Current challenges and trends in the tourism and services sector

Principal Investigator:	doc. Ing. Petr JANEČEK, Ph.D.
Project Number:	SGS-2024-031
Grant awarded by:	ZČU
Term:	2024-2026

CO-INVESTIGATORS:

• Magistra Liuba TURCHYN, kandidát ekonomických věd
• Ing. Jan TLUČHOŘ, Ph.D.
• doc. Ing. Petr ŠTUMPF, Ph.D.
• RNDr. Jiří PREIS, Ph.D.
• Ing. Lukáš PICHLÍK
• Ing. Olga MARTINČÍKOVÁ SOJKOVÁ
• doc. RNDr. Jan KOPP, Ph.D.
• doc. Ing. Petr JANEČEK, Ph.D.
• doc. Ing. Dagmar JAKUBÍKOVÁ, Ph.D.
• doc. Ing. Dita HOMMEROVÁ, Ph.D., MBA

PROJECT ANNOTATION:

In the current turbulent environment, we are constantly faced with new challenges and trends to which both the business sector and the public sector are adapting. This project aims to describe and investigate these challenges and trends, focusing on two main areas. The main research areas of the project are tourism and the service sector, primarily because these two areas have been the continuous and long-term focus of the research of the Department of Marketing, Trade and Services. Considering the need for an interdisciplinary approach in contemporary science, this project also emphasizes the use of interdisciplinary research on new trends and challenges in tourism and services. For this reason, the mentioned research areas are analyzed in detail from three perspectives that are seemingly separable but in practice interrelated. These are the perspective of tourism as an industry, the marketing perspective, and the economic and geographic perspective. As a cross-cutting topic of the project, technological change is currently pervasive and permeates all three sub-perspectives. Although the three main research perspectives are identified, these are not separate activities but rather will exploit synergies from the combination of the scientific perspectives mentioned above, which will contribute to a better understanding of current challenges and trends in tourism and services. The tourism sector itself is such a complex system with services that it offers opportunities for cooperation between different actors and facilities from the public and private, profit and non-profit sectors. Moreover, as recent history has shown, tourism and the service sector in particular are very sensitive to various global and local changes. Tourism and other services are economic activities that necessarily take place in a particular territory. That is why tourism is at the heart of the project, as it is dynamically evolving in time and space. Technological change, which significantly influences and changes the economic and marketing environment, can be seen as another layer of complexity. For this reason, the project draws on current knowledge but also develops further knowledge in areas such as economics, business economics, management, marketing, or economic geography. The project corresponds to the areas in which the Faculty of Economics implements study programs, especially the master programs (Business Economics and Management and Economic and Regional Geography) and the Ph.D. program (Economics and Management). The project promotes cooperation between academia and practice in the region, especially in the Pilsen and Karlovy Vary regions, but also in other regions, and develops research in the field of tourism and services.