Indigenous tourism from a visitor's perspective: an empirical examination of Valene L. Smith's 4Hs at a Sámi festival in Norway

Over the past three decades, indigenous tourism has received a growing amount of attention from both the tourist market and tourism academics. The research conducted regarding indigenous people has often treated the subject from a conflict perspective. In this study, a symbiotic perspective is employed in that visitors' attractions built upon indigenous resources may positively contribute to indigenous hosts. Nevertheless, to do so is dependent upon acquiring an understanding of visitors' preferences in an indigenous tourism context. To empirically ascertain visitors' preferences, a framework proposed by Valene L. Smith has been adopted. This framework operationalises the indigenous tourism product as consisting of four primary components: habitat, handicrafts, heritage, and history. This study first identifies these four components, and then examines the magnitude of their effect on visitors' experiences and perceptions at a Sámi festival in Northern Norway. The findings indicate that habitat is clearly the most salient component of this particular indigenous event in that it positively influences the visitors' satisfaction with the festival, their willingness to recommend the festival to others, and their willingness to pay to attend the festival. Further details of the findings as well as the study's implications are also provided.     

Historical and geographical context in festival tourism development

Festivals have increasingly become a significant tool for economic development through both tourism and the re-imaging and re-branding of cities and regions as modern cultural centers. To understand the issues and challenges of festival tourism events, it is important to know the historical and geographical context in which they occur. Conceptually, the historical context can be viewed through the degree to which an event has a vernacular indigenous origin or is newly created. The geographical context, on the other hand, reflects the degree to which a festival is defined by the place in which it occurs or is more global in its thematic orientation. A contextual framework for festival tourism that takes these two factors into account results in four types of festival events: Local Heritage Festivals, Local Contemporary Festivals, National Heritage Festivals, and Global Contemporary Festivals. These four festival types face issues related to their local identity, uniqueness, liminality, and authenticity. The contextual framework for festival tourism is applied to the current situation of rapid festival development in China, with recommendations that Chinese event managers need to focus more on historically and geographically meaningful themes developed in partnership with local populations if they want to ensure an event's long-term success.     

Traditional costume experience at a cultural heritage festival

The experience of traditional costumes on palace grounds is a unique phenomenon of cultural heritage tourism in South Korea. This study investigated the impact of the experience of the traditional Korean costume, Hanbok, on festival satisfaction. Based on the theoretical background, five dimensions of festival experiences were derived: playfulness, escape, placeness, togetherness, and sacredness. The proposed model was empirically tested in a field study with 374 respondents participating in the Royal Culture Festival held at the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Seoul, Korea. The regression analysis showed that all five dimensions of festival experiences had a statistically significant impact on festival satisfaction. This study affirms that the Hanbok experience plays a key moderating role in the relationship between four of the five dimensions of festival experiences and festival satisfaction. Detailed academic and managerial implications are provided.     

Suitable Festival Activities for Taiwan's Tourism and Nation Branding with the Application of the PR AHP Program

Taiwan's tourism industry can be further developed to establish country branding from the perspective of tourism. Combining festival activities with tourism is a good approach. This study is aimed at identifying the festival activities that are suitable for Taiwan's tourism campaign. It has adopted the preference relation analytic hierarchy process (PR AHP) method which currently has no related program. This study has made two major contributions. It has determined suitable festival activities for Taiwan's tourism campaign and has constructed an easy-to-use PR AHP program for researchers.     

Memorable tourism experiences and their consequences: An interaction ritual (IR) theory approach

Tourism experiences, memories thereof, and their consequences tend to be analysed separately, often focusing on the individual's perspective. This paper introduces Collins' (2004) interaction ritual (IR) theory to develop a micro-sociological interpretation of these phenomena as interconnected elements of IR chains. A longitudinal qualitative study of a multi-cultural festival held in Italy, the Mondiali Antirazzisti (Anti-racist World Cup), is used to show how emotional experiences and patterns of collective action are reproduced by the returning attendees in their home communities through the trans-local appropriation of the event's format. Findings lead to a revised model of IR chains to explain the trans-local dimension of transformational event tourism. The implications for wider application of IR theory within tourism are discussed.     

Perceptions of tourism products

The concept of the tourism product has been rooted in the minds of industry professionals as the industry has rapidly developed. Yet research into the tourism product and its constitution has not been a particular focus. Smith (1994) was one of the first, and remains one of the few, researchers to have decomposed the tourism product into basic elements. His five elements formed a single core and a series of four encapsulating shells. The study reported here first clarified the definition of tourism product and employed Smith's framework to analyze various tourism products in different tourism sectors. A student sample was used in a survey to rate the importance of five elements of tourism products. The results showed that the five elements were prevalent but that they differed in their importance for tourists across a variety of tourism products. Tangible physical plant was considered to be the most important component of nearly all tourism products. Finally, a new model of the tourism product is proposed here, and managerial priorities when creating sustained and satisfying tourist experiences are discussed.     

旅游节庆节目编排质量的探索研究与实例验证

文章以游客体验、利益相关者关系和项目管理为理论支撑,归纳提出了旅游节庆活动节目编排质量的理论模型,并通过调查问卷结构方程模型分析对这一模型进行了实证检验。经修改后,该模型的正确性得到确认,其中,各变量之间的假设关系也都成立。该研究在一定程度上填补了目前对旅游节庆活动节目编排质量理论探讨的空白,并就在节庆活动的规划和组织实践中更好地做好节目编排工作提出了建议。     

Racialised boundaries in tourism and travel: a case study of the UK black Caribbean community

Studies of tourism motivation and behaviour have not accounted significantly for the aspirations and experiences of ethnic minority groups living in metropolitan societies. This conceptual paper presents a case study of the UK black Caribbean community and seeks to indicate ways in which members of this community perceive places, spaces and destinations in Europe. Attention is directed to how black people’s perceptions and experiences are influenced and structured by the social conditions of racialism and racism. The discussion considers how the incursive nature of the white gaze, and popular representations and stereotypes of black societies and cultures, contribute to black people’s disengagement from ‘tourism experiences’. Racialised experiences and encounters call into question an individual’s right to adopt a tourist identity. As the discussion partly focuses on ways in which black visitors perceive ‘white others’, the work strongly implies that there is a fundamental need to remove the ‘white gaze’ as the only or dominant way to observe and make sense of the world. Given that this paper contributes to an understanding of how race relations are reproduced within tourism environments, it concludes with suggestions as to how future studies of ethnic minority tourism and travel might be conducted.     

Art festival attendance: Who attends and why with implications on developing future festival attractiveness

Art festivals are an increasing part of a destination's event portfolio, asserted by destination marketing and management agencies to hopefully promote community engagement including attracting tourism, trade, and talent to the destination. With art festivals a common annual event feature at destinations, the competition for festival participation has increased, creating a greater need to isolate those festival attributes that are specifically appealing to targeted visitor segments. Examining participant profile and motives to attend the publically funded annually recurring Macau Arts Festival (MAF), the findings of this case study showed mostly community involvement with participants being mainly well educated, middle-aged, and female. While an aim of the festival, international participation in the festival was limited. A factor analysis on motives to attend the festival revealed that while there was common agreement with previous literature on reasons to attend, Macau's cultural background provided increased opportunity for the MAF to differentiate the event. Marketing implications also suggested investigating a communication strategy that could differ between attracting local and international audiences. With a significant cost to public finances, greater scrutiny on the appeal of the festival to specific local and international audiences was recommended to better present the cost to benefit argument for hosting.     

Spiritual attitudes and visitor motivations at the Beltane Fire Festival,Edinburgh

Outside the peak season for tourism to Edinburgh, Scotland, during the evening of April 30th, visitors attend a festival with ancient Celtic overtones. Frequently, the evening is cold and windy. Our objectives are to: identify motivations for attending the festival; trial questionnaire items on spiritual attitude; and assess whether spirituality might be relevant in assessing visitor intentions. The method of investigation involved exploration and confirmation phases to test structures in distinct subsamples. Further, a strict approach was applied to identify factors that had theoretical value. Spirituality attitude is found to be a factor, as well as the motivations of cultural adventure and escape. Given the nature of the event, the time of year and composition of the audience, encouraging repeat visitation and using this to develop and manage Edinburgh's tourism strategy has potential. Recommendations are made to management.     

Engaging volunteer tourism in post-disaster recovery in Nepal

There is limited research published on the significance of volunteer tourism in assisting host communities in the recovery of a tourism destination and its industry after a disaster. Our paper addresses this research gap with reference to a case study of Nepal's tourism recovery after the country's 2015 earthquake. We argue that a clear post disaster volunteer tourism framework could validate volunteer tourism's potential role to ensure that communities do not miss out on any form of assistance that may be of use in re-establishing destination or community lifestyle. Our paper provides an initial exploratory understanding of how post disaster volunteer tourism might be effective; it uses a disaster management framework to conceptualise the phenomenon.     

A framework for managing quality in the tourist experience

While the impacts of tourism have received considerable attention, relatively little research has focused on the impacts of tourism from the perspective of the tourists themselves. This paper examines the impacts of tourism on the quality of the tourist's experience. A synthesis of previous research identifies an interrelated series of experiential impacts related to tourist activity. The resulting understanding of the factors that threaten the quality of the tourist experience provides the basis for a management framework aimed toward protecting quality recreation/tourist experiences. The suggested management framework focuses on the identification of undesirable impacts on the tourist experience, the determination of causal factors related to these impacts, and the selection of potential management strategies for ameliorating the undesirable impacts.     

Understanding primary stakeholders' multiple roles in hallmark event tourism management

This paper contributes insights into stakeholder theory in hallmark event tourism and the implications for engaging primary stakeholders in further tourism management settings. The tangible and symbolic tourism benefits instilled in destinations by hallmark events are well-documented; with destination managers increasingly adopting event portfolio approaches to nurture and develop existing and new hallmark events. Nevertheless, limited understanding exists of how stakeholders engage with hallmark events over time; their lived experiences in event tourism; and consequent management implications. This paper uncovers multiple and shifting roles of primary stakeholders in a long-established hallmark event tourism context (Edinburgh's Festival Fringe). It presents a typology identifying five primary stakeholder roles. Phenomenological interviews with twenty-one primary stakeholders revealed that most fulfilled multiple roles. Existing concurrently and historically, these differed throughout stakeholders' lived experiences and engagement. In its findings, this paper extends knowledge of stakeholders' roles in event tourism and implications in further tourism management settings.     

The “Pink Night” festival revisited: Meta-events and the role of destination partnerships in staging event tourism

This paper adopts a managerial perspective to revisit an original case study of the “Pink Night” festival presented by Giovanardi et al. (2014) in an earlier issue of this journal. Our in-depth qualitative study contributes to the event tourism planning and management literature in three ways. First, we shed light on how and why competing Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) cooperate to plan, develop and manage event tourism. Second, we introduce and describe the brand new concept of the meta-event, which is the main theoretical contribution of this work. Third, we elucidate the role of meta-events as brand architecture tools to rebrand and reposition wide tourism areas. We illustrate the theoretical and managerial implications of the meta-event concept for event tourism studies and destination managers.     

Ancient poetry in contemporary Chinese tourism

Classical poetry is an important part of Chinese culture. This study explores its roles in contemporary Chinese tourism based on participant observation of tourist destinations in the Three Gorges and surrounding area along the Yangtze River and content analysis of tourism guidebooks. Classical poetry is used to guide Chinese tourists in terms of what to gaze at and how to gaze. Specifically, first, poets and their poems create historical and cultural value for a place, which forms an essential foundation for its attractiveness as an object for Chinese tourists gaze. Second, poems may be used to enhance tourists' aesthetic appreciation of a landscape along the spatial and temporal dimensions, creating transcending poetic experiences. Such influence of classical poetry exemplifies the cultural continuity in China that should be well understood and considered in contemporary tourism. Implications in tourism development and marketing, aesthetic experience creation, environmental interpretation, and literary tourism are discussed.     

Socio-spatial authenticity at co-created music festivals

From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper examines how their design, organisation and management are co-created with participants to produce authentic experiences. The paper contributes to research on authenticity in tourism by examining how authenticity emerges and is experienced in such co-created commercial settings. It presents the importance that the socio-spatial plays in authenticity experiences and how socio-spatial experience and engagement can also be recognised as a form of aura.     

Festival Tourism: A Contributor to Sustainable Local Economic Development?

Towns, villages and cities are increasingly keen to share their culture, environment and spending opportunities with visitors by the promotion of festivals. The fact that income can be generated by such festivals is clear but the true value of visitor spend is more complex to calculate with accuracy. This paper considers the contribution of festival tourism to sustainable local economic development. A festival typology is created that broadly identifies three festival types termed 'home-grown', 'tourist-tempter' and 'big-bang'. Here three festivals matching the typology are analysed against the model of sustainable local economic development activity created by the environment charity Forum for the Future. Results suggest that although festivals may have the potential to provide opportunities for sustainable local economic development such opportunities frequently remain unexploited. Nevertheless, some festival scenarios do indicate a closer match to the model of sustainable local economic development activity than others. This paper analyses why this should be and suggests ways in which festival tourism's contribution to local economies might begin to be better understood, and consequently, improved.     

Destination Visual Image and Expectation of Experiences

A unique experience is the essence of tourism sought by tourists. The most effective way to communicate the notion of a tourism experience at a destination is to provide visual cues that stimulate the imagination and connect with potential tourists in a personal way. This study aims at understanding how a visual image is relevant to the expectation of experiences by deconstructing images of a destination and interpreting visitors' perceptions of these images and the experiences associated with them. The results suggest that tourists with different understandings of desirable experiences found different contents and notions of images inspired them to visit a destination. Several managerial implications are discussed.     

Children's Influence on Purchasing Tourism Products via the Internet: Parental Power Versus children's Power—the Social Power Perspective

An integration of the social power theory, which simultaneously incorporates parental power and children's power into the framework, was used in this research to investigate the causal relationships among perceived parental power, adolescent Internet mavens, and children's influence on purchasing tourism products via the Internet. The cluster sampling approach was used to collect samples from three tutoring schools in Taiwan. A total of 266 student-parent questionnaires was analyzed. The results show that both perceived parental power and adolescent Internet mavens are critical antecedents of children's influence on purchasing tourism products via the Internet. The results also indicate that adolescent Internet mavens exert moderating effects between perceived parental power and children's influence. These findings have managerial implications and provide useful reference data for future research.     

The antecedents of memorable tourism experiences: The development of a scale to measure the destination attributes associated with memorable experiences

Providing visitors with memorable tourism experiences (MTEs) is important for achieving success in the highly competitive tourism marketplace. To support destination managers, this paper developed a scale instrument that conceptualizes the attributes of destinations associated with MTEs. Following a rigorous scale development procedure, this study identified a 10-dimensional construct that affects MTEs. The data support this dimensional structure of the attributes of destinations affecting MTEs and the internal consistency and the validity (i.e., content, construct, convergent, and discriminant) of the scale. The theoretical and managerial implications of the study's results are discussed.