In recent years, the issue of memorable tourism experience (MTE) has garnered increasing attention from scholars and tourism practitioners. This paper provides a systematic review of 52 articles on MTE listed on the SCOPUS and WOS databases from 2012 to 2020. Qualitative analysis of the literature identified nine main categories of topics in MTE-related articles. Results showed that the largest proportion of articles focused on how MTEs influenced tourists’ perceptions and behaviours and how they shaped destination marketing. Co-occurrence analysis was performed to investigate trends in the keywords used by academics over the past five years. The geographic location of studies, research methods and theories applied in these articles were also analysed. Most articles were published in the current decade and China was the geographic setting for the highest number of articles in the review. The review concludes with the theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as the directions for future research.

This study analyzes the role of residents in urban tourist destinations affected by the increase in tourist flows, which have generated various problems such as tourism, gentrification and the emergence of tourism as a threat to residents. The role of residents in tourist destinations has not been analyzed regularly during the development process of destinations. We study two cases of historic centers in European cities, with the aim of comparing tourism problems, which are common to most European urban destinations. This study was conducted by administering surveys amongst residents of these historic centers (378 in Málaga, Spain, and 380 in Gdansk, Poland). These cities show a similar demographic size and urban characteristics. This is the first comparative research on tourism-phobia and gentrification in destinations, a field of analysis that is still not studied much. We develop specific scales to measure gentrification and tourism-phobia; moreover, we study the impact of some tourist problems that affect residents (noise, dirt, occupation of public spaces, etc.), and we show the spatial distribution of tourism-phobia. The same analysis instruments are used for both cities. The results of this study show that the tourism-phobia situation is different in the analyzed destinations. It is more intense in the case of Málaga than in Gdansk. The two historic centers are especially affected by the processes of increased tourist flows and the growth of new forms of tourist accommodation. The research results show that the residents’ annoyance caused by tourism gentrification is more intense than tourism-phobia. Both case studies highlight the residents’ complaints regarding the inadequate management of problems by public stakeholders and control measures.