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This paper aims to illuminate the possibilities of phenomenology in hospitality, enriching methodological rigor necessary to study holistic experiences, which are increasingly recognized as a central component of hospitality businesses.

It first presents the main tenets of phenomenology, along with its two orientations (descriptive and hermeneutic) and three associated methods (descriptive phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology and interpretive phenomenological analysis). Second, it undertakes a critical review of post-2010 hospitality and tourism phenomenological studies. Third, the author focuses on Giorgi’s phenomenological method in psychology and illustrates the main methodological aspects with the data gathered for the study on the user experience of hotel smartphone apps. Finally, it discusses challenges and suggests prospective areas for hospitality phenomenological research.

Phenomenology can address a variety of subjects in hospitality, ranging from hospitality guests and workers to business owners, entrepreneurs and members of larger communities.

For the academic audience, the paper demystifies philosophically rich methodology of phenomenology by highlighting its methodological aspects and practical applications. It also hopes to contribute to practitioners’ greater appreciation of phenomenological knowledge of lived experiences.

Phenomenology has a long tradition as a qualitative research method in the social and health sciences. The application of phenomenological methods to understand lived experiences and subjectivities offers researchers a rich tapestry of methodological approaches, often however, the availability of these methods to researchers is tempered as a result of inflexible ideas regarding their use. This article aims to highlight the uniting features between approaches.

The paper begins by offering a brief overview of the two traditions within phenomenology, the descriptive and interpretive approaches and traces the development of each one. It then presents an overview of the commonalities shared by both approaches in with particular reference to the philosophical and methodological cohesion between them.

Frequently, the literature fails to focus on how these methodologies can be used together, and instead foregrounds the ontological and methodological differences between them. While an overview of some of the more vociferous debates within phenomenology are included and acknowledged, the paper calls for a focus on the shared goals of the phenomenological project.

This article aims to illustrate that, while recognising differences, the two phenomenological traditions have more in common that unites them, and argues that once this is applied pragmatically, a multiplicity of phenomenological traditions are available to researchers.

This paper aims to explore the reasons why descriptive phenomenology (DP) can provide an improved understanding of hospitality, tourism and event experiences. This is achieved through two objectives: first, by revealing the complexities and philosophical depths of DP; second, by providing a practical, stepped method that offers rigour and transparency.

This paper is based upon a study that explored the lived experience of the popular music festival-goer. It generally discusses the phenomenological philosophies of Husserl (1965 [1911]) and the descriptive phenomenological method in psychology of Giorgi (2009). It identifies not only some of the challenges and criticisms of DP but also the strengths of using a scientific approach to phenomenological research.

The philosophical strengths underlying DP afford a deeper understanding of the phenomenon being studied. The lived experience music festival study illustrates that the method of data collection and analysis highlights the intricacy of the philosophical debate and research findings. Although the bracketing, or epoché, method of DP has been criticised, the actual application is far more complex than trying to blank out prior knowledge. The aim is to ensure that it is the participants’ experiences that are used to identify the structure that is the phenomenon rather than the personal interpretation of the researcher.

It is recognised that researching the lifeworld affords a greater depth of understanding of experiences in people’s lives. One of the disappointments has been that one branch of phenomenological research, DP, has been underutilised and at times misunderstood in hospitality, tourism and event research. This paper aims to demonstrate and illustrate why and how DP should be considered in the future research of such experiences.

This article focuses on the various phenomenological approaches and their scope in the Human Resource Management (HRM) domain.

The authors reviewed and elaborated various phenomenological approaches, and their convergence, divergence and scope in the field of HRM.

The theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology reveal that with its philosophical differences, phenomenology emanates various spectrums in the form of different approaches. Furthermore, these approaches, e.g. Post-Intentional Phenomenology and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, have the potential to understand and uncover various phenomena in the field of HRM.

Phenomenological approaches could be employed to uncover various complex phenomena in the field of HRM. Phenomenological approaches can be used to examine the everyday life experiences of employees, as they could contribute to reframe and enhance the HRM practices in the organization.

The study contributes to the authors' knowledge of employing various phenomenological approaches to explore the diverse phenomena in the field of HRM.

This chapter examines how hospitality and tourism researchers can use ‘expressive text’ (or writing) to express the lived quality of an experience in order to ‘show what an experience is really like’ rather than ‘tell what it is like’. Expressive text refers to written language forms such as narrative, poetry and metaphor that can be used as tools in research to vividly represent the meaning and feeling conveyed in an experience. The expressive text-based approach to researching lived experience provides a textual link between experience and its expression. For this reason, it is especially useful when working with lived experience accounts of phenomenological and hermeneutic research.

The expressive text-based approach suggested here is still a relatively under explored arena within hospitality and tourism research. As a relatively under explored arena, the rich insightful knowledge that can be gained from understanding practitioner experience is rarely a central focus of scholarly writings about the workplace in hospitality and tourism contexts. However, in order to be fully appreciated as a discipline in its own right and to advance knowledge of the field, understanding the typical and significant attributes of hospitality and tourism work will be decidedly helpful.

One of the difficulties of working with lived experience accounts is finding a suitable research approach that helps to both retain the lived elements of the experience and ensure the rigour of the inquiry. An expressive text-based methodological framework that has a phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophical underpinning is argued to be suitable for this purpose. Therefore, the focus of this study is to discuss such a methodology and explain the reasons for its content, style and structure in researching lived experience. The approach that is proposed here consists of a five-tiered textually expressive methodology that is employed to contextualise, portray and interpret the lived experience meanings in order to understand the significance of the experience in relation to relevant discourses in hospitality and tourism studies, and to consider implications for policy and professional practice. The guiding questions of the five-tiered framework cover the following issues: (1) What is the context of the lived experience? (2) What is the lived experience of this practice like? (3) What is the meaning of this experience for the practitioner? (4) What is the significance of the experience in contributing to the advancement of knowledge within the field? (5) What are the implications for practice and professional development?

To illustrate uses of this methodology in research, the study here includes an example showing portrayals and interpretations of the typical and significant lived nature of hospitality reception work. This shows and communicates the full meaning of the episode, circumstances or situation. The chapter then concludes with some reflections on benefits as well as tensions in working within an expressive text-based phenomenological and hermeneutic framework.

Understanding customer experience remains the holy grail in marketing and tourism theory and practice. Although research techniques continue to evolve and improve, capturing the depths of what customers experience while they experience remains an arduous task let alone what its roots are. In response, this chapter sets out and illustrates an autohermeneutic phenomenological approach that taps into the deeper levels of experience to comprehend its extremities and processes. It places experience at the center of (self-)observation and thereby grants direct access to the entire “lifeworld” experience spectrum in its ultimate and purest form from the subject's perspective (be it a consumer, a customer or a tourist) and thereby rendering a first-hand view of the deeper levels of the pre-core-post journey of experience. This thought piece advances the methodological underpinnings of experience by offering a novel perspective to researchers and practitioners. This is brought by a supporting framework composed of five methodological guidelines to examine the multifaceted characteristics of experience, starting with its inception including its twists, turns and evolvements over time, pertaining to the viscerally intensive experience realms such as tourism.

In the last two decades, there has been much research and attention on information and communications technologies (ICTs) as tools that can contribute to the economic and social lives of persons with disabilities (PWDs). However, few studies have sought to explore and document the experiences of PWDs who use these technologies to access the democratic space. Using Democratic Governance as a conceptual framework, this qualitative study seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the experiences of several visually impaired Caribbean youth with the use of ICTs to access the democratic space.

This study uses the qualitative research design and is guided by Husserl’s Descriptive phenomenology. The study sought to explore common patterns elicited from the specific experiences of 14 visually impaired citizens in Jamaica and 9 in Barbados through the use of semi-structured interviews.

The findings suggest that ICTs have in some ways contributed to the lives of these visually disabled youth, specifically as it relates to improving their ‘political knowledge’ and encouraging ‘political talk’. In other words, ICTs have played a contributive role in terms of including visually impaired Caribbean youth in the democratic space.

This study contributes to improving our understanding of how and in what ways ICTs can promote the inclusion of visually impaired persons in the democratic space.

The Covid-19 period has led to defining changes in the teaching process. Therefore, it is essential to explore how teachers have approached these changes, what experiences they have gained and what they have tried to change. This study aims to elucidate how innovative practices were applied in teaching – which was influenced by emergency remote teaching (ERT) – and better understand teachers' experiences related to these practices.

The phenomenology design, a qualitative research model, was executed in the current study. Phenomenological inquiry aims to interpret people's experiences about a specific concept designated as a phenomenon. Creswell (2020) classified two types of phenomenology: interpretive and descriptive. Interpretive phenomenology was employed in the current study as researchers collected data from individuals experiencing the phenomenon, collected and interpreted the data via excluding their own experiences.

As a result of the data interpretation, four themes related to experiences of innovative teaching practices during ERT were discovered: interpretation of innovative teaching, innovative teaching practices, needs related to innovative teaching and challenges to innovative teaching. The categories related to the interpretation of innovative teaching include positive and negative interpretation. The categories related to the second theme, innovative teaching practices, consist of characteristics of innovative teachers and innovative teaching practices employed. The categories related to the third theme, needs related to innovative teaching, are the need for guidance, training and technological infrastructure. The categories related to the fourth and final theme, challenges to innovative teaching, are barriers related to the teacher, barriers related to the learner and those related to the environment.

This study discovered that for teachers to practice innovative teaching, they must develop themselves, keep up-to-date and develop lifelong learning skills. Hung and Li (2017) reached a similar conclusion to the findings of this study: teachers' professional development is positively related to innovative teaching skills at a high level. The participating teachers stated that they had to rapidly improve their technological competency. It is thought that teachers developing their technological competencies will contribute to both ERT and face-to-face education at the end of the Pandemic.

This chapter presents findings from the author’s qualitative descriptive phenomenological dissertation and explores the complex decision-making processes inherent to internationalizing college and university campuses through the framework of bounded rationality. By capturing the essence of how college and university presidents describe their experiences of complex decision-making, a notable finding that emerged from the author’s study suggests that complex decision-making requires strategic decision-making approaches. Applying other decision-making strategies in complex situations empowers the decision-maker to mindfully maneuver through the intricate factors that impact choice and drive action. This chapter explores the complexity of how decisions are formulated from a strategic mindset, presents strategies and best practices, and offers recommendations that can be implemented as higher educational leaders embark on their own internationalization initiatives.