L83 - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; TourismReturn

It is widely recognized that a rapid increase in foreign direct investment leads to an increase in tourism at different levels. This paper applied a Granger Causality test to investigate the causal relationship between International Tourist Arrivals (ITA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) across countries. By using time series data from six countries in the top ten European destinations (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom) for the 1980-2014 period, the findings reveal that there is a unidirectional causality between ITA and FDI. The results are strongly proven with the same results when the lag between FDI and ITA is lengthened at lag 1. Moreover, the outcome evidence has a unidirectional relationship running from FDI to ITA when GDP is added as the controlling variable.

Tourism is characterized by constant spatial expansion and diversification. It is one of the fastest growing global economic sectors. Local economic fluctuations undoubtedly have a significant influence on the development of tourism. The aim of this study is to highlight the crucial importance particularly of stimulating and realisation presumptions, which greatly influence the demand for tourist activities on a global scale in recent years with implications for the Czech Republic. The theoretical base of the paper consists of an overview of concepts of market performance, and multi-criteria competitiveness of tourism destinations is introduced here. The analytical part of the study examines major shifts in the distribution of tourism on a global scale and the impact of changing assumptions of development and determinants, such as information technology, transport, political factors, environmental factors, demographic factors and the degree of urbanisation, travel security, as well as a whole range of social and economic impacts. A special emphasis is devoted to the consistence of the tourism industry with economic fluctuations and recessions. Global trends are then applied to the tourism sector in the Czech Republic.

The paper deals with quality management in the sector of Tourist Information Centres (TIC) in the Czech Republic and the development of the quality management systems in the sector as part of the national quality management system in tourism. Since the TICs perform a prominent role in destination marketing management, the quality of their services seems to be of high importance. To set the particular quality criteria and to include the TIC segment in the national quality management system, an analysis and extensive research among visitors to TICs, employees and founders of TICs in the Czech Republic has been accomplished. Another analysis focused on twelve selected national quality management systems abroad using secondary research and on-line interviews with selected specialists on TIC quality. The analysis abroad comprised personal consultations with TIC specialists in England. The observed results implied the conclusion to use the SERVQUAL model and to integrate quality management systems in TICs into the national system based on the principles of the three-level Swiss quality management system.

As part of health-oriented tourism, spa tourism has dynamically evolved in the past 10 years. The research focuses on current and future consumer behavior of Czech clients - both insured and self-paying ones - and also analyzes the potential new segment of the population that has not used spa services yet. As for quantitative research methods, we used a combination of personal interviews and online questionnaire data collection. The research includes all regions of the Czech Republic with spa resorts. We also used the quota sampling method for determination of the share of the main segments of respondents. The whole research includes answers of 1,016 respondents. The research proved a high potential for spa visits in all studied segments and identified their inclination to consume, particularly in relation to the age and family income. The conclusion of the research was sent to spa tourism practitioners and experts.