Travel patterns have dramatically changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism has been both a vector and a victim of the disease. This paper explores the pandemic’s impact on rural tourism, using the theoretical framework of the “mobilities turn” to investigate issues of corporeal and communicative travel found between the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 874 guests visiting the Italian region of South Tyrol, where rural tourism is the norm, identified different patterns of physical travel and approaches to collecting on-site information on COVID-19. Results from a principal component analysis (PCA) and a cluster analysis highlighted at least two different approaches from visitors to the region: the first is more cautious, mostly practiced by domestic tourists, with limited mobility on-site, coupled with a need for information; the second is instead a more adventurous approach, with higher on-site mobility, more use of sustainable forms of transport and less interest in data evidence on COVID-19. Implications for rural tourism and its future are discussed. The hypothesis of an inverse relationship between corporeal and communicative travel needs further exploration in future research.

This paper focuses on Design Thinking as a tool for initiating transformation processes both for the enhancement of company resilience, involving challenges connected to current trends such as digitalization and democratic leadership, as well as for the restructuring of a sustainable socio-ecological company organization. Primary findings of this explorative study show that Design Thinking is a suitable method to promote digital, democratic, and innovative business and leadership transformation, but that it is not primarily operationalized in the context of a further-reaching socio-ecological transformation towards more sustainability.

This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of cultural sustainability in mountain regions by offering perspectives for sustainable governance at the intersection of intangible cultural heritage preservation and local tourism development. For this purpose, the influence of tourism on intangible cultural heritage was studied in the context of the practice of transhumance, an ancient form of pastoralism. This paper focuses on the case of South Tyrol, Italy, a touristically highly developed region where cross-border transhumance was granted intangible cultural heritage status by UNESCO in 2019. Adopting a qualitative approach, 13 interviews were conducted with cattle and sheep farmers, cultural practitioners, and experts as well as tourism representatives. Highlighting the benefits of including culture in the discussion about sustainability, the paper seeks to inform local governance measures for enhanced cultural heritage preservation and sustainable tourism.

Our study analyses media audiences of football within the English context. The research question can be formulated as follows: How do young people at a Northern-England university interpret and (re)construct discourses surrounding race/ethnicity in men's televised football? Results from our focus groups with young football media audiences show how they take a relatively race-conscious perspective in comparison to most earlier studies. At the same time, football talk appears a complex space where racialized discourses are rejected as well as accepted and where meanings given to race and ethnicity intersect with other markers of difference such as culture and nationality.In tegenstelling tot de meeste eerdere studies analyseert deze studie hoe het televisievoetbal-publiek betekenis geeft aan etniciteit en huidskleur. De onderzoeksvraag kan als volgt geformuleerd worden: Hoe interpreteren en (re)construeren jonge mensen aan een Noord-Engelse universiteit (18-26 jaar) discoursen over huidskleur en etniciteit in mannenvoetbal op televisie? Bevindingen laten zien hoe veel van de geïnterviewde mediagebruikers reflexief zijn in hun betekenisgeving aan huidskleur/etniciteit. Tegelijk blijkt 'football talk' een complexe en tegenstrijdige plek te zijn waar raciale vertogen gereproduceerd en tegelijk afgewezen worden en waar betekenisgeving aan etniciteit en huidskleur samenhangt met andere constructies van verschil gebaseerd op cultuur en nationaliteit.