Tourism as a cultural domain the case of Taos,New Mexico

This paper offers an analysis of tourism as a cultural domain through a combination of hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling procedures not previously used together in touristic studies. The data for the study were gathered from interviews with 89 tourists who completed a card-sorting task for fifty items selected as representative of the range of real behavioral choices available to visitors to the Taos region. The two solutions presented, based on the U-statistic and the KYST program, are in reasonably good agreement and also correlate well with an earlier analysis reported in this journal (Kemper 1979). The approach used here not only enhances ethnographic understanding of tourism as a cultural domain and complements field research carried out using more traditional participant-observation and survey interview methodologies, but also offers a number of valuable applications for conceptualizing and marketing tourism.     

Sustainable development of industrial heritage tourism – A case study of the Industrial Monuments Route in Poland

The main goal of our research was to identify, characterize and discuss the main types of business models that can be found in touristic heritage sites that have been transformed into such from former industrial facilities or were newly created to pass on the heritage values. The research is a continuation of our study that started in 2017 on on Polish touristic sites, that are associated on a touristic route – Industrial Monuments Route of Silesian Voivodeship. This route is located in southern part of Poland and it is the largest industrial route in the country. Our research revealed, organized and complemented the different types of business model transformation that took place in the analysed sites, among them is the post-production organization model which is the most frequently occurring one. This model applies to touristic ventures or cultural institutions that are former production or extraction facilities. Thanks to the transformation of those sites they suite now to fulfil their new touristic function, even if originally they have been designed for other purposes. The use of such transformed business models has also proven itself as an effective and in many cases the only way to preserve and save cultural heritage from degradation.     

Responses to replica (vs. genuine) touristic experiences

A growing trend in tourism is the use of replica experiences. Yet, consumers' responses to replica (vs. genuine) touristic experiences are mostly overlooked in the literature. In this paper, we propose that consumers' perceptions of authenticity of the replica (vs. genuine) touristic experiences mediate their responses to these experiences. We define three theoretically driven factors that influence the authenticity perceptions of consumers—experience characteristics (restricted experience vs. not restricted experience; within close vs. distant geographical proximity to the genuine) and a consumer characteristic (salient goal: collecting experiences vs. having fun/pleasure), which influence consumers' responses to replica and genuine touristic experiences. We found support for the proposed theory using two field studies from Egypt's Luxor Tutankhamun tomb and three experimental studies.     

Marginal paradises: Bungalow tourism on the islands of Southern Thailand

In a longitudinal comparative study, some current issues concerning the nature, penetration, and impact of youth tourism on two beaches on two differentially developed islands in southern Thailand are examined. The beaches are “marginal paradises”—touristic paradises marginal to both the life plan of the tourists and the ecology and economy of the native society. Contrary to a widespread idea, vacationing youth tourists seek mainly “recreational” experiences, resembling those sought by most mass tourists, and show marked narcissistic tendencies. They have few relations among themselves or with the natives. Superficial native friendliness covers up a deeper resentment of the foreigners; while nude bathing causes inter-cultural misunderstanding, animosity finds expression in tourist- oriented crime. Though tourism development is of the small scale “craft” type, its benefits for the surrounding native villages are few, especially on the more developed island, where urban businessmen control the beach. The study lends some support to the multi-lineal model of touristic development, with the two beaches mainfesting differential development dynamics     

The evolution of tourist arts

Tourist arts with ethnic content are at the nexus of changing tourism, ethnicity and art in the modern world. This paper explores the range of varieties of tourist arts, the dynamics of change between various types of artifacts, and the interaction between tourist arts and notions of ethnic self-perception. The analogy between language and art is pursued to illuminate the nature of the various communication codes embodied in tourist and ethnic arts. The paper concludes by stressing that tourist arts are not an end-point, but one possibility within the fluid relationships between material symbols, outsiders' demand, and the defense and reformulation of ethnicity. It also concludes that the evolution of ethnic awareness, combined with increased education and travel opportunities, is bringing a uniformity of attitudes towards tourism, material heritage, and museums among the middle classes of all nations. Thus minority ethnic symbols have become the manipulated “totems” of touristic identity.     

Heritage Management and Control

ABSTRACT

Tourism is one of the most important economic activities. Historical heritage has been identified by both administrators and the private sectors as major touristic assets. It has been a myth that the more heritages a country own, the better it would be. Some recent reports, however, revealed that heritages, in fact, could be a burden to the concerned government and the economy. This paper is to review the situation in Egypt in relation to the issues of discovering, preserving and commercializing of historical heritages. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the community, which has the gift of heritage, and heritage preservation of Egypt and to the improvement of our knowledge of the discipline of tourism.     

“We had a ball … as long as you kept taking your painkillers” just how much tourism is there in medical tourism? Experiences of the patient tourist

The debate over ‘medical tourism’ versus ‘travel for medical treatment’ largely centres on the role of the voluntary leisure or touristic component. This study provides empirical evidence regarding the nature of leisure tourism occurring during medical travel, drawing on interviews with individuals who have returned from travel overseas for medical treatment. We identify four influences: the medical procedure; personal factors (e.g. travel experience, resilience, accompanying companions); destination factors; and financial matters. The most significant of these is the nature of the medical procedure, its level of invasiveness and requirements for post treatment recovery, and whether or not the patient-traveller suffered any complications. The ‘hotel-isation’ of hospitals (‘hospitels’) contributes to participants' perceptions of this type of travel being touristic in nature, even if no other conventional touristic activities are engaged in. We also observe similarities between medical tourism and business travel, both being hybrid forms of tourism, with variable leisure components.     

Policy coherence between tourism and climate policies: the case of Spain and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia

Abstract

The relationship between tourism and climate change is reciprocal. The effects of climate change on tourism are undeniable. However, tourism and climate change are complex and cross-cutting phenomena that enter policy agendas at different moments and with different discourses. This paper analyses the coherence between the policy domains of climate and tourism at the formulation stage of the policy process, focusing on national and regional government levels and the key touristic offer in Spain – that of sun, sea and sand. The proposed method analyses three dimensions within policy documents: frame significance, policy scope and connotation. Results reveal the imbalance between the two policy domains; the lack of concrete actions and stable mechanisms for achieving greater coherence; and the different conceptions of the issue. The paper considers the causal relationships between tourism and climate change, the consequences of mutual impacts, and the temporal dimension of problem framing. This research brings together three fields of knowledge – tourism, climate change and public policies – and suggests enhancing coherence between tourism and climate policies in order to address the sustainability of tourism destinations.     

Anthropology and tourism: A science-industry evaluation

The anthropological contribution to touristic study derives from this discipline's holistic perception of human culture and its comparative methodology. Renewed use of the “national character” approach, applying traditional field methods to industrial societies, would serve to identify elements stimulating tourism in the donor area and the needs within the recipient region. A tourist region is defined as a marketable destination with the surrounding support zones to supply requisite visitor services. The relationship between tourism and regional development needs to be assessed in terms of the economy theory of multiplier effect, as money, goods, services and people flow between the regional core and its support zones. Models illustrate internal development as well as donor-recipient relations. Science and industry share common goals in development and management of tourism, noted by efforts to educate the decision-makers as well as the tourist.     

Destinizing Finnmark: Place making through dogsledding

This paper illuminates an emerging dogsledding-tourism nexus in Finnmark through a place perspective and asks how sled dogs and mushers change the place in touristically relevant ways and what is at stake in such processes. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, encounters and interactions that sled dogs and mushers become part of through their performances in place, are analysed. The paper brings tourism and relational geographies together while describing the ecologically, geographically, and historically embeddedness of dogsledding. Contingent touristic creativities and becomings are analysed through a more-than-representational place theoretical perspective that conceptualizes tourism emergences as ‘destinization of place’. The perspective encompasses non-human as well as human accomplices in touristic transformations and illuminates the complex political and ecological entanglements that touristic changes imply.     

Language and tourism

The sociolinguistic study of verbal encounters in touristic situations provides an opportunity to exanine communication between different linguistic groups under unusual circumstances: the high temporariness of the foreigners and the high degree of linguistic accommodation of the locals to them. This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the tendency of guestworkers and immigrants who are less temporary and usually of lower status, to accommodate linguistically to the locals. While accommodation by locals is common to virtually all touristic situations, the degree of proficiency of locals in the tourists' language varies considerably and hence also the extent to which tourists are forced to accommodate linguistically. In an effort to organize the linguistic variation in tourism, a typology of tourist roles is used as the principal framework. The notion of “language brokerage” is introduced. The integration of sociological and sociolinguistic analyses is illustrated by incidental data from the literature on tourism and from fieldwork in Thailand.     

Mediating urban transition through rural tourism

This study examines China’s urban–rural transition in the process of development and change. Regarding tourism as a discourse of difference, it focuses on a rural ethnic community, Jiabang, in Southwest China. It aims to highlight the role of tourism in providing a stimulus for the creation of a local group identity that subverts wider discourses of rural areas. With the goal of understanding how toured places are imagined, presented and consumed, this study utilises mixed data sources collected from tourism promotional materials and ethnographic fieldwork. The findings suggest that the forces behind the touristic place creation and consumption are both integral to and the result of the changing attitudes and perceptions of people and places in contemporary China.     

Optimization-based convention site selection method

The meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions industry has developed greatly in recent decades, and has become an important driver of the regional economy. Many big cities are eager to develop the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions industry as a means of stimulating their economies. As is well known, convention site selection is one of most important research topics related to the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions industry, and this article presents an optimization-based method for convention site selection. This proposed method takes the non-quantifiable factors of site selection into account, and it adopts the use of second-hand data to quantitatively evaluate the performance of candidate sites with respect to several quantifiable factors. The proposed method is applied instead of using questionnaire surveys, and it is applicable for selecting convention sites even when the candidate sites are in the same cities. The method presented in this article takes various site-level factors into account (such as the meeting and accommodation facilities), along with city-level factors (such as the site environments). The main focus of this article is to provide a concrete method, along with a series of suggestions to help convention planners in making appropriate site-selection decisions.     

Eye movements on restaurant menus: A revisitation on gaze motion and consumer scanpaths

Menu designers have based design tactics on roughly applied psychological foundations. In particular, attention and memory-based design placement strategies are founded upon assumptions which necessitate a clear idea of consumer eye movement sequences across restaurant menus. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, a review of academic and practitioner literature is presented to frame the current discussion on gaze motion patterns as applied to restaurant menus. Second, the results of an eye-tracker study are presented as an empirical and more quantitatively analyzed replication of past restaurant gaze-motion studies. Results offer an average menu scanpath, show that observed consumer scanpaths differ from those anecdotally espoused by industry, and suggest traditional menu “sweet spots” may not exist.     

大陆居民赴台湾自由行旅游流网络分析及演化研究

随着人们旅游消费能力逐渐增强,对旅游品质的要求越来越高,自由行已经成为人们主要出游方式之一。文章以大陆居民赴台湾自由行为对象,采用数据挖掘技术采集我国最大旅游分享社区网站2009年以来的台湾自由行行程信息,构建了细粒度的旅游流有向网络,并使用社会网络理论进行分析。研究表明,该网络属于无标度网络,网络规模为2656,但平均路径只有4.3,网络密度较低,节点的度分布满足幂律分布,网络核心区与边缘区互动较少。按照时间顺序构建旅游流网络,研究网络的演化并分析其演化动力,发现网络规模、连接数量都与行程数量近似于比例增长,网络演化过程中新增加的节点优先链接网络中的明星节点。文章首次从网络演化的角度使用社会网络理论研究旅游流,丰富和拓展了旅游流研究内容。     

Touristic Development and Water Sustainability in Banff and Canmore,Alberta, Canada

During the past decade the towns of Banff and Canmore, located in the Bow Valley Corridor of Alberta, Canada, have faced intense touristic, recreational and residential developmentpressure.Both communities have experienced significantinvestment and obvious growth in residential, resort and other tourism infrastructure. These changes have stimulated concerns regarding ecological,economic and social impacts of touristic development and triggered questions regarding its sustainability. This paper outlines the nature of touristic development activities in the Bow Corridor and, in particular, identifies water supply and waste water treatment issues related to touristic and residential growth in the towns of Banff and Canmore. Efforts of local municipal officials to deal with the impacts of residential and visitor demand on water supply and treatmentinfrastructure,including demand-and supply-side managementactions, are noted. Sustainability principles for water management, produced by the Canadian Water Resources Association, are used as touchstones to identify the incorporation of sustainability concepts and principles in planning and management of water resources in the Bow Valley Corridor. The paper concludes with comments concerning efforts to attain sustainable water managementas a componentof sustainable tourism in the Bow Valley Corridor.     

Sights of sites: picturing heritage,power and exclusion

This paper explores the visual representations used to illustrate, promote and communicate a particular idea of heritage in the tourism literature, which provides an instance within which to examine the material consequences of a dominant discourse. This examination takes place within the context of current New Labour policy initiatives, which have put forward a new role for heritage, both in terms of the touristic experiences it can provide and as an instrumental tool for social inclusion and civic engagement. It is argued in this paper that these consciously designed objectives have also opened up a conceptual space within which images of heritage are drawn upon to undertake a course of ideological work that affectively reaffirms and legitimizes the cultural symbols of an elite social group as a consensual representation of national heritage.     

Comparative assessment of tourist generating markets for New Zealand

Portfolio analysis has become a widely used strategic planning tool in many industries during the past decade. Strategic decisions in the tourism industry include issues such as which markets are most attractive (e.g. have greatest visitor expenditure potential); in which markets are a specific country's “products” most competitive; how promotional budgets should be allocated for greatest effectiveness; and what the promotional message should convey. Industry Attractiveness Analysis—a flexible variety of portfolio analysis—has been applied to the generating countries which supply tourists to New Zealand in an illustrative case study. Both national level and individual company applications are described and illustrated in 3 × 3 matrix form. These diagrams are, in themselves, a good communication mechanism which encourages rational, strategic thinking about managerial decisions and resources allocations. Past, present, and future situations can be portrayed in a graphically useful manner.     

Conscious versus Nonconscious Mind and Leisure

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of inferring and measuring touristic attraction for countries as wholes, based on the observed distribution of tourists among a set of destination countries. Embodied in the research is the understanding that even if it is the distinctiveness of countries that allows them to become touristically important, countries are not unique to the extent that a generalized measure of attraction cannot be derived. The phenomenon of tourism is expressed as constituting a system with a peculiar mode of organization in which attraction varies spatially. Interpreting the data on tourist flows in the Western European/U.S.A. system as resulting from individual expressions of choice/preference for the destination visited, a nonmetric scaling algorithm is used to derive an attraction scale. The significance of the scale is then tested against the hypothesis that the directional bias of tourist flows and the spatial variation in attraction are both functions and expressions of socioeconomic center/ periphery differences.     

Image Formation Process

The image formation process has been an area of inquiry for more than 20 years. The process of image formation is intricately entwined with the destination selection process. Understanding the different techniques unitized to form destination images is necessary to developing an image consistent with what a destination has to offer. This paper present a typology of the different image formation agents, describes the process of touristic image formation and provides recommendations for selecting the appropriate image formation mix. It is an attempt to develop a theoretical basis for the touristic image formation process.