A comparative study of hospitality and tourism graduates in Australia and Hong Kong

This paper evaluates the career experiences and perceptions of graduates from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia towards the programmes that they undertook. The two cohorts of graduates exhibited broadly similar career histories and expressed similar attitudes towards the quality, strengths and weaknesses of their respective programmes. In both cases, female students dominate the graduate cohort and about half of the respondents were found to have left the tourism or hospitality field within 3–5 years after graduation. Graduates believe that their general business and general education subjects play a stronger role in acquiring their first and current jobs than specialist tourism, hotel management and food service subjects. The findings highlight the challenge facing the university sector in attempting to balance the desire to provide a broadly grounded liberal education with the student desire for practical training. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing a cultural tourism typology

This paper tests further a cultural tourism typology based on the interface between centrality of cultural tourism as a trip motive and the depth of experience. Five types of cultural tourist are identified that represent five benefit‐based segments. The segments are tested against a variety of trip, demographic, motivational, preferred activity, awareness, cultural distance and activity variables. Significant differences are noted between the groups, suggesting that the model presented may be effective in segmenting the cultural tourism market. Moreover, although the segmentation process is predicated on two variables, these variables are reflective of underlying trip motivation, activity preference and cultural distance factors noted between the different types of cultural tourist. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tourism and online photography

This paper documents the use of online travel photo-sharing technologies among Hong Kong residents. The advent of Web 2.0 is changing fundamentally the tourist information search and destination choice process. Yet, to date, no study has documented Web 2.0 usage levels and preferences for certain media for posting travel photographs across an entire community. This study reveals that some 89% of pleasure travelers take photographs and that 41% of them posted their photographs online. Social network sites (SNSs), instant messaging, online photo albums and personal blogs were the most popular media used. In general, people who post photographs online tend to be younger, better educated, and earn a higher income than those who do not. The study determined that most people also use multiple media platforms to disseminate their images. Cluster analysis based on the four major styles of online platform identified five cohorts of users who differed in number and type of media used, demographic profile and travel motive. Implications for destination promotion are discussed.     

Sustainability and integration – the principal challenges to tourism and tourism research

ABSTRACT

What are the biggest challenges facing tourism and tourism research? This paper answers this question by canvasing the opinions of recognized experts in the field. The analysis is based on 30 interviews with fellows of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. Two key thematic issues were identified. First, the pragmatic issue of how to operationalize sustainability and its various sub-elements, such as climate change, overtourism, and tourisation to ensure the long-term future of tourism. Second, the need for further integration between disciplines within the tourism field, between tourism and other fields, and between research and practice.     

Integration of Financial Services

Abstract

Integration financial services is a term with many meanings. Definitions might include:

• ownership of different segments of financial services,

• the distribution of products of one segment by another, and

• a consumer-centric strategy driven to satisfy the needs of the customer regardless of organizational structures.

For the purposes of my paper, I will define it as the erasing of boundaries leading to consumers receiving value propositions that are not restricted by traditional industry segment barriers.     

The pathfinder process in Northern Ireland

Government has many customers — not just the individual citizen, but also corporate customers from the private sector. Getting close to those customers will require changes in the nature of public sector culture. Below are two examples — the first from Northern Ireland and the second from Whitehall — of government departments which have tried to change the way in which they do things.