The activation of local service suppliers by incoming tour operators in a “developing” destination – the case of Madagascar

This article elucidates how organised tourism initiated by the international tour operator system can involve local actors in a developing country with a young tourism industry. The empirical basis is incoming tour operators in Madagascar with the focus on their policies and practices in getting involved with local tour operators and individual providers of service by the realisation of their programs for international markets. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on personal interviews with incoming tour operators located in the capital city of Madagascar. The central theoretical frameworks applied are primarily from the research literature on partner selection and cooperation in exchange relationships (channels of distribution) and contract theory and the results are discussed within in the wider perspective of local competence development and sustainable tourism. The findings demonstrate that incoming tour operators have a quite limited involvement in the cooperation with local actors and uncover the problems linked to partner-specific, local attraction-specific and context-specific factors. The study offers an insight into a field that has been scarcely illuminated empirically by research and it is believed that the results have relevance beyond the geographical context of the research.     

Reassessing traffic accidents in developing countries

Current approaches to traffic accidents in developing countries have followed methods utilized in industrialized countries, based on the ‘man-vehicle-road’ causal factors. The persistence of poor traffic safety conditions attests to the inadequacies of these methods. The paper proposes that current unsafe conditions have to be analyzed instead in the context of the physical, political, technical and enforcement environments. Alternative approaches are suggested, based on the acknowledgment of the accident as an environmentally related problem and the acceptance of the safe circulation space as a political right. Accordingly, alternative policy actions are suggested.     

British Wildlife Tourism Operators: Current Issues and Typologies

The UK wildlife outbound tourism sector is a relatively uncharted area of academic study both in terms of demand and supply. The purpose of this paper is first, to move towards a typology of British wildlife tour operators and their favoured destinations, and secondly, to introduce the relationship between satisfying the consumer and sustainable product/destination management. A systematic review of wildlife tourism brochures and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders indicate a gradual shift from a specialised market offering high involvement in a particular species (usually birds) to a more general market looking for an interesting, but pleasant and relaxing holiday based around a general interest in nature and the environment. Both markets coexist in a complex product and tourist spectrum with neither market being entirely inclusive. Instead there is a degree of movement between one and the other which has led to operators offering a wider range of products to suit the hard-core expert and the novice enthusiast. However, product development and satisfying the consumer implies some difficult management dilemmas such as the use of tape recordings, food provisioning and the constant search for new destinations to offer experienced tourists something different.     

Towards Integration of Sustainability into Tourism Planning in Developing Countries: Egypt as a Case Study

This article argues that planning and thus implementation of sustainable tourism development would differ not only between the developed and less developed countries’ (LDCs) tourist destinations but also from one destination to another in developing countries. Although sustainability has been introduced to the global world as an avenue for the protection of the resources in the developing world that the intrageneration equity is one of its objectives, developing countries still lack the effective planning techniques and tools for implementation. Nevertheless, developed countries have got better opportunities for the implementation of such principles, ranging from appropriate funds and expertise needed for the planning tasks, to more stable economic and environmental conditions. As the capabilities of developing countries’ tourist destinations for adopting the principles of sustainability would differ, each of those destinations should be treated separately while assessing such abilities to implement sustainable tourism development. For this purpose, this article approaches the evaluation of the Egyptian tourist planning mechanism from a sustainable point of view. In order to achieve the research objectives, a benchmark technique has been employed by using sustainability indicators as criteria to judge the appropriateness of the tourist planning system against the principles of sustainable tourism development.     

Experiential and involvement effects on the Korean wine tourist's decision-making process

This study's core purpose is to understand the behavioural intention (BI) of wine tourists using the Extended Model of Goal-directed Behaviour (EMGB). Specifically, the Model of Goal-directed Behaviour (MGB), an advanced version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), is extended to EMGB by incorporating experience and involvement towards wine tourism to better understand wine tourists' intention to participate in a tour. The sample was 211 Korean wine tourists. Results revealed that two constructs related to wine tourism, namely, experience of a wine tour and wine tourism involvement, formed positive and significant relationships with attitude towards participating in such a tour. Attitude, subjective norm, and positive anticipated emotion influenced tourists' desire to participate in a wine tour, which, in turn, influenced their BI. Contrary to expectations, the frequency of past behaviour does not have a significant effect on desire and BI, and perceived behavioural control has no significant effects on BI.     

Travellers’ profiles definition using statistical multivariate analysis of attitudinal variables

This paper aims at presenting a set of travellers’ typologies using attributes characterizing people’s attitude, through an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and a subsequent cluster analysis (CA), based on the obtained latent constructs. The final goal is to contribute to deepen the knowledge on market segmentation in order to define more people-oriented transport policies, focusing on a medium size Italian city, Alessandria. Six factors have been defined on which the k-means cluster analysis has been applied finding four travellers’ profiles.Results confirm certain hypothesis from behavioural psychological theories. Attitude–behaviour relationships loosen when habits, consolidated in time, do intervene; moreover in small-medium urban context, as opposed to large and dense cities, insufficient transport supply does not favour the use of alternative modes to the motor vehicle, if not to the cost of a great loss in efficiency. In fact, the study shows how significant constraints such as necessity, time saving, and low transport supply (mainly designed around students going to school) are in determining a behavioural change, so that the “right general attitudes” are not sufficient to obtain a real modal shift. This leads to expect opportunistic behaviours, even within a overall positive attitude towards the environment. Actually, that overall positive attitude is not enough to prompt consistent behaviour unless a marked self-control and strong motivation are present. These two features seem to be missing in the interviewed sample of population, unlike what emerges from other studies undertaken in Northern Europe. The geographic location most likely plays a significant role in such a difference. Indeed, cultural background and the prevailing habits of the population may well explain the “slackening” of the bond between moral norms and behaviour, and the subsequent search for surrogates (e.g. the high willingness to pay for environmental protection) to justify the unwillingness to forgo the private vehicle on behalf of more sustainable modes.Finally, our study seems to prove that education could play a key role in transport policy formulation but, moreover, in social policy, as individuals more akin to modal shift are those showing higher levels of instruction.