Flashpacking and automobility

Recent research has attempted to distinguish the key differences between backpacking and flashpacking. However, research observing how both groups choose to travel between destinations remains a neglected theme, and one that may also reveal distinct behavioural differences. This paper critically examines the methods of transportation used by backpackers and flashpackers and analyses how both groups value mobility throughout their respective journeys. While both groups have frequently been identified as being highly mobile, few papers have critically examined the significance transportation choices play in enhancing or fulfilling their desired experiences. Despite suggestions that flashpackers possess far greater financial budgets, most studies have assumed that they travel in similar ways to backpackers. In this paper, the importance of automobility, which is deemed to be a combination of autonomous and self-directed movement, is explored in the context of Norway. Using a qualitative methodology, the experiences of 43 interviewees (26 backpackers and 17 flashpackers) at 10 different hostel locations were recorded in 2009. The findings revealed that backpackers and flashpackers exhibited highly contrasting mobilities, and that previous assumptions regarding how they choose to travel should be challenged.     

International and domestic tourists’ “a priori” and “in situ” image differences and the impact of direct destination experience on destination image: the case of Linz,Austria

A profound understanding of destination image and its determinants is of significance for destinations aiming to effectively position themselves in the tourism market. However, existing research on destination image formation has mainly focused on the “a priori” and “a posteriori” stages and paid only limited attention to the “in situ” stage. To fill in this gap, this study examines the effect direct destination experience and visitors’ nationality (domestic vs. international) have on both “pre-travel” and “in situ” cognitive and affective elements of image. The study was conducted using 400 international and domestic visitors to Linz, Austria. The findings indicate that there are significant differences in the way domestic and international tourists perceive Linz as a tourist destination both prior and during the actual experience. The study also provides empirical evidence that direct destination experience plays a major role in destination image formation, irrespective of individual’s nationality. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.     

铁路信息安全管理研究

铁路运输生产安全管理工作需要健全铁路信息安全管理体系。简述了我国铁路信息安全管理的现状及存在的问题,介绍了国外信息安全管理的特点和信息安全管理的发展趋势,研究提出了铁路信息安全管理的内涵和目标以及信息安全管理模型,梳理了铁路信息安全管理关键流程,提出了建立信息安全管理组织体系的建议。     

Shining light on the darkness. Placing tourists within North Korean tourism. Comment on: Desiring the dark: ‘A taste for the unusual’ in North Korean tourism?

Few studies exist of tourism in North Korea. Many passing references to tourism have been distanced from actual tourists. Visiting North Korea is a form of moral political tourism that has no relationship to dark tourism or fantasy, but represents tourist interest in seeking to discover a ‘real’ North Korea that is distinct from hegemonic political narratives from outside or inside the country. Tourism is associated with the need to evaluate and reconsider political orthodoxies and ideologies, and discover an everyday environment.     

The tourists of developmentourism – representations ‘from below’

Tourism has become part of the ‘development’ agenda. As an agent of post-modernity, tourism helps increase the commodification of what were previously regarded as uncommodified matters of social life. Accordingly, ‘development’ is now a tourist commodity in many localities in the so-called ‘South’, where the tourists in turn assume a moral consumer style. This paper is primarily about (strategic) representations of the tourist-other as a protagonist of assistance in the realm of what I call developmentourism. My argument is to a large degree empirical, based on two villages in Mozambique. In particular, the two cases studied indicate the interlaced relationship between tourism and ‘development’, and its repercussion on the discursive activity and representations of the members of the two villages. Moreover, both cases analysed in this paper inform the broader non-governmental economic and moral order in which they are situated.     

Adventure Sports and Tourism in the French Mountains: Dynamics of Change and Challenges for Sustainable Development

Despite their historical links, there have always been profound contradictions in the relationship between sport and tourism in France and Europe in terms of behaviour and development models. The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s marked a certain narrowing of this divide, with a gradual blurring of the boundaries between tourism and sport, and an increasing hybridisation of activities and reference models. This change was due on the one hand to the increasing demand for 'active tourism', breaking with the cultural and geographical conformism of conventional holidays and trips, and on the other hand to the appearance of 'leisure sports' held in new esteem following the development of a whole range of new or revived activities (climbing, mountain biking, canyoning, parascending, rafting, hydrospeed), which no longer resisted 'touristification.' In this process, the crisis which affected winter sports in France during the second half of the 1980s played a far from negligible role by stimulating a systematic search for diversification in the supply of tourism 'products', with respect both to seasonal aspects and to the target clientele and activities. Thus, while a crisis was shaking the foundations, the renewal in the supply of leisure sports was contributing to a revival of mountain tourism, particularly in the summer. The result of this upheaval was that leisure sports, which until then had been largely marginal to tourism, were placed at the very centre of the touristic system.