Sustainability and integration – the principal challenges to tourism and tourism research

ABSTRACT

What are the biggest challenges facing tourism and tourism research? This paper answers this question by canvasing the opinions of recognized experts in the field. The analysis is based on 30 interviews with fellows of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. Two key thematic issues were identified. First, the pragmatic issue of how to operationalize sustainability and its various sub-elements, such as climate change, overtourism, and tourisation to ensure the long-term future of tourism. Second, the need for further integration between disciplines within the tourism field, between tourism and other fields, and between research and practice.     

Negotiating heritage and tradition: identity and cultural tourism in Ærø, Denmark

Ronström's tradition/heritage dichotomy is used to explore issues of cultural inheritance in the Danish island of Ærø. The 2006 publication of Carsten Jensen's best-selling historical novel We, the Drowned turned the Baltic Sea village of Marstal into Denmark's best-known maritime community. Locally, however, there had long been a tradition of Marstallers contrasting their community's seafaring past to the reputedly agrarian identity of the island's other main village, the former market town of Ærøskøbing. The community rivalry between industrial Marstal and tourist-friendly, half-timbered Ærøskøbing finds expression in the two villages’ various tourist attractions. Jensen's novel has been embraced by both Marstallers and Danes in general, renewing interest in local traditions and the encouraging Marstal's development as a heritage town. Although We, the Drowned has become a tool for constructing community solidarity, it has also introduced a mode of heritage tourism that may clash with elements of the local identity.     

Urban Subversion and Mobile Cinema: Leisure,Architecture and the “Kino-Cine-Bomber”

Abstract

This article introduces our bicycle-based cinema device—the “kino-cine- bomber”—as a vehicle to re-imagine disused buildings and obsolete urban infrastructure for re-activated public leisure spaces. It is also a vehicle to conceptualize theoretical relations among leisure, architecture, cinematic geographies, and urban spaces. Through these lenses, we focus on a series of Situationist-inspired methods using the kino-cine-bomber to identify buildings that could be removed—as architecture by subtraction—in Coventry, United Kingdom. There, the River Sherbourne flows hidden beneath the city, culverted and capped, a relic of postwar urban planning no longer fit for purpose. We explore river “daylighting” plans by postgraduate architecture students using the kino-cine-bomber, first to trace the hidden river beneath the city streets then to project architectural designs where buildings may be repurposed and the river revealed. We discuss the possibilities of these designs and, befitting a paper celebrating Situationism, we close with a manifesto for urban leisure spaces.     

Health club use and ‘lifestyle’: exploring the boundaries between work and leisure

In this article I investigate the relationship between work and leisure for professional employees. Drawing on qualitative research I explore the motivation behind premier club use – a sector within the wider health club industry – to show that rather than being an activity firmly located within the domain of ‘leisure’, it is a complex activity, influenced by a person's occupation and experience within the workplace. Through the empirical discussion I show that professionals working within the city are often committed to a ‘project of the self’, fuelled by a desire to create a professional identity whereby the development and maintenance of a fit and healthy body symbolises characteristics that are valued within the professional workplace. Accordingly I propose the concept of a ‘workstyle’ as opposed to ‘lifestyle’, to suggest that the motivation behind premier club use is defined according to the social and cultural experience of working in the city and in turn, certain individuals may be consuming premier club membership for the benefit of their overall career. To this end, premier club use is portrayed as an activity defined according to the principles of work rather than as a definitive ‘leisure’ pursuit, thus blurring and mediating the boundaries between work and leisure.     

Effects of Service Fairness and Service Quality on Tourists’ Behavioral Intentions and Subjective Well-Being

This study examined the effects of service fairness and service quality on tourists’ behavioral intentions and subjective well-being (SWB) with the mediation of satisfaction. It conceptualizes SWB as a sociopsychological benefit that people receive from tourism activities in parallel with behavioral intentions to visit the destination treated as economic benefit. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted in Xiamen city of Fujian Province, China, and a valid sample of 541 tourists was used for data analysis. Findings show that service fairness has more of an effect on behavioral intentions and SWB than service quality; and such differentiated effects can be partly attributed to the mediating role of satisfaction between the antecedent constructs (i.e, service fairness and service quality) and consequence constructs (i.e, behavioral intentions and tourist SWB). The results suggest that tourism service providers should deliver services in a fairer way and tourist SWB should be attended to by both governments and academics.     

Beyond Ethnic Stereotypes – Identities and Outdoor Recreation Among Immigrants and Nonimmigrants in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Studies on immigrants' recreational use of greenspace have tended to focus on ethnic groups as homogeneous entities. In a qualitative study based on group interviews, this article focuses on the cultural diversity among and within ethnic groups. We used an identity perspective to study outdoor recreation of young Dutch adults with Chinese, Turkish, or nonimmigrant backgrounds. Results show that primarily personal identities, age, and ethnicity inform recreational behavior. The multiplicity of peoples' identities results in more heterogeneity between and within ethnic groups, as well as more homogeneity between immigrants and nonimmigrants, than commonly described. When immigrants are considered as a homogeneous group that underparticipates in outdoor recreation, individual immigrants who frequently participate in outdoor recreation are overlooked. Furthermore, we show that acculturation does not progress at the same rate among all ethnic groups, and that ethnic identity may be sustained among second and subsequent generations through certain recreational activities.     

Training,tracking, and traversing: digital materiality and the production of bodies and/in space in runners’ fitness tracking practices

ABSTRACT

The impact of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, or the digital quantification of the body for the purposes of self-betterment, on leisure has been well-established within the literature. Drawing on the experiences of ten women who self-track while running, this project extends the literature on running and place, and lived experiences of the QS, by considering the role of fitness tracking on embodiment and emplacement. First, I trouble the notion that running data is an objective replication of a runner’s activities, illustrating instead that fitness tracking is an accomplishment of human and non-human agencies and that this accomplishment does not always go according to the runner’s plan. Second, I complicate the idea that personal data collection is a disembodying act that turns visceral sensations into impersonal numbers. Instead, I argue that running data collection is often intertwined with visceral and experiential aspects of running, thus maintaining a connection between the body and the data that is collected on that body. In so doing, I contribute to digital leisure studies efforts to characterise the lived experiences of self-tracking, pointing in particular to the role of non-humans and place in those lived experiences.     

We Aren’t So Different After All: Differences and Similarities Between Political Affiliation and Issues of Park Use,Management, and Privatization

Abstract

Many researchers have argued that political polarization has increased dramatically over the past 25 years. This article explores partisan polarization regarding specific issues of state park use, management, and privatization. An online demographically stratified panel survey of New York and Pennsylvania residents was used to examine differences in attitudes toward these issues by political affiliation. Respondents were placed into three categories: Republican, Independent, and Democrat. While significant differences were found among the groups, they were often small and rarely between Democrats and Republicans. The only issues demonstrating clear partisan differences were certain park privatization issues, support for diversity initiatives, support for additional greenways, and support for shale gas development within state parks. The results from this study indicate little partisan polarization of state park issues.     

Negative Film Plot and Tourists´ Image and Intentions: The Case of City of God

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects of films with a negative plot on tourists’ cognitive and affective image about Brazil and behavioral intentions of visiting the country. The film selected is City of God, one of the most internationally acclaimed motion pictures produced in Brazil. The results suggest that films with a negative plot tend to negatively reinforce the viewers’ evaluations of the image attributes, although the influence on the general image tends to be subtle. Moreover, it was concluded that in the case of films with a negative plot, the imagery of landscapes is the element that is most likely to increase visiting intention.     

Continuity,change and performativity in leisure: English folk dance and modernity 1900–1939

In post‐industrial countries, folk dance may be considered as an embodied performance of a perceived tradition and is representational of values attached to an imagined past. The English Country Dance is one such form of folk dance, having been revived, or re‐invented, in the early twentieth century by Cecil Sharp who claimed it to be a national dance of England. However, Sharp re‐defined it not as a popular and spontaneous leisure activity but as a serious middle‐class art form representing an English sensibility and the virtues of a pre‐industrial pastoral collectivism. After the hiatus of the First World War, the English Country Dance continued to offer a resistance to the modern, this time in the form of a burgeoning popular dance culture which embraced urban sophistication and jazz dance. Using the concept of performativity, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the leisure context of the English Country Dance, in terms of spatiality, style, consumption and gender, enabled a continuity of resistance to the modern in a changing socio‐cultural environment. The paper draws upon primary research in the archive of the Manchester Branch of the English Folk Dance Society and upon records of contemporary dance in the Mass Observation archive.     

What can big data and text analytics tell us about hotel guest experience and satisfaction?

The tremendous growth of social media and consumer-generated content on the Internet has inspired the development of the so-called big data analytics to understand and solve real-life problems. However, while a handful of studies have employed new data sources to tackle important research problems in hospitality, there has not been a systematic application of big data analytic techniques in these studies. This study aims to explore and demonstrate the utility of big data analytics to better understand important hospitality issues, namely the relationship between hotel guest experience and satisfaction. Specifically, this study applies a text analytical approach to a large quantity of consumer reviews extracted from Expedia.com to deconstruct hotel guest experience and examine its association with satisfaction ratings. The findings reveal several dimensions of guest experience that carried varying weights and, more importantly, have novel, meaningful semantic compositions. The association between guest experience and satisfaction appears strong, suggesting that these two domains of consumer behavior are inherently connected. This study reveals that big data analytics can generate new insights into variables that have been extensively studied in existing hospitality literature. In addition, implications for theory and practice as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

Backpacker tourism: sustainable and purposeful? Investigating the overlap between backpacker tourism and volunteer tourism motivations

Alternative tourism, particularly backpacker and volunteer tourism, has developed significantly in recent times. This rapid development has contributed to criticism of potential negative effects, notably of the environmental, cultural, economic and social impacts associated with backpacker tourism. Volunteer tourism, by contrast, has been seen in positive terms as more sustainable, combining altruistic motivations with the travel concept. This paper explores backpacker interest in volunteer tourism and identifies overlaps in motivations between the two forms of tourism; 249 self-administered questionnaires were collected from backpackers within backpacker hostels in central Melbourne, Australia. The findings of this study suggest that a motivational overlap exists between backpacker and volunteer tourists, indicating potential for the creation of volunteer tourism products catering specifically for the backpacker market. This may encourage more sustainable tourism experiences within the burgeoning backpacker market, thus addressing some of the negative criticism of the latter. This paper also discusses the implications of these findings for the marketing and development of volunteer tourism products for both the backpacker and volunteer tourism markets.     

The “Ecotourism Curriculum” and Visitor Learning in Community-based Ecotourism: Case Studies from Thailand and Cambodia

Visitor learning is a basic component of community-based ecotourism (CBET), yet has seldom been the subject of research. This study examines how local environmental, cultural and livelihood knowledge comprise the ecotourism curriculum in two CBET projects located in southern Thailand and Cambodia, respectively. Following an accounting of local ecotourism curriculum content and teaching pedagogies employed at present in the two projects, recommendations are made for enhancing visitor learning in CBET. These include curriculum development, which recognizes and incorporates the particular forms of local knowledge present in a given CBET community, and the application of pedagogies of experiential and transformative learning in the teaching of this curriculum.     

Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery: Re‐enactment Event Tourism as Authentic Heritage Travel

Abstract

Heritage tourism has evolved to include study of sub‐segments who travel to attend and participate in historical event re‐enactments. In the US, the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific coast and back again is being commemorated from its point of departure to its end. This paper is an exploratory study of a sample of re‐enactment tourists who attended three of the Lewis and Clark events. The role that re‐enactment tourism plays in heritage tourism is examined and preliminary findings on perceptions of nostalgia and authenticity of the re‐enactment products and events are presented. Preliminary managerial benefits and suggestions for host communities are provided.     

War and thanatourism: Waterloo 1815–1914

This paper examines the historical evolution of Waterloo as a tourism mega-attraction. It locates battlefield visits as a form of thanatourism and explores the development of Waterloo through a sight sacralization model. The model proposes that an attractions appeal is achieved through progressive stages of marking which comes to invest it with a quasi-religious mystique, sacralization, as a goal of ritual pilgrimage for tourists. The paper comments on the sequencing of the model in the case of Waterloo and suggests how the social and ideological environments of the potential tourist may affect the potency and stability of the sacralization process over time. Résumé: Guerre et thanatourisme: Waterloo 1815–1914. Cet article examine lévolution historique de Waterloo comme méga-attraction touristique. Il identifie les visites au champ de bataille comme forme de thanatourisme et examine le développement de Waterloo selon un modèle de sacralisation de lieu. Le modèle présente lidée que lattrait dun lieu touristique est réalisé par lintermédiaire des étapes progressifs de marquage, qui linvestissent dune mystique quasi religieuse, une sacralisation, comme objectif de pèlerinage rituel pour les touristes. Larticle commente lenchaînement du modèle pour le cas de Waterloo et suggère comment les environnements social et idéologique du touriste éventuel peuvent, avec le temps, avoir un effet sur la puissance et la stabilité du processus de sacralisation.     

Same but Different: Chinese-American and Mainland Chinese Consumers’ Perceptions of and Behavior in a Service Failure Situation

Going beyond the traditional East/West consumer differentiation in studying service failure, this article examined the impact of acculturation, together with ethnicity of service staff and origin of a hotel brand on consumers’ perceptions and behavioral responses. The research drew on four focus groups conducted in Beijing with 34 participants, followed by an experiment for which data were collected from 451 Chinese-Americans and 464 Mainland Chinese. Results showed significant differences in perceptions and behavioral responses following a service failure between Chinese-Americans and Mainland Chinese, and among Chinese-Americans with different acculturation strategies. Implications of study findings and directions for future research are discussed.