Perfect pregnancy? Pregnant bodies,digital leisure and the presentation of self

Pregnant women are increasingly engaging with social media as a form of digital leisure. In doing so, they subject themselves to normalised images of pregnant bodies communicating unrealistic ideals. Instagram is a culturally communicative and visual platform and a pervasive context in which to explore body discipline and regulation. The current research utilised discourse analysis to explore dominant discourse surrounding pregnant women’s bodies through their self-presentation on Instagram, uncovering potential areas of challenge and resistance. Content was selected from 60 user-generated posts from 16 pregnant women’s personal accounts on Instagram. Results explore themes of ‘The “Perfect Pregnancy and Middle-class, Consumptive Ethic”’, ‘Doing Exclusive Heteronormative Pregnant Femininity’ and ‘Self-surveillance & Hyper-visibility of the Digital Fleshy Pregnant Body’. These themes identified how pregnant women embody dominant discourse regarding neo-liberalism, consumption, traditional medicine, heteronormativity, and hegemonic masculinity, and use this to engage in self-surveillance, policing, and monitoring of their pregnant bodies. A final theme Rejecting the ‘Perfect Pregnancy’, Reworking (and Reproducing) Dominant Ideals’ is uncovered, outlining alternative posts by the women that offer resistance to the dominant discourse, however examples are infrequent and lack evidence of conscious and overt politicisation. Future research should focus on pregnant women’s self-interpretation of social media engagement and the pregnant bodies excluded from this discourse.     

Tracing the consent,adaptation and resistance practices of an ‘unsustainable’ workforce: The governmentality of workplaces in tourism industry

This study takes a Foucauldian approach to neoliberal governmentality to analyze the multi-layered power relations at the tourism workplaces and the practices of subjection of employees to the industry's working conditions. It focuses on the neglected question of how tourism employees can continue working despite problems with their working conditions. Field research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with tourism workers in Alanya, one of Turkey's most important tourism cities, to reveal traces of employees' consent-adaptation-resistance practices in their everyday lives. The findings show that individuals are subjects in a multilayered power relationship. This subjection frames adaptation and resistance practices and reproduces unsustainable conditions within tourism workplaces. The findings offer critical insights into working conditions in the neoliberalized tourism workplaces dominated by Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The study encourages a new perspective highlighting the necessity of further criticism to promote decent work.     

Employees’ green recovery performance: the roles of green HR practices and serving culture

A tourist organization’ green sustainability can be achieved not only through its employees’ environmental activities but also through their green recovery behavior performed to resolve or recover environmentally–unfriendly actions in their tourist services. The primary aim of our research is to investigate the role of green human resource (HR) practices (training, empowerment and rewarding for pro-environmental behaviors) in fostering employees’ green recovery performance. Participants recruited for this study comprised frontline employees and their supervisors from tour companies based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The research results provided support for the mediation role of employee environmental commitment for the positive effects of green HR practices on employee's green recovery performance. Moreover, serving culture was found to play a moderating role to strengthen the impacts of green HR practices on employee environmental commitment as well as for the effect of employee environment commitment on their green recovery performance.     

‘These are the voyages …’: interaction in real and virtual space environments in leisure

This paper examines the impact of new technologies, computer‐mediated communication and information and communication technologies, on traditional, ‘face‐to‐face’ live social interaction within leisure environments. Initially recounting the factors involved in the closure of two science fiction/Star Trek fan clubs, the paper considers impacts in other leisure settings. The nature of the impact of new technologies is examined through drawing upon the cyber‐optimist versus cyber‐pessimist debate, prominent in the somewhat complex cyber zone literature. Much of the cyberspace literature is, however, both theoretical and speculative, with an acknowledgement of uncertainty over the nature of the impacts of new technologies. The paper thus concludes by proposing an agenda for research in this subject field. This is informed by earlier work by Kelly (1983) who advocated that, in addition to examining its form and environment, research on interactions should also investigate the quality of such interactions.     

Tourists’ digital footprint: The spatial patterns of tourist flows in Qingdao,China

Spatial patterns of tourist flows represent the movement of tourists and show differences in tourism resources giving advice for promoting balanced and sustainable tourism development. This paper proposes a novel framework for analyzing these patterns based on tourists' digital footprint data collected from online travel diaries. Based on illustrative case study data from Qingdao (China), the framework, combining traditional quantitative and social network analysis, is able to pinpoint: (1) The influence of distance decay and attractions’ popularity on the spatial patterns of tourist flows; (2) The uneven distribution of the core tourist nodes and the existence of the structural hole phenomenon, which form a network pattern with unbalanced power and intense internal competition; (3) The formation of the core area for tourism along the coastline – as is typical for coastal tourism cities. This difference of tourism resources between coastal and inland areas, thus, remains a challenge for future tourism development in Qingdao.     

Investigating wellness tourists’ motivation,engagement, and loyalty: in search of the missing link

Wellness tourism is a rapidly growing sector of the current thriving tourism industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate tourists’ motivation and its relationship with engagement and loyalty at wellness tourism destinations. Specifically, tourists’ motivation was evaluated via four components: prestige and luxury; novelty and knowledge; self-development; and relaxation and escape. Tourists’ engagement was assessed from two perspectives: experiential and reflective. The study confirmed the impact of tourists’ motivation on engagement, which consequently leads to loyalty. The present research provides industry practitioners with strategies to understand and predict tourists’ behavior in wellness tourism destinations.     

The production of spaces of the ‘good life’ – the case of lifestyle migrants in Spain

In search for the ‘good life’, the current generation of European retirees is striving to materialise a self-determined way of life by moving to locations that provide a higher quality of life, such as the Mediterranean coast. Migrants’ leisure practises and distinct spatial features, e.g. leisure infrastructures, hereby frame a production of desirable spaces.

The contribution is theoretically informed by Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space that suggests space to be a social product emerging from congruities and contradictions in a triad of practices, representations and localities. It is discussed how everyday leisure practices reproduce collectively or individually imagined representations of spaces of the ‘good life’ and how such spaces are contested.

The presented case study is mainly based on qualitative interviews depicting narratives associated with the realm of leisure. Empirical data were collected among German retirees, who relocated to a small municipality at the Costa del Sol (Southern Spain).

The analysis of empirical data reveals mostly consistencies within the realms representations, practices and localities, but depicts contestations of spaces of the ‘good life’ with regard to ongoing ageing processes. Lifestyle migrants ascribe meaning to practices of leisure in order to fulfil the desire for consuming tourist; sights that frequently represent highly symbolic places. Constructing notions of sociability with friends and acquaintances through leisure, the migrants hold meaningful social ties, which provide security through reliable networks. Nevertheless, this article points out that spaces of the ‘good life’ are deconstructed through age-related mobility constraints.     

‘Time-out’ with the family: the shaping of family leisure in the new urban consumption spaces of cafes,bars and restaurants

In many north-western European countries, the family practices of drinking and eating used to be largely located in the private domain of the home. This situation has recently begun to change, particularly in gentrified urban areas where middle-class families are growing in number and family outings in bars and restaurants are becoming more widespread. This paper examines the new practices of family consumption from two perspectives: the providers and the consumers. Entrepreneurs shape family-friendly spaces by reducing boundaries between eating, drinking and playing and by offering out-of-home pleasures in home-like environments for both parents and children. They balance between accommodating the families and retaining their childless clients. Families that consume in the food and drink spaces are primarily local middle-class families, and fathers and mothers equally participate. This study further reveals that leisure time spent with the family cannot always be classified as leisure time as a family. Parental involvement with the children differs. We distinguish leisured caring time with high parental involvement, own leisure time mainly directed at parents’ personal activities and social leisure time mainly directed at maintaining social relationships beyond the family. We discuss earlier research on the complicated character of family leisure related to the caring duties of parents. Empirical evidence comes from an exploratory study of ten consumption spaces in the inner city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.     

“China,why not?”: serious leisure and transmigrant runners’ stories from Beijing

The purpose of this study was to examine how amateur, serious distance runners negotiate their running practices upon transnational migration to China. Despite the extensive body of research into expatriate experiences and adaptation, serious leisure as a site where meaning-making occurs has not been studied in existing research. Through interviews with five female and two male expatriates, we studied the ways in which Western runners brought meaning to the transition experience and negotiated meanings and bodily practices associated with running. Through narrative analysis, we identified three core narratives of migration (possibility, necessity and growing up) and two emergent narratives (community and running to feel like oneself) about shifting meaning in running. We conclude with implications for future research in serious leisure and migration studies.     

An examination of green intention: the effect of environmental knowledge and educational experiences on meeting planners’ implementation of green meeting practices

Environmental sustainability has become an important concern in staging meetings and events. This paper introduces the Convention Industry Council's Green Meetings Report and goes on to investigate whether prior knowledge and educational experiences related to environmental sustainability are influential factors in planners’ commitment to engaging in ecologically friendly behavior. Using a nine-point questionnaire, 278 delegates at North America's largest one-day event for meeting planners were sampled. Regression analysis showed that the intention to implement green meeting practices is positively influenced by both prior knowledge of and educational experience with greening practices. In particular, educational experiences were found to be a strong influential factor contributing to meeting planners’ intention to implement green meeting practices. By providing operational definitions of knowledge and education, it proves that knowledge gained by an unstructured format was less effective than the impact of education on green intention. Accordingly, this study not only highlights academic discussions on environmental knowledge-building through formal education but also derives managerial implications for the meeting and event industry by outlining ways to incorporate continuing professional education in sustainable meetings and events. A range of ideas for the content of that professional education is presented, along with the possibilities for e-learning.     

‘All in a day's leisure’: gender and the concept of leisure

This paper suggests that leisure conceptualized as time or activity alone poses problems for gender. The underlying idea of leisure as freely-chosen, self-actualizing experience is presented as a basis for broadening the concept. Both the limitations and the freedoms inherent in the leisure experience of women and men may be explained through such a concept of leisure.

This concept leads us to explore new areas of literature, in particular feminist analyses of power. Women's lack of autonomy in comparison with men is highlighted. Finally, further research and future policy can be enhanced by this broader concept of leisure.     

Students’ expectations,experiences, and career direction after in-house internship: the pedagogical role of the hotel training center in Thailand

This study investigates the in-house internship of the hotel training center in Thailand, with two specific objectives: (1) to investigate the expectation of students prior to taking internship and compare it with their perception after taking the internship and (2) to explore experiences and skills gained by student interns and the influence of in-house internship on students’ choice of job after graduation. This study employs a qualitative methodology through content analysis to extract meaning from the students’ opinions derived from the focus group interview and the narrative writing of the short open-ended questions. The results from the study demonstrate the crucial role of compulsory in-house internship within the Tourism and Hospitality Management curriculum. The study also confirms that in-house internship can equip and prepare students for the real internship experience within the hotel industry and it also sheds light on the pedagogical role of the in-house internship in the tourism and hospitality curriculum.     

Narrating the Multiplicity of ‘Derby Grrrl’: Exploring Intersectionality and the Dynamics of Affect in Roller Derby

Driven by an ethos of self-organization and empowerment women involved in the revived version of roller derby have created an embodied and virtual leisure practice that challenges gender norms and invites different identities. However, tensions exist in the way different women negotiate the space of roller derby and the meaning of playing, belonging, and becoming “derby grrrls.” This article presents findings from a qualitative study of roller derby in Australia to make connections between feminist theories of affect and the growing body of work on intersectionality. We explore how identity categories intersect to shape the meaning of roller derby for different women. Narratives recount the complex affective relations (passion, frustration, pride, shame) that women negotiate in forming leisure identities in relation to the social context of their lives. The article aims to contribute to the development of feminist thinking about leisure as a negotiated space of transformation, creativity, and difference.     

‘Stand out,not up’: bodyboarders,gendered hierarchies and negotiating the dynamics of pride/shame

In this paper, bodyboarders who surf the breaks of the Illawarra, New South Wales talk about their surfing experiences. We are particularly interested in leisured exclusions. Bodyboarders’ principal concern appears to be territorialisation of surf breaks and the legitimisation of bodyboarding in a sport where they are disavowed a ‘real’ surfing identity based on shortboarders’ desire to claim superiority. The paper explores how bodyboarders’ experiences of pride and shame articulate with understanding of space, self and masculinities. Alongside the physical environment of the surf break, interpersonal relationships between shortboarders and bodyboarders figure heavily in participant’s negotiation and construction of their gendered identities. We argue how individual bodyboarders negotiate the pride/shame nexus has important implication for understanding gender and territorialisation of the surf.     

Undergraduate students’ perceptions of the importance of English in the tourism and hospitality industry

Educators commonly promote English as beneficial to future employability, but students’ perceptions of the importance of English in the tourism and hospitality industry are often not considered. It is important that students’ perceptions are examined as gaining better insights could allow more positive attitudes to both English and the industry being fostered. This study investigated the perceptions of students (n = 71) enrolled at a university in Japan and found no statistically significant differences based on gender, country of origin, year of study, work experience, or future work intentions. However, it was indicated that communicative competence, confidence, English listening, and English speaking were the factors perceived to be most important by the students. Consequently, it is suggested that tourism and hospitality courses should incorporate components that focus mainly on these skills, but not to the detriment of English reading and writing, which were also perceived as important.     

Investigating individuals’ decision formation in working-holiday tourism: the role of sensation-seeking and gender

ABSTRACT

Despite the emergence of working-holiday tourism, little research has been carried out to understand working-holiday makers’ (WHMs) decision-making processes. This study was designed to examine the formation of WHMs’ intentions to participate in working-holiday tourism programs. A study model was proposed by extending sensation-seeking into Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and testing the difference between gender groups. An online survey was conducted with 369 WHMs in China. The study result indicated that the TPB model has a good fit to the data, and that the predictive power of the intention has been improved compared with the original TPB. The results from a structural equation reveal that three critical elements in TPB significantly formed individuals’ intentions for working-holiday programs, sensation-seeking formed positive and significant relationships with subjective norm (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC), and most importantly, significant differences were found between different gender groups. The study’s theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

A heritage ‘trailscape’: tracking the exploits of historical figures – an Australian case study

ABSTRACT

One of the many distinct problems encountered in tracking the exploits of historical figures such as folk heroes – especially in their guise as tourist icons – is engagement, not only with the principal routes and trails taken by them, but also with the minor pathways and the many small-scale rural settlements, meeting grounds, base camps, and replenishment stopovers which serviced their lifestyle. An aggregation of these trails and servicing points would contribute significantly to determining, firstly, the regional operational areas of such folk heroes (including highwaymen, outlaws, social bandits, and bushrangers) and secondly, a potential pattern for history-linked and heritage-based regional tourism. It is likely that in responding to the meanderings of the folk hero, the spatial pattern would conform more to the idea of a ‘themescape’ than to other linear-like configurations, and the outcome could be envisaged and interpreted as a ‘trailscape’. Using as a case study the story of the Australian folk hero Edward (Ned) Kelly, this paper experiments with ‘ways of looking at the evidence’ and of interpreting and engaging with the ‘trailscape’ which is a hallmark of the overlapping spheres and clusters of the hero’s activities.     

What drives employees’ intentions to implement green practices in hotels? The role of knowledge,awareness, concern and ecological behaviour

This study investigates the effects of three green triggers – environmental knowledge, environmental awareness and environmental concern – and employees’ ecological behaviour on their intentions to implement green practices in hotel companies. Data was collected through a survey from 438 hotel employees in Hong Kong and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that the three green triggers are positively associated with ecological behaviour and ecological behaviour is positively associated with intention to implement green practices in hotels. Additionally, ecological behaviour mediates the relationship between the three green triggers and intentions to implement. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.