to compare the filtered data to the ground-truth APC data. The datasets were also used to study the San Luis Obispo Downtown Farmer’s Market and its impact on transit ridership demand. The investigation revealed that after carefully employing the filters on BT data there were no consistent patterns in differences between unique passenger counts obtained from APC data and the BT data. As a result, one should be careful in employing BT data for transit OD estimation. Not every passenger enables Bluetooth or owns a Bluetooth device, so relying on the possession of Bluetooth-enabled devices may not lead to a random sample, resulting in misleading travel patterns. Based on the APC data, it was revealed that transit ridership is 40% higher during the days during which Higuera Street in Downtown San Luis Obispo is used for Farmer’s Market – a classic example of tactical urbanism. Increase in transit ridership is one of the aspects of tactical urbanism that may be further emphasized. With rapidly-evolving data collection technologies, transit data collection methods could expand beyond the traditional onboard survey. The lessons learned from this study could be expanded to provide a robust and detailed data source for transit operations and planning.