Island of Peace or Island of War: Tourist Guiding

The role of tour guides in conveying information, offering explanations, and developing narratives has become a contemporary research theme. The guide is introduced as a translator of the culture, who has the crucial task of selecting, glossing, and interpreting sights. The study will examine how the Island of Peace—a border site between former adversaries, Israel and Jordan, is introduced to Israeli tourists by Israeli guides and what messages the guides deliver to their captive audience. Based on participant observation of the guided tours in the site the article will show that the guides’ narratives and messages in many cases do not portray the site as a site of peace (as its name suggests), but mostly as a site with a past of tension and conflict.     

Following the story: narrative mapping as a mobile method for tracking and interrogating spatial narratives

Museums and heritage tourism sites are highly curated places of memory work whose function is the assembling and ordering of space and narrative to contour visitors’ experiences of the past. Variations in such experiences within and between sites, however, necessitates a method that: (1) captures how guides, visitors, and exhibits interact within spaces when representing and performing history and (2) allows researchers to document those variations. We developed narrative mapping, a mobile and geographically sensitive form of participant observation, to enable museum scholars and professionals to systematically capture, visualize, and interpret tendencies and variations in the content, affective qualities, and spatial arrangements of museum narratives over multiple sites and across multiple tours at the same site. Two antebellum plantation museum case studies, Laura Plantation in Louisiana and Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, demonstrate the method’s utility in documenting how stories are spatially configured and materially enlivened in order to analyze the ways enslaved persons are placed within these narratives.     

Digital cultures,acceleration and mega sporting event narratives

Mega sporting events, as with the evolution of human progress, continue to be marked by trepidation and awe over the transformational power of technology. Today, mega sporting events like the Olympic Games and World Cup are increasingly the captivating spectacles of consumer capitalism. Whereas, since the 1980s, established media organisations have exerted a significant influence over the production of mega sporting event narratives, the mass availability of everyday digital technologies democratises media making, changing the way events are conceived, planned, mediatised and reported. Citizens, living digitised and social mediated lifestyles, are now important co-creators, shaping the design, delivery and dissemination of events to a wider audience. This article explores the emergence of digital tools and technologies and their impact on mega sporting event media narratives. It highlights how social media and ubiquitous digital technologies augment accelerated identities. As a means of illustrating the acceleration agenda and its impact on mega sporting event coverage, the author presents a case study of a citizen media initiative #citizenrelay, which focused on the Olympic Torch Relay on its journey around Scotland, UK in the summer of 2012. The article concludes by suggesting that the digitally democratised citizen has power in their pocket to make media that, when brought together as part of a collective, can present alternative narratives to those offered by the established media frame.     

Occupying whateverland: Journeys to museums in the Baltic

Recent history of Central and Eastern Europe charts multiple occupations, liberations and re-occupations by a variety of states and regimes. Museums of recent history, located across the region, strive to both constitute a memorial shaping narratives of national identity, and to represent the past in a way both recognizable and persuasive for their predominantly international tourist visitors. These visitors come with their own preconceptions and aims towards building both a historical narrative of the past and a personal identity narrative of a cultured, engaged tourist. In this paper, we chart how the historical past is used in contemporary sensemaking processes in the museums, and how tourist interpretations cross organizational and national barriers that the museum-curated historical narratives attempt to create.     

Placing the enslaved at Oak Alley Plantation: narratives,spatial contexts,and the limits of surrogation

ABSTRACT

As iconic landscapes of the American South and significant heritage tourism destinations, Southern plantation museums have traditionally erased slavery and the enslaved from their narratives of the antebellum past. Recently, some plantation museums, such as Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana, are commemorating the enslaved within their landscapes and narratives, although often in limited and insufficient ways. In this paper, I draw on theories of symbolic excavation and commemorative surrogation to understand both the difficult memory work necessary to include the history of slavery at plantation museums and the fact that such museums or memorials act as surrogates for the lives of enslaved women and men that have been lost from our social memory. Using photographic documentation, content analysis, and textual analysis, I then examine the Slavery at Oak Alley exhibit to argue that fully assessing the efficacy of such commemorative surrogates requires that they be placed within the spatial narratives of both the plantation museum and the history of slavery more broadly.     

严格导游准入制度与健全导游管理体制的探讨

目前,由于导游准入制度体系存在缺陷,旅游市场管理体制仍待完善,导游整体素质亟待提高等深层次的问题日益凸显。文章主要剖析这一现象的成因,提出严格导游员准入制度,建立健全旅游管理机制及相关法律法规体系,以提高导游整体素质,提升导游服务质量。     

Young people,digital media making and critical digital citizenship

A range of recent academic, policy and practice-focused work in the UK and internationally has identified a need for more focused attention on the role of digital literacies in enabling young people to more effectively navigate their way through an increasingly complex, digitally mediated world. In this article, we explore the main debates taking place around the prevalence of digital media in the early twenty-first century, with emphasis on the role of pervasive digital media in educational settings. Focusing on the practice-based project, Digital Commonwealth, a series of critical insights are drawn, highlighting the difficulties facing educational authorities and young people in dealing with the opportunities and threats brought about by digital media. We conclude that a critical digital citizenship agenda needs to be embedded in educational narratives, where young people are, through practice, asked to ponder how digitally mediated publics operate in the school setting and beyond. Integrating ‘making’ and ‘thinking critically’ about the benefits and dangers of pervasive digital media in and outside of school is imperative. Our study suggests that there remain significant inequities in terms of provision across schools, access to suitable infrastructure and equipment, and the presence of qualified and confident staff with the requisite digital leadership attributes to enable digital media projects to be integrated into everyday learning practices. Major events, like the Commonwealth Games, can precipitate and accelerate uptake of new approaches and innovative thinking but they do not represent a panacea for the systemic development of critical digital citizenship over time.     

The Impact of Tour Guides’ Physical Attractiveness,Sense of Humor,and Seniority on Guide Attention and Efficiency

In this study, we investigated whether tourists view attractive tour guides as more competent, humorous tour guides as more approachable, and experienced tour guides as more professional, and whether these three factors influence the effectiveness of tour guide interpretation. The results indicated that physical attractiveness and humor had additive effects on interpretation effectiveness when combined. Although some tour guides were not physically attractive, experience provided an additive effect on interpretation effectiveness. Thus, we recommend discarding stereotypes regarding physical attractiveness and improving education and training in humor for tour guides. Experienced tour guides wearing appropriate attire also increases interpretation effectiveness.     

Social mediation in remote developing world tourism locations – the significance of social ties between local guides and host communities in sustainable tourism development

This article discusses the role of the local, or regional, guide as a social mediator between a host society and tourists, as a means of sustainable tourism development in developing world locations. The debate illustrates how previous studies have neglected this social aspect of mediation by tourist guides and partly absorbed it into the concept of cultural mediation. Empirical illustrations are offered from the context of small tourist group visitations to local villages in rural areas of Madagascar, where collective social norms still play an important role. A qualitative approach based on personal interviews with guides and on field trip experience and observation is employed. Empirical findings indicate that the inclination of the host society to welcome accompanied tourists is facilitated by the capacity of local guides to develop relatively strong social ties with the host society. It is suggested that the increased use of local guides with good social relationships with the local communities as against the mere employment of non-local accompanying guides working for centrally located tour operators can enrich the mutual experience quality in the encounter between visitors and hosts and support local sustainable development by enhanced local involvement. Implications for sustainable tourism practice are discussed.     

The guided tour a sociological approach

In an exploratory study of guides and based on data derived from research combining observation and extended interviews, the relationship between guides, drivers, and their passengers is examined. The evidence suggests that the guiding role is not yet institutionalized, and remains open to interpretation by guides and passengers alike. The role of guiding involves a number of subsidiary and sometimes conflicting sub-roles, of which the information-giving function is emphasized by guides themselves, in their drive for professional status. Guides are found to develop manipulative and dramaturgical skills to satisfy their passengers' quest for a unique touristic experience. The mediation of the guide as “culture-broker” eases and may make more meaningful the contrived and artificial relationship between tourists and their hosts.     

The sanitization of colonial history: authenticity,heritage interpretation and the case of Macau's tour guides

Macau was founded by the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century. The centuries of colonial rule that preceded its recent return to China gave it a distinctive character unique in China. The tangible and intangible imprint of the colonial history of Macau is central to its attractiveness as a cultural tourism destination. A literature review reveals worldwide examples of the manipulation of history for both political and tourism purposes. This research uses in-depth thematic interviews with 14 local tour guides to show how Macau's colonial heritage is presented and interpreted to tourist groups by the local tour guides, as regards both what they are shown and what they are told. It is found that the guides adjust their interpretation to the geographical origin of the tourists in a significant way; in particular, they tend to almost totally eschew any reference to its colonial history when addressing a Chinese audience, in contrast to the interpretation presented to non-Chinese visitors. The use of Hall's three-fold interpretative message framework (dominant – hegemonic/negotiated/oppositional) is discussed, as is Langer's concept of mindless and mindful tourists. Some consequences for the sustainability of heritage tourism in Macau are also explored.     

One museum,two stories: Place identity at the Hong Kong Museum of History

Tourism academia has attempted to individually explore the concepts of visiting experience, place identity, narratives, and history museums, but it has rarely delved into the deep and sometimes murky waters of the intimate connection among these notions. Focusing on the Museum of History in present-day identity torn Hong Kong, the current study sheds light on the identitarian and ideological implications visiting this museum has for Hong Kong born-and-raised Millennials. The findings challenge the current understanding of place identity at heritage sites of contested identity by revealing the subtle, sensitive, and fluid connections between individual and official narratives, and also among the investigated concepts. They also raise important critical assumptions about the politics of museography.     

Tourism,mood and affect: Narratives of loss and hope

Beyond looking to emotion and affect for the purpose of understanding better the tourist experience in itself, this article considers what affect produced through tourism might do vis-à-vis our relationship with the world around us. With a particular focus on the production of ‘hopeful mood’, the article discusses the links between affect and tourism narratives of loss and of hope performed in two New Zealand tourism destinations. That both loss and hope narratives are produced in both destinations illustrates not only how tourism narratives are ‘affective’, but also that the affect produced is potentially selective. The implications of these narratives for tourism’s hopeful ‘worldmaking’ capacities are considered, along with suggested further avenues for research on tourism narratives, mood and affect.     

参团游客对旅行社服务质量的期望与感知实绩研究

关于参团游客对旅行社服务质量的预期和感知实绩的研究是改进旅行社服务质量,提高游客满意度的理论依据.本研究通过紧急事件访谈与问卷调查的方法,对参团游客对旅行社服务质量的期望与实际感知进行了研究,并利用IPA方法进行了分析探讨.结论认为,参团游客对旅行社服务质量主要关注产品服务质量、营业点服务质量、导游服务质量和营销服务质量,其中产品设计质量尤为重要;但游客的总体感知实绩并不理想,12个要素均需进一步改进,其中导游导购服务、产品种类多样化、价格公道和导游讲解水平是目前我国旅行社服务质量改进的关键因素,这一结论对旅行社服务质量改进具有现实意义.     

Identity in the “Road Racing Capital of the World”: heritage,geography and contested spaces

This article explores the complex relationship between sport and landscape and their role in the expression and maintenance of identity. While discussions have typically emphasised the role taken by stadia and sporting venues in the development and expression of sporting and national identities, fewer have considered the role taken by the wider landscape. It is this landscape that provides the context in which many sports are enacted and watched and it is through the embodied actions and experiences that landscape is given added meaning, reinforcing narratives of space that are implicated in the creation and maintenance of national identities. Yet here, unlike stadia or other sporting venues, space is much less regulated; as a result, participants and observers are also implicated in the creation of “counter geographies” that destabilise “official” narratives of space. Here our focus is on the contested landscapes of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Races; an event where sporting narratives have become materially and conceptually part of the landscape. Through a discussion of these landscapes and their expression in the Staying the Course exhibition curated by Manx National Heritage, we contend that geographies of sport must also reflect on the contested nature of sporting spaces.     

Intensive tour guide training in regional Australia: an analysis of the Savannah Guides organisation and professional development schools

A number of authors believe that tour guide training may hold a key to passing on the concept of sustainable tourism to tourists. Savannah Guides Limited (SGL) is an organisation for tour guides interpreting and protecting the tropical savannahs of northern Australia. This paper examines the provision of intensive professional development schools, which the SGL organisation provides, to raise standards of professionalism for nature-based tour guides in remote regions. Its framework is based on Schein's three levels of organisational culture model, and Black and Ham's 10-element performance-based tour guide certification programme. Active participant observation of the development school process and a self-administered questionnaire to SGL members were used to understand the organisation's success. The main motivations for tour guiding are explored, as are the ways in which tour guides acquire knowledge. It is suggested that the provision of professional development schools in nature-based tourism regions benefits the guide and the tour guiding industry, and contributes to the protection of the natural environment. It is proposed that the SGL training model of professional development schools and certification be adopted by tour guiding organisations in other regional destinations as a way of nurturing and advancing quality tour guiding and professionalism.     

The Guided Hike in Banff National Park: A Hermeneutical Performance

Sharpley identifies the need to help the public adopt a new paradigm of sustainable development through learning and understanding. The example of a guided hike in Banff National Park, Canada, that communicates to visitors ideas about sustainable development – and sustainable tourism – is examined in this paper to gain some sense of the world of the hike. The paper is based on a hermeneutical theatrical model derived from the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer, which includes play, festival, mimesis, gaze and beauty. Through the use of the model, the paper examines the present day performance of the hike, including the narratives of hikers and those involved in presenting the hike. The examination also includes relevant legislation, history and the setting. The result explores the nature and process of understanding a sustainable development paradigm on a guided hike in a natural protected area.     

Women's travel in the Tang Dynasty: Gendered identity in a hierarchical society

Women's travel writing has received increasing attention, with English literature being the focus of most studies. In contrast, Chinese women have been absent from historical travel narratives. The Tang Dynasty (618–907), a golden period in Chinese history, had a rare collection of women's travel poetry, a genre offering richness and insights on female travelers' experiences and perceptions of “other” places they had visited. Drawing on women's travel writings from All Tang Poetry, this study illustrates how travel narratives help formulate and reinforce, or downplay, gendered identities in the contexts of social hierarchy and patriarchal ideology. The research contributes to the gender, travel and identity literature from a Chinese language and culture perspective.     

Tourist Guides and Job Related Problems,Analysis and Evidence from Jordan

This study investigates the challenges that professional Jordanian tourist guides may encounter. The implication of this research stems from the fact that very little research, at least in Jordan, has addressed the problems that tourist guides encounter. Qualitative methods, using participants’ observations and in-depth interviewing methods, were used to generate insights from the collected data. The results reveal multiple critical challenges that impact the professional stability of tourist guides. Further efforts are required to fully understand the needs of tourist guides.     

Micro-foundations of absorptive capacity in platform economy-based tour guiding companies

This study investigates individual absorptive capacity (ACAP) in a platform economy-based tour guiding company. In such companies, guides are not employees but work as freelancers that sell their services to the company. The study's objective is to explore the knowledge-sharing dynamics between lower company management, who depend on the guides' knowledge for product development, and guides, who need incentives to share their knowledge with a company that they work with, rather than for. Methodologically, the study is based on data collected through embeddedness in a relevant case company, consisting of in-depth interviews, as well as participant and direct observation. The study characterizes central ACAP processes in the study context, pointing to five specific categories of micro-foundations that drive or hinder these processes: experience and knowledge, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, (meta-)routines, social integration mechanisms and leadership. Finally, recommendations are provided on how to improve ACAP processes in these types of companies.