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There were two questions the participants of the workshop were to answer against the back‐ground of three presentations. 1. Does tourism actually contribute to the economic growth of a country or region, and if yes, how? 2. What is the role of the state in this context? The three presentations in this workshop dealt with the following topics: The Contribution of Events to Growth in Tourism (Roland Scherer, Franz‐Martin Riklin, and Thomas Bieger; University of St Gall, Switzerland) Rapid Tourism Growth in a Fast Crowing Economy — The Case of Ireland (James Deegan and Donal A. Dineed; University of Limerick, Eire) The Importance of Building up Slovenia's Positive Image as a Competitive Advantage Factor (Maja Konecnik; University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) Two of the papers will be considered more closely in this report: The paper on the Lucerne Festival because for some reason it was published only in German in the conference proceedings (pp. 277–301), and Maja Konecnik's presentation on Slovenia's image as it has not been published at all. The second presentation has been published in English in the conference proceedings and can be looked up there in detail (pp. 207–222).

Following a presentation by Dr Harald Pechlaner of the University of Innsbruck (Austria) about “Public Policies for Cultural Heritage within the Destination”, the participants of the workshop discussed general problems of facilitating economically viable tourism products within a destination. The situation of private owned castles in South Tyrol was giving a good example of the problems involved. Even though the castles — due to their owners' orientation towards their family traditions and not towards a marketing perspective — are facing some special problems, by and large they have to tackle the same issues as other small and medium‐sized enterprises (SME) in the tourism sector.

The paper describes the method and the results of a pilot‐study on recreational effects of holidays. The objective of the study was to get first insights in the psychological process of recreation during holidays: E.g. How can recreation be measured? What kind of changes in the emotional state do occur during long term recreational processes? Do people perceive themselves as «recreated» during or after a holiday? A sample of 59 German teachers were asked to fill in psychological questionnaires before, during and after their summer holiday 1992. The questionnaires used measured different dimensions of personal condition (mood), individual effects of work load, and some data concerning organisational and motivational aspects of the holiday trip as well as sociodemographic data.

Travel Surveys in Europe: More than one problem to achieve this the results of several national tourism research projects have to be reviewed. It is known that the situation of tourism research in Europe is not satisfying, even though now almost every country has a more or less regulary travel survey. From a scientific point of view it is necessary that these surveys are valid and reliable, which is difficult to prove. Anyway it is true that this objective can only be met by a high standard of quality. Particular problems, however, may rise from comparing national surveys, and even more so when time series are involved. Lack of comparability already starts with the definitions, and the results vary with different methodological approaches. This is especially true for shortbreak holidays. Figure 1 shows the astonishing effects of minor changes in the methodological approach. For not blaming others, it's an example of our own research work. It demonstrates that a higher frequency of surveys p.a. (1985 RA/KONTI RA) or a slightly modified question (KONTI RA 85/KONTI RA 89) makes up for a higher number of shorttrips.