Purpose: Amazon Explore is a new online experience product from Amazon, which offers live stream sightseeing of destinations around the world. This paper aims to provide a first insight into how exactly Amazon Explore enters the virtual experience (VE) industry, and discuss the possible implications of its business model for the future of virtual and offline travel experiences. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative and quantitative methods of content analysis methods were employed in this study. The sample of this research consisted of 175 Amazon Explore products. Firstly, the authors analysed the content of each product, and then quantitative method were used to present the data. With this analysis, the authors presented how Amazon Explore is testing the foundations for new business models, and discuss the possible implications for the future of tourism. One year later, those same Amazon Explore products were reviewed again to check development progress. The following were the main questions regarding VE: How interactive are Amazon Explore products? How does Amazon Explore aim to ensure the monetisation of these products in an economically sustainable way in order to go beyond the “freemium” business model, often associated with VE as just another destination marketing tool? Findings: This article presents the discussions of VE and virtual reality (VR). The authors determined the level of interactivity of the diverse VE offered themes with a model of four levels of interactivity. The results show that the analysed products achieve mostly only low levels of interaction. Regarding monetisation, Amazon Explore shows three possible future directions in the development of VE: as a marketing tool, as an extension of the offline experience and as potentially someday replacing real travel as part of the future monetisation scenario. Originality/value: The article offers the first insights into Amazon's extension into the realm of VE in two time periods in 2020 and 2021, and, based on these preliminary results, discusses four possible scenarios for the future development of VE monetisation.

This article aims to explore and analyze current issues and features of environmental protection in managing local tourism destinations based on the principles of sustainable development through the relevant literature and thus to provide an insight into major environmental measures and activities that should be implemented in practice, emphasizing the importance of environmental sustainability as a key factor in the development and success of local tourist destinations in today’s business environment. Qualitative methods were used, with the literature review based on content analysis by keywords. This particularly affects the business process efficiency and the participation of destination stakeholders and in many cases leads to a low level of environmentally sustainable destination practices. In addition to this theoretical approach, this study also has direct managerial implications for destination environmental business operations. An attractive and well-preserved environment is the primary factor of tourism and local tourism destination development and its success, as well as an integrated part of the tourism product. This study addresses a critical gap in the existing literature on environmental sustainability at local destinations, where prior work has often overlooked the integration of actionable, practice-oriented frameworks tailored for both researchers and practitioners. While theoretical insights into sustainable practices abound, there remains a scarcity of holistic analyses that bridge scholarly understanding with implementable strategies for on-the-ground application. To fill this void, our research provides a comprehensive overview and systematic analysis of current practices, with targeted emphasis on co-developing scalable frameworks for improving environmentally sustainable practices at local destinations.

This study examines the importance of wine characteristics when choosing wine, such as the shape and colour of the bottle, type of wine cork, information on the wine label, price and ethnocentrism. Three research questions were proposed in this paper. A quantitative online survey in the form of 458 participants was carried out in Slovenia. Participants were asked questions relating to their wine consumption behaviour. The results of this study show the Spearman’s correlation coefficient between ethnocentrism and country-of-origin importance. These findings benefit winemakers who want to improve their wine sales and learn what characteristics of the wine label are significant.

V strokovnem prispevku bomo predstavili pregled iz literature o digitalni zrelosti podjetij, zlasti malih in sred-njih podjetij (v nadaljevanju MSP) in se osredotočili na problematiko merjena le te, saj ni uveljavljenega modela za merjenje digitalne zrelosti, ki bi ga lahko aplicirali na podjetja iz različnih sektorjev. Predstavili bomo nekaj primerov dobrih praks digitalizacije in načinov merjenja, ki so se jih posluževali predvsem v turističnem sektorju po svetu. Po pregledu več različnih vprašalnikov za merjenje digitalne zrelosti, ki so na voljo na spletu, ugotavljamo, da so vprašalniki neprilagojeni za različne sektorje in zlasti za področje turizma, predlagamo nekaj poudarkov za vprašalnike, ki bi omogočili boljši vpogled v trenutno stanje na področju digitaliziranosti turis-tičnih MSP-jev. V Sloveniji so se digitalne preobrazbe lotili celovito in se podjetjem ponuja tudi vavčarje za različna področja, na primer za dvig digitalnih kompetenc, potreba po katerih se je še posebej pokazala v času pandemije Covid-19, za digitalni marketing, za pripravo digitalnih strategij in za kibernetsko varnost. Prav tako je v Sloveniji DIH oblikoval vprašalnik za merjenje digitalne zrelosti podjetij, ki je razdeljen na več sklopov, podjetjem pa je po zaključku vprašalnika posredovana strategija oziroma nasveti za izboljšave na različnih po-dročij delovnega procesa podjetja.

Slovenija je bogata z raznoliko kulturno dediščino, ki je pomemben del turistične ponudbe naše države. Zavedati se je potrebno varstva kulturne dediščine in njenega ohranjanja za naslednje generacije. To lahko uspešno storimo tudi z njeno digitalizacijo, ki omogoči ohranjanje le te ter, da postane dostopna tudi izven meja Slovenije. Študenti Fakultete za turizem, Univerze v Mariboru, so v okviru predmeta Slovenska kulturna dediščina pripravili znanstveno monografijo. Na podlagi projekta Gradovi Posavja so snovali inovativne turistične produkte teh gradov s pomočjo digitalizacije. Študentje so po analizi dobrih praks nadgradili trenutno turistično ponudbo obravnavanih gradov.