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The authors of this case study show the importance of tourism for Slovenia, the host country of the 49th Congress of AIEST which took place from 28th August to 2nd September 1999 in Porto Roz.

The aim of the study on the competitive situation of tourism in the Caribbean area was to analyse the competitive position of tourism in a number of Caribbean destinations. These countries are Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago.

Market globalisation produces a very competitive scenario that affects mainly enterprises operating in very fragmented contexts. Tourist enterprises have difficulty in finding economic and efficient conditions, they are generally small‐sized and the management culture in tourism is still at the beginning. Cooperation and integration among stakeholders operating in the tourism system are the conditions that ensure the full satisfaction of tourists' expectations; but also that promote the search for business economies. A tourist destination becomes a product only if it provides tourists with an integrated supply system. The cooperation among enterprises and institutions creates added value for the tourism destinations and for the single businesses, but operators have difficulty in recognising it. Especially the mature destinations are those that find it hard to change their mode of operating, mainly because they do not wish to re‐nounce to the perpetual annuities that have already been obtained. Some examples, with reference to the Italian situation, confirm this. Operators tend to evaluate the benefits of their initiatives in the short‐run, but the results of integration actions should be assessed in the medium‐ and long‐term. Furthermore, in a process of organisational change the powers and the skills tend to be redistributed unevenly. The points of view of tourists and enterprises shall overlap more and more till they can no longer be separated. In this way the services supplied will meet the tourists' expectations. The re‐organisation of the industrial sector proved that network‐based operations are essential for the efficiency of the enterprises and for the competitiveness of the tourist areas.

This article describes a way in which a notion of “tourism quality plan” was: understood, accepted and implemented in a specific transitional environment. Assuming that societies with European Union agenda as well as those with PHARE supported democracies, represent a favourable context for implementing a “tourism quality plan” a specific, Croatian, case is shown where PHARE was not yet granted. The logics of national “repostitioning” process is explained and a meaning of “tourism product consistency plan” is elaborated.

Like most traditional forms of tourism also alpine tourism has lost its strategic success positions due to the ongoing globalisation of the tourism sector. The traditional structures in tourism marketing — based on political and institutional boundaries — have to make place to a more market oriented structure. The association of swiss tourism managers decided to follow a destination management approach that will lead to corresponding tourism structures. A proposition for such structeres has been presented last year.

Tourism policy is a generic term with many interpretations. For too long time tourism policy has been identified with promotion of the public sector. Nowadays the content is much more embracing. The first section of this contribution briefly describes the evolution in this content and deal with the present meaning that is given to tourism policy. “Competitiveness” and “sustainability” are the the two key terms in the modern view. The situation of Bruges with respect to those two core notions is the central theme of this contribution. For the analysis of competitiveness the Porter approach is an interesting instrument. This leads to the strenghts and weaknesses of Bruges with respect of competitiveness. Sustainability was always a major element in the tourism policy of Bruges.

The objective of this research is to measure Chinese students' progress in gaining new vocabulary in Spanish at the B1 level after using the serious video game Guadalingo.

A group of 30 Chinese students participated in an experiment, in which 16 of them played Guadalingo; the other 14 were used as the control group. The experimental group played five lessons of the video game in a period of 10 days. Before and after the lessons, students were tested on their knowledge of the vocabulary from these units.

Results have shown that the use of Guadalingo helped these students to enhance their knowledge of the target vocabulary by 17.40% after the completion of the missions.

Based on our result, the use of video games seems to be a suitable and great support to the foreign language classroom, and the use of Guadalingo could be considered a valuable tool for this purpose.

This paper aims to present the experiences of SEAFDEC/AQD library staff in digitizing institutional publications and developing an institutional repository (IR).

SEAFDEC/AQD IR or SAIR provides a reliable means for its researchers to store, preserve, share their research outputs, enable easy access to and increase the visibility of its scientific publications. The repository uses DSpace customized with some add-ons. Details on the digitization hardware and software, layout, delivery format, and persistent identifier used are provided.

As of March 2012, the repository contains 771 items with 541 downloadable PDFs. SAIR had 88,287 item views, 69,249 PDF downloads and 271,978 searches. SAIR is registered to and indexed by OpenDOAR, ROAR, Google Scholar and WorldCat. It is harvested by AVANO Ifremer, BASE, Sciencegate.ch and OAIster. Initial impact based on indicators in webometrics ranking web of world repositories and research centers was presented. Reluctance to contribute to IR has been observed by the library staff among SEAFDEC/AQD researchers.

The IR can be an effective tool to promote institutional publications and those written by researchers in peer-reviewed journals and to generate higher citations through increased visibility. IR submission policy and procedures are being drafted by the library staff.

SAIR provides free access to all in-house publications of SEAFDEC/AQD. Full-text digitized copies of fish farmer-friendly materials like books, handbooks, policy guidebooks, extension manuals, institutional reports, and newsletters can be downloaded.

SAIR is one of only three open access institutional repositories registered in the Philippines. The paper discusses the lessons learned and issues to be addressed in developing an IR of value to other institutions considering similar projects. Future plans and further development are also presented.

The purpose of this study, accordingly, is to not only offer insights about Arab international students’ stress management and adjustment mechanisms while abroad but also bring to light the extent to which these digital citizens’ use of social media networks reinforces their citizenship values and preserves their national identity during the COVID-19 global health crisis.

The researcher adopted the descriptive approach, which is the appropriate scientific method for this type of research studies, grounded on an examination of the reality or phenomenon, depending on its quantitative analysis and its accurate description by means of collecting data, using the measurement tool of questionnaire to identify the role of social media in relation to citizenship during the COVID-19 global health crisis.

Jordanian exchange students heavily rely on social media during the pandemic, choosing Facebook as their most favorable choice during the pandemic to connect with family and friends near and far, while choosing WhatsApp as the most favorable choice for promoting citizenship values during the pandemic, with an average willingness to actually discuss citizenship through social media. The findings affirm results and conclusions of previous studies about the crucial role of social media in international students’ cross-cultural experiences, especially during stressful events like the COVID-19 global health crisis.

Unfortunately, and even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 global health crisis, Arab international students, including exchange students, are already underrepresented in studies of international students’ adjustment and stress management in hosting countries (Farrugia et al., 2017; Meleis, 1982). This marginalization, or partial exclusion, of Arab international students’ experiences abroad should alert scholars of missed research opportunities that should alter existing knowledge about international students, especially when we realize, for example, that Arab international students showed the highest stress level among international students – including Asians who, according to previous studies, usually struggle the most (Bai, 2016:103).

This study aims to develop a quadrotor with a robust control system against weight variations. A Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller based on Particle Swarm Optimization and Differential Evaluation to tune the parameters of PID has been implemented with real-time simulations of the quadrotor.

The optimization algorithms are combined with the PID control mechanism of the quadrotor to increase the performance of the trajectory tracking for a quadrotor. The dynamical model of the quadrotor is derived by using Newton-Euler equations.

In this study, the most efficient control parameters of the quadrotor are selected using evolutionary optimization algorithms in real-time simulations. The control parameters of PID directly affect the controller’s performance that position error and stability improved by tuning the parameters. Therefore, the optimization algorithms can be used to improve the trajectory tracking performance of the quadrotor.

The online optimization result showed that evolutionary algorithms improve the performance of the trajectory tracking of the quadrotor.

This study states the design of an optimized controller compared with manually tuned controller methods. Fitness functions are defined as a custom fitness function (overshoot, rise-time, settling-time and steady-state error), mean-square-error, root-mean-square-error and sum-square-error. In addition, all the simulations are performed based on a realistic simulation environment. Furthermore, the optimization process of the parameters is implemented in real-time that the proposed controller searches better parameters with real-time simulations and finds the optimal parameter online.