EAI Endorsed Transactions on Tourism, Technology and Intelligence

A Hybrid Approach to On-Grid and Off-Grid Solar Energy with Optimum Investment: A Case Study in Vietnam

Long D. Nguyen — 2024-12-05

Vietnam’s demand for energy has grown significantly due to the country’s economy’s fast development and expansion over the last ten years. The majority of energy in the future will have to come from renewable sources due to the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, which will force a significant transition away from fossil fuels as the primary energy source. In the Power Development Plan VIII with a vision to 2050, Vietnam’s power sector has labored to develop new resources such as solar and wind energies in an effort to build and enhance the nation’s power system. A technical and financial model for the construction of a hybrid grid-connected photovoltaic plant with a battery energy storage system under practical optimization problems is presented in this work. Certain business models link the analysis to hourly irradiation by taking into account the hourly energy demand profile for planned working activities. The suggested hybrid system’s investment, needed power, and capacity are evaluated and optimized using a variety of scenarios. These findings demonstrate the system’s economic viability and technological viability in our suggested approaches.

Eco and responsible tourism and effective community engagement: Learnings and considerations from the social enterprise sector in Vietnam

Michael Maher — 2024-12-16

INTRODUCTION: In the eco and responsible tourism sector, social enterprises (organisations which fund their social mission through market activities) can meaningfully engage with local communities in their pursuit of social impact.

OBJECTIVES: This paper explores the trade-offs social enterprises make to balance market viability and social mission within the eco and responsible tourism context, focusing on how these trade-offs intersect and impact organisational strategies.

METHODS: The research adopts a thematic analysis of data collected from nine social enterprise organisations who partook in semi-structured interviews.

RESULTS: Two intersecting axes of trade-offs are presented: how beneficiaries are included in the development of market outputs, and the second on how its social value is dispersed.

CONCLUSION: A framework is developed to enable self-reflection and evaluation of the trade-offs and risks involved to social mission and market viability.

Pro-Poor Tourism as a Mechanism of Social Innovation and Empowerment

Richard Hazenberg — 2025-01-14

Pro-poor Tourism is a concept that emerged in the early 2000’s as a means of fostering the development of sustainable tourism and as a means of ensuring the benefits of this were felt by local populations. Whilst the efficacy of pro-poor tourism and the impact that it makes for communities has been questioned over the last two decades, with research focus on how its impacts on communities and how it is operationalised, there has been less of a focus on the underpinnings of what pro-poor tourism is (or should be) from a theoretical perspective. In particular, there remains a lack of understanding as to what constitutes pro-poor tourism from a sociological perspective. In this review paper, the concept of social innovation is used to theoretically explain the mechanisms for successful implementation of pro-poor tourism initiatives, as a means of empowerment. The paper illustrates how pro-poor tourism can act as a means for empowering the poor and achieving sustainable development agendas, by utilising ‘strong tradition’ social innovation approaches in order to enable social action that can refigure societal power structures.