The International Academy for the Study of Tourism convened a session on global economic crisis and tourism during its 20th anniversary conference in Mallorca, Spain, in June 2009. Three articles featuring on the impacts of economic downturn on tourism in Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and North America have resulted and appeared in this issue of the Journal of Travel Research. This summary aims at an integrated discussion on the consequences and perspectives on the global economic crisis and tourism. The prospects of world tourism for the years to come are also reflected.

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This paper examines competitiveness and efficiency issues related to destinations in the Mediterranean region. Following a detailed discussion on methodology, a hedonic analysis is performed, in which the price of holiday packages is regressed on a number of package characteristics and operator and location scaling factors. Those that are statistically significant among the latter are subsequently used in a second-step correlation framework, which aims to offer a valid interpretation of the observed price differentials among core and peripheral holiday destinations. On these grounds, a number of policy measures are finally discussed.