Floods have recently become a major hazard in West Africa (WA) in terms of both their magnitude and frequency. They affect livelihoods, infrastructure and production systems, hence impacting on Sustainable Development (SD). Early Warning Systems (EWS) for floods that properly address all four EWS components, while also being community and impact-based, do not yet exist in WA. Existing systems address only the main rivers, are conceived in a top-down manner and are hazard-centered. This study on the Sirba river in Niger aims to demonstrate that an operational community and impact-based EWS for floods can be set up by leveraging the existing tools, local stakeholders and knowledge. The main finding of the study is that bridging the gap between top-down and bottom-up approaches is possible by directly connecting the available technical capabilities with the local level through a participatory approach. This allows the beneficiaries to define the rules that will develop the whole system, strengthening their ability to understand the information and take action. Moreover, the integration of hydrological forecasts and observations with the community monitoring and preparedness system provides a lead time suitable for operational decision-making at national and local levels. The study points out the need for the commitment of governments to the transboundary sharing of flood information for EWS and SD.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyse the brand communication on social media (SM) made by two- and three-starred restaurants and the customer reaction in terms of engagement effects during a crisis. The research highlights the connections between brand communication and engagement dynamics on Instagram by looking for differences in the strategies of two and three-starred restaurants and by highlighting the changes in the background engagement drivers.Design/methodology/approach: Using data collected from 5,666 Instagram posts by 34 Italian Michelin-starred restaurants, the authors analysed the crisis-driven changes in online communication and customer engagement comparing three phases of the COVID-19 pandemic by applying a linear regression model with fixed effects.Findings: Michelin-starred restaurants changed their strategies of brand communication to overcome the effects of the crisis. The findings highlight the importance of SM as a tool to stay in touch with consumers and the pivotal role of customers in engagement, especially during a pandemic.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to investigate the changes in brand communication and the effects on customer engagement during a pandemic, with a focus on Instagram. It contributes to understanding the role of platform and the main drivers of engagement on Instagram, as well as suggesting how managers can improve brand value using SM.

Due to the continuous increase of the tourism industry, tourism destinations need to be managed under a sustainable framework, with the main aim of minimizing the adverse effects caused by tourism flows. In recent years, several attempts...

Online sustainability communication attracts a considerable attention in tourism research. This study focuses on sustainability communication in official destination websites for informing and motivating visitors to adopt sustainable practices and behaviors. To advance previous research in this area, it adopts a web content mining approach to assess the characteristics of online contents of a sample of 20 Italian cultural destinations. The main dimensions and typologies of sustainability-oriented practices in tourism are used as basis to develop a text classifier for the automated content analysis. A total of 2.975 web pages from official city websites and official tourism promotion websites of the destinations is analyzed through this approach to investigate the online contents relating to the environmental, economic, socio-cultural and general dimensions sustainability as well as their emotional appeal. The analysis reveals that about 15.8% of total online texts contains information to promote sustainability-oriented behaviors at the destination. It indicates that the communication is more specifically focused on environmental/economic/socio-cultural practices than generically referring to sustainable/responsible tourism. However, in line with previous research, it highlights that destinations do not sufficiently balance these pillars in their online communication. Further, the websites’ texts scarcely leverage the persuasive potential of affective appealing messages. The implications of this automated approach for improving the design of online sustainability-related contents are also discussed.

Transformative tourism experiences have attracted considerable scholarly interest in the recent past and deserve further attention to advance knowledge on the role of tourism in human transformation. This study aims to advance the understanding of the triggers and dimensions of transformative ecotourism experiences through the analysis of travelers’ online reviews relating to 10 Italian Pathways (Cammini d’Italia). A total of 742 reviews from 2010 to 2022 were collected from TripAdvisor using a web scraping procedure and analyzed by applying text mining techniques. This analysis explored the cognitive, affective, sensory, social and other experiential factors that can trigger tourists’ transformative experiences and their relationship with behavioral, psychological, spiritual and physical dimensions of transformation. The findings provide evidence of the association of cognitive and sensory triggers and the search for unusual, special tourism experiences to transformative experiences, with specific regard to the psychological, spiritual and physical dimensions. Based on the findings, theoretical and managerial implications are provided to improve the understanding and promotion of transformative tourism experiences in this context.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to systematically review the literature on how sustainable tourism is communicated online and who the main stakeholders involved in the communication are.Design/methodology/approach: Conducting a quantitative approach based on the systematic literature review, we searched five academic databases and examined 747 papers published from 2009 to 2022. A total of 87 articles were systematically analysed.Findings: Sustainable online communication has mainly been explored through structured data rather than alternative ones. Different stakeholders have been studied about online sustainable communication. However, few studies have focused on the relationships between them as a unique and complex ecosystem of subjects.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to synthesise sustainable online communication and the stakeholders involved. It provides an in-depth understanding of central papers discussing the topic and offers insights for future research to foster growth in both research and practice. Overall, this research highlights the lack of research on the topic and its importance for a planned sustainability-oriented online communication strategy to raise awareness and inspire sustainable choices.