Singapore — tourism development plans

P.P. Wong of the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore, compares the recommendations of two reports on tourism development - Tourism Product Development Plan prepared by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and Tourism Development in Singapore prepared by Pannell, Kerr, Forster. The reports provide a framework for Singapore government tourism planning aimed at rectifying the recent decrease in the level of visitor arrivals.     

Caribbean tourism — economic development

This report has been prepared by the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre (CTRC) in order to focus attention on the contribution made by tourism to economic growth and development in the Caribbean, and also to encourage governments and donor agencies to allocate greater resources to research, product development, marketing and training for this most important economic sector. CTRC is an intergovernmental regional tourism research and development agency whose main aim is to promote tourism as a vehicle for the socioeconomic development of the Caribbean region.     

Conference tourism — a salesman's dream

Conference tourism is thought to be booming, indeed the term a ‘salesman's dream’¹ has been used, but there is actually a dearth of evidence to support this claim. The perceived conference tourism demand is largely derived from ‘informed speculation’. George Hughes, Lecturer in Planning and Tourism in the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, describes the types of statistics available and the three basic methods used to generate estimates of demand. The lack of comparability among methods and the non-rigorous sampling procedures make estimates of demand unreliable as indicators of future development.     

Health-care tourism — an exploratory study

This article explores the concept of health-care tourism. It is based on a pilot study that involved a survey of 206 travellers, 22 travel agents, 12 medical doctors and two herbalists; a review of the tourism and travel literature; and content analysis of 284 travel brochures about 24 countries. Healthcare tourism is defined, the sample, methods of data collection, findings, and implications are discussed, and future research areas suggested. Health-care tourism can be used to define an effective marketing strategy.     

Shaping tourism trends — the commercial perspective

Continuing development in the tourism industry will require the application of proper commercially based techniques. Governments and local authorities nowadays require a return on community investments. The commercial sector is able to create new tourism trends by identifying opportunities for new product development and thereby extending demand. Sound research and marketing to ensure that a product gives adequate financial return should encourage government investment and be of mutual benefit to both government and the tourism industry. Commercial principles can also be applied to protect a country's cultural heritage.     

From travel to tourism — visions and utopias

Man has been on the move since the beginning of his existence. Gradually different forms of transport were developed and greater distances travelled until most parts of the globe became accessible. The invention of the printing press enabled images of the world to be disseminated among people unlikely to experience travel at first hand. Information systems have developed to supply instant images anywhere, and travel and transport technologies enable man to explore outer space.     

Yugoslavian tourism — strategic planning of destination product

The Regional Park Palić-Ludoš, situated in north-east Yugoslavia, has long been recognized as a domestic tourist attraction although in recent years its popularity has declined. Dr Ognjen Bakić, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics, Belgrade, presents a strategy for revitalization of this tourist destination which has the potential to attract international as well as domestic tourists.     

Seasonality and cycles in tourism demand—redux

Analyzing tourism demand cycles is of strong interest to researchers and forecasters. However, often the preponderance of seasonality encumbers the derivation of cycles that are free of seasonal patterns. Using recent advances in time-series econometrics, we offer a solution. We employ two methods that produce cycles that are robust to seasonal properties of the data; cycles from seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data are virtually indistinguishable.     

Government management of tourism — a Thai case study

This article examines the relationship between government and the tourism industry and the problems of that relationship as both strive for more effective management to meet the challenge and changes of the 1980s. Attention is focused on the role of government and the political input, the tourism management agency, the government administrative system, the industry, and the response of these various groups to demands on the tourism sector. The article concentrates on Thailand but many problems experienced are common to most countries and arise from the nature and role of government and the tourism industry and their relationship.     

Stages of peripheral tourism development — Canada's northwest territories

The strategy of industrial diversification into tourism by a peripheral underdeveloped region is considered with reference to Canada's Northwest Territories. A theoretical model of the evolution of the peripheral tourism industry is used to discover whether an ideal strategy exists which could avoid a “centre-periphery conflict”. The article concludes that avoidance of conflict requires maintenance of control over decision making by the peripheral authorities; and industrial development on a scale within the scope of local resources. Lack of local manpower and expertise in tourism is identified as the major block to successful development of a locally controlled industry.     

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.     

International volunteer tourism and youth travelers – an emerging tourism trend

This study attempted to examine the intricate associations among volunteer tourism (VT) motivations, overall image, satisfaction, trust, and the influence of these relationships on behavioral intentions among youth travelers. Our findings from the structural analysis indicated that VT motivations significantly contributed to building positive images, inducing satisfactory VT experiences, and building trust with a VT organization. Our results also demonstrated the competence of the higher-order structure of VT motivations in explicating the intention formation. In addition, the overall image, satisfaction, and trust played an important mediating role. Moreover, satisfaction with VT experiences was of utmost significance in determining intentions.     

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.     

Four kinds of tourism?

To relate tourism to leisure theory, this paper first offers a potential conceptual framework to assist in placing leisure in the context of other human behavior. This is done by considering dimensions of both subjective experience and structural environment. The field structured by these two dimensions is then reviewed by examining four more or less extreme positions, although emphasizing that reality will rarely conform to an extreme. The two dimensional field of human behavior is, like all conceptual models, an attempt to understand the immense complexity of reality. Turning to tourism, this framework demonstrates that just as recreation often fails to result in leisure, so the tourism industry may well detract from the positive aspects of the tourism experience, and at the worst, may produce alienation.     

Analysing stakeholders’ perceptions of golf-course-based tourism: A proposal for developing sustainable tourism projects

Social interpretations of the impact of development on territories differ according to the socio-political positions of different actors, and especially depending on the degree of power wielded by each actor. These interpretations should be taken into account if the governance of development projects is to be improved, and with it, the sustainability of tourist projects in general. This paper examines a range of stakeholders' perceptions of the impacts of a golf-based tourism development in the south-west of Spain. A mixed methodology is used to analyse the results, highlighting the significance of a social impact assessment. Our findings confirm two differing discourses, one corresponding to influential actors and the other to non-influential, showing unequal degrees of variety and complexity in their argumentation and a clearly distinct capacity for shaping the local socio-environment. Our conclusions indicate that the impact of tourism development is perceived differently in line with stakeholders’ socio-political positions.     

Which investment incentives for tourism?

Governments around the world offer a wide range of incentives to developers by acting to reduce capital costs and operating costs and to improve investment security. This analysis demonstrates that high operating leverage is a principal source of financial risk and that grants to reduce initial capital costs are more effective in reducing risk. Apart from guaranteed investment security most tourism incentives are unnecessary — the primary instrument should be the capital grant, or its equivalent in the provision of facilities.