Search results

This chapter analyzes the importance and performance of values in tourism higher education and business as seen by the alumni of the European Master in Tourism Management. The students were exposed to the values-based education framework proposed by the Tourism Educational Future Initiative. This chapter empirically tests the relevance of its model for an ideal and real industry, and for the corresponding world of tourism education. Using importance performance analysis, results identify gaps between the importance and performance in the values. The findings have implications for the future development and implementation of experimental values-based education.

This is a report on a research project on the development of a model for tourist development of abandoned rural settlements and estates. In the project we used the Visitor Friendly Test, known as Kotler's test, taking into consideration basic questions for testing place friendliness suggested by Philip Kotier, Donald Haider and Irving Rein (1993). The Kotier — Haider — Rein test attracted our attention because of a great interest in it among the tourism experts. As the test had never been carried out before, we developed it in such a way that it could be used in practice. The pilot project was carried out on an example of a (lesser developed) tourist community Tr□iè. Test evaluation was made on the basis of experiences gained through development and implementation of the test. This article explains the developmental process of the test, weights, problems and some results. The basic aim of the pilot project was to evaluate the test potential for further use in testing visitor friendliness of places and its usefulness in the tourism development model for abandoned estates where the possibility of measuring the actual customer expectations and perceptions do not yet exist.

The author addresses the unequal participation of different nations in outgoing tourism as an ethical question and proposes a tourist certificate trading programme. Today 65 per cent of the total tourism expenditure belongs to the top ten tourism outgoing countries that only have 15 per cent of the world population. The tourist emission trading programme would provide governments with an efficient tool for obtaining equity in trans‐boundary tourism consumption by giving financial compensation for not travelling. Travellers would have to hold tourism permits equal to the value of their travel consumption units. If they proved insufficient they would have to buy permits from other participants that travel less. Non‐travellers would be compensated for not travelling, the third world nations would gain financial sources due to their lower travel propensity on the account of western countries with a higher propensity to travel. Since tourism uses and destroys the environment and grows constantly, such a programme would enable the control of the growth of tourism too ‐ by limiting the total number of certificates.

This paper aims to deal with the myths of tourism in regard to the tourism available data and their mythical interpretation in relation to top tourism countries, tourism economic contribution and competitiveness and to argue that there is yet no such thing as globalisation of tourism demand. For many decades, tourism researchers have tried to present the true tourism situation, yet – seduced by the available tourism data and rankings – they might have failed to produce the accurate or generally true description.

This paper uses a transformative research approach which aims to break existing scientific paradigms in the field of tourism knowledge. Thus, this paper challenges the ever going elaboration of established tourism meanings by asking whether tourism understanding of its development, rankings and competitiveness is justified under the present circumstances.

The paper presented some existing anomalies in the understanding of tourism global system which are based on existing data, methodologies, geo-political structure of sovereign states and tourism research values. This implies a limited applicability of current tourism understandings to a universal level.

For the time being, the discussion on accuracy of the authors’ tourism knowledge remains under the notion of “tourism myths” and the doors for more research on what new approaches, values and methodologies would enable tourism researchers to obtain the accurate tourism rankings, remain wide open.

This paper can mobilise for improvements in data gathering, accessibility, interpretation and methodology to improve tourism policy, planning and management. In this regard, the paper mobilises for “cosmopolitan responsibility” for tourism surveys and understandings which will provide tourism researchers with a value system that meets the globalised tourism development.

This paper shows the possible impact on tourism knowledge, new tourism paradigms and then on tourism policy and management.

This paper’s originality is in opening up new approaches to understanding what tourism researchers a while ago would never have considered relevant.

This chapter explains the background of the book and begins with an introduction of Jafar Jafari’s tremendous contribution to tourism knowledge creation and education. This is followed by a report on the content analysis of 573 tourism education related articles published in the past 10 years. Results indicated the need for philosophical discussion about the nature of tourism education and the popularity of teaching and learning approaches as a research topic. The two main sections of this book, namely philosophical issues in tourism education and experiential/active learning in tourism education, fit into these two identified issues. A synopsis of each chapter is provided next; and future directions for tourism education research are suggested.

Until now the majority of researchers of sports tourism have focused their research on the tourist and their characteristics, meaning, on the demand. Since the majority of authors (Gibson 1998; Seddighi and Theoracharous 2002; Hudson 2003; ?inch and Higham 2001) studied tourists and their characteristics we decided to focus on the providers of active sports holidays. According to Planina, Mihali_(2002, pg. 29) the tourism model is built on demand and supply. The supply side was analyzed by WTO (2004) in their research amongst European tour operators with the highest turnover in order to establish how sport features in products involving Latin America. Based on this idea we decided to carry out a research amongst providers of active sports holidays and asked them about a typical client. We divided the providers into segments according to the type of guests. The research was carried out to find the answer to the question “What do providers of active sports holidays offer in Slovenia and how they perceive their guests?” We were interested to know what they actually offer and the trend of the enquiries they receive from their visitors. The characteristics of the visitors are important to help providers decide how to develop their facilities to meet the demands of the market. We learnt that in Slovenia the majority of tourists are short‐length stays. We also researched the supply and demand and learnt that the providers expect the demand to be highest for skiing and cycling. In the largest of the segments the activities most frequently offered are swimming (water sports), tennis (racquet sports), the usual team sports and skiing. However, the demand for these sports is not growing. Amongst the activities which are in lesser demand but have been defined by the providers as growing are mountain biking and golf.

The purpose of the research is to conceptualize a model of tourist satisfaction at the destination level which can serve as a background for designing a universal, parsimonious, short and easily applicable measurement instrument.

The conceptual model was developed on the basis of existing theoretical and empirical research in the fields of marketing and tourism.

The model includes eight latent constructs, with tourist satisfaction being the central one. The analysis of the antecedents (quality, image, value, and costs and risks) of customer satisfaction provides insights into the processes underlying the creation of satisfaction, while the outcome constructs (complaint behavior and loyalty) indicate the consequences of (dis)satisfaction.

Designing a parsimonious and easily applicable measurement instrument imposes some limitations with respect to the number of constructs and measured variables included. The inclusion of additional constructs/variables should provide a more comprehensive insight into customer satisfaction and a more solid basis for strategic decision‐making but at the same time it is likely to reduce the model's transparency and universality.

The results of a continuous customer satisfaction monitoring should serve as an input for a trend analysis and strategic discussions regarding the development of a tourist destination. The ultimate goals of monitoring satisfaction include identifying strategic objectives at the destination level, preparing tactical and operational plans and ultimately increasing the competitiveness of a given destination.

Achieving customer satisfaction should be one of the most important goals of every DMO and, to our knowledge, a few universal cause‐and‐effect measurement instruments/models have been developed to support this goal. The proposed model provides a basis for the continuous monitoring and improvement of the competitiveness of a given destination.