Professor Graham Miller
Academic and research departments
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.Biography
Professor Graham Miller is Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Surrey with university level responsibility for sustainability and employability. Graham is also Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and is a member of the Executive Board of the University. The Faculty comprises nine schools, nearly 500 staff and more than 6,000 students.
Graham holds a Chair in Sustainability in Business with his research interested in the drivers to create a more sustainable tourism industry. Graham has held grants worth over £6.5m and is currently the lead on an ESRC Impact Accelerator grant (with Professor Karen Bullock and Dr Jo Blanden) to fund more impactful research from the social sciences. Graham also holds an UK Sustainable Innovation fund to create indicators of sustainability for businesses in the camping and caravanning industry, with Plum Data Ltd and Professor Xavier Font (University of Surrey).
Previously Graham conducted research for the European Commission DG Enterprise and Industry to develop indicators of sustainability for tourism destinations across Europe. This work led to the creation of the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS) now employed by nearly tourism 200 destinations across Europe. Other research has assessed the economic impacts and travel patterns of accessible tourism in Europe with a view to creating strategies to encourage greater supply of accessible tourism infrastructure. Work for the UK government through DEFRA sought to create a roadmap for changing consumer behaviour to generate greater demand for a more sustainable tourism industry in the UK.
Graham holds the title of Distinguished University Professor at Wakayama University in Japan, is chair of the Considerate Group, a company formed to promote sustainable practice in the hotel industry through the analysis of energy and water usage data, and is former Director for Plum Data, which creates sustainability and performance dashboards for the camping and caravanning industry in the UK.
Graham is the former co-editor of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, the leading academic journal dedicated to research around promoting sustainability of the tourism industry, and sustainability through the tourism industry. From 2014-2019 Graham was the lead judge for the World Travel and Tourism Council’s Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. These global awards recognize the best examples of sustainability in the Travel and Tourism industry annually. Graham was also an appointed member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for the Future of Travel and Tourism. This group seeks to provide imaginative and bold solutions to the global challenges facing society, and in particular how travel and tourism intersect with these challenges.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
- Professor of Sustainability in Business
- Member of Executive Board
Previous roles
Business, industry and community links
News
In the media
Research
Research interests
- Data-driven approaches to sustainability
- Indicators of sustainability
- Sustainable tourism
- Business ethics
- Corporate social responsibility
- Accessible tourism.
Research projects
Indicators of esteem
Co-editor, Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Vice-chair, Research Ethics Committee, Hammersmith Hospital, London
Past projects
Research with Dr Victoria Eichhorn, Dr Gang Li and Dr Jason Chen, also on behalf of the European Commission DG Enterprise and Industry, has assessed the economic impacts and travel patterns of accessible tourism in Europe. This research has challenged existing understanding of how significant the potential market for tourism for people with disabilities really is. The research has also led to a series of recommendations for organisations to access this market.
Professor Miller has completed with Dr Lynn Minnaert and Professor Robert Maitland an ESRC seminar series grant creating a network to explore the potential of social tourism as a component of regeneration and social policy in the UK. Previously, Graham has completed an EC Framework 6 project (€2.2m) making tourism across Europe more accessible for people with disabilities, and research for DG Enterprise and Industry establishing training programmes for the tourism industry to be able to receive disabled tourists more successfully. In addition, Professor Miller has secured two knowledge transfer partnerships funded by the Technology Strategy board, conducted research for Defra on establishing the public understanding of sustainable tourism.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
- 2018: Gloria Crabolu
- 2016: Anke Winchenbach: Diversifying with dignity: Coastal Tourism Employment in the UK
Completed postgraduate research projects I have supervised
- 2017 Kelsy Hejjas: Reaching the Hard to Reach: CSR and Employee Engagement in Hospitality and Tourism
- 2017 Roberta Atzori: Tourist Responses to Potential Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation Measures In Florida’s Coastal Destinations
- 2016 Claudia Eger: Community Benefits Through Tour Operation in Morocco
- 2015 Adun Okupe: Tacit Knowledge Revealed. Leadership in the Airline Industry
- 2015 Susann Power: An applied ethics analysis of best practice entrepreneurs
- 2014 Michalis Hadjikakou: Calculating the water footprint of tourism in Cyprus
- 2013 Elina Michopoulou: Technology Acceptance of an Accessible Tourism Information System
- 2012 Victoria Eichhorn: A Performative Analysis of Disability and Social Exclusion in Tourism: A Place for ‘Self-Identity’and Agency?
- 2012 Tomomi Wakiya: Overcoming the Barriers Towards the Inclusive Design Of Tourism.
- 2011 Diana Kangethe: A Critique of Stakeholder Management in Nairobi National Park- Kitengela Dispersal Area, Kenya.
- 2010 Kitsada Tungchawal: Local Participation in Tourism: A Study of Two Village-Based Tourism Destinations In North Eastern Thailand.
- 2009 Nancy Stevenson: Policy at The Margins: Views from Leeds About Local Authority Tourism Policy Activity.
- 2008 Balvinder Kler: Sub-Aquatic Meanings: A Phenomenological Study of Scuba Divers’ Experience of Place.
- 2007 Lynn Minnaert: Social Tourism: A Potential Policy to Reduce Social Exclusion?
My teaching
- Business Ethics
- Sustainable Tourism
- Tourism Management
- Sustainable Consumption
- Business environment
- Sustainable Development
My publications
Publications
This article presents three different ways in which the involvement of charities in tourism in the UK can be considered and what implications this may have for the industry. Those charities involved outside the industry seek to engage in tourism purely because of the fund-raising potential that it offers. These charities can achieve high profits from these activities yet are not directly concerned with the tourism industry. The second level of involvement with tourism concerns charities that can be seen to operate within the industry and offer travel to sites of concern for their members. Finally, charities that operate above the industry seek to influence the industry through tactics similar to those of pressure groups. The way that this final group raise funds to support their activities differs from the first two groups, however they are tied more closely to the tourism industry in that it represents their reason to exist. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.
The link between information privacy concerns and privacy behaviours has been a focus of extensive investigation in various disciplines. However, little attention has been devoted to this issue in the tourism literature. Spurred by technological development and shaped by tourism-related environments, emerging privacy issues call for comprehensive yet context-specific studies to ensure tourists are making beneficial privacy choices. This paper first presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research on privacy concerns and behaviours. Then, it suggests a list of overarching research priorities, merging social and technical aspects of privacy protection approaches as they apply to tourism. The priorities include research to measure tourists’ privacy concerns, explore specific biases in tourists’ privacy decisions, experiment with privacy nudges, and explore how to integrate privacy nudges in system design. Thus, this paper contributes to guiding the direction of future research on privacy protection in tourism.
The current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. The absence of behavioural and near-term technological solutions to aviation’s environmental impacts underscores the importance of policy levers as a means of curbing carbon emissions. Where past work has used qualitative methods to sketch public opinion of environmental aviation policies, this work uses data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults to make a quantitative assessment of the acceptability of a broad range of aviation climate policy options. The findings indicate that there is significant support across demographic groups for a large number of policies, particularly those that place financial or regulatory burdens on industry rather than on individuals directly. Support for aviation policies strengthens with pro-environmental attitudes and is weaker among people who are aeromobile. Though self-interested considerations appeared to dominate policy option preferences, concern for fairness may also shape policy acceptability. Overall, this paper provides to policymakers a quantitative evidence base of what types of policies for addressing aviation climate emissions are most publically palatable.
This study shifts the focus from building individual capacities to understanding the relational acts through which empowerment and education acquire their value and meaning. Conceptually, the paper employs social cognitive theory to explore the interplay between social learning, relational agency, and culture. This interplay builds the foundation for the development of an empowerment model of capacity building that proposes an interlinked system of community capacity and empowerment dimensions. The model is explored in the context of the Education for All project in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The research combines participant observation, qualitative interviews and visual methods to provide rich insights to situated knowledges of learning and empowerment. Findings reveal that the meaning of education equates to the capacity to aspire to a different life. This problematizes the way gender and gender relations are understood in the rural Berber villages. The girls’ education unsettles the repeating cycle of female educational deprivation, and leads them to become role models within their communities. This instills the image of educated women in community consciousness, leading to an incipient change in perceptions of what girls and women can be and do
This paper introduces a novel method of surface refinement for free-viewpoint video of dynamic scenes. Unlike previous approaches, the method presented here uses both visual hull and silhouette contours to constrain refinement of viewdependent depth maps from wide baseline views. A technique for extracting silhouette contours as rims in 3D from the view-dependent visual hull (VDVH) is presented. A new method for improving correspondence is introduced, where refinement of the VDVH is posed as a global problem in projective ray space. Artefacts of global optimisations are reduced by incorporating rims as constraints. Real time rendering of virtual views in a free-viewpoint video system is achieved using an image+depth representation for each real view. Results illustrate the high quality of rendered views achieved through this refinement technique.
The link between information privacy concerns and privacy behaviours has been a focus of extensive investigation in various disciplines. However, little attention has been devoted to this issue in the tourism literature. Spurred by technological development and shaped by tourism-related environments, emerging privacy issues call for comprehensive yet context-specific studies to ensure tourists are making beneficial privacy choices. This paper first presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research on privacy concerns and behaviours. Then, it suggests a list of overarching research priorities, merging social and technical aspects of privacy protection approaches as they apply to tourism. The priorities include research to measure tourists’ privacy concerns, explore specific biases in tourists’ privacy decisions, experiment with privacy nudges, and explore how to integrate privacy nudges in system design. Thus, this paper contributes to guiding the direction of future research on privacy protection in tourism.
Sustainable tourism is not a static target, but a dynamic process of change, a transition. This book considers how monitoring using indicators can assist tourism to make such a sustainability transition. It encourages the reader to view tourism from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective and draws on material from a wide range of sources. The book explains why monitoring is important for different groups of stakeholders; public and private sector, NGOs and communities. It also examines important monitoring considerations such as what and where to measure, how much will monitoring cost and how the data can be presented. The book puts particular emphasis on indicator use and implementation. It highlights the process and techniques to develop and use indicators and then provides clear and detailed examples of monitoring in practice around the globe at different geographic scales. © G.A. Miller and L. Twining-Ward 2005. All rights reserved.
Embedded in information search theory and based on exploratory research, this paper investigates accessibility tourism information schemes as information communication sources and their potential to fulfill the informational needs of tourists with a disability. Five interrelated need components are identified: richness and reliability of information, appropriate information sources, communication tools and customer-orientation. The results show that the existing schemes studied only partly comply with informational requirements. Major limitations include their high fragmentation and lack of geographical reach, which result in deficiencies in quality, depth and breadth of information, appropriate customer-oriented and communication services using mainstream media. To achieve information satisfaction and fully enable disabled people, it is advocated that a pan-European approach to accessibility is necessary to remove informational barriers that currently restrict travel options of disabled individuals.
Risk is a widely accepted entrepreneurial construct and entrepreneurship is a key feature of the tourism industry. Yet, investigating types of risks and calls for research on ethical entrepreneurship in tourism have largely been neglected. This research provides an original contribution to academia about risk-types and subsequent coping mechanisms as faced by ethical tourism entrepreneurs. Using methods from Personal Construct Theory, 15 in-depth interviews with self-defined ethical tourism entrepreneurs were conducted. An existing consumer risk-framework (monetary, functional, social and psychological risk) provided a priori themes for analysis. Through constant comparison of data, different forms of intelligence (survival, system, emotional and spiritual) have emerged as coping mechanisms. These in vivo themes have been paired with risk-types to develop an original conceptual framework for risk faced by ethical tourism entrepreneurs. The implications of this framework are significant in providing support to nascent entrepreneurs, government start-up initiatives and entrepreneurial incubator programs.
Although social tourism has been seen in a number of countries as having potential to counter social exclusion, formulating a definition for the term is difficult. "Social tourism" is used to describe a variety of initiatives for a variety of different social groups. These range from holidays for children from low-income backgrounds, through improving accessibility in hotels, to offering ecological holidays. This article discusses the definitions of "social tourism," distinguishing host-related and visitor-related forms, and aims to clarify its potential value in combating social exclusion. It does so by examining the ethical values underlying the way social tourism is defined and suggesting a theoretical framework for the effects of social tourism. Some ethical views of society place an a priori moral duty on the stronger strata to support the weaker. Others do not judge the support of the weaker strata as an a priori dominant ethical principle, and judge the welfare of the state by the opportunity of all its strata. Ethical positions that see stronger strata as having a moral duty to support the weaker are more likely to be supportive toward both host-related and visitor-related social tourism. Those that do not will probably support host-related social tourism, but will support visitor-related social tourism, if publicly funded, only if it can demonstrate benefits for the whole of society. In Western liberal democracies where this is a prevailing view, visitor-related social tourism might justify public expenditure as a potential tool to combat social exclusion. It can be seen as a merit good if it improves excluded peoples' handicapping characteristics, through, for example, beneficial effects in health, self-esteem, and improvement of family relationships. However, there is little research to test its effectiveness in achieving these outcomes. Further research is required to evaluate whether social tourism can have a significant role in combating social exclusion, and thus justify support from public expenditure. Copyright © 2006 Cognizant Comm. Corp.
Florida, one of the world's most visited tourist destinations, holds one of the most vulnerable positions as a result of climate change. Through a quantitative survey, this study gathered the responses of 432 tourists who had previously visited Florida, with a hypothetical scenario of changed climatic conditions. The examination of the tourist perspective showed the presence of ample sunshine and factors related to beach comfort as the reasons for choosing the destination. In a scenario were beaches disappear and tropical diseases become more widespread, the majority of respondents stated they would choose a different destination. However, respondents would reconsider their intentions if adaptation measures such as reduced prices, coastal habitat conservation and measures to protect beaches from erosion and coastal areas from inundation were in place. The findings suggest that seasonal and geographic shifts in tourism demand could be mitigated by the implementation of adaptation measures at the destination level.
This paper presents the results of a two round Delphi survey conducted into expert opinion on the development of indicators to measure the movement of the tourism product at a company/resort level towards a position of greater or lesser sustainability. This research forms part of a wider project to develop indicators that consumers can use in the selection of their holidays and promote a more sustainable form of tourism. The results of this expert survey show considerable disagreement over “sustainability” and where the borders of the concept exist. In addition, the research identified contrasting views over the use of qualitative versus quantitative indicators and the role that consumer pressure can play. The use of the Delphi technique to address complex and uncertain issues is also explored.
Embedded in information search theory, this paper investigates accessibility schemes as communication sources and their potential to fulfill the informational needs of tourists with disabilities. Five interrelated need components are identified: information richness and reliability, appropriate sources, communication tools, and customer-oriented services. The results show that, despite complying with the reliability function at the regional and national level, the existing schemes studied partly comply with informational requirements. Limitations originate from high fragmentation and lack of geographical reach. To achieve information satisfaction and fully enable access to tourism for people with disabilities, a more sophisticated understanding of differential needs and appropriate sources is regarded as crucial.
This book aims to be a showcase for cutting edge research offering a high-edited selection of the best paper submitted to the 2006 tourism conference at the ...
Service quality in the tourism industry receives increasing attention in the literature, yet confusion still exists as to which measure offers the greatest validity. The two main research instruments are Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and SERVQUAL. However, both measures have been questioned and research has introduced measures that multiply SERVQUAL by Importance, as well as a measure of just Performance (SERVPERF). This article assesses these four main methods of measuring customer service quality. The data were obtained in cooperation with a major U.K. tour operator. Of the respondents, 220 completed a questionnaire before departure on what elements were important to them and what their expectations were for these elements. Toward the end of their holiday, respondents were issued a second questionnaire measuring performance on the same elements. The research found that although there was variety in the rankings of the 13 different elements, there was no statistical difference between the four methodologies. The final section of this article considers the implications of this finding for tourism managers and future research in the area of service quality.
Heli-tourism represents one of the great dilemmas and conflicts between recreational enjoyment of the wilderness and the conservation of the fragile alpine and mountain areas where the activity takes place. The question of responsibility towards the environment is one, which tourism operators generally seem reluctant to accept but one operator that appears to have taken a proactive approach to environmental issues in mountain regions is heli-operator Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH). This paper expands on the limited amount of research that exists on the complex relationship between tourism and the environment by applying a responsible marketing model to CMH. This model is grounded on previous literature in marketing, and strategic and environmental management. Interviews with key stakeholders, observational research, and content analysis of communication materials, were used to identify how near CMH is to finding a balance between responsible action and the communication of these activities.
If tourism is to become part of a more sustainable lifestyle, changes are needed to the patterns of behaviour adopted by the public. This paper presents the results of research conducted amongst members of the public in England on their understanding of sustainable tourism; their response to four desired tourism behaviour goals, and expectations about the role of government and the tourism industry in encouraging sustainable tourism. The research shows a lack of awareness of tourism’s impact relative to day-to-day behaviour, feelings of disempowerment and an unwillingness to make significant changes to current tourism behaviour.
This book considers how monitoring using indicators can assist tourism to make such a sustainability transition.
This paper advances an ethic of care for sustainable tourism. The study develops an original business care model that captures the dynamic interrelationships between care, responsibility and trust in corporate philanthropy. The model provides a novel perspective on how responsible business practices are formed across distance by shedding light on the different layers of responsibility and trust that characterize business–stakeholder relationships. The model is evaluated using the example of tour operators’ engagement in the Education for All project in Morocco. Findings show that tour operators’ commitment to caring at a distance becomes part of shared, displaced and performed articulations of responsibility. While performed responsibility acknowledges the embodiment of care, displaced responsibility shifts the responsibility to select, perform and/or oversee acts of care to stakeholders in destinations. Shared responsibility requires attention to the ways in which meanings and practices of care are co-constructed in corporate philanthropy with trust functioning as a central driver of these processes.
This paper focuses on establishing a conceptual grounding for the value of dignity in tourism employment for achieving decent work as part of the sustainable development agenda. Dignity is widely acknowledged as a key driver for ‘good’ work, but little conceptual grounding on the value of dignity in tourism employment has been established. This paper will contribute to the theoretical debate on sustainable tourism by providing a critical review of frameworks for decent work, workplace dignity (or its absence), and understandings of identity. We will explore how the context and conditions of tourism employment are conducive (or not) for offering dignified and sustainable employment. This paper makes two original contributions to knowledge. First, it introduces a psychosocial understanding of dignity in tourism employment, reflecting its deeply rooted individual, organisational, societal and policy aspects, and recognising the actors involved. Second, the critical importance of dignity in tourism employment for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is discussed, with future research directions identified.
The availability of always-on digital agents in hotel rooms, providing agency and surveillance cues, presents opportunities for behavioral interventions. This study tested the effectiveness of agency and social feedback on pro-environmental behavior intention of hotel consumers. A survey with scenario-based experimental design was distributed to US and UK travelers (N=621). Results suggest that no one type of agent was more effective than the other in influencing pro-environmental behavior intention. Social feedback was found effective when given by a virtual assistant. Perception of another agent being ‘present’ in the room, even when invisible, is sufficient to induce normative behavior. This enriches literature on surveillance cues and behavior change and contributes to finding new ways of leveraging emerging technologies to foster sustainability.
The current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. The absence of behavioural and near-term technological solutions to aviation’s environmental impacts underscores the importance of policy levers as a means of curbing carbon emissions. Where past work has used qualitative methods to sketch public opinion of environmental aviation policies, this work uses data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults to make a quantitative assessment of the acceptability of a broad range of aviation climate policy options. The findings indicate that there is significant support across demographic groups for a large number of policies, particularly those that place financial or regulatory burdens on industry rather than on individuals directly. Support for aviation policies strengthens with pro-environmental attitudes and is weaker among people who are aeromobile. Though self-interested considerations appeared to dominate policy option preferences, concern for fairness may also shape policy acceptability. Overall, this paper provides to policymakers a quantitative evidence base of what types of policies for addressing aviation climate emissions are most publically palatable.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Tourism products vary in their direct and indirect (supply chain) water use, as well as in their economic contribution. Hence, water-scarce destinations require a method to estimate and compare water use intensity (water use in relation to economic output) for different kinds of tourist products in order to optimise their tourism offering. The present study develops an original framework that integrates segmentation with an environmentally extended input–output (EEIO) framework based on detailed tourism expenditure data and tourism satellite accounts (TSAs) in order to quantify the total (direct and indirect) economic impact and water use for multiple tourism segments. To demonstrate the rigour of the methodology, it is applied to the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The results show that cheaper forms of tourism tend to have a significantly lower total water use and, depending on the economic impact indicator of interest, may have above-average economic contribution per unit of expenditure. The proposed framework provides a significant step towards achieving sustainable water use through destination-specific estimates of water use intensity which take into consideration segment-specific attributes. It is envisaged that this could eventually lead to customised interventions for diverse tourism market segments.
This editorial reviews sustainable tourism research as reflected in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism over the past twenty-five years, followed by specific consideration of more recent trends. It looks back in order to consider how sustainable tourism research, and its coverage in the Journal, has changed and developed, and is continuing to do so. It also uses the review to suggest ways in which the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and research in this field, might usefully continue to move forward in the future to further increase its relevance, innovation and impact.
This article examines the business choices made by independent farming families, when confronting the need to diversify away from traditional agricultural activities by starting farm-based tourism businesses. Based on interviews with farm family members who have set up tourism attractions on their farms, and drawing upon the concept of experiential authenticity, the article explores their self-conceptions of their family identities. In so doing, it addresses the choices and dilemmas facing farm families who attempt diversification through the tourism attraction route, and considers how this affects their attitudes towards more traditional farming activities. Using qualitative case study data, an empirically grounded framework is proposed that expresses the choices and challenges facing tourism entrepreneurial family farm members in the UK, through the conceptual lens of experiential authenticity.
The impact of tourism activities on local water resources remains a largely understudied issue in environmental and sustainable tourism management. The aim of the paper is to present a simple methodology that allows an estimate of direct and indirect local water use associated with different holiday packages and to then discuss relevant management implications. This is explored through the creation of five illustrative examples of holidays to semi-arid eastern Mediterranean destinations: Cyprus (2), Turkey, Greece and Syria. Using available data on water use associated with different forms of travel, accommodation and tourist activities, indicative water footprints are calculated for each of the illustrative examples. Food consumption by tourists appears to have by far the most significant impact on the overall water footprint and this aspect of water use is explored in detail in the paper. The paper also suggests a way of employing the water footprint methodology along with import/export balance sheets of main food commodities to distinguish between the global and local pressure of tourism demand on water resources. Water resource use is likely to become an increasingly important issue in tourism management and must be considered alongside more established environmental concerns such as energy use, using methodologies that can capture direct as well as supply chain impacts.
Increasing implementation of automation has brought global concerns over the future of jobs in various sectors. To ensure that the transition to automation in travel and tourism will be made in a responsible and accountable manner, this study conceptualizes how automation, found to be driven largely by labor shortage, can be used to promote decent work. Utilizing Grounded Theory to analyze data from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with industry practitioners, this study provides rich descriptions of the transformation brought by automation to companies, employees, and wider society and develops a theoretical model to explain ‘Decent Work through Automation’ (DW–A). In doing so, this study opens a pathway for further research on technology and decent work in tourism, including second- and third-order impacts of emerging technology. The paper offers practitioners and policymakers guidelines for responsible adoption of automation.
We aimed to evaluate the impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness with reference to the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), a scheme funded by the European Commission to address the evidence gap in tourism policy making. To do this, we evaluate the absorptive capacity of destination management organisations (DMOs) to implement and use sustainable tourism indicators to make policy decisions. We provide evidence of how DMOs have acquired knowledge about the importance of sustainable tourism indicators through ETIS, and how they have assimilated it by developing their own systems based on the principles of ETIS. However, we find that the European Commission had unrealistic expectations that DMOs, or their policies, would be transformed as a result of the use of indicators, or that indicators would be exploited to improve tourism sustainability and competitiveness. We contribute to the study of policy science by showing how absorptive capacity can be used to analyse and evaluate policy interventions, despite being a linear rational approach to explaining a complex policy context.
Designed as essential reading for all leisure and tourism experts, this educational book analyzes and explains demographics, global supply and demand.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have a great potential to aid not only in promoting tourism products and services, but also in influencing responsible travel behaviour to support sustainability. The effectiveness of using AI for positive behaviour change interventions depends on consumers’ attitudes toward AI. This study found three underlying views of AI impacts: Beneficial AI, Destructive AI, and Risky AI. Based on these, three consumer segments were identified: The Laggards, The Aficionados, and The Realists. The first two segments hold opposing views: the former averaging higher in negative impacts, while the latter in positive impacts of AI. The Realists are aware of both benefits and risks of AI. These segments differ in their intention to follow recommendations from AI. It is suggested that mainstream consumers, those belonging to The Realists, are likely to respond positively to AI systems recommending responsible behaviour, signifying the positive role of AI in sustainable tourism.
This article examines ethical entrepreneurship in tourism by developing a Weberian Ideal-Type Construct for an ethical tourism entrepreneur, and thereby deeper understanding of ethical tourism entrepreneurship. This research contributes to the extremely scarce literature at the academic juncture of ethics, tourism and entrepreneurship, which is significant as tourism is characterised by entrepreneurial idiosyncrasies with ethical challenges. The study is methodologically rooted in Personal Construct Theory. The qualitative findings from 15 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, who have been commended for their ethical business conduct, show that ethical entrepreneurship in tourism is based on intuitionism, care and relationships, future-orientation, humility and benevolence as key virtues. These findings challenge the more traditional views of entrepreneurial attributes, such as egoism, risk-taking and opportunism.
The dynamic organisational processes in businesses dilute the boundaries between the individual, organisational, and societal drivers of corporate philanthropy. This creates a complex framework in which charitable project selection occurs. Using the example of European tour operators, this study investigates the mechanisms through which companies invest in charitable projects in overseas destinations. Inextricably linked to this is the increasing contestation by local communities as to how they are able to engage effectively with tourism in order to realise the benefits tourism development can bring. This research furthers such debates by exploring the processes through which tour operators facilitate community development through charitable giving. Findings show, with no formal frameworks in existence, project selection depends upon emergent strategies that connect the professional with the personal, with trust being positioned as a central driver of these informal processes. Discretionary responsibilities are reworked through business leaders’ commitment to responsible business practises and the ethical subjectivity guiding these processes.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have a great potential to aid not only in promoting tourism products and services, but also in influencing responsible travel behaviour to support sustainability. The effectiveness of using AI for positive behaviour change interventions depends on consumers’ attitudes toward AI. This study found three underlying views of AI impacts: Beneficial AI, Destructive AI, and Risky AI. Based on these, three consumer segments were identified: The Laggards, The Aficionados, and The Realists. The first two segments hold opposing views: the former averaging higher in negative impacts, while the latter in positive impacts of AI. The Realists are aware of both benefits and risks of AI. These segments differ in their intention to follow recommendations from AI. It is suggested that mainstream consumers, those belonging to The Realists, are likely to respond positively to AI systems recommending responsible behaviour, signifying the positive role of AI in sustainable tourism.
This text draws together current thinking and practice in the tourism industry and allows readers to examine critical issues and problems.
This book aims to address this divide by integrating theory with practice through the inclusion of specific tourism research case studies alongside research.
As the first book to cover this key tourism subject, Tourism Distribution Channelsbrings together a range of contemporary case-study material, providing the
Employing narrative futuring through “letters from the future” technique, this study captures travelers’ imagination of how travel will be in 20 years as they position themselves to pre-experience it. Key themes extracted from the letters include the (desired) future states of technology, reflecting expectation of technical feasibility of artificial intelligence (AI), and the world around them, echoing concerns towards environmental and social sustainability. Especially critical is the link between advancements in technology and sustainability, provoking relevant stakeholders to start taking responsibilities to prepare for what might come and steer the development of AI to benefit society at large.
Heli-tourism represents one of the great dilemmas and conflicts between recreational enjoyment of the wilderness and the conservation of the fragile alpine and mountain areas where the activity takes place. The question of responsibility towards the environment is one, which tourism operators generally seem reluctant to accept but one operator that appears to have taken a proactive approach to environmental issues in mountain regions is heli-operator Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH). This paper expands on the limited amount of research that exists on the complex relationship between tourism and the environment by applying a responsible marketing model to CMH. This model is grounded on previous literature in marketing, and strategic and environmental management. Interviews with key stakeholders, observational research, and content analysis of communication materials, were used to identify how near CMH is to finding a balance between responsible action and the communication of these activities.
This article examines the definitions and implementations of the concept ‘social tourism’ that are in use in Europe today. Examples show that the concept has been implemented in many different ways to suit national contexts and that the justifications and goals of social tourism can differ greatly. The question arises how one can define the boundaries of this versatile and complex concept. This article proposes a model to clarify the interrelationships between the different interpretations: it highlights where common ground exists, but also where contradictions are apparent. The model consists of four main categories: the participation model, the inclusion model, the adaptation model and the stimulation model. The model draws on the historical development of social tourism and the ethical foundations for provision, and it is supported by a range of examples of European practice. Through this sub-categorisation of the concept, it is argued that a ‘scientification’ of the concept of social tourism can take place, so that the term does not lose its academic and political value. This article concludes by proposing a definition for social tourism that can effectively set the concept apart from other forms of tourism with attached social benefits.
The visual hull is widely used as a proxy for novel view synthesis in computer vision. This paper introduces the safe hull, the first visual hull reconstruction technique to produce a surface containing only foreground parts. A theoretical basis underlies this novel approach which, unlike any previous work, can also identify phantom volumes attached to real objects. Using an image-based method, the visual hull is constructed with respect to each real view and used to identify safe zones in the original silhouettes. The safe zones define volumes known to only contain surface corresponding to a real object. The zones are used in a second reconstruction step to produce a surface without phantom volumes. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method for improving surface shape and scene realism, and its advantages over heuristic techniques.
Holidaying is an important leisure pursuit and, for a growing minority, air travel is the default mode for holiday mobility. However, the current trend of increasing demand for air travel runs contrary to climate-related sustainability goals. Efforts to motivate reductions in consumption of holiday air travel must contend with the embeddedness of flying as a social practice and should be informed by an understanding of how people prioritize air travel for holidays relative to other forms of consumption. Using data drawn from a survey of 2066 British adults, this exploratory study uses a novel method to assess the willingness of individuals to sacrifice holiday air travel relative to their willingness to make changes to their daily consumption patterns. We find a greater readiness to undertake additional expense (of time, effort, or money) than to retrench incumbent consumption patterns in order to fly for holidays. Reluctance to sacrifice for the sake of flying was greatest with regards to those items that are most associated with the basic infrastructure of modern life (e.g., mobile phones). Examining product-specific pro-environmental sacrifice in relative terms, our findings suggest that voluntary reductions in flying is more plausible than other modes of pro-environmental sacrifice.
This paper presents a novel volumetric reconstruction technique that combines shape-from-silhouette with stereo photo-consistency in a global optimisation that enforces feature constraints across multiple views. Human shape reconstruction is considered where extended regions of uniform appearance, complex self-occlusions and sparse feature cues represent a challenging problem for conventional reconstruction techniques. A unified approach is introduced to first reconstruct the occluding contours and left-right consistent edge contours in a scene and then incorporate these contour constraints in a global surface optimisation using graph-cuts. The proposed technique maximises photo-consistency on the surface, while satisfying silhouette constraints to provide shape in the presence of uniform surface appearance and edge feature constraints to align key image features across views.
Against the backdrop of advancements in technology and its deployment by companies and governments to collect sensitive personal information, information privacy has become an issue of great interest for academics, practitioners, and the general public. The travel and tourism industry has been pioneering the collection and use of biometric data for identity verification. Yet, privacy research focusing on the travel context is scarce. This study developed a valid measurement of Travelers’ Online Privacy Concerns (TOPC) through a series of empirical studies: pilot (N=277) and cross-validation (N=287). TOPC was then assessed for its predictive validity in its relationships with trust, risk, and intention to disclose four types of personal data: biometric, identifiers, biographic, and behavioral data (N=685). Results highlight the role of trust in mitigating the relationship between travelers’ privacy concerns and data disclosure. This study provides valuable contribution to research and practice on data privacy in travel.
This paper represents part of a programme of research into the development of indicators that can be used to monitor movement of the tourism industry with reference to more sustainable positions. In order to determine the potential for implementing such indicators this paper asked senior representatives of the UK tourism industry what factors influenced the degree of responsibility shown by their organisation. The research also asked what factors respondents felt would trigger any change in the actions of tour operators in the future. The research reveals that while many in the industry see industry structure as the constraining force, the potential for market advantage or the fear of negative PR also determines company actions. The research utilised elite interviewing for 35 senior representatives of the UK tourism industry.
Tourism research has come a long way since the first developments in the identification and delineation of a tourism subject area in the mid 1960s.
In this editorial, we reflect on how the Journal of Sustainable Tourism can contribute towards sustainable tourism researchers achieving more impact with their research. We propose some changes that can be tested in, and introduced gradually and collaboratively with, the community of the editorial board and authors. To support impactful mind sets, we will promote research that reflects diverse academic communities. To promote impactful research topics, we will encourage authors to frame their submitted articles against the Sustainable Development Goals, while research that is time sensitive will be fast tracked so it can contribute to current debates. To promote impactful methodologies, we shall favour articles that use mixed methods and action research, and those that conduct longitudinal, experimental, and evaluative research. To promote impactful partnerships, we will favour multidisciplinary approaches and research that has been co-created with stakeholders. To promote impactful communication and dissemination, we will continue to build an online community on social media for sustainable tourism researchers, we will promote articles in social media to raise their visibility, and we will provide free access to those articles that are deemed to have the greatest potential to impact positively on society.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been linked with numerous organizational advantages, including recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale, which relate specifcally to employees. However, despite specifc benefts of CSR relating to employees and their importance as a stakeholder group, it is noteworthy that a lack of attention has been paid to the individual level of analysis with CSR primarily being studied at the organizational level. Both research and practice of CSR have largely treated the individual organization as a “black box,” failing to account for individual diferences amongst employees and the resulting variations in antecedents to CSR engagement or disengagement. This is further exacerbated by the tendency in stakeholder theory to homogenize priorities within a single stakeholder group. In response, utilizing case study data drawn from three multinational tourism and hospitality organizations, combined with extensive interview data collected from CSR leaders, industry professionals, engaged, and disengaged employees, this exploratory research produces a fner-grained understanding of employees as a stakeholder group, identifying a number of opportunities and barriers for individual employee engagement in CSR interventions. This research proposes that employees are situated along a spectrum of engagement from actively engaged to actively disengaged. While there are some common drivers of engagement across the entire spectrum of employees, diferences also exist depending on the degree to which employees, rather than senior management, support corporate responsibility within their organizations. Key antecedents to CSR engagement that vary depending on employees’ existing level of broader engagement include organizational culture, CSR intervention design, employee CSR perceptions, and the observed benefts of participation.
This research investigates resistance strategies employed by individuals with a disability, which remain unexplored at a theoretical and practical level. This lacuna is addressed by identifying and examining different strategies either enabling or preventing resistance. Linking resistance to identity positions, the study further juxtaposes individual and collective forms of resistance related to contextual differences between the everyday life and tourism. Findings highlight that a clear-cut dichotomy of strategies enabling or contrarily preventing resistance does not exist. Yet, while the everyday life leads to transformation by relying on a collective identity, tourism offers greater possibilities to develop a sense of self-identity, as highlighted by the strong denial to make use of specialised operators. This provides a locus for the industry to act upon.
The article introduces an integrated market-segmentation and tourism yield estimation framework for inbound tourism. Conventional approaches to yield estimation based on country of origin segmentation and total expenditure comparisons do not provide sufficient detail, especially for mature destinations dominated by large single-country source markets. By employing different segmentation approaches along with Tourism Satellite Accounts and various yield estimates, this article estimates direct economic contribution for subsegments of the UK market on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Overall expenditure across segments varies greatly, as do the spending ratios in different categories. In the case of Cyprus, the most potential for improving economic contribution currently lies in increasing spending on “food and beverages” and “culture and recreation.” Mass tourism therefore appears to offer the best return per monetary unit spent. Conducting similar studies in other destinations could identify priority spending sectors and enable different segments to be targeted appropriately.