“Couchsurfing has made me a better person and the world a better place”: the transformative power of collaborative tourism experiences

ABSTRACT

Presented as an alternative form of tourism, Couchsurfing is a predominantly non-commercial accommodation type where hosts offer a “couch” to travelers through a hospitality network. Couchsurfing.com is considered as an icon of the sharing economy and more specifically of shareable tourism. This article provides a deeper understanding of couchsurfers’ motivations and shared values. Through an empirical qualitative study, we discuss the transformative power of Couchsurfing experiences, the underlying transformational processes, conditions, and socio-psychological and behavioral consequences. We also discuss the findings’ implications for society, businesses, and tourism in general.     

Revealed and stated preference analysis of ski resort attractiveness

The paper compares a revealed and stated preference approach for estimating the site attractiveness of Vermont ski resorts to weekend skiers. Unexpected bias in attractiveness estimates, seemingly caused by the geometry of origins and destinations, is discovered when the revealed preference approach is used. The attractiveness scales of resorts, which were estimated using separate metric (Thurstone) and nonmetric (nonmetric scaling) models of preference, are shown to be very similar despite the different assumptions of the two models. Eighty‐six percent of variance in the attractiveness estimates of resorts is explained by only two variables, mean perceived length of slopes and mean perceived level of crowding. A multidimensional scaling analysis of a matrix showing the mean cognitive similarity of each pair of 23 resorts reveals that the resultant two‐dimensional cognitive map of the resorts can be largely characterized by the same two attributes, slope length and crowding, that explain the preference‐based attractiveness estimates.     

Perceived changes in holiday destinations

Small samples of tourists visiting Greece and Morocco were studied intensively to see whether tourists' post-travel images of these countries were different from pre-travel images. An adapted form of Kelly's repertory grid was used to assess the images. It was established that both travelers to Morocco and to Greece changed their images of the visited locations when compared to a control group of non-travelers. In addition, the tourists' country of origin (Britain), and countries similar to the visited destinations, were also seen somewhat differently after the holiday. While these findings apply only to a limited number of tourists of a particular type, this kind of study paves the way for more research on tourists' attitudinal changes.     

The dynamics of tourism’s carbon footprint in Beijing,China

Abstract

Beijing is an important hub for global tourism, but the extent of tourism’s contribution to Beijing’s carbon footprint remains unclear. We integrated an environmentally extended multiregional input–output model and the tourism satellite account in a study to estimate the dynamics of Beijing’s tourism-related carbon footprint in the post-financial crisis period. Our findings indicate that from 2007 to 2012, whereas the carbon footprint of inbound tourists in Beijing steadily decreased, that of domestic tourists increased. The composition of carbon footprints for the consumption activities of inbound and domestic tourists differed substantially. We also traced the spatial distribution of carbon sources associated with tourism consumption in Beijing. In light of our findings, we offer recommendations to target the adoption of low-carbon consumption patterns by domestic tourists, and energy optimization of service suppliers by increasing energy use efficiency and the renewable energy ratio. In addition, we recommend that public and government should seek to lower energy costs and reduce carbon emissions throughout the life cycle of commodities. We conclude that the government and tourism authorities should actively promote carbon and wider environmental awareness, and that producers must seek to improve the efficiency of their energy use by reducing carbon emissions at source.     

Tourism and water use: Supply, demand, and security. An international review

This article reviews direct freshwater consumption in tourism from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints to assess the current water demand of the tourism sector and to identify current and future management challenges. The article concludes that even though tourism increases global water consumption, direct tourism-related water use is considerably less than 1% of global consumption, and will not become significant even if the sector continues to grow at anticipated rates of around 4% per year (international tourist arrivals). The situation differs at the regional level because tourism concentrates traveller flows in time and space, and often-in dry destinations where water resources are limited. Furthermore, the understanding of tourism’s indirect water requirements, including the production of food, building materials and energy, remains inadequately understood, but is likely to be more substantial than direct water use. The article concludes that with expected changes in global precipitation patterns due to climate change, it is advisable in particular for already water scarce destinations to engage in proactive water management. Recommendations for managing tourism’s water footprint are made.     

We can have the cake and eat it too: leisure and spirituality at ‘veiled’ hotels in Turkey

This paper uses ethnographic methods to inquire how new forms of consumption arise as a result of bridging Islamic spirituality with leisure in the newly growing tesettür hotels in Turkey, which have become a magnet of popular and academic attention. We aim to offer a multi-layered analysis of the leisure and consumption practices of Muslim women in the context of the new Islamic hospitality industry by looking at the interactions between spiritual Islam and modern capitalism. We focus on the consumption process of the female customers of these hotels as part of defining and redefining their newly developing identity that is Islamic and spiritual; as well as modern and luxurious. The study responds to the call of Gökar?ksel and Secor to analyse new Islamic patterns of consumption and leisure by building on their perspectives bridging neoliberal capitalism and resurgence of Islamic identities. We call for a critical and contextual perspective to understand the dynamic emergence of new forms of Islamic lifestyles and capitalism; emphasising a future agenda of further research that is sensitive to the complexities of desires and leisure activities of veiled Muslim women in diverse countries.     

Economics of tourism investment in data scarce countries

Ex-ante economic impact analyses are required to demonstrate the development impact and viability of multilateral loans. These assessments are often performed under tight timelines, in data scarce environments and with limited opportunity for primary data collection. This paper develops a framework for assessing tourism interventions under these challenging conditions and evaluates a US$15 million tourism investment in Belize. This paper contributes to the literature by: (i) developing a generalizable approach to building economy-wide models in data scarce environments; (ii) generating realistic expectations of agent responses with quasi-contingent valuation and auto-regressive integrated moving average methods. Applying the first economy-wide model for Belize, results show that the investment would stimulate GDP by 3% and reduce unemployment from 12% to 10% by 2040.     

Twenty five years of the Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing: a bibliometric ranking

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing (JTTM) is a leading international journal in “Marketing” and “Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management.” JTTM published its first issue in 1992. In 2017, the journal has celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. For that reason, this study analyzes all the publications in the journal since its creation by using a bibliometric approach. The objective is to provide a complete overview of the main factors that affect the journal. This analysis includes key issues such as the distribution of annual publications and citations, the most cited papers, the h-index, citations per paper, the keywords that are mostly used, the influence on the publishing industry and authors, universities, and the countries that have the most publications. The paper uses the Scopus database to analyze the bibliometric data. Additionally, the paper also uses the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer software to map graphically the bibliographic material. The graphical analysis uses bibliographic coupling, co-citation, citation, and co-occurrence of keywords. These results indicate that JTTM is one of the leading journals in the areas where the journal is indexed, with publications from a wide range of authors, institutions, and countries around the world.