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Contemporary mobilities research has demonstrated a fundamental blurring between work, leisure and tourism practices for migrants as they seek to construct new lifestyles whilst maintaining connections with their homelands. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the results of a research project that analysed the work and leisure experiences of Polish migrants living in the North East of England using a mobilities theoretical approach. In this paper, the authors focus on the reasons influencing their migration and their leisure and tourism mobility practices.

The results are based upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods gathering a sample of 90 questionnaires and 11 focus groups.

Based upon a statistical analysis of the questionnaires using SPSS and textual analysis applied to the focus group transcriptions, different gendered work, leisure and tourism mobilities were identified relating to family attachments and social ties.

The authors argue that seemingly mundane leisure and tourism practices can often be a catalyst for greater mobility, and this mobility has significant gender dimensions.

This paper thus provides new insights into the interweaving of different gendered work and leisure mobility practices based upon empirical findings of Polish migrants to the North East of England.

Drawing from two years of multi-sited fieldwork about international backpacking in Central America, I make important connections between the backpacking escape motive, the backpacker hostel, and tourism. I explain how backpackers experience the hostel as their “home base” and “home away from home” to escape into local cultures and natural environments that exist outside of it and an international community of travelers that convenes inside of it. I refer to theories on modern tourism, the backpacking escape motive, and the concept of community. I also theorize how the global spread of modern amenities and tourism shapes backpackers' escape experiences.

Samirah Al-Saleh <sameeraalsaleh@hotmail.com> is a lecturer in geography and tourism at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She is also a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Sunderland, United Kingdom. She has participated in numerous tourism conferences in Saudi Arabia and abroad. She has contributed to the journal, Al Aqiq, in a recent special edition on the topic of domestic tourism in Saudi Arabia.

This chapter examines the consumption experiences of Saudi Arabian female domestic tourists visiting the shopping malls of Jeddah and contextualizes this in terms of Islamic consumption more generally. First, the wider academic literature on the relations between shopping and tourism is discussed, and then aspects of Islamic consumption in terms of both shopping and tourism. Next, a review of the context of tourism development in Saudi Arabia and specifically Jeddah is provided. After a brief note on the methodology used for this study, the results from the focus groups conducted with female domestic tourists about their shopping experiences in Jeddah are discussed.

The purpose of this paper was to develop an integrated framework for assessing the flood risk and climate adaptation capacity of an urban area and its critical infrastructures to help address flood risk management issues and identify climate adaptation strategies.

Using the January 2011 flood in the core suburbs of Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia, various spatial analytical tools (i.e. digital elevation modeling and urban morphological characterization with 3D analysis, spatial analysis with fuzzy logic, proximity analysis, line statistics, quadrat analysis, collect events analysis, spatial autocorrelation techniques with global Moran’s I and local Moran’s I, inverse distance weight method, and hot spot analysis) were implemented to transform and standardize hazard, vulnerability, and exposure indicating variables. The issue on the sufficiency of indicating variables was addressed using the topological cluster analysis of a two-dimension self-organizing neural network (SONN) structured with 100 neurons and trained by 200 epochs. Furthermore, the suitability of flood risk modeling was addressed by aggregating the indicating variables with weighted overlay and modified fuzzy gamma overlay operations using the Bayesian joint conditional probability weights. Variable weights were assigned to address the limitations of normative (equal weights) and deductive (expert judgment) approaches. Applying geographic information system (GIS) and appropriate equations, the flood risk and climate adaptation capacity indices of the study area were calculated and corresponding maps were generated.

The analyses showed that on the average, 36 (approximately 813 ha) and 14 per cent (approximately 316 ha) of the study area were exposed to very high flood risk and low adaptation capacity, respectively. In total, 93 per cent of the study area revealed negative adaptation capacity metrics (i.e. minimum of −23 to <0), which implies that the socio-economic resources in the area are not enough to increase climate resilience of the urban community (i.e. Brisbane City) and its critical infrastructures.

While the framework in this study was obtained through a robust approach, the following are the research limitations and recommended for further examination: analyzing and incorporating the impacts of economic growth; population growth; technological advancement; climate and environmental disturbances; and climate change; and applying the framework in assessing the risks to natural environments such as in agricultural areas, forest protection and production areas, biodiversity conservation areas, natural heritage sites, watersheds or river basins, parks and recreation areas, coastal regions, etc.

This study provides a tool for high level analyses and identifies adaptation strategies to enable urban communities and critical infrastructure industries to better prepare and mitigate future flood events. The disaster risk reduction measures and climate adaptation strategies to increase urban community and critical infrastructure resilience were identified in this study. These include mitigation on areas of low flood risk or very high climate adaptation capacity; mitigation to preparedness on areas of moderate flood risk and high climate adaptation capacity; mitigation to response on areas of high flood risk and moderate climate adaptation capacity; and mitigation to recovery on areas of very high flood risk and low climate adaptation capacity. The implications of integrating disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies were further examined.

The newly developed spatially explicit analytical technique, identified in this study as the Flood Risk-Adaptation Capacity Index-Adaptation Strategies (FRACIAS) Linkage/Integrated Model, allows the integration of flood risk and climate adaptation assessments which had been treated separately in the past. By applying the FRACIAS linkage/integrated model in the context of flood risk and climate adaptation capacity assessments, the authors established a framework for enhancing measures and adaptation strategies to increase urban community and critical infrastructure resilience to flood risk and climate-related events.

Heavy metal music has had a long relationship with environmental and ecological concerns, one that can be traced as far back as Black Sabbath’s ‘Into the Void’ (1971). Academic work has, however, been slow to recognise the entanglements of metal, environment and ecology in either the global or an Australian context. More recently, however, popular music scholars have begun to acknowledge how the sonic anger of black, death and other genres of extreme metal might be an appropriate medium for social and environmental commentary and protest (Lucas, 2015, p. 555). Therefore, according to Wiebe-Taylor (2009), metal’s ‘darker side is not simply about shock tactics and sensory overload…’, because, ‘metal also makes use of its harsh lyrics, sounds and visual imagery to express critical concerns about human behaviour and decision making and anxieties about the future’ (p. 89). Taking an ecocritical approach, this chapter will map and analyse the environmental concerns and ecological anxieties of Australian metal across a range of different bands and metal genres, as they emerge through three ‘dead-end’ discourses-misanthrophism, apocalypticism, Romanticism – which offer little or no hope of survival.

Consumer-driven technology innovations are transforming travel behavior. However, travel suppliers are still struggling to grasp their customers’ desires regarding mobile device usage in travel and also face other barriers. This paper aims to take a two-pronged approach to identify the gap between what travelers would like to do on mobile devices and what suppliers currently offer and to provide insights from technology industry experts on future trends.

This paper uses two exploratory studies: a consumer survey to understand travelers’ needs and wants regarding mobile devices and a qualitative study to learn more about how travel suppliers are responding and to identify barriers. Statistical techniques include ANOVA tests to identify individual differences and factor analyses to discover patterns in the data.

Consumers would like to do more on mobile devices than is currently available; therefore, industry providers must be more forward-thinking with technology development and overcome the barriers identified in this paper.

Given the limitations to existing supplier offerings and capabilities, travelers were asked what they would like to do on mobile devices. Although marketing and technology personnel from various companies were interviewed, other perspectives exist.

This paper contributes to the technology adoption and service-supplier innovation literatures by helping mobile technology service providers in the travel industry better understand and bridge the supplier-user gap. Suggestions to close this gap and predictions from technology industry experts are included to direct future actions.