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As the Journal of Tourism Futures celebrates its 10th anniversary, Dr Ian Yeoman (Hotel Management School Leeuwarden) interviews Professor Heike Schänzel (Auckland University of Technology) about her role as the Associate Editor of the journal.

Personal interview.

Schänzel provides a guide to the role of the Associate Professors and discusses her own research.

The interview provides insights about the role of Associate Editors in managing the future of tourism and the critical directions of family tourism, lesbian, children’s voices and social justice research.

Tourism value chain (TVC) analysis has been widely used as an alternative approach for designing sustainable and inclusive programs for tourism development in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. This chapter looks at the experiences of three sustainable tourism initiatives in the Philippines to assess the strengths and limitations of the value chain as a framework for destination development. Short case studies describe the experiences of stakeholders in two popular destinations in the Philippines: the surfing town of San Juan, La Union, and the resort-island of Panglao, Bohol. The third case study shares the perspective of the Transforming the Tourism Value Chain (TTVC) project, a national campaign for more sustainable hotels, resort as well as meetings, conventions, incentives, and event (MICE) facilities in various destinations around the country. Stakeholders deeply involved in implementing these projects share their insights on the successes, challenges, and limitations of TVC-based approaches to resilient and sustainable destination development. The destinations' experiences suggest that the advocacy for sustainable management and operations may be comparable to a process of technology adoption or acceptance along the TVC. Practical and theoretical recommendations for leveraging the TVC toward more holistic and sustainable visitor economies are given at the end of this chapter.

Large classes pose challenges in managing different types of skills (e.g. maths, subject-specific knowledge, writing, confidence and communication), facilitating interactions, enabling active learning and providing timely feedback. This paper shares a design of a set of assessments for a large undergraduate economics course consisting of students from diverse cultural backgrounds. The benefits, challenges and learning experiences of students are analysed.

Students worked in groups to complete an assessment with several questions which would be useful as a revision for the individual assessment, the following week. Survey questionnaires with Likert-type questions and open-ended questions were used to analyse the learning and skill development that occurred because of the group work. Responses to the open-ended survey questions were coded and analysed by identifying the themes and categorising the various issues that emerged.

This assessment design developed group working skills, created opportunities to interact and enhanced learning. The analysis of the responses found that working with peers enabled the students to generate their own feedback, clear doubts and learn to solve problems. Effective communication, planning meetings and working around the diverse group members’ strengths and weaknesses are some graduate skills that are developed in this group assessment. The challenges were arranging meetings, finalising assessments, engagement of group members and unreliable technology. However, the students found ways to overcome these challenges.

This assessment design can be useful in higher education practice by introducing a mechanism for authentic collaborative practice. This paper adds to the literature on peer interactions and group work and enables effective learning at scale.