Culture as a tourist resource — a theoretical consideration

This article considers the potential of opera as a tourist attraction. Existing work is reviewed and the case stated for deriving a model of opera tourism from a consideration of motivation. Data on those who attend opera and those who become tourists are examined, together with existing literature explaining why people attend opera and become tourists, in order to determine common characteristics. The two activities may theoretically be consumed in a combined product. A number of routes to opera tourism are proposed as a framework for further analysis of the phenomenon. These routes are derived from a consideration of the definition of ‘holiday’.     

Is It Difficult to Market a City as a Convention Destination?

Abstract

Convention tourism is a very lucrative form of tourism and is becoming one of the fastest growing sectors in the tourism industry. Greece, a traditional tourist destination worldwide, has not developed its convention sector satisfactorily. This paper presents the outcome of a small scale qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews with six experts of organizing meetings and conventions, which were undertaken in order to explore the potential of Thessaloniki as a convention destination by assessing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The results revealed that Thessaloniki has a potential to develop this special form of tourism and ameliorate the low tourist inflow. However, it is a difficult task, mainly due to the lack of cooperation among the city's stakeholders.     

The role of tourism management in adaptation to climate change – a study of a European inland area with a diversified tourism supply

The Carpathian Basin is one of the most vulnerable European regions in terms of potential climate change impacts on biodiversity. Its wide range of tourism activities make it uniquely suitable for assessing the effects of climate change on tourism. This research sought to create a Tourism Adaptation Portfolio (TAP) for the Szentendre micro-region in Hungary and to assemble an adaptation toolbox for current and future use by tourism organizations. The TAP contains practical, easy to implement solutions for key stakeholders in the sector by adaptation type (technology, management, behavior, education, policy). Surveys of local tourism suppliers showed that 70% said they were well informed, largely by the Internet, but 55% admitted to not knowing enough. The methodology outlined here is transferable and the process can be replicated elsewhere, supporting other regions in becoming climate-friendly tourism destinations, creating opportunities for uniquely positioning a region for consumers. The article provides a concise overview of tourism provider attitudes assessed through a questionnaire, shedding light on points of intervention, willingness to pay, main barriers and suitable adaptation instruments. The adaptive capacity of stakeholders is also discussed, which is indispensable for implementing successful practices in adaptation and maintaining the current level of environmental services.     

Conference tourism — a salesman's dream

Conference tourism is thought to be booming, indeed the term a ‘salesman's dream’¹ has been used, but there is actually a dearth of evidence to support this claim. The perceived conference tourism demand is largely derived from ‘informed speculation’. George Hughes, Lecturer in Planning and Tourism in the Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, describes the types of statistics available and the three basic methods used to generate estimates of demand. The lack of comparability among methods and the non-rigorous sampling procedures make estimates of demand unreliable as indicators of future development.     

What Facilitates a Festival Tourist? Investigating Tourists’ Experiences at a Local Community Festival

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of festival attributes and tourism facilitators on tourist satisfaction. The results of this study show that festival attributes has a positive and significant effect on tourists' satisfaction. Data analysis also revealed a positive and a significant effect of intrapersonal facilitators and structural facilitators on tourists' satisfaction. However, interpersonal facilitators do not allow a significant impact on tourists' satisfaction in the festival context. One of the most important findings is that festival commercialization is the strongest predictor of tourists' satisfaction. Structural facilitators are regarded as of primary importance in determining the satisfaction of festival tourists. Future research is needed to investigate other important antecedents of tourists' satisfaction across other festivals or locations, and to identify the complex nature of festival tourists' satisfaction. Finally, a longitudinal approach will better elucidate the relationships between measurement variables and their antecedents.     

Travel as a Life Priority?

This paper adopts a different approach to understand non- or infrequent travel. Most research is grounded in constraints theory, and assumes that once constraints are removed, people will travel. Yet, in spite of efforts by the industry to remove obstacles to participation, travel propensity rarely exceeds three-quarters of the population of developed economies. This paper tests the idea that tourism may simply not be a high enough priority for some people to engender travel, while for others it may be seen as being more important. The study evaluated where travel ranks within a set of 13 other activities. People who rated travel as being important or very important to them, consistently rated it as being a higher priority than most of the activities studied. Those who rated travel as being unimportant or of little importance placed it as a lower priority activity. The findings challenge the traditional constraints theory.     

Customer-service training — a social-psychological framework

Customer-service training aims to produce staff who are better at dealing with customers. This article examines the social-psychological framework of the customer-server interaction and identifies important factors responsible either for “bad” or “good” relations. Anxiety arising out of negative factors, eg social distance between the participants to the interaction, or an inability to make sense of or to control the hospitality environment, can result in a retreat into “roles” and “stereotyping” which increases the probability of inappropriate responses. Management must find ways to control and simplify the environment while still allowing the staff scope for initiative.     

Does workplace fun matter? Developing a useable typology of workplace fun in a qualitative study

A fun work environment is a positive atmosphere for organizations to attract and retain employees. This study identifies the significant factors of workplace fun and develops a useable typology of workplace fun activities in the hospitality industry. A qualitative case study with grounded theory approach was used by conducting interviews with ten hotel human resource (HR) practitioners in the People's Republic of China. The results identified four “S”s of workplace fun factors, namely: (1) Staff-oriented workplace fun, (2) Supervisor-oriented workplace fun, (3) Social-oriented workplace fun, and (4) Strategy-oriented workplace fun. This study provides a roadmap to guide future hospitality management research in workplace fun domain.     

Evidence of a low-carbon tourism paradigm?

The global tourism industry has benefited from exceptional growth; however, a number of challenges have the potential to seriously undermine the industry's future aspirations. This research uses social representation theory to understand how the social group of tourism experts makes sense of the phenomena of “tourism growth”, “low-carbon tourism”, “peak oil” and “risks for tourism”, and whether representations are indicative of different underlying paradigms. A total of 101 experts from various tourism professions and key demographics were interviewed using the free associations method. The findings reveal distinct representations of the four phenomena, but also significant linkages between them, in particular in relation to the global economy, transportation, energy supply and sustainability. Further, whilst experts appear grounded in the Dominant Social Paradigm of consumerism and neoliberal capitalism, there is evidence of alternative views that question some of the fundamental assumptions of the growth paradigm. In particular, when asked about low-carbon tourism and peak oil, experts advanced associations that indicated an Alternative Paradigm. A broader paradigm shift originating from within tourism, however, alone is unlikely.     

Tourism — a vital force for peace

Tourism consultant Louis J. D'Amore sets out the ways in which tourism might contribute to a better understanding between nations. He argues that peace can be more constructively defined than as the absence of war or violence and puts the case for tourism as the instrument best placed for the promotion of world harmony.     

Tourism – a new systematic approach?

Brian King presents a view of the current state of tourism literature, in the light of the publication of The Tourism System, which takes a different approach to the study of tourism. Although the concept is not new, it has now been substantially developed and offers an interesting way of looking at the subject.     

Does the geographic proximity of products influence a consumer’s decision? An evaluation in a restaurant

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Sex and the (seventeenth‐century) city: a research note towards a long history of leisure

Sociability and sexuality have long been acknowledged by scholars as core aspects of leisure, but historical quotidian practices such as heterosociability among young people have remained elusive. Sociologists as well as historians have elevated the interrogation of leisure to a rich area of specialisation, but one with limited historical depth since their attention has primarily focused on the last 200 years, and especially – by historians’ standards – the very recent past. This research note explores the centrality of heterosexuality as a key to youth leisure culture in seventeenth‐century French cities to argue that the pre‐modern history of leisure needs to be complicated not only by questions about class and about clearer categories of labour and leisure, but by the topics of gender and sexuality that are strikingly absent from current literature.     

“Just trained to be a chef,not a leader”: A study of head chef practices

ABSTRACT

Hierarchical manners and taxing work complicate the picture of the restaurant industry, a sector in great need of personnel. There is little scientific research on daily work in restaurants. Through interviews and observations in restaurant kitchens, three head chef practices were detected: “Master the materiality” is a stipulation for leading kitchens, but does not imply leadership aspirations; “show and guide” is teambuilding through which standards are reinforced by the presence of leaders while allowing coworkers some freedom; and “overview and foresight” involves nonhierarchical supervision by head chefs during service. These practices make sense to head chefs as they enhance product quality and their reputations as professionals. The study points to a horizontal leadership in the restaurant industry and a possible new order for growth and development.     

Why does a firm participate in a travel exhibition? A case study of the Taipei International Travel Fair

This study explores the reasons why an exhibitor participates in a travel exhibition and assesses this marketing strategy. A total of 15 representative exhibitors who participated in the Taipei International Travel Fair were interviewed between January and July 2016. The results of the analysis indicated that exhibitors’ selection of a travel exhibition was based on the exhibition’s performance and condition. The primary purposes for participating in a travel exhibition were to enhance the firm’s reputation and sales. The exhibitors’ marketing strategies primarily involved on-site promotional activity and relevant five-sense experiences. An assessment of exhibitors’ participation factors and marketing strategies can both help firms implement their goals and enable organizers to create sustainable exhibitions. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing both theoretical and managerial implications for the travel fair, service, and tourism industries.     

Riding a Panda Bus to the Creat wall

The Panda bus is one of the series of products CITS has recently promoted for overseas tourists to China. The bus is so named not because it looks like the panda bump er cars we see in amusement parks, but becuase it bears eye-catching panda symbols. CITS, a renowned travel agency, discovered that there has been a sharp increase of FITs to China in recent years and that manyof them preferred traveling independently,instead of joining organized teams. But independent traveling is more expensive and adds the difficulty of finding an interpreter.     

“More Than Just a Run in the Park”: An Exploration of Parkrun as a Shared Leisure Space

ABSTRACT

Over the last 13 years, parkrun has grown from a small time trial in Bushy Park, London, to become a global social movement. During this time, much has been claimed about the potential health-related benefits from participating, but comparatively little attention has been given to the social reasons for attending. The aim of this study was to better understand the meanings of participation for both runners and volunteers using an intrinsic case study that focused on a specific event, Colwick parkrun in Nottingham, England. Building on literature that positions leisure sites as third places, the article seeks to enhance our understanding of parkrun as a community-based initiative. Data collection included observation, participant observation, semi-structured interviews (N = 19), and a survey (N = 235). Several themes emerged, suggesting that participation in parkrun provides an inclusive leisure space for casual sociability, as well as facilitating a shared experience of exercising with others.     

Towards a Conceptualization of Unethical Marketing Practices in Tourism: a Case‐Study of Australia's Inbound Chinese Travel Market

This paper has a twofold purpose: to identify the types and impacts of unethical practices in an international travel market and to offer a generic model to enhance our understanding of the causes and consequences of such practices. The Chinese outbound market is used as a case study. The choice of China is timely and appropriate, given that the country is forecast to be one of the world's major outbound markets by 2010 with over 100 million leaving mainland China (World Tourism Organization [WTO], 2006 World Tourism Organization. 2006, November 7. The Chinese outbound tourism market Retrieved March 19, 2007, from http://www.unwto.org/media/Releases/2006/november/chineseoutbound.htm [Google Scholar]). The research setting is the Chinese inbound tourism market to Australia where the Chinese market has grown substantially since Approved Destination Status (ADS) was granted in 1999. The implications of this research for European and North American tourism operators are significant, given the 2005 agreement between the European Commission and the Chinese authorities that allows group travel from China into Europe. Using the long‐interview technique with industry participants in Australia and China a conceptual framework of the environment in which unethical practices occur is provided. A model illustrating antecedents, impacts, and outcomes of unethical practices is offered. Key managerial findings include the unhealthy consolidation of channel power in the Chinese market and the influence of ethnic networks across borders. Several key issues requiring further research are highlighted.     

US international pleasure travel market — a values perspective

The values and lifestyles (VALS) technique for market segmentation is applied to the population of the USA. Of nine different types isolated, three are found to account for the bulk of international pleasure travellers - ‘achievers’, the ‘societally conscious’ and ‘belongers’. Research demonstrates that these three groups have quite different travel motives and goals. The US travel market is thus more highly differentiated than previously imagined. VALS could therefore be a useful technique enabling the industry to define and target potential market segments.