Creating joint experiences - Families engaging with a heritage site

Interactions between family members constitutes an important element of engagement with tourism sites, leading to enhanced value creation. Yet we know little about how these engagement practices lead to experience outcomes. Studies of visitor engagement have explored C2C value co-creation contexts, adding to our understanding of social practices as a source of value outcomes. This study adds to this literature through a focus on the intimate social context of families’ collective engagement practices, viewing the family unit as constituting a complex amalgam of individual, relational and collective resources (Epp & Price, 2008). Adopting a multi-stage and multi-method qualitative research design, we identify seven practices through which families engage with attractions, including: absorbing, interacting, information sharing, explaining, constructing meaning, competing and deviating. Families associate these practices with experience outcomes: bonding, creating memories, entertainment, and learning. The findings inform the design of effective engagement platforms and resource deployment to facilitate group experiences.     

Testing a model of effective interpretation to boost the heritage tourism experience: a case study in Macao

While the impact of tour guides’ interpretation on tourism experience is well acknowledged, little research has been conducted on the production of effective interpretation by tour guides. In this study, effective interpretation is defined as producing a positive outcome on tourists’ knowledge and understanding of the visited heritage site, feelings and emotion, satisfaction and likelihood of visiting other relevant nearby heritage sites. Based on a literature review, a conceptual model of effective interpretation consisting of four propositions was formulated and examined by empirical on-site research in the World Cultural Heritage Site in Macau. The empirical findings support the four propositions and the applicability of the model for effective interpretation in Macao. The research was conducted in two phases: on-site guide evaluation and a linked tourist survey. The target market was mainland Chinese visitors. The results revealed the influence of four factors on effective interpretation, namely, heritage and tourist information knowledge, service attitude, communication competence and emotional intelligence. Special attention is given to the use of humor, provocation and emotional sensitivity. Future research should further investigate tourists’ emotion management and the applicability of this model to other tour guides’ heritage interpretation, at different types of site and in different regions.     

Social media-based analysis of cultural ecosystem services and heritage tourism in a coastal region of Mexico

Understanding spatial patterns of visitation and benefits accrued to different types of natural and cultural heritage tourists may have important implications for the sustainable management of their destinations. We investigate cultural services accrued to local, domestic and international visitors to the Usumacinta floodplain, a coastal region with one of the highest biological and cultural diversities in Mexico. We combine analysis of social media photographs and high-resolution land cover mapping to identify different cultural services and their association with specific ecosystem and land cover types. Hotspots for international tourists are spatially restricted to well-known and accessible sites. Locals are 2.2–2.5 times more likely than international visitors to be associated with aesthetic appreciation and birdwatching. Locals upload more photographs of coastal lagoons, mangroves, beach and sea. Results are analyzed in light of land cover changes in the region and provide valuable information to decision makers for improved tourism management and conservation strategies.     

Dialectical emotions in a dark heritage site: A study at the Auschwitz Death Camp

This study was designed to explore the emotional experience during the visit to the Auschwitz Death Camp, and its relationship to the perceptions of benefits gained from the visit as well as the quality of the experience. A mix method approach was adopted. Following a qualitative study, questionnaires (n = 553) were distributed in four languages. The findings which are based on the PANAS index revealed an emotional duality. The study highlights the central role of the negative emotions and the significant contribution of these emotions to visitor's satisfaction, as well as to the perceived benefits derived from the visit. The study challenges the emphasis of tourism research on positive emotions and its view of negative emotions as having a negative impact, leading to dissatisfaction with the visitor experience. The findings emphasize the need to conceptualize the visitor experience and address the positive contribution of negative emotions.     

Implicit prices for longer temporary exhibitions in a heritage site and a test of preference heterogeneity: A segmentation-based approach

This paper examines whether or not people with different characteristics have significantly different nonmarket preferences for longer temporary exhibitions in a cultural heritage site, using a choice modelling study. In order to perform the examination, several methods to calculate confidence intervals (the bootstrap, jackknife, Krinsky and Robb, and Delta methods), and a convolutions approach are adapted. A sample is segmented into relatively homogeneous subgroups according to their sociodemographic or attitudinal characteristics. The results from a case study show that (1) the implicit price for longer exhibitions by one month is AU$5.01 per household; (2) sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics as segmentation criteria do not cause significantly different implicit prices; and (3) different methods of testing the relationship between mean WTP estimates did not lead to different conclusions.     

Residents,their use of a tourist facility and contribution to tourist ambience: Narratives from a film tourism site in Beijing

Any tourist site open to local residents represents a point where residents and tourists become a back drop for the experiences of the other. This paper examines a specific Beijing film tourism attraction, Grand View Gardens, and the manner in which the site is used by local residents, the meanings attributed to it, and residents' role in creating an ambience for tourists. Residents have a daily connection with the site, and form audiences for events held at the Gardens. They often interact with tourists, becoming a source of information for tourists. The paper examines residents' motives for using such attractions, their attitudes towards tourists and suggests they possess a role in the creation of a sense of place that is valued by tourists. The paper fills a gap in an under-researched area, where, in the Chinese context, both residents and visitors form backdrops to each other's experience of place.     

Transformation of Gunkanjima (Battleship Island): from a coalmine island to a modern industrial heritage tourism site in Japan

Gunkanjima Island (Battleship Island) is an abandoned coalmine and community off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. At its peak, the island was fuelling the industrialisation of modern Japan, home to a community of over 5000 residents with one of the highest population densities in the world and the site of early modern concrete high-rise buildings. With the shift to oil, the island soon became abandoned going into decay. A recent rise in media attention and the inclusion as a 2015 UNESCO World Heritage Site has generated interest in industrial heritage tourism on the island. This paper explores the rise and fall of the island as a coalmine and the transition to an industrial heritage tourism site. A framework is presented illustrating the transformation of industrial sites into industrial heritage tourist attractions.     

Balancing the dual mandate of conservation and visitor use at a Canadian world heritage site in an era of rapid climate change

Abstract

National parks in Canada operate under the dual mandate of conservation and visitor use, which involves balancing ecological integrity and nature-based tourism activities. Climate-induced environmental change may increase the existing tension between conservation and visitor use as major tourism resources located in protected areas (PAs) are projected to undergo large-scale changes. This study draws upon the behavioural approach, scenario planning, and landscape visualizations to examine the relationship between climate change impacts, visitor perceptions, and visitor experience management at the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Four tourism development scenarios defined by two management drivers (ecological integrity and visitor demand) with corresponding storylines and visualizations were developed for 2050. The visualized scenarios were presented to visitors (n?=?304) in a survey to understand potential implications on visitor satisfaction. The results suggest that park managers need to find a balance between ecological integrity and visitor use in a way that ensures commercialized tourism development is limited, educational material is prioritized, and ecological integrity is maintained. While understanding the behaviour of future tourists is complex, it is a critical component of climate change adaptation planning and decision-making processes that needs to be prioritized by policymakers and PAs managers.