‘What’s on your Bucket List?’: Tourism,identity and imperative experiential discourse

The concept of the Bucket List has achieved rapid and widespread recognition. This article makes an original Critical Discourse Analysis of the Bucket List as a cultural phenomenon that provides important insights into the interrelation between identity and tourism. The Bucket List is used to communicate specific suggestions of desirable tourism experiences and uses what can be termed the experiential imperative discourse, where the language, tone and framing of the text positions the experience described as essential and obligatory. Ultimately, the Bucket List discourse serves to prescribe culturally specific ideas of what constitute ‘good’ tourism experiences and is imposed on individuals who are prompted to desire a constantly renewing range of tourism experiences.     

‘Intelligent investment’? Welsh sport policy and the (in)visibility of ‘race’

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we draw on research conducted in Wales to consider reasons for participation and non-participation in sport and physical activity among Black and minoritised ethnic (BME) groups. This study exposes the challenge at the heart of sports policy in relation to ‘race’ and ethnicity in Wales that, if not addressed, may lead to the marginalisation of attempts to increase BME participation in sport and physical activity despite good intent. It points to a disjuncture between supply and demand and leads us to question the extent to which such policies resonate with the interests, needs and lived experiences of people from different BME communities in Wales. We draw on testimonies of policy-makers and implementers, as well as individuals from various BME communities in five regions of Wales, to consider the extent to which national sports policy encourages strategies to increase participation among different ethnic groups. We suggest that increasing participation among BME communities and other ‘hard-to-reach’ groups must go beyond accounting for the supply aspects of sport and physical activity to consider more critically the plethora of barriers and exclusions facing many BME communities. We conclude by arguing that for racial inequalities to be reduced, and promises such as ‘sport for all’ to be realised, the analysis of policy needs to be related to broader relations of power in the culture of both sport and society.     

Indigenous masculinity in sport: the power and pitfalls of rugby league for Australia’s Pacific Island diaspora

Pasifika men are significantly over-represented in Australia’s National Rugby League and their dramatic influx into the sport over the past 10–15 years has often been attributed to their ‘natural’ athleticism and other corporeal reasons invoking hyper-masculinity. Coupled with this discourse is the commonly accepted idea that these sporting opportunities are a good thing for Pasifika peoples. This paper considers both the damaging effects of the ‘hyper-masculine body’ and ‘sport-as-inherently good’ discourses, and addresses the positive potential rugby league has in transgressing various forms of oppression. Rather than arguing that sport is a positive force in society or outright challenging that assertion, I demonstrate how rugby league in Australia plays a paradoxical role in both reinforcing and challenging social values around race and masculinity. It can be a rare space for positive visibility and upward mobility for Pasifika and other Indigenous men, and a space of exploitation, degradation and racism; it can even save lives and destroy them. I argue that these complexities should be better understood before any moral claim is made about the positives or negatives of sport for marginalised peoples.     

What are the key success factors for strategy formulation and implementation? Perspectives of managers in the hotel industry

This study investigates how hotel managers describe strategy and identify key success factors for its formulation and implementation. The study analyzes qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with property level top managers of hotels in Hong Kong. The findings show that hotel managers prioritize competition analysis and macro-environmental conditions over internal characteristics such as teamwork in strategy formulation. In the implementation phase, however, internal considerations such as employee involvement and strategic consensus are given prominence. This study provides a significant contribution by examining how top level practitioners in the industry interpret success factors in their strategic management efforts, and it highlights a largely neglected area in the hospitality and tourism management literature.     

‘What’s the Story in Balamory?’: The Impacts of a Children’s TV Programme on Small Tourism Enterprises on the Isle of Mull,Scotland

Film- and television-induced tourism effects have been witnessed in a number of locations world-wide, creating a range of positive and negative impacts for host communities and environments. The children’s television programme Balamory, filmed on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, has created a new tourism phenomenon for the island, leading to concern that Mull’s reputation as a green destination for the discerning might be displaced by a less desirable form of tourism. Through a questionnaire survey of tourism businesses on Mull, this paper explores the perceptions of television-induced tourism and the effect of Balamory on business activity during the 2003 season, exploring customer numbers, spending, turnover and profitability, along with attitudes to the new visitors. The research also explores the implications for sustainable tourism development, particularly recognising the limited life-span of film- and television-induced tourism and issues relating to displacement of traditional markets, with an emphasis on sustaining tourism as a means of generating revenue to support a rural island community.     

Home of (or for?) Champions? The Politics of High-Performance/Elite and Community sport at New Zealand’s Home of Cycling

Abstract

Creating inclusiveness and user-friendly spaces is a challenge to any new sporting venue. This article explores the attempts by various ‘stakeholders’ involved in the production of the Avantidrome, New Zealand's ‘Home of Cycling’ to align the rhetorics with the realities for creating a new velodrome across its first 20 months of operation. More specifically, there exists a tension in the ‘selling’ of a sport-for-all model with the public construction of a high-performance, elite-use facility. In neoliberal times, such contradictions seemingly proliferate when public spending blends and blurs with corporate sponsorship and a results-driven framework for funding elite sport while being aligned with visions of community. Combining user interviews and sustained on-site ethnographic observations with Foucault's theories of power, we seek to understand how these multiple entities produced relational forms of power that resulted in efforts to accommodate both community-based and high performance models within the same cycling space.