The Importance of Sustainability in Diving Tourism—The Case of German Speaking Diving Tourists

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Thank you for the opportunity to review “The Importance of Sustainability in Diving Tourism – The Case of German Speaking Diving Tourists”. I believe the topics fit within the scope of "Sustanability". The issue is timely and interesting, but the paper has several shortcomings that should be addressed if the paper is to be published”

This research analyses the importance of sustainability in diving tourism, contributing to establish new and more sustainable offers in diving tourism and thus developing this area of sports tourism more sustainably overall. However:

• The abstract should be improved.
• “conjoint measurement” are not appropriate keywords. Keywords should be reviewed
• Literature Review should be separated from the Introduction section.
• the introduction should be improved with a view to better exposing the structure of the article. The contribution of the paper should also be indicated. What it specifically contributes.
• Methodology Section is appropriate.
• English language should be reviewed
• “etc” should not be used.

Regarding practical implications, Discussion and Conclusion, this section should be improved, highlighting the current gaps in the topic presented and where the work wants to position in order to overcome the gap.

Finally, I suggest the authors to propose strategies and actions to other active sports tourists, and further sustainable practices.

Abstract have been edited

Keywords have been adapted

Following the guidelines of the journal no extra chapter for the review was created, but the introduction has been edited and the research questions have been stated more clearly at the end of chapter 1.

Methodology was extended (Review 2)

Language has been reviewed

By clearly stating the research questions discussion should be more senseful. In addition, conclusion was extended

Some suggestions have been added.

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• Introduction

1. In the first paragraph, lines 24-26, I think you should make it clear why you consider ,,Tourism, and sports tourism in particular” to be ”prime examples of this” - and what is ”this” more precisely. It is a little difficult to understand the idea and it is not really explained why you state this.
2. Lines 61-62 - maybe a really short definition would be suitable for what sports tourism is. It is, after all, the main subject of interest for your paper.
3. I understand the value of Table 1, but at the same time I think it is too big, it takes a lot of space in the paper, but it says too little about the reviewed papers - maybe comprise the results from these studies under another form of representation? Or add more important information in the table drawn from each paper ? (maybe without including the title of the paper?)
4. The Introduction is  well structured overall, but at the end, I recommend to better introduce in the text your purpose and the research questions. The way it is stated now, it appears as a set of questions that are naturally derived from previous studies, but it is not clearly stated that these will be the questions you will try to answer and also it is not clearly stated which is the purpose of the paper at the end of the Introduction. By the way, the three questions are really interesting and bring to attention important matters.

• Materials and methods

         In section 2.2. Statistical Analysis, it will be useful to shortly explain what cluster analysis and conjoint analysis are and how they work. 

• Results

      1. Line 231 - it is difficult to understand the meaning of the sentence ”the high observed number of diverse divers seems to be striking” - their high number in what context? 

      2. Again, the conjoint analysis, how it works and what do the numbers in Tables 7 and 8represent should be explained - either in this section or in the ”Methods” one

• Conclusions

      This section is to the point and it explains in a clear manner the contributions of the results for the industry. However, you mention that the findings are also interesting from a scientific perspective (Line 313) but I do not think you really explain the scientific importance. Could you elaborate? 

• You should maybe check the text for some minor writing issues. Examples: line 47-48: ”which necessitates the need”  - maybe a synonym would work better or to express this in some other way.  Line 189: ”high sustainable diverse” - should be divers. Lines 326-327: there is something missing in these sentences, the meaning is not clear. 

The lines have been adapted

We have added our working definition in addition to the cited papers.

The table has been reduced by cutting the titles as the can be written in “references”. Content of some of the papers are discussed in the following text. The smaller table now, just underlines the importance of the topic sustainability in diving tourism.

By stating that we are dealing with the three questions, in order follow the reviewer´s advice.

Explanations have been added

Sentence has been changed

Explanation has been added

Another aspect has been added

Sentence has been changed

Has been changed

Has been changed

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I am very concerned about updated authors and studies. Please, authors must add update studies, we are in 2021.

The literature review is correct, but please it check updated authors.

About the questions, I would recommend another question. How is diving tourism affecting the territory and the marine ecosystem?

Regarding to Methods is good, although I liked the study sample larger than 174 people.

About the results and conclusions are very interesting. But I did not see opinions about international tourist about this topic in the survey, especially international dive tourists. For me it is importance.

I would like to see a image with the most importance variables relationship.

Author can add limitations and future study in the paper, please.

Within the review papers of the last 10 years have been included. In some basic aspects also older works.

Although the aspect is very important and interesting, our investigation was not dealing with that aspect, so it should be included in following studies.

This aspect has been added to the limitations.

As we focused only on German speaking tourists, we could not give answers to that but added it to the recommendations for following studies (including our next one with translated questionaries).

Results in table 7 and 8 have been described more detailed. Following this we did not include an additional image

Further limitations and ideas for further research have been added.