Bringing Hotels to Healthcare

Abstract

The field of medical tourism has grown and developed over the last ten years into a popular option for having a medical procedure done. Continuing success is expected, and becoming involved with medical tourism appears to be an excellent way for the hotel industry to differentiate their services. By integrating a medical tourism program into an existing hotel company's services, both aspects of the partnership will build off of the other's success and create a new and exciting travel experience. A joint partnership between a medical facility and a luxury hotel would enjoy abounding success in this new and exhilarating market.     

Bringing Personal Character Strengths into the Production of the Leisure Experience

This study explores opportunities for character strength activation through the leisure context of charity sport events. Character strengths are a core aspect of positive psychology, and their activation increases wellbeing. Based on a card sorting procedure and semi-structured interviews, respondents identified which strengths they used during charity sport event participation. Results indicate that kindness/generosity, citizenship, loyalty and teamwork, hope and optimism, and passion and enthusiasm were all core event-related strengths. The findings provide insights regarding the relationship between leisure participation and wellbeing, as we know that (i) leisure frequently leads to increased wellbeing, (ii) this leisure context provides an opportunity to activate specific character strengths, and (iii) these specific character strengths are known to increase wellbeing. Therefore, it may be that the activation of these event-specific character strengths provides a mechanism to derive wellbeing outcomes from leisure participation, and should be further explored in the design of charity sport events.     

Being together at the zoo: zoo experiences among families with children

This study focuses on family-based zoo experiences and how individual and social factors affect the experiences of parents as well as children. Limited knowledge exists of zoo experiences; in particular children’s perspective on zoo visits is missing, just as parents–children interchanges and their effects on zoo experiences have been offered scant attention. Based on theories on family experiences as well as relevant studies on zoo visits, a theoretical framework is established. This considers both the perspective of parents and children and that zoo experiences are of a multiple nature and may hence consist of both central and peripheral experiences. By means of qualitative interviews with families visiting Aalborg Zoo, Denmark, it is discovered that the experiences children and parents gain from visiting a zoo differ. It is not, however, so much the nature of the experiences as it is the priority given to experiences that vary, and so zoo experiences of parents and children are to a high degree, mutually supportive. This, furthermore, means that family zoo visits appear relatively harmonious as both children and parents have their needs fulfilled.     

When birds flock together: an identification of the destination social servicescape

ABSTRACT

While servicescapes have been studied in a variety of travel and tourism domains, the phenomenon has been largely ignored at the destination level. This is especially true when it comes to considerations of the social servicescape, which is reflective of the extent to which the mere presence of other destination visitors can influence affective responses to the destination experience. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to propose and empirically test a model of the destination social servicescape that explores perceived psychographic similarity within the social servicescape and the effects of this construct on affective evaluations and behavior.     

Bringing the past to life: Co-creating tourism experiences in historic house tourist attractions

This ethnographic study concentrates on the co-creation of experiential value between the tourist and tour guide in a single historic tourism site; Huntingdon Castle, Ireland. Built upon the principles of service dominant logic, the research explores how storytelling acts as an engagement platform and value enhancing strategic resource. In doing so, it impels the value co-creation journey and shapes the tourist's experience. Observation is coupled with qualitative interviews to capture the dual perspective of both guides and tourists. Findings exhibit the co-creation process through the performance of stories; how and when people derive pleasure (value); the influencing aspects of the environment or place; and guide/tourist perspectives on how they feel and think during the experience. The research contributes by taking a practical operational view of how co-creation occurs. It goes beyond the guide's perspective and exhibits the importance of co-creation of lived experience in the story enhanced tourism experience framework.     

Running together: The social capitals of a tourism running event

This article discuss the types of social capital that are co-produced and consumed by a host of actors during a small-scale sport event called Etape Bornholm, a five-day tourism running event. We make a contribution to the literature on social capital in small-scale tourism sport events by developing the spatial dimensions of territoriality and mobility as a supplement to discussions of bridging and bonding. Through a qualitative investigation of local organisers, volunteers, runners, supporters and spectators, we show how four types of social capital are involved in making the event happen. The conclusion develops the metaphor of “running together” to conclude on the forms of social capital that are drawn upon and practised.     

Making a difference together: discourses of transformation in family voluntourism

This article explores the intersection of development discourse, volunteer tourism, and practices of family travel. While research on the emerging trend of voluntourism has tended to focus on young, single, college-aged volunteers, little attention has been paid to families with young children who volunteer abroad. Taking as its starting point the prevalent message that voluntourism can “make a difference”, the article examines the implications of emphasizing the family and the child, rather than structural inequalities, as the objects of transformation. Based on face-to-face and online interactions with worldschooling families, the article uses mobile virtual ethnography to create an in-depth and immersive study of mobile and online social groups. Findings suggest that families undertake voluntourism as a strategy for fostering family bonding and cultivating their children's sense of global citizenship. In both cases, family voluntourism pursues transformation in the private sphere of the family rather than in the public sphere of political activism. In this sense, discourses of transformation make family voluntourism complicit with neoliberal ideals of individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism that may reinforce rather than dismantle entrenched Global North/Global South power hierarchies, but they also lend themselves to critical debates that may recuperate the transformative potential of volunteer tourism.     

Bringing a politics of hope to the tourism classroom: exploring an integrated curriculum design through a creative and reflexive methodology

ABSTRACT

The university classroom as it has traditionally been structured is ill-equipped to prepare the creative, problem-solving, socially engaged, and ?exible young adults that today’s employers demand. Hierarchical approaches to university education dominate, and students frequently fail to make the connections between what they are learning and real-world scenarios. In this paper, we present an Integrated Curriculum Design (ICD) project initiated by three professors at varying stages of their careers in two tourism classes in a Canadian University. While much of the scholarship on ICD to date has focused on its bene?cial aspects for students, here we employ Critical Analytic Practice (CAP) in order to critically re?ect on our own pedagogic values, questions, and learning as we experienced them over the course of this project. Through our creatively re?ective writings, we better understand how ICD has positively impacted our own ability to co-design and co-deliver meaningful learning experiences in the tourism classroom. Our research makes three contributions to: the limited scholarship on ICD in tourism, the limited scholarship focused on re?exivity in tourism pedagogical scholarship and we draw attention to the use of CAP as an innovative way to represent data in tourism in order to broaden our audience and impact.     

Banding together in a festival context: Examining effects of a joint-stakeholder external service recovery

Despite substantial growth in revenue and attendance numbers on a global and country level over the past decades, failure is still a fairly common phenomenon in the events/festival industry. Drawing on two scenario studies and data collected in the United States, this research investigated the impact on festival-goers’ evaluations and behavior of joint-stakeholder external service recoveries, in contrast to the prevalent focus on examining service recoveries by a single stakeholder that caused the failure. Findings revealed that festival-goers had different perceptions of and behavioral intentions towards the various stakeholders depending on their perception of fault for the failure. Yet, rather than a predicted joint effect with failure severity, we found a significant interaction effect of the locus of causality with service recovery measures, either via an internal or external recovery. Implications of study findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

On bringing people and park together through ecotourism: The Nanda Devi National Park,India

While the need for linking park with people was heavily stressed both at the World Conservation Strategy (1980) and the World Congress of National Parks (1982), the conflict has remained unresolved, particularly in the developing nations. The hackneyed question, who is more important – monkey or man - is still argued. Admittedly, human beings are as much a part of nature as any other animal or plant species. Indeed, it is neither desirable nor feasible to alienate poor people, living in and around parks and protected areas. Modern methods of judicious park management now point more to Integrated Conservation Development Projects (ICDP) than resorting to a traditional “fences and fines” approach. ICDP ensures the conservation of biological diversity by reconciling the management of park with social and economic needs of the local people, who have limited access to resources and few alternative means of livelihood. Paradoxically, these people bear substantial costs – as a result of lost access – while receiving little in return. Nanda Devi National Park in Uttaranchal (India) presents an unsavory example of people and park relationship. It is India's highest park after Kangchendzongha (Sikkim). Characterized by high altitude ecology, the park (625?sq.?km) is profoundly rich in biodiversity, mountain-lores and mythologies. Indigenous communities, particularly Bhotias, have enriched the landscape by their bizarre ways of life. After Tilman and Shipston's successful ascent (1936) of Nanda Devi peak (7817?m), an era of mountaineering and trekking ensued which resulted in degradation of fragile Himalayan environment. Poaching of musk deer and herb smuggling also raised alarm. Considering the dire conservation needs for preserving genetic resources and diversity of species, the area was notified as a National Park in 1982. Subsequently, the park was closed for ecological quarantine. Later it was declared a Biosphere Reserve (1988) and inscribed asa World Heritage Site in 1992. Customary to Third World practices, the park emphasized a policing role excluding local people, displacing them arbitrarily with meager or little compensation for their losses of livelihood. Ban on tourism activities further added to their problem of life and living. The paper discusses the cleavage of park and people and argues that development of sound ecotourism can resolve this conflict and bring park and people together.     

Tell us your concern,and we shall together address! Role of service booking channels and brand equity on post-failure outcomes

The extant literature on service failure and recovery has overlooked the post-service failure evaluations when customers interact through different online service booking channels, such as direct websites (Direct) and online travel agents (OTAs). In this study, following the attribution theory and the expectation disconfirmation framework, we analyse the impact of service failure across service booking channels (direct vs. OTA) and its influence on post-service failure outcomes. Besides this, the study also examines the moderating roles of co-created service recovery and brand equity between channel type and post-recovery outcomes. A between-subjects experimental design revealed that when a service failure occurs in a direct (vs. OTA) website, it creates adverse outcomes of higher magnitude. The results also suggest that, in the case of a direct channel, co-created service recovery generates favourable service outcomes when the channel carries low brand equity. However, in the case of an OTA, the use of co-created service recovery works better when that OTA carries high level of brand equity. Further, the results also supported that these post-recovery outcomes are driven by recovery satisfaction and channel engagement. Thus, this study findings offer novel insights into online service recovery literature and managerial practice, primarily for efficient design and execution of recovery efforts across channels.     

震后旅游目的地重建过程中融资模式的研究

汶川大地震后,四川的旅游业作为灾后重建的重要工程,在目的地重建中选好融资模式,是恢复整个旅游产业链的关键点.本文通过真实数据阐述了汶川地震后四川旅游业面临的具体问题,有利于理清灾后重建的基本思路,结合人与自然的和谐发展,提出基于高效、快速、低成本的多元化的重建融资模式,为推动四川旅游业的全面复苏创造良好的基础条件.     

地名在风景名胜区的应用

文章全面介绍了中国以风景名胜命名政区的历史与现状，对其中合理与不合理的原因进行了分析，尤其对徽州地区改名黄山市带来的负面影响进行了深入分析，并据此对风景名胜区发展提出了几条建议。     

旅游合同一方当事人的认定探微

谁是旅游合同的当事人？这是摆在法院面前的一个既简单又复杂的问题。文章从旅游合同纠纷的实际案例出发,试图解决作为复杂问题的旅游合同一方当事人的认定难题。尽管赞同法院裁决时否定单位的旅游合同当事人资格的做法,但不接受其裁决理由,并提出了两种诠释路径：一种是基于现行法制,否定单位具有旅游合同当事人资格的正当性;另一种是面向未来,通过完善立法,承认单位是旅游合同当事人,但赋予作为受益人的旅游者直接请求权。前者适用我国《合同法》有关间接代理的条款,认定单位不是当事人,只是旅游者的代理人;后者建议完善《合同法》有关利他合同的规定,立法确认旅游者作为受益人得就其损害向旅行社提出违约赔偿。     

关于当前多媒体教学中教师角色的思考——以旅游教育教学为例

多媒体教学是对传统教学方式的一场革新 ,新的教学环境和教学方式要求教师必须明确自身角色。本文针对目前多媒体教学中存在的问题 ,以旅游教育教学为例 ,从思想认识、技术水平和管理制度三个方面入手 ,分析了多媒体教学中教师的角色 ,提出了相应的建议 ,期望有助于促进多媒体教学应用     

浅谈风景名胜区内旅游索道存在的合理性

自1979年以来,我国旅游客运索道从无到有,迅速发展至目前的近300条,全国绝大多数风景名胜区都建有或正在修建索道,为促进景区交通运输现代化和旅游业的发展起到了积极作用。然而,并非各方面人士都认同旅游索道这一新生事物。针对不断传出的反对者的批驳声,本人谨以山东泰山旅游索道股份有限公司的自身实践对反对意见中的几点误区加以分析,以阐述旅游客运索道在风景名胜区内存在的合理性。     

Redefining the Recruitment Niche for the Guide Association in the United Kingdom

This article shows how the concept of a recruitment niche can be valuable in understanding the difficulties the Guide Association in the United Kingdom has in recruiting new volunteers. Understanding Guiding as career volunteering, within serious leisure, shows how the distinctive ethos of the existing volunteers contributes to the social construction of the recruitment niche. The defining boundaries of the niche restrict the ability to recruit new volunteers. Thus the article gives an example of how a recruitment niche for a voluntary organization can be defined using the socially constructed ethos of volunteers involved in career volunteering rather than by characteristics such as level of educational attainment. It also demonstrates the implications of this for voluntary organizations wishing to increase recruitment.     

Tourism, the world and the Caribbean

Tourism contributes significantly to the Caribbean economy and a strategy to exploit the industry's potential must be tailored to world trends at macro and micro levels. The composition of the market is changing and bookings are becoming dominated by fewer, larger companies able to exclude smaller carriers and tour operators not participating in the computer reservations systems. Worldwide recession has retarded the growth of the tourism industry and aggressive marketing by the USA and others provides fierce competition for the Caribbean. The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) seeks to enhance the local prospects.