Welcome to COSTA 2019

Welcome to the 6th Conference on Sustainable Tourism in Asia (COSTA 2019) to be held in Hiroshima, Japan on Friday and Saturday, December 20-21, 2019 at the Hiroshima Bunka Koryu Kaikan Hotel in Hiroshima.

The 6th Conference on Sustainable Tourism in Asia is an annual, international, peer-reviewed event that has been held every year in Hiroshima. This year’s event will coincide with the end of autumn and start of winter in Japan, which is actually an ideal time of the year for visiting Hiroshima. All attending participants will have an opportunity for travel around Hiroshima, including its two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Peace Park and the Shrine Island of Miyajima (Itsukushima).

Please note that the number of oral and poster time slots is limited. The organizers will close submissions and registration when the event has reached its capacity.

About COSTA 2019

Our theme for COSTA 2019 is Tourism for Peace and Hiroshima, serves as the ideal venue for this special event, which supports the notion that the travel industry, in general, exists for people from different beliefs, cultures, social and economic backgrounds to have opportunities to share in the awe and wonder of this amazing world, to explore new cultures and gain positive impressions, which they will take back to their country. Through COSTA 2019 we believe that by creating a platform for dialog of peaceful ideas for the tourism industry, we can work together to better promote and achieve peace through tourism.

While many academic institutions, government agencies and members of the travel industry focus on the economic or environmental aspects of tourism, few have recognized the growing importance of tourism in promoting, securing and preserving global peace. Conventional tourism, especially in developing countries, is more vulnerable to the industry’s adverse effects from environmental risks like compromised ecosystems to socio-cultural conflicts arising from failure to respect, communicate and include local communities in the planning and benefit sharing.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), both travel and the tourism industry have often been recognised for the ability to drive peace, security and understanding. In fact, research conducted by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) in partnership with the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) illustrated that countries with a more open and sustainable tourism sector tend to be more peaceful. Moreover, a sustainable and open tourism sector brings about a higher level of positive peace: namely the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Also, countries with a more sustainable and open tourism sector are more likely to enjoy higher levels of positive peace in the future. Finally, the more sustainable a country’s tourism sector, the lower the country’s level of violence and conflict is likely to be and in non-conflict-affected countries, tourism is resilient to deterioration in violence and conflict, even when terrorism is targeted at tourists.

COSTA 2019 offers a platform for scholarly and applied conversations among a wide variety of stakeholders concerned with the continual challenge of advancing peace through tourism.

We welcome proposals of 250 words in English by Friday, November 1, 2019.

COSTA 2019 Streams

Cultural and Heritage Tourism
Dark Tourism
Destination Branding and Marketing
Eco-Tourism and Geo-Tourism
Halal Tourism
Hotel Management and Sustainability
Medical Tourism
Popular Culture & Contents Tourism
Religious Tourism
Sustainable Tourism
Tourism for Peace
Tourism Technology
Other Areas (please specify)