Tourist use of public transport at destinations – a review

Understanding tourists' use of public transport (PT) at the destination is important for sustainable mobility, destination satisfaction, PT management and destination management. This paper provides an overview of research in PT and tourism since 2000. The review identifies main topics and issues including how PT is used for tourism purposes in different contexts. It also recommends policies and strategies for a modal shift to PT in tourism, and identifies potential areas for future research. The review indicates that there are differences in the level of PT use by visitors between rural and urban destinations. PT is often not favoured by visitors in remote areas, although the situation is more promising in urban destinations. However, the overall potential of PT as an alternative mode for travelling is unclear, given tourist motivations and behaviours, and provision of visitor-oriented PT services including the need for appropriate communication and social marketing strategies.     

The contribution of native species to sense of place

The approach of promoting a destination through native resources is intriguing. This research attempted to assess the role of native species in contributing to the success of a destination through their contribution to sense of place. It illustrated the mechanisms and preconditions through which native species can contribute to the distinctiveness of a destination. This research has uncovered a number of factors explaining the potential of a native species to become a viable contributor to a destination's sense of place. In a nutshell, a prospective native species can potentially become a viable option with which a destination can build its sense of place and overall identity if that particular species has a strong biological foundation in the natural environment; if it has been embraced or endeared by residents through social and historical processes; and if there are ample opportunities for tourists to experience and interact with it, through which endearment among tourists and a strong sense of place can be built. The Provençal cicada was used as an illustrative case. The adoption of the cicada by Bouches-du-Rhône tourism as a regional symbol and for use in its communications reinforces the cicada's contribution to the destination's identity and sense of place.     

Public Choice and Tourism Analysis

This paper considers the potential of Public-Choice theory to serve as a means to analyse tourism policy. It introduces the central issues for understanding the study of policy and economic decision-making, bringing them together as a single coherent explanation of the role of government within the contemporary market system. In the context of tourism analysis, the focus is on the forces that explain why governments make particular types of decisions for the industry and the effect these have on the community's collective well-being. Policy can impact on a society's culture, its social order, its administration or its use of law, or any combination of these; but, largely it is about the economic welfare of the community. Much of the public decision-making system concerns who gets what, who should benefit and who should pay. The paper reviews the notion of government intervention to establish an 'interpretation' of economic policy-making in Western democracies, such as Australia, Britain or New Zealand. It argues that most policy issues, including tourism issues, derive from some form of failure in the market-place, where the tourism industry is but one component interconnected with many others. The paper expands the public-choice approach further by applying it to segmented markets, and the tourism industry itself, and provides an issue-based model that allows the tourism policy-making process to be explored, exposed and predicted.     

Goodbye maps,hello apps? Exploring the influential determinants of travel app adoption

With the increased market penetration of smartphones and the emergence of high-speed wireless network technologies, the tourism industry's interest in using mobile applications as a means to enhance the tourist experience is rising. However, despite the growing number of companies and organizations that are investing in travel-related apps, there is limited academic research on consumers' intentions to adopt these technological innovations. In this study, the technology adoption model, innovation diffusion theory, and social cognitive theory are utilized to investigate the factors that could affect travel app adoption by tourists visiting rural tourism sites in China. The results show that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and compatibility are significant antecedents of the intention to use travel apps. Further, self-efficacy indirectly influences the intention to use travel apps through the mediation of outcome expectations. The results do not support social norms as significant predictors of behavioural intention. A discussion and implications are also provided.     

Tourism,Religion and Religiosity: A Holy Mess

Although religion and religiosity are well-known factors for influencing behaviour in different social settings, there is very limited research that explores the links between them and visitation patterns of tourists. In this study tourists' visitation patterns to a heritage site of religious significance (the Wailing Wall, Israel) are explored. Differences are found between tourists based on their religious affiliation and religiosity. The findings also reveal that the tourists' religiosity has different effects on those with different religious affiliations. It is argued that the actual relationships between a tourist's religion and strength of religious belief need to be understood in relation to the site visited, the tourist's perception of it and the meaning he or she attaches to it. The implications for tourism management and the theoretical investigation of heritage tourism are discussed.     

Measuring the Conservation Aptitude of Surf Beaches in Phuket,Thailand: An Application of the Surf Resource Sustainability Index

The research seeks to measure the conservation aptitude of nine surf beaches in Phuket, Thailand by employing the Surf Resource Sustainability Index, an assessment methodology comprising 27 social, economic, environmental and governance indicators used to frame and quantify attributes for conservation development. The research identifies and documents key areas of concern for the sustainability of the island's coastal surfing resources and distinguishes steps forward to address emergent issues. The study finds that by improving the awareness, legislative status and management of surfing sites, the overall conservation aptitude for the island could be raised considerably. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Residents' Perceptions of Tourism Impacts on Island Destinations: A Comparative Analysis

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the resident's perception of tourisms impacts on two very successful major mature island destinations (Tenerife and Mallorca). To do so, we conducted a study based on the social exchange theory by using a scale that measures residents' perceptions of tourism's positive and negative impacts on the economy, culture, society and the environment. The results based on more than 1100 interviews show that similar opinions arise on both islands; however, significant differences in terms of the level of perception of the impacts in the two destinations have also been unveiled. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reinventing Macau tourism: gambling on creativity?

The paper identifies some major economic, social and environmental effects of gaming-related tourism in Macau, the world’s largest gaming location in respect of casino turnover. The main types of effects of casino development are typically those associated with growth machine theory. The paper also identifies major threats to the sustainable development of Macau as a gaming/tourism destination, arising from a narrow industrial base, competing destinations, community alienation, and what is referred to as the ‘China factor’. The paper discusses the types of strategies that are required if Macau tourism is to counter these threats and develop successfully as a ‘World Centre of Tourism and Leisure’. It is argued that Macau can most effectively achieve this goal if it develops its tourism and gaming industries to be consistent with the key attributes of a creative city.     

Mythic Geographies of Representation and Identity: Contemporary Postcards of Wales

This article explores how picture postcards contribute to the cultural production, performance and consumption of landscapes, places and identities. Drawing on cultural and critical studies, it scrutinises the postcard as a cultural text and as a site of cultural production. It begins by briefly reviewing the concepts of ethnicity and identity in relation to its case study country of Wales and suggests how its imagined communities and landscapes have a broad mythical structure that can be mapped across a series of discourses. It then outlines the study's approach to postcard analysis and locates the visual in social science research, confronting issues of interpretation, validity, sampling and reflexivity. The article subsequently presents a discourse analysis of a dozen contemporary Welsh-produced postcards from the archives of the National Library of Wales. In particular, it navigates the visual narratives that are privileging particular stories of place, culture and nationhood and analyses what is being invoked to epitomise contemporary Wales and what is being set aside in these postcard representations. It suggests these visual texts reflect an internal re-mapping of Wales that is celebrating the capital city of Cardiff as its metropolitan cultural core and marginalising alternative imagined communities of Wales, redefining them through spectacle and theatricality. Finally, the article concludes by suggesting how further analysis of such visual touristic texts could offer insights into the cultural production and consumption of identities, landscapes, and places.     

Carrier collaboration with endogenous networks: Or,the limits of what carrier collaboration can achieve under antitrust immunity

Airlines maintain complex networks that are to large extents complementary. Therefore, some passengers need to change aircraft and airlines to fly from their origin to their final destination. The present study captures pricing problems in terms of double marginalization but goes one step further by incorporating network choices. The model involves a two-stage game with two carriers who choose their complementary networks in the first stage and fares in the second stage. Each carrier's network involves one or two links that are distributed geographically or distributed in time. If both carriers maintain two links, then transfer passengers can choose between two alternative connections which they consider as imperfect substitutes. There are only transfer passengers, and maintaining a link is costly. The analysis reveals that carrier collaboration and antitrust immunity can eliminate double marginalization and create incentives to extend networks. Our results indicate that the scope for the improvement of carrier networks via antritrust immunity can be rather limited relative to the social desirability of more extensive carrier networks. A possible policy lesson is that airlines should be granted antitrust immunity conditional on network expansion and/or frequency obligations.     

Transformational tourism as a hero's journey

Transformational tourism is an emerging form of tourism that deserves better attention from researchers and reviewers. This article provides a better understanding of the phenomenon, its varieties and its different stages, drawing on the metaphor of Campbell's archetypical journey of transformation: hero's journey. Using a phenomenological approach, the article tries to shed some light upon the conditions of the touristic experiences that foster transformation. Eight factors were identified: personal situation, being away doing unfamiliar activities, interaction with people, live the moment, difficulty, setting, reflection and integration. The three stages of the hero's journey (departure, initiation and return) are subsequently applied to describe the transformative travel process. The paper concludes with implications for research and professional practice.     

Quantifying spatial gaps in public transport supply based on social needs

This paper concerns a research project to identify spatial gaps in public transport provision for people who are socially disadvantaged. The paper outlines the research context for measurement of public transport supply and needs, and then describes the methodology developed for an application in Melbourne, Australia. Results of the application are described including key findings on spatial gaps in services relative to social needs. The research identifies significant gaps between services supplied and social needs for transport services. Consistency of these findings with research in other Australian cities are noted. Implications for policy development are suggested.     

Community resilience to long-term tourism decline and rejuvenation: a literature review and conceptual model

Studied for decades in disciplines such as ecology, psychology, engineering and sociology ‘resilience’ can be defined as a system's ability to withstand and respond to change. The tourism literature has embraced the concept of community resilience by harnessing concepts of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Many of these studies have focused on the tourism system's ability to respond to short-term disasters and hazards. With the growth of resilience studies in tourism, it is timely to take stock of the core premise of resilience as it is applied to tourism and to identify key gaps in current research. Consequently, this research aims to identify the core concepts of community resilience, with a focus on its application within tourism. The findings reveal that many studies have been conceptual, although there are an increasing number of empirical studies underpinned by resilience theory. Therefore, a conceptual model is presented to broaden existing resilience research and to guide future research into community resilience to tourism decline and rejuvenation.     

The replication and reduction of automobility: Findings from Aotearoa New Zealand

In this paper, we examine the factors that contribute to the replication or reduction of automobility amongst young adults. Semi-structured interviews conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand, with 51 drivers and non-drivers, aged 18–35 years old, form the empirical material. The findings build upon previous research and extend understandings of how seven explanatory factors; perceptual, value and preference, social, built environment, economic, legal/policy and technological, work both to continue the current automobility paradigm, and to challenge it by adopting alternative mobilities. We use the Energy Cultures Framework as an analytical tool to explore the ways through which materialites, norms, practices, and external context can replicate or reduce participation in the hegemonic mobility paradigm. This approach offers useful insights into the interactions between what the research participants think, have and do, and how this is resulting in a reduction in automobility norms amongst some younger people. It also identifies and highlights potential opportunities to leverage upon current change trends to assist a systemic transition away from automobility towards a culture of multi-mobilities.     

Is social class still working? Revisiting the social class division in tourist consumption

The effects of social class division have been extensively examined in tourist behaviour studies, but mostly on specific tourism forms, attractions, or activities. Limited empirical research has looked into the effects of social class difference (as well as other demographic variables) on tourists' destination consumption in a holistic and comprehensive way. To revisit the role of social class in today's tourist consumption, this study stratified a group of American tourists based on their social class and compared their participation patterns in four types of destination activities: cultural, hedonic, nature-based, and shopping-related. The empirical data were from a conversion and destination branding study conducted for Thoroughbred Country, South Carolina. The analysis gained mixed results, as social class was found to have significant impacts on tourists' consumption of certain destination products/activities, but not on others. It was expected that this study could not only contribute to the research endeavours in tourist consuming behaviour, but also provide practical implications for more effective destination marketing and market segmentation strategies.     

The transformation of a legacy carrier – A case study of Turkish Airlines

This study examines the metronomic rise of Turkish Airlines into a global carrier in the period following domestic deregulation and part privatisation. Using a comparative assessment of the carrier's network and its competitive strategies during the 2003–2013/2014 period it was found that Turkish Airlines now benefits from considerable network, cost, service and brand advantages over competing European and to a lesser extent Middle-Eastern airlines. Its network operation based in Istanbul Ataturk airport enjoys strong geographic and demographic advantages, which enables it to optimise the use of its large and young short-haul fleet between a significant number of domestic and international points. This study has important implications for partially or fully state owned legacy carriers as to how to gain competitive advantages in an increasingly open and liberal airline industry.     

Norway's urban toll rings: Evolving towards congestion charging?

The role of various types of road user tolls has been an important part of Norwegian transport development for a number of years. There are now around 50 such projects in operation around the country. This paper examines the urban toll ring projects and presents results from new research into the schemes in Norway's three largest cities: Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim. The research indicates that key decisions are being debated as to whether the schemes will continue as toll rings, be stopped completely or transformed into more of a demand management style policy. Interviews with road and local authorities have shown that the feelings are mixed and that the decision will depend on various transport, social, organisational and political factors.This paper reviews the cases of Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim and documents the latest developments in each scheme. The theory behind the application of the toll rings is explored through the case studies. Despite all the projects being implemented by similar networks, each scheme developed its own individual characteristics. These are laid alongside the economic and transport benefits with which they have been associated. The Strategic Policy Niche Management framework is used to analyse various aspects of the toll projects and identify key lessons. The effect these might have on future UK projects is also discussed.     

Mobilities of the periphery: Informality,access and social exclusion in the urban fringe in Colombia

The relationship between transport, poverty and social exclusion has increasingly held an important place in both research and policy agendas, particularly in industrialised countries. While this has helped consolidate an emerging body of theory concerned with the social consequences of mobility, our understanding of these dynamics in the context of high vulnerability and poverty in the Global South is still relatively undeveloped. Through the case of Soacha, a municipality adjacent to Colombia's capital, Bogotá, this paper explores travel strategies in a context of scarce provision of transport which, when combined with acute conditions of low-income and segregation, limit vulnerable populations' access to the city. The travel practices, perceptions and priorities of low-income populations in deprived areas of the Global South are analysed, using a framework of transport-related social exclusion, to critically examine the elements that play a role in gaining access to the city. The emergence of adaptable methods, relations and transactions between demand and supply that allows deprived populations to reduce their risk of becoming socially excluded show potential for conceptual and practical development in addressing and analysing transport-related social exclusion.     

Powered-two-wheelers for city commuting: Insight from Australia's three largest capital cities

The journey to work receives a great deal of research attention due to the peak demand on the transport system. Cities are increasingly concerned with managing traffic congestion and reducing pollution and most of the focus of this research has been on cars, public transport, walking and cycling. In contrast, the role of powered two-wheelers (PTWs), including motorcycles and scooters, in commuting has received little attention, particularly in the context of cities in the developed world. This paper provides new insight into commuting by PTW by drawing on census journey to work data from Australia's three largest cities (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) combined with an intercept survey of PTW commuters in Melbourne. It explores the extent of, and changes in, PTW commuting as well as the demographics of PTW commuters. While PTWs account for only a small percentage of urban commuting in Australian cities, their use is growing rapidly and there is a concentration of commuting by PTW into city centres. PTW commuters tend to be high-income males in skilled professional and technical professions. The implication of these findings for transport policy are discussed.