Can ecotourism deliver real economic,social, and environmental benefits? A study of the Osa Peninsula,Costa Rica

Doubt persists about ecotourism's ability to make tangible contributions to conservation and deliver benefits for host communities. This work in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula tests the hypothesis that ecotourism in this region is more effective at improving well-being for local residents, at enhancing their access to key resources and information, and at supporting biodiversity conservation than other locally available economic sectors. Data from 128 semi-structured interviews with local workers, both in ecotourism and in other occupations, together with associated research, indicate that ecotourism offers the best currently available employment opportunities, double the earnings of other livelihoods, and other linked benefits. Locally, ecotourism is viewed as the activity contributing most to improvements in residents’ quality of life in the Osa Peninsula and to increased levels of financial and attitudinal support for parks and environmental conservation. Ecolodge ownership by local people is substantial, and many local ecotourism workers plan to launch their own businesses. The data offer a convincing rebuttal to arguments that ecotourism does little to address poverty or disparities in access to resources and equally rebuts claims that ecotourism is simply a part of the “neoliberal conservation toolkit” that cannot help but exacerbate the very inequalities it purports to address.     

Residents’ Participation,Perceived Impacts,and Support for Community-based Ecotourism in Cambodia: A Latent Profile Analysis

Throughout Cambodia, community-based ecotourism (CBET) has been initiated and established to generate additional income for local people and to conserve local natural resources since the early 1990s. However, few studies have addressed residents' attitude towards CBET. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the residents' attitude towards CBET. The study classified 209 residents of Yeak Laom CBET in north-eastern Cambodia with respect to their participation in non-remunerative and remunerative activities, perceived impacts on livelihood assets and livelihood outcomes, and support for CBET. Rather than the conventional cluster analysis used by most previous studies, Latent profile analysis was employed. The study suggests that residents of a CBET may consist of four attitude clusters, namely Absolute Supporter (69%), Beneficiary Supporter (14%), Concerned Supporter (11%), and Ambivalent (6%). In conclusion, most residents of a CBET are likely to support CBET development and believe that it has positive impacts on their livelihood assets and outcomes, albeit with little involvement. The residents of the study area can be considered as a tourism-hungry community.     

British Spectators’ Perceptions of the Values and Norms in Selected Professional Sports: a Comparative Ethical Survey

Abstract

In recent years the British media have made much of the apparent decline of standards in British sports. In order to interrogate the veracity of media assumptions regarding the standards of conduct in major British sports, a selection of British sports spectators were interviewed in order to examine: (i) their perceptions of the values and norms of sport; (ii) whether they thought that sporting conduct as currently demonstrated by UK sportsmen and women was positive and related to some ideal notion of the ‘ethos of sport’ and the ‘spirit of the game’; (iii) whether they thought that there had been an improvement, a decline or no change in the ethical standards of conduct in those sports; and (iv) views on the impact of new technologies on the values and norms of sport. At least 200 questionnaires were collected from spectators at each of the following major sporting events: (a) the English Nationwide Football League Divisions 2 and 3 play‐offs, Cardiff, May 2001; (b) the All England Tennis Championships, Wimbledon, July 2001; (c) the England vs Australia Cricket Test match, Edgbaston Birmingham, July 2001; and (iv) the British Open Golf Championships, Royal Lytham and St Annes, Lancashire, July 2001. Results showed that there were statistically significant differences in what sports spectators thought about British professional sportspersons acting in a fair and sporting way and also that standards of conduct had generally declined over the last 10 years. A general pattern of distribution emerged where the team sports (cricket and football) were less favourably perceived than the individual sports (golf and tennis).     

Ecotourism in Bako National Park,Borneo: Visitors’ Perspectives on Environmental Impacts and their Management

Ecotourism potentially provides a sustainable approach to development in Malaysia. However, to realise this potential the adverse effects of visitor activity and associated infrastructure on the natural environment and the tourism experience must be identified to guide management actions and thus to sustain the resources on which ecotourism ultimately depends. This study, conducted in Bako National Park on the island of Borneo, reports one of the first efforts to identify the impacts of ecotourism in Malaysia from the perspective of visitors. Environmental conditions of greatest influence on visitors’ experiences included litter and biophysical conditions such as soil erosion and vegetation damage. These conditions were of greater concern to visitors than social conditions, such as the number of people. These results suggest that management efforts can be directed towards indicators of greatest concern such as litter, soil erosion and vegetation damage. The broad support given by those surveyed for a range of management actions provides managers with a choice of strategies to sustain ecotourism in Bako National Park. This study, with its sociopolitical approach, contributes to a greater understanding of the implications of the ecotourist experience for ecotourism management in Malaysia.     

Is robot hotel a future trend? Exploring the incentives,barriers and customers' purchase intention for robot hotel stays

To explore whether robot hotels will be a future trend, the main purpose of this study is to increase understanding of the incentives and barriers that influence customers' purchase intention (PI) for robot hotel stays. This study also explores how customers' tech-savviness moderates the causal relationships between incentives, barriers, and PI. Hotel customers in Taiwan were surveyed with a 6-part questionnaire; 408 responses were collected using convenience sampling. The data is analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM). The research results indicate that incentives and barriers impact respondents' PI for robot hotel stays, with tech-savviness serving as moderators. This indicates that particular types of individuals (e.g., individuals more comfortable with technology and/or change) are more susceptible to the idea of robot hotels and are more willing to pay to stay at robot hotels. Other individual types may require additional incentives before choosing to patronize robot hotels.     

Tourism education and curriculum design: A time for consolidation and review?

This paper seeks to examine the growth and development of tourism education within Great Britain, with specific reference to the situation in England and Wales. This is a subject that has received relatively scant attention since the publication of a number of seminal papers produced in the mid to late 1990’s and early C20th. The paper reviews how tourism education has developed from relatively humble origins to that of a subject taught in a wide variety of education institutions. It examines what programmes seek to achieve in terms of knowledge skills development and preparing students to meet the labour needs of the tourism industry. It also reflects on where tourism education is going in terms of courses, course philosophy, levels of study, subject content and teaching and learning strategies.     

Why do you cruise? Exploring the motivations for taking cruise holidays,and the construction of a cruising motivation scale

The purposes of this study were to develop a measurement scale for motivation to cruising and to examine the role of cruising motivation on intention to cruise. The motivation measurement scale was developed by following the procedures recommended by Churchill (1979). The scale was tested and found to be both reliable and valid. The role of cruising motivation on intention to cruise was tested with an online panel survey and it was found that cruising motivation has a positive influence on cruising intention. Based on the study results, some marketing implications were provided to the cruise industry.     

What is happening in Paris? Airbnb,hotels, and the Parisian market: A case study

Airbnb has been the subject of heated discussions among tourism and hospitality scholars. In order to understand the true impact of P2Psharing on the tourism and hospitality landscape, it is important to understand that market in detail first. Therefore, in this paper, we explore the development of the Airbnb market over the last seven years in Paris, the most popular destination for Airbnb guests with more than 40,000 accommodation rentals. This research note is a summary of our findings on the Paris market. Our study shows different growth and seasonality patterns for Airbnb and hotels and dissimilarities in the geographical location of the offers. The findings indicate that the two products are not in direct competition and that their relationship might be more complex than previously thought. We trust that exploring the nature of the competitive relationship would be a valuable avenue for further investigation.     

Is UNESCO recognition effective in fostering tourism? A comment on Yang,Lin and Han

The purpose of this response to the original work by Yang, Lin and Han (Tourism Management, 2009), is to continue discussion of the impacts created by the formal accreditation of sites through the process of UNESCO recognition. In the particular case described by Yang, Lin and Han, alternative interpretations of the results may be offered. Additional evidence is also provided from instances in Italy and overall it appears that econometric analysis questions the degree to which UNESCO accreditation generates the economic returns from tourism that may have prompted the original applications.     

Are innovations relevant for consumers in the hospitality industry? A hedonic approach for Cuban hotels

This paper evaluates the impact of innovative activity in the hotel industry on the willingness to pay by consumers. To this end, we estimate a hedonic price function where innovation is identified indirectly through certain attributes that previous literature has linked with hotel innovativeness. The test is performed on a representative sample of Cuban hotels, considering a large number of attributes of hotels and rooms. To solve the usual problems of collinearity, a million alternative models are estimated by choosing the variables included in a random manner and obtaining the final coefficients by means of an internal meta-analysis. The results are completed with a variance decomposition analysis. The results highlight the importance of the attributes linked to innovation and internationalization on the determination of room prices in Cuban hotels: membership of international hotel chains, high quality offers, diversified rooms, and adaptability to specific needs of each client.     

COVID-19 and Africa's aviation and tourism sectors: A new agenda for the future?

Although the impact of COVID-19 is inordinately enormous, there remains a lack of attention to the new governance architecture, the African Union High-Level Task Force (AU-HLTF), in Africa's aviation and tourism sectors in its wake, which this paper primarily examines. We foregrounded governance themes of political economy within the African Union High-Level Task Force (AU-HLTF) through secondary data, observing 90 key industry leaders and 10 purposively sampled semi-structured interviews. We found the insignificant priority in tourism restart via LCCs first, the incongruent holistic relationship between the restart of the aviation and tourism sectors. Secondly, the historical-geographical material relationships within the new governance framework. Thirdly, the AU-HLTF intervention is actor-biased towards the aviation sector and rooted in path dependency. A hierarchical-mixed market governing typology we propose by arguing is a steering mechanism of public sector reform that alternatively reboots a balanced path towards sustainability by prioritizing intra-tourism promoted by low-cost carriers.     

Transport and Tourism: Cycle Tourism – A Model for Sustainable Development?

Whilst the relationship between transport and tourism has been a subject of discussion in the literature, research has focused primarily on an evaluation of transport as a means to an end rather than as a contextual component of the tourism offering, especially at the destination. This paper evaluates the concept of a planned sustainable transport network, the National Cycle Network in the UK, as a potential model for the integration of transport, tourism and recreation. The paper concludes by exploring a number of implications, which may be considered when developing similar tourism transport networks. A model of sustainable transport development is presented.     

Is UNESCO recognition effective in fostering tourism? A comment on Yang,Lin and Han: Reply

This note replies Cellini's comment on the real effect of WHL in inducing more tourist arrivals in Yang, Lin and Han (2010, Tourism Management). Due to the time-invariant feature of the WHL number in the short-run, the fixed effect of panel data model seems to be inadequate on evaluating the impact of WHL on attracting international tourists. However, pooling estimates show that a region with more WHLs can attract more tourists.     

A family affair? Exploring the influence of childhood sport socialisation on young adults’ leisure-sport careers in north-west England

Based on interviews conducted with 19 young adults aged 30–35-years-old living in north-west England, this paper examines the features of childhood sport socialisation that typically precede high levels of leisure-sport participation in adulthood. The evidence suggests that the extent to which respondents were invested with different experiences of sport socialisation by their parents was influenced by financial and transport constraints, whether parents had themselves participated in sport, and the extent of parental encouragement. Those with the highest levels of adulthood participation tended to have two sports active parents who encouraged them to participate in leisure-sport, typically for enjoyment and the ‘love' of sport, and who experienced fewer financial and transport constraints than other parents. These respondents were also more likely, to have inherited sporting habituses and values from both parents who were in turn more able, and likely to purposively invest their offspring with different resources during childhood as an aspect of family-based leisure relationships. The evidence suggests, however, that each of the identified features of childhood sport socialisation are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for promoting high levels of leisure-sport participation during adulthood. Finally, the article concludes that sport policies may help raise the overall level of participation among the population, but frequent, and perhaps more health promoting, participation may remain confined to a minority who benefited from the required kind of sports socialisation in their childhood families.     

Too tired for exercise? The work and leisure of female cleaners in Denmark

The aim of this study was to explore the opportunities and challenges of female cleaners with regard to participation in leisure time physical activity (LTPA). We gained information about their everyday lives via semi-structured interviews with 25 women, most of them from rural Turkey. Drawing on the relevant literature on women’s work–life balance and (migrant) women’s participation in LTPA, we approached their work and leisure from an intersectionality perspective and explored if and how female cleaners engaged in LTPA and which constraints impeded their involvement. The interviewees’ narratives revealed that their everyday lives as unskilled migrant workers had a decisive influence on their opportunities of engaging in LTPA: most women struggled with the demands of a physically exhausting job and an extensive ‘second shift’ at home and therefore had great difficulty finding the time and energy to exercise. However, previous experience of LTPA seemed to have a decisive influence on their current LTPA practices.     

Can the Sun Rise on Sunset? A Case in Human Resources and Organizational Behavior

ABSTRACT

Events at the Sunset Hotel illustrate the numerous human resources issues that can develop when a senior manager who was passed over for promotion distorts messages and undermines his supervisor's constructive change efforts. Rumors flourish, employees become confused, and Sunset Hotel's general manager is frustrated in his inability to accomplish goals. It is uncertain whether the general manager will be able to regain the senior manager's support or to prevent his behavior from affecting employee morale and damaging the hotel's image and reputation.