Prof Valeria Minghetti on peer review, overtourism, regenerative tourism, and how to succeed

“Nev­er stop ask­ing your­self ques­tions. Curi­os­ity and the desire to find solu­tions is what makes a dif­fer­ence,” accord­ing to Valer­ia Minghetti.

Such an atti­tude will take young­sters a long way in travel & tour­ism, she reckons.

And it must be redoubled at the very highest levels of aca­demia and industry.

Saverio F Ber­to­lu­cci inter­viewed Prof Minghetti for a Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­view. For this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Mr Ber­to­lu­cci iden­ti­fies his high­lights. [The full tran­script is on Substack.]

Who is Professor Valeria Minghetti?

Pro­fess­or Valer­ia Minghetti, Chief Research Dir­ect­or at CISET, the Inter­na­tion­al Centre for Stud­ies on Tour­ism Eco­nom­ics, Uni­versità Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy, rep­res­ents the per­fect con­ver­gence of aca­demia and hospitality. 

An estab­lished expert in eco­nom­ics and tour­ism devel­op­ment whose fields of expert­ise have grown to the point where there are almost no bound­ar­ies, Prof Minghetti’s aca­dem­ic career spans three dec­ades and is a blend of many dif­fer­ent know­ledge dimen­sions, includ­ing inform­a­tion tech­no­logy, trans­port, and micro- and macroeconomics. 

Valer­ia has par­ti­cip­ated in many nation­al and inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences as well as con­trib­uted to pro­jects led by the European Uni­on and oth­er inter­na­tion­al institutions. 

She is cur­rently a mem­ber of the sci­entif­ic com­mit­tees of BTO (Be Travel Online) and ENTER (the annu­al con­fer­ence by the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for IT and Travel & Tour­ism), and she sits on the edit­or­i­al board of the Journ­al of Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy & Tour­ism.

Con­tents ^

It’s time to review the peer-review process

Valer­ia Minghet­ti’s con­tent gate­keep­ing exper­i­ence for industry events and journ­als lends weight to her con­cerns about the way ideas and opin­ions are per­petu­ated. She has long noticed how an alarm­ing num­ber of indi­vidu­als exploit their self-pro­claimed expert­ise to pro­pose ideas without sol­id evidence. 

Pro­fess­or Minghetti asserts that while a cul­ture of free­dom of speech remains found­a­tion­al to any truth-seek­ing endeav­our, it can be exploited by those who wish to pro­mul­gate per­son­al beliefs and ideo­logy at the expense of truth; par­tic­u­larly in situ­ations where there is no time and space giv­en to good-faith cri­ti­cism, open debate, and impar­tial peer review.

“There are often papers presen­ted in tour­ism journ­als writ­ten by authors with non-tour­ism expert­ise, who use tour­ism as a mere field of exper­i­ment­a­tion to have one more oppor­tun­ity to pub­lish, without hav­ing real know­ledge of the phe­nomen­on. This can lead to banal or wrong con­clu­sions, pre­cisely because they do not have the ele­ments to cor­rectly inter­pret what their mod­el ana­lyses. It would be worth being more cau­tious about this.”

This raises the issue of alleged cor­rup­tion in aca­demia. It also high­lights the need for a debate about the effic­acy of peer-review processes. 

On the oth­er hand, Valer­ia notes that not all pub­lic­a­tions are poorly run; and that mul­tidiscip­lin­ar­ity is cru­cial to stud­ies of tour­ism due to the cross-cut­ting nature of the phe­nomen­on. She points to an example high­light­ing the rich insights that can be gleaned from study­ing tour­ism through the lens of anoth­er field: Tour­ism, tech­no­lo­gies and com­pet­it­ive strategies by Auli­ana Poon; one of the first works to ana­lyse the rela­tion­ship between inform­a­tion tech­no­logy and tourism.

Con­tents ^

Overtourism: A function of space and time

“Gen­er­ally, no des­tin­a­tion suf­fers from total overtourism.” 

Valer­ia Minghetti’s simple and dir­ect state­ment sums up the unuse­ful­ness of the term ‘over­tour­ism’. It can be replaced by ‘mis­man­age­ment’, which is usu­ally cal­cu­lated in space and time dimen­sions. In oth­er words, excess­ive vis­it­or inflows hap­pen in spe­cif­ic peri­ods and in spe­cif­ic areas but are not over­whelm­ingly present all year, and are not per­ceived as a prob­lem by everyone. 

Prof Minghetti says that much mis­man­age­ment hap­pens in the early devel­op­ment stages of a des­tin­a­tion, when it is first ‘dis­covered’ by trav­el­lers and word quickly spreads. That tour­ism might become and remain a net neg­at­ive for host com­munit­ies over the longer term is a func­tion of wrong­do­ing or incom­pet­ence by poli­cy­makers and managers.

Accord­ing to Valer­ia, the rap­id demo­crat­isa­tion of tour­ism through rising glob­al eco­nom­ic and social prosper­ity has res­ul­ted in a boom in tour­ism demand from 100s of mil­lions more people who here­to­fore nev­er had the time nor resources for it. This has increased demand for estab­lished des­tin­a­tions and exposed new places to dis­cov­ery too. 

Unfor­tu­nately there have always been indi­vidu­als who think that they can do whatever they want, wherever they want, with the con­sequent risk of con­flict between cit­izens and vis­it­ors. With more trav­el­lers and tour­ists, there are more of them too. And they have reach and influ­ence via the internet.

“There is often little or dis­tor­ted know­ledge […] of places and a lack of crit­ic­al think­ing behind one’s actions. In prac­tice, digit­isa­tion, instead of cre­at­ing a gen­er­al bene­fit, ends up gen­er­at­ing a neg­at­ive effect on people’s behaviour. 

“The aware­ness, on the part of poten­tial vis­it­ors, of pos­sible stress­ful situ­ations (which would also be det­ri­ment­al to their enjoy­ment) could gen­er­ate dif­fer­ent choices. Choices that, because of their nature, would not be defin­able as “lim­its” per se, in social terms. Not least because set­ting a lim­it is equi­val­ent to […] defin­ing a max­im­um access threshold, which can be eas­ily iden­ti­fied for closed places (e.g., a museum), or bounded, such as an island or a park, but hardly for an open place, such as a city.”

Con­tents ^

The promise of regenerative tourism

Tour­ism growth has always been a poten­tial pos­it­ive, espe­cially in places where tour­ism can be “the main driver of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment”. The chal­lenge is to “ensure an equit­able dis­tri­bu­tion of the wealth derived from it at the loc­al level”. 

To this end, Valer­ia Minghetti thinks that the regen­er­at­ive tour­ism trend is prom­ising in that it moves “bey­ond the con­cepts of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and respons­ib­il­ity to tour­ism that gen­er­ates real loc­al value and well-being” for all.

Prof Minghetti points to the Future of Tour­ism Coali­tion and its list of 13 core prin­ciples:

“Among them the import­ance of main­tain­ing a gen­er­al over­view of des­tin­a­tions and their char­ac­ter­ist­ics, which means includ­ing tour­ism in an over­all des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment plan; aim­ing for qual­ity over quant­ity of tour­ists attrac­ted; rede­fin­ing met­rics for eval­u­at­ing eco­nom­ic suc­cess; encour­aging cir­cu­lar use of resources; lim­it­ing land con­sump­tion for tour­ism pur­poses; diver­si­fy­ing tour­ism demand; encour­aging prox­im­ity tour­ism; [and] pro­tect­ing a destination’s inner identity”.

The pos­it­ive con­sequences of regen­er­at­ive tour­ism do not stop there. Its “tour­ism for all” approach poten­tially max­im­ises diversity in terms of not only vis­it­ors but also the tour­ism tal­ents that cater to them; the lat­ter sus­tained through an appro­pri­ate work/life balance. 

Con­tents ^

Intuition, curiosity, science, and belief

Of course I had to ask such a wise and exper­i­enced fig­ure how young tal­ents may suc­ceed in tourism.

Valer­ia Minghetti:

“Listen to your intu­itions. Even if ana­lyt­ic­al think­ing has been pro­moted [over] ‘gut feel­ings’, espe­cially in [the West], intu­ition rep­res­ents a dif­fer­ent way to elab­or­ate inform­a­tion. Some­times our brain knows what is good for us before we are aware of it. This applies to your study and work choices, but also to the res­ol­u­tion of a problem […]

“Secondly, be curi­ous. Nev­er stop ask­ing your­self ques­tions. Curi­os­ity and the desire to find solu­tions is what makes a difference […]

“Finally, if you are inter­ested in work­ing in tour­ism research and con­sultancy, remem­ber that tour­ism by its nature is an applied sci­ence. […] Use sci­entif­ic meth­ods to find approaches [that help make] the tour­ism sys­tem more sus­tain­able and com­pet­it­ive: do not use tour­ism just to test your theories.”

Valer­ia invites young tal­ents, whatever their back­ground and who­ever they hap­pen to be, to believe in them­selves, chal­lenge them­selves, and to work towards a bright­er future.

Con­tents ^

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Con­tents ^

About the author

Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci stud­ied inter­na­tion­al tour­ism & leis­ure at Uni­versità di Bologna, Italy and sus­tain­able tour­ism devel­op­ment at Aal­borg Uni­ver­sity, Den­mark.

Cur­rently work­ing as a com­mer­cial assist­ant with VDB Lux­ury Prop­er­ties in Bar­celona, Spain, the quad­ri­lin­gual Itali­an is inter­ested in des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment, the exper­i­ence eco­nomy, and cus­tom­er care, and has a pas­sion for social sus­tain­ab­il­ity, remote tour­ism, and co-creation.

Con­tents ^

About the Tourism’s Horizon Interviews

“Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions, in col­lab­or­a­tion with “GT”, has sought the can­did views of well-known and respec­ted experts on tourism’s past, present, and future. 

The Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­views involves Jim Butcher, Vil­helmi­ina Vain­ikka, Peter Smith, Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci, Dav­id Jar­ratt, and Sudip­ta Sarkar as inter­view­ers. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog will pub­lish their high­lights and com­ment­ary as “GT” Insights. 

Read the full tran­scripts of each inter­view on Tourism’s Horizon’s substack.

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