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This study increases understanding of the influence of Russian culture and society on travel practices during Soviet times and now, through the subjective experiences of Russian women. Based on the life-history narratives concerning travel of Russian women who lived in the USSR and worked for the government, the study explores features of traveling during Soviet and Russian times: norms and rules, gender aspects, Russianness and habitus. Both culture and governmental restrictions and societal rules affected how women traveled in Soviet times. This study demonstrates how historical and social contexts and habitus were significant for women in the past and continue to be so in the present, as well as how they have affected these women’s travel practices. By drawing on social reality, gender literature, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, and sociohistoric patterning of consumption from the research domain of consumer culture theory, this study seeks to fill the gap in understanding the significance of these aspects for travel practices.

This study aims to shape the future of academic air travel practices by identifying the challenges between existing air travel-related policies and practicing responsible air travel.

With increasing concern over global warming, many institutions have implemented sustainability programmes to tackle carbon emissions and create sustainable practices. COVID-19 has resulted in many universities seizing the opportunity to maintain reduced levels of academic air travel emissions. However, the outdated travel-related policies have caused much scope for tension arising from the policy gap between pre-COVID university travel policies and academics' intentions to reduce their air travel emissions. This study interviewed academics at the University of Otago (New Zealand) to elicit detailed narratives of their perceptions of the university’s air travel-related policies, generating co-created and mutually informative insights.

The present programme of in-depth interviews with academic staff revealed that while most staff accept the need to reduce air travel emissions, they face challenges concerning career advancement, equity and equality issues. Universities will need to evolve their travel-related policies to address these challenges, enabling academics to adopt new practices that do not unreasonably disadvantage themselves, their disciplines or their institutions.

The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the institutional policy challenges to responsible academic air travel and the need for the current policy gap to be resolved. The authors propose directions for a responsible academic air travel future that will require both top-down and bottom-up approaches involving academics and institutions.

Air travel is becoming increasingly recognized as a source of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. This is particularly relevant for the university sector, which relies heavily on staff air travel for domestic and international mobility.

Using a qualitative content and textual analysis of Australian university sustainability policies, documents and Web pages, this paper discusses the extent to which these organizations take the task of reducing emissions from flying seriously.

Universities fall into one of three groups in this regard. “Air Travel Ignorers” are organizations that either have no sustainability policy or none that recognize air travel as a source of greenhouse gas emissions. The second group – “Recognition without Intervention” – describes universities that do acknowledge the role of air travel in their carbon footprint, but do not propose any means to reduce the amount of flying they do. Third, “Air Travel Substituters” seek to substitute their air travel with a digital form of mobility, usually video conferencing.

The authors then highlight the need to decrease and denormalize university air travel through shifting shared expectations of mobility for events such as conferences and meetings.

By way of a conclusion, the authors discuss the nature of air travel for Australian academia and the relationship between various forms of mobility, connectedness and co-presence.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of Australian university sustainability policies with respect to air travel.

This study seeks to assess the role that sustainability concerns currently play in educational travel within higher education. Although sustainability issues and initiatives have become popular on campuses across the globe, little has been written specifically about efforts within higher educational travel programs.

The paper conducted an online survey of practitioners in the field of higher education travel about attempts, if any, to incorporate themes of sustainability and sustainable travel into travel programs at the institutions.

In general, the paper found that sustainability‐related themes and concerns have yet to develop to the level of campus sustainability. The paper also found three additional themes: a disparity between sustainability in discourse and practice; sustainable measures that focus on local organizations/relationships and external programs; and the financial, marketing and relational offsets associated with the implementation of sustainability.

The paper could find no other similar study; thus the paper represents a first glimpse into current efforts to incorporate and address sustainability concerns in higher education travel programs.

This chapter assesses how luxury travel imaginaries were modified in the aftermath of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Drawing on long-term fieldwork among travel influencers, the chapter presents their response strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on an analysis of evidence from participant observation in tourist sites, network visualisations, in-depth interviews and platform profiles, I trace the transformations luxury travel imaginaries have undergone since the beginning of 2020. Before this global crisis, travel influencers became new puissant players in the highly globalised tourism industry as they regularly received assignments from tourism boards and hotels. Although brand sponsorship was considered a substantial source of revenue for travel influencers, their collaborations in travel destinations and the monetisation of travel content on YouTube were further assets to secure a livelihood. The coronavirus outbreak, however, turned their life-worlds upside down. This ethnographic investigation identified three main responses of travel influencers to the current long-term crisis of tourism: (1) diversification of content creation and orientation towards other influencer genres, (2) support for local tourism organisations and online promotion of staycations and (3), finally, travel to tourist sites for circulating online content on safe travel standards. Digital platforms became a major arena where the future of tourism has been re-negotiated in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The in-depth investigation suggests that travel influencers were in a position to create new powerful representations of luxury as safe travel since they acquired the skills to establish stable storyworlds for their travel experiences, which attracted the attention of large platform audiences.

Increasing operational costs and narrowing profit margins are forcing many Hong Kong travel agencies out of business. Studies have demonstrated the strategic importance of revenue management (RM) implementation for travel agencies that wish to remain competitive. Hong Kong travel agencies should learn from these examples and modify their existing practices. As travel agencies have many of the characteristics of traditional and non-traditional RM industries, they should be able to adopt the RM operational strategies that have been successful in other industries. This study’s methodology is qualitative; in-depth interviews are conducted with 10 industrial professionals. The results provide valuable insights into RM implementation in Hong Kong travel agencies. The implementation strategies discussed here include the use of perishable inventories, predictable demand, segmentation, reservations made in advance, limited capacity and appropriate cost and pricing structures, all of which aid in profit optimisation. The results indicate that RM can improve travel agencies’ competitive stance and enhance profit maximisation. RM practitioners need to fully understand the concept and techniques and have the determination to develop and promote the system among personnel at every level of the travel agency.

This chapter describes and applies concepts informed by the behavioral theories of the firm to investigate the macrocosmic dynamisms as embodied in China's travel agency policy changes. Through a focused thick description, the study reviews the evolution of China's travel agency regulations since its reform and opening up era and subsequently discusses the impacts and implications of the recent changes in China's travel agency regulations on the regional tourism. By reviewing the evolution of China's travel agency regulations and discussing the impacts of the recent changes in the 2009 Travel Agency Act on the regional tourism, this chapter demonstrates that (1) the government has undergone a learning process to integrate both internal and external evolution factors in regulating its travel agencies’ behaviors; (2) the government–firm relationship behaviors remain the center in the evolution of China's travel agency policies; and (3) the 2009 Travel Agency Act would act as a shock factor initiated by the government to change the routines in firm behaviors, and subsequently the population ecology in both China's and the regional tourism industry.

It has been established that values, beliefs and norms are good predictors of pro-environmental behaviour; however, it is less explored how these constructs can be influenced. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic, as a shock event, was a “game changer” or it had limited impacts on deep-rooted travel patterns.

To understand whether the pandemic has influenced people’s value orientations with regards to sustainable travel, the authors have made use of the value–belief–norm (VBN)theory of environmentalism and conducted a large-scale survey in Germany, Italy, France, The Netherlands and UK (N = 1545).

The findings showed that the pandemic caused only temporary change in deep-rooted travel patterns as (self-reported) pre-pandemic behaviour of respondents align with their value orientations and proved to be a good predictor of projected travel behaviour. Based on projected travel behaviour and value orientations, four market segments were identified – Frontrunners, Laggards, Comfortable Crowd and Entitled Stewards. While all segments showed willingness to adapt, the authors found variations in the extent of adaption and in the phases of the customer journey where travellers are likely to make changes.

According to our knowledge, using the VBN theory of environmentalism to understand the impact of shock events on deep-rooted travel patterns represents a new perspective. Moreover, to the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first, written in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which looks at the impact of the health crisis on deep-rooted travel patterns, instead of the commonly studied risk perception.

This study leverages an integrated framework that uses the theory of planned behavior (TPB), risk perception and sustainable behavior to investigate the COVID-19 risk perception of a potentially powerful consumer group – generation Z – on decisions to participate in the domestic tourism stimulus campaign and their willingness to practice socially responsible behaviors.

Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. The study adopts partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to examine the data with the final sample of 422 generation Z in Thailand.

The COVID-19 perceived risk positively affects attitudes, perceived behavioral control and the intention to join domestic tourism campaign, affecting the desire to engage in sustainable behaviors when traveling. Attitude and perceived behavioral control mediated risk perception and the decision to join the campaign. Unlike other studies, generation Z is conscious of the situation but is not risk-averse to travel.

The study offers recommendations (and domestic tourism campaign's features) for government agencies and tourism partitioners, especially developing tourism destinations, to effectively launch domestic tourism campaigns to target generation Z during and after post-pandemic crises.

This study contributes to our limited understanding of generation Z's travel behaviors. It contributes to the extended use of TPB, risk perception and socially responsible conduct of such a specific generation. It is one of the first studies integrating the COVID-19 risk perception of generation Z and their intention to utilize the stimulus campaign.

The Covid-19 pandemic adversely affected the tourism industry. The highly contagious coronavirus-19 has brought the whole industry to its knees, initiating catastrophic effects in terms of loss of jobs and revenue. The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify the innovative coping strategies adopted by small tourism companies (STCs) to revive business and cope with the pandemic.

This study used qualitative exploration and asked open-ended questions to senior executives of STCs in India. Written responses were obtained from the respondents. Thematic analysis was performed to analyse the responses of the participants.

The findings highlight the innovative strategies adopted by STCs to cope with Covid-19-related business loss and present suggestions given by them to benefit the tourism industry.

This study offers insightful practical and theoretical implications for tourism companies, marketing practitioners and policymakers.

The study builds on social practice theory, and the findings (prominent themes) are uniquely mapped with the elements of social practice theory.