This paper evaluates the satisfaction of cruise passengers visiting the Atlantic islands of the Azores Archipelago. It investigates the relationship between their satisfaction with the Azores and their behavioural intentions, not only with regard to repurchasing the cruise but also to the likelihood of their recommending it and the Azores to friends and relatives. A structural equation model is used to analyse the factors that make the Azores attractive as cruise ports of call. The data were obtained from a survey distributed between March and December 2004 among the passengers of cruises docking at Azores ports. The findings reveal that, besides value for money, the two main factors driving the behavioural intentions are linked, first, to the city, its attractions in general and the individual's level of satisfaction with the overall visit and, second, and of lesser importance, to the perceptions of hospitality, safety, services and cleanliness of the environment in the Azores.

This paper uses a random frontier model to analyse technical efficiency in a data set of hotels in Luanda, the capital city of Angola, for 1990–2007. The hotels are ranked according to their technical efficiency, disentangling homogeneous and heterogeneous variables. This methodology attempts to account for observed and unobserved heterogeneity across hotels. The study rests on the premise that hotels in Luanda have an established role in the business market and emerging significance in the tourism market, broadly defined. Based on the analysis, the authors conclude that those hotels adopting a more strategic approach are better, and thus more efficient, than those that lack vision. They then point to the wider implications of the discussion.

In the last two decades, creative tourism has evolved as a burgeoning field, encompassing a wide range of concepts and practices, in different places around the world. From the very beginning, however, creative tourism has aimed to contribute to sustainable development and increased community wellbeing, as an alternative to mass cultural tourism. With this review article, our main objective is to identify and analyze a body of literature that specifically addresses creative tourism in islands, contributing to fill a gap in the knowledge since no reviews with this focus have yet been undertaken. Our aim is to provide a critical overview of creative tourism experiences at island destinations worldwide, addressing the plurality of empirical contexts and methodological approaches found in academic research. This review highlights the key trends in creative tourism, pointing out two distinct approaches: creative tourism in urban contexts, based on creative events, “cultural clusters” or Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), versus community-focused small-scale tourism experiences in rural contexts. This paper also provides an opportunity to assess the evolution of sustainable creative tourism approaches in islands.

The impact of tourism on the local economy and employment has been widely reported in the literature through the use of regional or county expenditure multipliers. Indeed, the money that visitors spend in a community is likely to be the benefit that residents probably recognize most readily. Despite this, only a few studies have focused on the determinants of tourist expenditure at the individual or household level. This paper sheds further light on this issue. For this purpose, the authors use information gathered by interviewing visitors about their levels of expenditure. The analysis focuses on total expenditure and expenditures on lodging, restaurants, shopping and car rental, and uses OLS, quantile regression and instrumental variable techniques. The results suggest that the impact of socio-demographic and trip-related characteristics on tourist expenditures goes far beyond the mean effect. Furthermore, correcting for the endogeneity of some explanatory variables might be a worthwhile exercise.

The current need for territories and societies to grow is based on the Sustainable Development Models as well as the United Nations (UN) Agenda for 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In that case, such new forms of tourism development imply creating and upgrading critical infrastructures, facilities, equipment, or differentiated activities to bring clients who align with the desired Sustainable Development Models and SDGs. In this regard, the thematic literature provides evidence that some tourism typologies (nature-based, rural, culturally-based creative tourism) play a critical role in attaining sustainable regional development. Therefore, this paper aims to unfold what can be learned from the pilot projects implemented in the Azores region aimed toward the so-desired regional sustainability. Contextually, the obtained results ask for the regional leaders to consider encouraging entrepreneurship associated with small and medium-sized firms; fostering the diversity of touristic offerings; designing guidelines that follow sustainable development models and the SDGs; or creating meaningful investments in the conservation and protection of cultural heritage, as well as the Azorean endogenous resources.