The Huaiyang Canal, a significant section of the Grand Canal, boasts representative tourist attractions. This study analysis of online reviews from Ctrip and Mahive using R language, Gephi, ROST CM, and SPSS has provided insights into tourists’ perceptions of the Huaiyang Canal’s image. Key findings include: (1) Dominant landscape images encompass gardens, canals, and buildings, emphasizing the historical and cultural assets. Both cultural and natural landscapes equally captivate tourists. (2) The canal’s tourism image perception follows a “garden-history-canal” hierarchy with the canal as the central space and history expanding its tourism features. (3) The perceptions can be categorized into historical and cultural landscapes, man-made projects, and attraction perception. Despite varying tourist numbers in Huaian and Yangzhou, scenic spot experiences are similar. The overall perception of tourists is largely positive, but some express concerns about service attitudes and travel time planning.

Most researchers have recognized the importance of tourism for economic growth and have concluded that the growth of tourism can also affect the economic and socio-cultural development of society. Our study proves that this relationship can exist, as there is a very strong relationship between tourism and economic development, especially in GDP, which challenges the concept of tourism as an engine of economic development for developing countries such as Kosovo. Our results show that the relationship between GDP growth and tourism development has a bilateral and positive long-term causality. But the low level of tourism development in Kosovo during the years of the study (2010–2022), analyzed according to the Robuts model, shows that in our country during these 12 years the increase in GDP has influenced the development of tourism and not vice versa.

Rural tourism, which offers authentic cultural and nature-based experiences, is increasingly recognized as a vital tool for sustainable development. Ethiopia, with its rich rural landscapes and cultural heritage, holds immense potential for rural tourism, but the sector remains underdeveloped. This study assesses the facilitating conditions and challenges of rural tourism in Ethiopia using a mixed-methods approach. Results indicate that Ethiopia’s economic growth, improved rural infrastructure, large rural population, higher ethnic and religious diversity index, and 11 UNESCO World Heritage Sites provide strong foundations for rural tourism. However, significant challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, limited marketing, restricted access to financing, ethnic conflicts, environmental degradation, and insufficient stakeholder cooperation hinder its growth. To address these barriers, the study proposes a model encompassing strategic investments in infrastructure, enhancing marketing and promotion, access to finance initiatives, conflict resolution strategies, sustainable tourism practices, enhancing stakeholder coordination, and supportive policy frameworks. By employing these strategies, Ethiopia can harness the full potential of its rural tourism sector, contributing to economic development and community well-being while promoting cultural preservation and environmental sustainability. Also, the proposed model is highly applicable to other developing economies that share similar contexts. Besides, given the importance of the seven fundamental pillars of the model, it remains relevant across tourism types like coastal destinations.

This research delves into the correlation between institutional quality and tourism development in a panel of nine Mediterranean countries within the European Union spanning from 1996 to 2021. The study gauges tourism development by examining tourist arrivals, while considering GDP growth rate, inflation, higher education, environmental quality, and trade as control variables representing factors influencing tourism. Institutional quality is measured through indicators such as regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. Utilizing Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) models, the study aims to quantify the impact of these factors on tourism development. The findings indicate a positive relationship between institutional quality and tourism, shedding light on the pivotal role of institutions in tourism management and their influence on the sector. These results have implications for shaping national development strategies.

Rural tourism plays a crucial role in rural development in Indonesia by providing employment opportunities, livelihood, infrastructure, cultural preservation, and environmental preservation. However, it is prone to external shocks such as natural disasters, public health events, and volatility in the national and global economy. This study measures the resilience of rural tourism to external shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 24 rural tourism destinations in Indonesia covering four years from 2019 to 2022. A synthetic composite index of the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto index (AMPI) is used to measure rural tourism resilience followed by clustering analysis to determine the typology of the resilience. The AMPI measure is also compared with the conventional Mazziotta-Pareto index (MPI) method. The resilience index is composed of capacity and performance components related to resilience. The results show that in the first year of COVID-19, most tourism villages in Indonesia were severely affected by the pandemic, yet they were able to recover afterward, as indicated by positive differences in the AMPI index before and after COVID-19. Thus, rural tourism villages in Indonesia have a strong capacity and performance to recover from pandemic shock. Lessons learned from this analysis can be applied to policies related to rural tourism resilience in developing countries.