A supplier side view of digital nomadism: The case of destination Gran Canaria

Digital nomadism is a rapidly growing lifestyle for living and working. Despite its potential transformative effect on destinations, little attention has been paid to destination communities in which digital nomads reside. This paper aims to examine the interface between the destination communities and digital nomadism: how the stakeholders in a destination community perceive and accommodate digital nomads. The case study comes from a popular European destination, the island of Gran Canaria, Spain. The study proposes an original supply side framework to theoretically inform the phenomenon of digital nomadism. Stakeholder theory is also applied to examine the interface between the local communities and the phenomenon. Applying the proposed conceptual framework, the results reveal a novel perspective on digital nomads, which is “new locals”. The results show that the accommodative strategies of local stakeholders correlate strongly with the stakeholder’s specializations, and include strategies such as: provider, communicator, integrator, and embracer.     

The impact of tourism on a dependent island: Gozo,Malta

Tourism for the 22,000 inhabitants of Gozo, Malta's underdeveloped sister island, means just over one hundred foreign residents, several hundred hotel visitors, and an annual stream of several hundred thousand day trippers from Malta. For Gozitans tourism has provided substantial earnings for a few catering and transport entrepreneurs, permanent employment for a few hundreds, and a modest income for some 1,600 women and girls producing handicraft souvenirs at home. However, the tourist connection to Gozo is controlled by Maltese, who obtain a disproportionate share of the industry's earnings. Increasingly Gozitans resent the way Maltese exploit their island, pollute it with picnic rubbish and treat them as backward. They compare their patronizating neighbours to the polite, free spending foreigners by whom they are treated with respect. Foreign appreciation of their rural environment and lifestyle has increased Gozitan self confidence, even as it has exacerbated their traditional resentment of Maltese cultural, social, and economic dominance. On balance, Gozitans from all walks of life regard tourism positively, especially its benefits to their underdeveloped economy.     

Vacation decisions,activities, and satisfactions

Vacations are a major consumer expense category. People devote considerable attention to deciding whether to take one or not (generic decision), to making joint decisions as husband, wife, and children, and to acquiring information from different sources and media. Information functions to sensitize, persuade, heighten appreciation, and legitimize choices. Several vacation types can be distinguished. Life-style, as a broader concept, may server as a good basis of explanation for vacation behavior. Equity and attribution are important concepts in understanding vacationer (dis)satisfaction and complaint behavior.     

Site and situation strategy in tourism planning: A Mexican case study

Mexico has experienced all the effects, good and ill, of a large and expanding tourist trade. Tourism's negative consequences--economic dependency, crime, cultural erosion--have manifested themselves in tourist ghettos along Mexico's northern border, on the Mexican Riviera, and in the capital. This study is an assesment of contemporary Mexican tourism planning as it relates to these problems, and further as it seeks to make tourism a stimulus to economically depressed areas of the nation. A case study approach is utilized to identify the strategy of site and situation selection for the new programmed resort complex at Cancun on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula. It is concluded that Cancun embodies, at least for Mexico, a radical departure in tourism development. The resort is situated to attract a large foreign clientele and to create the greatest possible positive economic and social impact on a resident Mexican population that has suffered chronic underdevelopment.     

Solesolevaki as social capital: a tale of a village,two tribes,and a resort in Fiji

This paper advances understanding of the complex and adaptive nature of indigenous Fijian communities involved in tourism. It examines how tourism-related development has set the people of one Fijian village along two separate development pathways, and explores how preferential access to tourism benefits has created disparities within the community. Complex Adaptive Systems theory and Social Capital theory are used to conceptualise how over 40 years of tourism involvement has influenced development within an indigenous Fijian community. The findings argue that indigenous Fijian communities are non-homogeneous entities, which are constantly in transition, responding and adapting integratively to both internal and external changes over time. The findings show that the emergence of new behaviours and ways of life has led to the collapse of the pre-existing systems of social capital. As a response, community members retreated and regrouped, strengthening internal bonds and social capital in their smaller social units, leading to both dependency and opportunity-seeking behaviours among participants. Ultimately, the paper asserts that money alone does not lead to development, but rather tourism and access to a variety of capital do.     

Higher skilled working tourists and their leisure lifestyles: a qualitative study of guest language instructors in South Korea

Using interviews conducted with 24 higher skilled working tourists employed as guest language instructors in the Republic of Korea, this paper explores how working tourists could secure an optimal leisure lifestyle in their host countries. Three key findings emerged. First, the respondents were seeking casual, touristic, amateur, hobby and volunteer leisure with their colleagues and with their host community members. But, the rewards and episodic aspects of their leisure, including formal and informal language development, suggested that it incorporated variations in project-based leisure as a core characteristic. Second, these respondents were taking part in guest, host and leisure speech communities that were each offering leisure choices. However, their leisure lifestyle was best when leisure, second language development and acculturation coincided in a leisure speech community. Third, that in a leisure speech community, respondents’ acculturation and friendships improved more so than in either guest or host speech communities. Also, that these respondents’ formal and informal second language learning within their leisure speech communities was essential for an optimal leisure lifestyle. The paper determines that leisure speech communities, occurring along a continuum of monetary, educational and interpersonal resources, could affect the linguistic mobility of higher skilled working tourists. It recommends that future research could examine if a sociolinguistics of leisure could assist in exploring and mapping the leisure lifestyles appearing among mobile populations in a globalising world.     

Malaysia's My Second Home (MM2H) Programme: An examination of Malaysia as a destination for international retirees

Malaysia was recently ranked fourth highest as a retirement destination by one established magazine. This warrants examination of the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Programme which targets retirees, and more recently, high net worth foreigners. Data was collected using postal questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews. By virtue of the entry requirements, the retirees were well-to-do. The application process for the MM2H visa did not pose much difficulty. Malaysia was chosen because of fond memories from earlier trips. Satisfied MM2H stayers inadvertently promoted the MM2H Programme when they narrated their positive experiences in various media. If the various country-specific and locality-specific charms that drew foreigners to Malaysia altered deleteriously, even bona fide retirees who had made Malaysia their only home would migrate elsewhere. Malaysian policy makers need to adopt cogent actions to attract more fresh retirees while retain those already in the country.     

Rethinking the sociology of tourism

Two principal general approaches to tourism are criticized. It is argued against the tendency to over generalize, to propose universal models and to conceive of the dynamics of tourism as a unilinear process. Instead, a multiplicity of types, different typologies and a multilinear approach to the dynamics of tourism should be favored. It is further argued that conceptual schemes should be further elaborated, illustrating the argument by an elaboration of MacCannell's fundamental concepts. The article emphasizes the need for some basic problems in tourism research to be reformulated; it proposes a strategy for research which, while preserving theoretical pluralism and eclecticism, will safeguard continuity and the ability to generalize by developing a common research style for the sociology of tourism.     

How do lifestyle hospitality and tourism entrepreneurs manage their work-life balance?

This study uses border theory to explore how lifestyle hospitality and tourism entrepreneurs manage their work-life balance. This research utilizes in-depth interviews and observations from Dali and Lijiang, China. Three types of findings emerged. First, for lifestyle entrepreneurs, work and personal life are not divided; business is considered a style of living, not work. Second, lifestyle entrepreneurs’ boundary management tactics include temporal tactics, physical tactics, and psychological tactics. Third, the factors influencing the work-life balance of lifestyle entrepreneurs include personal factors and the contextual factors related to tourism destinations. This paper contributes to border theory by indicating how an individual’s psychological borders have a decisive effect on work-life balance perception, and how both the tourism and Chinese contexts moderate the psychological borders of work-life balance to some extent.     

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.     

Physical Activity of Remote Indigenous Australian Women: A Postcolonial Analysis of Lifestyle

In the context of rising chronic diseases amongst Indigenous peoples, there are calls for the adoption of more healthy “lifestyles.” In this context, this paper explores thoughts about physical activity from 21 Indigenous families through the voices of women and girls living in remote rural communities in the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area, Australia. Speaking back to physical activity as a lifestyle “choice,” three consistent themes emerged: shame, gendered positioning, and welfarism. In conclusion, the perspectives of Torres Strait islanders and Northern Peninsula Area communities suggest that there are deeply embedded ways of thinking about the body, familial obligations, and the provision of and access to being active that are not consistent with Western health policies predicated upon individuals shouldering responsibility for “taking exercise.”     

Lifestyle Segmentation in Tourism and Leisure

ABSTRACT

This article examines three different approaches to lifestyle segmentation in improving the quality of tourism and leisure marketing decisions in three separate cases. Tourism and leisure products are prototypical lifestyle purchase yet in many tourism research studies visitors are described by demographics or tourism behaviour only. These cases illustrate different approaches to lifestyle segmentation. Firstly, there are segmentation schemes based on external logic that can be broadly applied across a range of markets, including tourism and leisure. Alternatively, there are schemes that are based on a 'conversation' with the data and which rely on an internal logic within that data that may not transfer to other market contexts. Between these two lie schemes that apply external paradigms to specific datasets. The cases selected illustrate points along this spectrum.

The first case study examines the use by government tourism organizations of lifestyle segmentation 'bought in' from an external source. Here lifestyle segmentation data is collected from a representative sample of the Australian population as part of a commercial “single source” data set. The second case is based on a regional tourism study, which has utilized prior theory to develop its own lifestyle segmentation and at the same time related this to boarder characteristics of tourists in Tropical North Queensland. The third case examines the development of tailored lifestyle segmentation among 'event' spectators based on purely internal criteria unrelated to the broader population. These cases provide insight into the appropriate development and application of lifestyle segmentation and the use of the data by tourism and leisure managers. Managers may think about the type of lifestyle segmentation approach required based on how the segmentation scheme results need to be related to the wider market or population.     

Trouble in the travel account

For several years a small but growing group of economists has been interested in the balance-of-payments aspects of international tourism and the travel account. This paper examines the reliability and consistency of international travel data provided by government agencies. Travel data are usually constructed from survey questionnaires, bank transfers, and records of travel agents. Often the quality of the data is low. In fact, it is likely that some countries are not able to tell whether they have a surplus or deficit on travel accounts. An examination of the inconsistencies in travel data reported by different countries will aid researchers in the numerous international travel demand studies.     

Photograph's role in tourism : Some unexplored relationships

Chalfen, Richard M., “Photography's Role in Tourism: Some Unexplored Relationships,” Annals of Tourism Research,” October/December 1979, VI(4):435–447. While photography is one of the most common attributes of tourist behavior, its role in tourism has never been studied. Tourist photography is understood as both photographs made by tourists and photographs made available to tourists by members of the host community. This paper draws attention to three unexamined topics: the relationship between certain tourist types and patterns of photographic behavior and/or content of photographs; the culturally variable standards of appropriate subject matter and camera use in different parts of the world; and the variety of responses exhibited by host communities to being photographed. Examples are given of host sensitivities and camera related disturbances. A trend is noticed in which host communities specify which images are appropriate and inappropriate for tourist photography.     

Technology as a tool to rebuild heritage sites: the second life of the Abbey of Cluny

Technology has made changes in communication, lifestyle, and cultures, creating a new challenge to heritage sites. Technology can be the answer to connecting with local communities and tourists, reducing the gap between people and their inheritance, making it more understandable, creating awareness and value and eliminating time and space limitations. It can be used to communicate, interpret, teach, analyze, and make heritage accessible. And it can also be applied to make virtual reconstructions of what no longer exists. This paper analyzes the effect of technology at a heritage site, using the Abbey of Cluny as a case. This Abbey is a monument in France due to its importance during the Middle Ages as the monastic capital of Europe. Today, there are only a few traces of what the Maior Ecclesia used to be. New technologies were applied to rebuild what was destroyed with time using augmented reality and 3D reconstruction. Qualitative methods were used to describe what effects in visitors and promotion of the site were observable.     

Speculative residential developers and foreign retirees’ market segment in Malaysia

Over the last decade in particular, there has been a steady stream of foreign retirees, and more recently foreign high net worth individuals, who have joined Malaysia's My Second Home (MM2H) Programme which provides them with long-stay period visas. This opened up a new but small market segment for residential developers. A study was conducted to determine how the developers accommodate the MM2H participants by using the 4Ps framework. Data was collected using the mixed method of postal questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews. Customisation for the MM2H residential segment was generally limited to promotion of new dwellings. Total customisation in terms of product, price, place and promotion was found to be highly risky. Another ‘P’ for people cannot be excluded from 4Ps framework as speculative developers associate different nationalities with different house purchasing tendencies.     

International Second Home Retirement Motives in Malaysia: Comparing British and Japanese Retirees

Generally, the international second home (ISH) retirement develops from the need for better life quality of the aging population globally. “Malaysia My Second Home” (MM2H) is an ISH scheme that aims to attract inbound retiree market in Malaysia. This study explores the retirement motivations and their influences on ISH decision using the combination of push–pull travel motivation theory and tri-reference point (TRP) theory, while simultaneously comparing the British and the Japanese retirees. We interviewed 26 MM2H participants in depth and content analyzed the data with qualitative NVivo software. Other than common motivations shared by both groups, there are also distinct differences, especially with regards to environmental preference and risk taking. Only two motives fit into all the three elements of TRP, with most motives either explained by a single or dual reference point. Based on the findings, the study proposes its knowledge, marketing, and managerial implications.     

Innovation Theory Revisited: Self-Preservation Innovation versus Self-Reinvention Innovation in Later Life

The innovation theory of successful aging differentiates between Self-Preservation Innovation (SPI) and Self-Reinvention Innovation (SRI), suggesting that both contribute to well-being in later life. Based on a telephone survey of 545 retirees aged 60 and over, this study aimed at examining the two types of innovation in leisure and their association with well-being. Results indicated that SPI activities were significantly more common than SRI activities and that innovators who reported adding the former had significantly higher life satisfaction than the rest of the sample. No such difference was found regarding innovators who added SRI activities. Moreover, the study showed that it was not the type of innovation but rather its result—namely, a greater leisure repertoire among innovators—that predicted postretirement life satisfaction. Results are discussed regarding each tenet of the theory, elucidating directions of future research.     

American views on retirement

Retirement has only recently become institutionalized in the United States. Earlier, most older men remained in the labour force, but today retirement is the overwhelming norm for the older American worker. The macroeconomic and microeconomic functions of retirement are distinguished. The ‘selling’ of retirement and the accompanying changes in attitude are illustrated by the treatment of retirement in the media, positive thinking being the dominant ideology. But retirees are often victims of cultural inconsistencies: changes in attitude to work and leisure lag behind changes in workforce participation.     

Planning for Sustainable Ecotourism: The Case for Research Ecotourism in Developing Country Destinations

Research ecotourism is a relatively new component of activities within the ecotourism industry, providing research opportunities for visitors focusing on aspects of the natural environment which are principally located in developing countries. This paper is directed towards identifying the nature and causes of socio-cultural impacts of this strand of ecotourism using a case study from Indonesia. The positive nature of socio-cultural impacts perceived by host communities alongside the irregular nature of economic benefits to host communities is analogous with the altruistic surplus theory of individual recognition of communal benefits. Certain characteristics of research ecotourists are identified as contributing towards host reactions towards visitors which reinforce the contention that this is a desirable form of ecotourism in similar locations.