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Purpose: The development of service automation continues to underpin the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors providing benefits for both customers and service companies. The purpose of this chapter is to showcase the practice of self-service technology (SST) usage in the contemporary tourism and hospitality sectors and present a conceptual framework of customer SST adoption.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter offers an examination of theory, research and practice in relation to SST usage in tourism, highlighting the benefits and drawbacks arising for both customers and service providers. Since the benefits are achieved only if SSTs gain effective adoption with customers, this chapter focuses on concepts underpinning the study of customer SST adoption. Drawing on SST adoption factors and SST customer roles, a conceptual framework of SST adoption is discussed.

Findings/Practical Implications: This chapter examines the principles and practice underpinning the usage of self-service technologies in the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors, with specific reference to customer SST roles in co-creation. The customer SST roles provide a more detailed and nuanced picture of the customer perspective on SST usage. These nuanced roles are captured in a conceptual framework which seeks to further refine the understanding of customer SST adoption.

Research Implications & Originality/Value: The framework provides a useful foundation for further research with a focus on customer empowerment in SSTs. The future development of service automation will require a balance between the delivery of a personalised and smarter customer experience and technology applications that are unobtrusive and which do not pose any ethical or privacy concerns.

The aim of this chapter is to examine and problematize the taken-for-granted conceptual understanding of risk practices in sport cultures. By inspecting the mainstay, and one might argue relatively stagnant, constructions of risk in the sociological study of sport, a case for attending to a wider range of risk-based ideologies and cultural practices is presented. The chapter ventures away from viewing risk as predominantly physical in sport settings and constructing athletes as oppressed agents who naively acquiesce to practices of self-injury and self-alienation in sport cultures. Emphasis is given to a broad spectrum of risks undertaken in the practice of sport, and the reflexive, personal nature by which risk may be understood by sports and physical culture participants.

In the first part of the chapter, the relatively simplistic or unidimensional construction of risk in sociological research in sport is reviewed. In the second part, the complexity of the concept of risk is then discussed alongside case examples that push the analytical boundaries of how risk is a multidimensional construct of athletes’ minds, bodies, selves, beliefs, values, and identities in a host of relational contexts.

Risk is best understood as a set of practices and belief that exists on a continuum in sport and physical cultures. Risk-taking in sport, however, can be personally injurious and detrimental along a number of lines but is also often calculated, personally/group satisfying and existentially rewarding at times. If the concept of risk is to be applied and interrogated in sport and physical cultures, it should be done so, therefore, in radically contextual manners.

This chapter illustrates the need for new and exploratory theoretical understandings of what risk means to athletes and other participants in sport and physical culture. New substantive topics are proposed, as are methodological suggestions for representations of the unfolding risk in the process of “doing” sport.

The leadership of the Iraq and Afghanistan war has been criticized for reported cases of contractor corruption. This chapter examines the extent to which these wars have played out in the political agendas of candidates for President. The hypothesis is that while the two wars continue to be a key campaign issue in election cycles, the corruption narrative is a neglected part of the discourse. There are possible reasons for the disjuncture between United States (U.S.) positions against corruption by foreign governments and contractor behaviors within the defense industry, namely the impact of corruption on voters, candidates and other stakeholders. The chapter closes with lessons about the effects of corruption on agenda setting while also contributing to research on evaluation of private-public partnerships in public policy implementation and governance.

This chapter focusses on travellers’ pursuit of silence. This quest may be a counteraction to the current invasion of noise in everyday life. Silence has become something rare, unique and exclusive – which conveys luxury in its pristine and simplest form. The study focussed on silence in the setting of a church, which is a place typically intrinsically attached to silence. A qualitative semi-structured study was designed to explore how churches’ atmospheres contribute to the experience of silence, as well as what such moments of silence mean to the contemporary traveller. Silence in a church is very much defined by the place itself. For the traveller, silence is (1) a code of conduct, (2) an inner state, (3) a break, (4) an empowering experience and (5) a precious moment. The findings of this study can be used to promote moments of silence for weary travellers in the need of quiet.