Dr James Kennell
About
Biography
James Kennell is an Associate Professor, and Head of the Department of Hospitality and Events, in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
James’ research is primarily focused on issues associated with the relationships between the events, tourism and hospitality industries and society and he has particular interests in the fields of policy and governance, political and protest events, dark tourism and the nature of events connected to death and tragedy. He publishes regularly across high impact journals in business and social science.
James a Deputy Editor of the Event Management journal, and Associate Editor for the Journal of the Geographical Institute ‘Jovan Cvijic’ (SASA). He serves on the boards of numerous publications including the Journal of Heritage Tourism and the International Journal of Tourism Cities. He is the Chair of the International Association for Events Studies.
James has broad experience of consultancy and business engagement, and has contributed to media outlets including the BBC, CCTV, The Guardian, The Metro, The Financial Times and Channel 4 News.
University roles and responsibilities
- Head of Department of Hospitality and Events
Affiliations and memberships
Publications
Abstract This study investigated the potential for the development of dark tourism in Lebanon, a destination that has suffered multiple crises in recent years including conflicts and the world's largest non-nuclear explosion, which devastated a large section the country's capital city, Beirut. Research was carried out using desk audit, key informant interviews and archival research, which identified 21 potential dark tourism sites that could be incorporated into a new dark tourism product as part of the recovery of Lebanon as a tourism destination. Of these 21 sites, the majority were found in Beirut, suggesting that an urban dark tourism product may be the most suitable product to develop as the country emerges from crises. However, a number of barriers would need to be overcome in order for dark tourism to contribute to a form of phoenix tourism in the country, including the engagement of diverse stakeholders, the security of international tourists in the destination, and the ability of the public sector to invest in destination marketing in the post-crisis period.
Contemporary events management is a diverse and challenging field. This major new introductory textbook is the first to fully explore the multi-disciplinary nature of events management and to provide all the practical skills and professional knowledge students need to succeed in the events industry. The book covers every type of event studied on an Events Management course, including sports, music, the arts, corporate events, tourism, and the public and voluntary sectors. It introduces the key issues facing the contemporary events industry, from health, safety and risk management to sustainability to developing a market-oriented business, with every topic brought to life through case-studies, personal biographies and examples of best practice. Written by a team of authors with many years of industry experience, it introduces the practical skills required in every core area of events management, including marketing, finance, project management, strategy, operations, event design and human resources. A companion website for the book includes a dazzling array of additional features, including self-test questions, audio interviews with key industry figures, additional case-studies and PowerPoint slides for each chapter. Events Management: An Introduction is the essential course text for any events management program.
Introduction to events management -- Event project management : feasibility, planning, delivery and evaluation -- Event design and production -- Event operations -- Event human resource management -- Event finance -- Event marketing -- Event law, health, safety and risk management -- Sporting events -- Mega-events -- Events in the public and third sectors -- Business events -- Cultural events and festivals -- Event impacts and sustainability -- Events and the media.
This book analyses the ways in which crises, including COVID-19, can be managed within the tourism and hospitality industries in Asia, in ways that support the future of these industries and help to make them more resilient. This book supports efforts to develop a new direction for the tourism and hospitality industry by considering their development holistically in the context of sustainable development. Going further, this book highlights actions to make the tourism system more resilient to external shocks and crises. Readers of this book will get insights into the economic, social, technological, and environmental implications of crises on the tourism and hospitality industry in Asia, including issues within the food and beverage industry in the Asian post-COVID-19 period. This book has three major objectives: to explore the crisis context of Asian tourism and hospitality, to present multiple cases from countries in Asia, and finally to envisage the paths to make the Asian tourism system more resilient, through the discussion of new trends and issues emerging following the pandemic. This book examines the economic, social, environmental, and technological implications of crises on the Asian tourism and hospitality industry and discusses the various ways of managing these crises more efficiently, contributing new knowledge to the industry. In its wider context, this book covers tourism management, crisis management, and destination management. At the more micro level, themes explored include tourism economics, marketing management, hospitality management, food and beverage management and tourism technology.
Featuring a broad geographical range of examples and pan-disciplinary perspectives, The Emerald Handbook of Destination Recovery in Tourism and Hospitalityis an essential reference and illuminating guide on developments in the theory and practice of tourism development post-pandemic.
PurposeThis article explores the ways in which the relationship between tourism, sustainable development and peace in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is presented in national tourism policies, with a focus on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)16: peace justice and strong institutions.Design/methodology/approachLeximancer 5.0 software is used to analyze national tourism policy documents. Themes and concepts from the documents are presented visually in a concept map, and further qualitative analysis is carried out on the theme of sustainability to generate insights.FindingsThe relationship between tourism and peace is not well developed in tourism policies in the MENA region. This is a missed opportunity to use the engine of tourism development to promote regional sustainable development, but increased engagement with nongovernmental organization (NGOs) and communities by tourism policy-makers can help to address this.Originality/valueThis article links SDG 16 to tourism policy and provides insights into how this relationship could be developed in a region experiencing recurrent crises and high levels of tourism growth.
Language bias is a common yet undiscussed practice that can significantly constrain the rigour and generalisation of place-based studies and literature reviews. This paper discusses how research published in English compared with other languages is considered or not when conducting literature reviews. This research focuses specifically on tourism research and explores specific journal article examples in the contemporary subject area of overtourism within destination-based studies. To do this, we take a critical-linguistic, post-positivist approach to three case studies drawn from the literature on the phenomenon of overtourism. The study highlights how research in languages other than English is often discounted or omitted in academic fields that are dominated by English language publications.Nevertheless, our findings strongly support the proposition that place-specific research, to be rigorous and generalisable, should be supported by research carried out in relevant languages for its location. This research provides evidence that place-based research, based on literature from multiple languages and interdisciplinarity, can be reliable, valid and trustworthy. The study also notes the recommendations for conducting literature reviews within place-specific research and avenues for future research.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought travel to a halt and the global tourism industry has been one of the sectors hit hardest during the pandemic. This book looks at how the tourism industry can enhance its resilience and prepare for future crises more effectively. The book provides insights into the economic, social, geopolitical and environmental implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism and hospitality industries and the responses in diverse international contexts. It highlights key concepts and includes cases with real-life applications. The book also discusses future research directions in a post-pandemic scenario. This book will be an invaluable resource for practitioners in the areas of tourism and crisis management and for readers to compare and contrast tourism destination recovery and crisis management practices through different research methodologies and settings.
Purpose - The tension between individual and collective well-being is at the core of the macromarketing perspective, and transformative luxury research (TLR) has recently begun to consider this in the context of luxury consumption. This conceptual paper reviews TLR in the setting of the tourism and hospitality industry.Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on a literature review in the field of marketing and tourism management.Findings - The authors propose a TLR-management model (MM), which identifies the link between TLR and well-being, as well as four elements that are important for the success of luxury innovations: risk; trust; ethics and ambidextrous management practices. Further studies will be able to apply this conceptual model in diverse luxury markets to develop more industry-specific versions of it but should always maintain the model's focus on individual and collective well-being to ensure that it supports the growth of transformative luxury in the future.Practical implications - The research has highlighted the benefits (individual and community well-being) of transformative research in the field of luxury products and services, but also the requirements (taking risk, trust and ambidextrous management) to achieve this transformative stage.Originality/value - The study provides a guideline to be followed by the luxury yachting industry to reach its transformative potential.
The humanity of the twenty-first century is faced with numerous natural and social disasters, which leave great and long-lasting consequences on the entire society and economy. Turbulence caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is still felt in the tourism sector today, and it is uncertain whether the invisible enemy of humanity is only in a period of lull, or whether it will completely withdraw. The goal of this Research Topic was to fully explore the emerging key problems in this newly created environment, both for businesses in a wide range of tourism activities, and for tourists themselves. The crisis situation has led to significant changes in the economic sphere, but also in the sphere of human interaction, reaction, and behavior. The results of the research on the given Research Topic pointed to all the visible consequences of the pandemic that the tourism industry and its related activities are facing, but the authors tried to identify the given problems to devise and propose strategic measures that would be applied in the recovery of the entire sector.
Dark events are organised events linked to death, disaster and suffering, and this conceptual study provides a new framework that can be used in their analysis. The framework has been developed through a theoretical synthesis of concepts from the domain theory of thanatology, and the method theories of dark tourism, dark leisure and collective memory. Six concepts of value for research into dark events are identified: commercialisation; approaches; public sphere; deviant behaviour; experiences; presence of death. The conceptual framework establishes a coherent conceptual footing for dark event research, and highlights links to established theories and methods that can be of value to future researchers in this novel area. Finally, we present an agenda for future research into dark events.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global tourism and hospitality industries has been profound (Sharma et al., 2022; Sigala, 2020). Not since the terrorist attacks in New York in September 2011 have we seen global travel impacts as wide-ranging and as severe. Tourism and hospitality have shown incredible resilience in the past, with international arrivals recovering quickly after crises and periods of restructuring and diversification providing opportunities for entrepreneurship, product development and the emergence of new destinations (Beirman, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is proving longer-lasting than the previous period of crisis. After emerging in China in late 2019, the virus has spread to every corner of the globe, but it has been experienced differently in different destinations. Some countries adopted severe lockdowns, while others took a more laissez-faire approach, at least initially (Cheng et al., 2022). Vaccines and other medical interventions that can prevent or mitigate the impacts of the pandemic have also been unequally distributed. National interests and corporate power have undermined the potential for a truly global approach to the pandemic, with vaccine nationalism undermining efforts to distribute medicines to the developing world (Wagner et al., 2021). The pandemic is not yet over, although the worst may have passed for many richer countries.
The role of shared leadership in improving project success has received increasing interest, yet there is still insufficient understanding of the contextual factors that enable – or prohibit – the emergence of shared leadership within project-based organisations. Based on primary data drawn from three experiential marketing agency case studies using 34 semi-structured interviews and 32 hours of observation, this paper examines how project-based organisations can effectively facilitate the sharing of leadership. The findings show that trust is a key antecedent to shared leadership in project teams. Specifically, we propose that to enable shared leadership to emerge, individuals should establish intragroup trust-trust with co-workers within their project teams and inter-group trust – trust between members of different project teams, and between project teams and the leadership team.. This research is among the first to closely examine whether factors which enable the emergence of shared leadership occur at multiple levels within project-based organisations, and through the use of qualitative approaches, offers a deeper understanding of why trust matters so much within shared leadership in these organisations. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, and given the exploratory nature of the study, avenues for further research are proposed.
Dark events are frequently analysed in terms of their social and political contexts and this is especially true in the case of dark commemorative events, linked to national tragedies, wars and other conflicts. Countries stage national commemorative events to create and sustain national myths. The way that these are designed and held, combining multiple elements into a narrative form, can be understood as a process of nationalist storytelling. This research note argues that whilst previous research into these events has drawn on theories of collective memory, viewing them from a storytelling perspective suggests that alternative approaches of competitive or multidirectional memory can provide insightful explanations of the often-contested role they play in national myths and contemporary social and political conflicts.
Many studies have reported that foreign-owned companies pay higher wages on average than domestic companies. However, this can be attributed to the different composition of the workforce or to a wage premium at the individual worker level. This paper contributes to this literature by observing whether individuals that change their job from a domestic to a foreign- owned company experience a change in their wages. Furthermore, it investigates whether this difference in wage patterns is moderated by workers? education. This paper is one of the very few micro-econometric studies that deal with this question in a transition country, Serbia, using employer- employee data on the private sector over a long time period (15 years). Changing jobs is found to be positively associated with workers? wages: the change in wages is higher when moving from a domestic to a foreign company than vice versa. The evidence suggests that more-educated workers benefit the most from leaving domestic companies.
This article discusses whether event management can yet be classified as a bona fide profession, how staff working in the industry can be effectively professionalized, and how professional university education programs can be better designed to achieve this end. The article discusses the findings and limitations of some of the existing literature concerning professionalism within event management, and whether event management can yet be wholly described as "a profession" according to conventional definitions. The event management profession and event management education are discussed in terms of improving pedagogy in relation to the requirements of event industry practice. Finally the work concludes that the challenges of educating future event professionals require a rethink of events education so as to develop more reflective practice.
Taking a global and multidisciplinary approach, The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism brings together a team of international scholars to examine the travel and tourism industry, which is expected to grow at an annual rate of four percent for the next decade. In more than 500 entries spanning four comprehensive volumes, the Encyclopedia examines the business of tourism around the world paying particular attention to the social, economic, environmental, and policy issues at play. The book examines global, regional, national, and local issues including transportation, infrastructure, the environment, and business promotion. By looking at travel trends and countries large and small, the Encyclopedia analyses a wide variety of challenges and opportunities facing the industry. In taking a comprehensive and global approach, the Encyclopedia approaches the field of travel and tourism through the numerous disciplines it reaches, including the traditional tourism administration curriculum within schools of business and management, economics, public policy, as well as social science disciplines such as the anthropology and sociology. Key features include: • More than 500 entries authored and signed by key academics in the field • Entries on individual countries that details the health of the tourism industry, policy and planning approaches, promotion efforts, and primary tourism draws. Additional entries look at major cities and popular destinations • Coverage of travel trends such as culinary tourism, wine tourism, agritourism, ecotourism, geotourism, slow tourism, heritage and cultural-based tourism, sustainable tourism, and recreation-based tourism • Cross-references and further readings • A Reader’s Guide grouping articles by disciplinary areas and broad themes
This paper explores the impact of motivation factors on spending at a London local authority’s programme of cultural events. The total local economic impact of the programme was estimated at £1,605,765, which represented a return on local authority investment of 6.61:1. We also take a closer look at the motivational and demographic data collected as part of the study. Using regression analysis, it identifies large variations in spending by different motivational groups of attendees. Attendees motivated to attend to ‘meet new people’ were found to be the highest spending group by some margin. In addition, the data shows that local audiences are the lowest spenders at these events and that there is no link between previous attendance and event expenditure. We identify a significant relationship between event attendee motivation and event expenditure, which suggests ways in which these public sector events can be developed and marketed in the future, as local authorities balance the competing priorities of local inclusion and generating local economic impact, through their event programming.
In order to analyse the ways in which problematic ethno-national behaviour at dark events in the Western Balkans undermines the transition from conflict, to post conflict and then peaceful societies, this research employed a sociological discourse analysis to critique the role dark events play in post-conflict tourism development and peaceful coexistence. Accordingly, by combining previous analyses of dark commemorative events with a new analysis of sport events, this research explains the relationship between event tourism and 16th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) focused on peace, justice and strong institutions. This media-based analysis shows that dark commemorative and sport events share similar historical contexts, dissonant heritage and the dark leisure practices of attendees. These dark events attract tourism flows across national boundaries in the region, as well as including more widely dispersed diasporas, and international media and politicians. The prevalence of dark events in the region, which feature strongly in tourism flows, require significant attention in order to promote sustainable development. The findings of this research can be used to develop future research into the relationship between dark events and SDG16, using methods that build on this exploratory study and the new model of dark events that it provides.
Over the last thirty years of research into tourism policy, there has been a dominant assumption that the appropriate role of the state in tourism is mostly settled. The state has a legitimate role in the tourism industry, but it is essentially one of 'steering and not rowing'. This assumption has developed against the backdrop of the neoliberal shift towards small states, powerful markets and light touch policy interventions in industry. This research note argues that the measures that have been taken by governments around the world in respect of their tourism industries, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are sufficiently significant and long-term to warrant a re-appraisal of the role of the state in tourism. Specifically, this note makes the case for a renewed focus on research into tourism policy in non-Western contexts, where the role of the state has not been as constrained by the neoliberal shift, and for an increase in international comparative policy research, which has been notably absent in the tourism policy field to date.
PurposeThis research explores how protest events can change and develop over time, through an analysis of stakeholder perceptions of the EXIT festival in Serbia. In doing this, it builds on previous research into protest events from a critical events studies perspective and has implications for the management and understanding of events linked to social movements.Design/methodology/approachThis research took a neo-institutionalist perspective and is based on 18 stakeholder interviews, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Purposive sampling in the highly-networked city of Novi Sad, Serbia, allowed for the inclusion of diverse participants from politics, NGOs, media and the festival itself.FindingsThe findings reveal that the EXIT festival has departed significantly from its original protest roots. Although it is now perceived as part of the dominant political culture in Serbia, it still has the potential to campaign on issues of relevance to the region, which is unrealised. This research demonstrates that the neo-institutionalist perspective can offer fresh insights for research into protest events. Taking this perspective suggests practical implications for the managers of events with protest roots and for social movements seeking to use protestival-style methods to achieve social change.Originality/valueThis paper provides a new theoretical perspective on protest events and proposes a new model that can be used in future research into protest events that persist over time. It also suggests implications for the management and development of protest events within social movements.
An overview of the future prospects for cultural regeneration in European cities in the aftermath of the global economic crisis.
This article develops a new understanding of the relative darkness of commemorative events that are linked to tragedy and suffering, by using examples of the many such events that take place within the countries of the former state of Yugoslavia. In order to do this, the article draws from the field of memory studies and, in particular, the concept of collective memory. A sample of commemorative events from the former Yugoslavia was investigated and qualitative fieldwork was carried to analyze them in terms of their role in collective memory. The analysis of these events allowed for the creation of a new scale of the relative darkness of commemorative events. The darkest commemorative events, which draw on autobiographical memory and hold a high degree of contemporary political significance, are judged to be the most dark and to present specific management problems because of this.
This article considers the development of the UK Cultural Olympiad supporting London's successful bid to stage the Olympic Games in 2012. It suggests that the Cultural Olympiad is a complex event itself and needs to be better understood if any impacts are to be felt in a meaningful sense. The event is thus considered through review of over 50 documents relating to its management, in the context of a number of identified themes: cultural development, developing institutional frameworks, social benefit, educational benefit and promotional benefit.
This paper examines the relationship between government tourism policy and local economic development in the United Kingdom. The economic contribution of the tourism industry in the United Kingdom is discussed and the ways in which the tourism policies of the previous thirteen year labour party government attempted to harness this for local economic development are critiqued. The tourism policy of the United Kingdom’s new coalition government is then analysed in the context of the global financial crisis. In order to evaluate the relationship between tourism policy and local economic development, three modes of local economic development are proposed, the third of which, progressive local economic development, is particularly relevant in the current economic context. This analysis shows that, although the current government’s tourism policy continues with many of the assumptions of previous policies about the links between tourism and economic development, it does introduce some new thinking that may create an environment in which the tourism industry can contribute to progressive local economic development that promotes sustainable economic growth. The paper ends with three practical ways that the state could support this contribution.
Carrying capacity is a concept that has been widely applied in tourism and recreation studies since the 1960s, but its emergence can be traced to the 1930s. Although it can be viewed as an important concept in the eventual emergence of sustainablity discourse, it has become less popular in recent years as sustainability and associated concepts have come to dominate discussions on the management of tourism and its impacts.\ud \ud Measurements of carrying capacity were first used as a way of deciding optimum stocking rates in agriculture. In addition, its measurements have been utilized in fields such as ecology, biology, and population studies. In livestock research, carrying capacity was defined as the maximum number of grazing animals that could make use of a defined area, and this natural-resource based tradition (Saarinen 2006) has informed many tourism studies. Thus, attempts were made to arrive at a single, ideal number of tourists who can make use of a tourism resource at any given point ...\ud \ud This is an excerpt from the content
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a new perspective on urban tourist motivations by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model to help to understand how tourists make decisions about which destinations to visit. Design/methodology/approach - This study was based on 30 one-hour-long structured interviews with visitors to Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. Respondents were asked to express their preferences between different pull-factor motives for their visit, using Saaty's scale, and further qualitative data were collected to examine these preferences in more depth. Findings - The results of this study indicate that the most relevant criteria and thus predominant factors in motivation for visits to Ljubljana are the Cultural and Nightlife pull factors, while religious and business motives are the lowest ranked factors. The paper argues that the results show the value of applying the AHP model to understand the role of pull factors in urban tourism destination choice. Research limitations/implications - As a single-destination case study, it is important that the findings of this research are evaluated against similar studies in other cities. A limitation of this research is the fact that sub motives within major groups of pull-factor motives have not been explored in this study and this should be the subject of future, more detailed research. Originality/value - This research shows the value of applying an under-used methodology to understand urban tourist motivations and knowledge gained through applying this method will be of value to destination marketing organisations as well as to researchers conducting future studies.
In order to make recommendations for the diversification of tourism products on the Thai island of Phuket, this paper applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to rank the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in the island of Phuket to make recommendations for sites that could be incorporated in to cultural tourism development in the region. In addition, it applies a quantitative-qualitative evaluation structure with weighted criteria, based on local expert opinion. The research identified which of the many potential cultural tourism sites would be the most attractive to tourists and shows the utility of the AHP method, combined with quantitative- qualitative evaluation, for decision making in tourism destination development contexts.
As the use of historic building as venues for commercial activity grows, events management professionals working in historic buildings are faced with a number of sustainability challenges, including conservation, preservation, social value and financial sustainability, as well as with satisfying their clients. In particular, these professionals are required to maintain the complex balance between the competing priorities of historic value and contemporary relevance. Little research has thus far investigated the role that sustainable events can play in the management of historic buildings, beyond considerations of the trade-off between conservation and income generation. This research analyses the contribution that events can make to the sustainable management of historic buildings, with an emphasis on understanding the perspectives of event managers within these properties, based on qualitative interviews with historic building event managers and stakeholders in London, United Kingdom. A key finding of the research is that event managers within historic buildings have complex views of sustainability that are specific to these properties and which are not captured in the mainstream events management literature. The paper contributes to the emerging literature on sustainable events and also develops earlier research on the role of events and other income-generating activities in historic buildings.
Despite the recent growth of research into dark tourism (Dale & Robinson, 2011; Lennon & Foley, 2000; Stone, 2013; Tarlow, 2005) and the growth of the dark tourism market (Biran & Hyde, 2013; Stone 2005; Stone & Sharpley, 2008), there has been little interest shown in understanding the relationship between dark tourism and urban tourism (Page & Hall 2002). This paper presents the initial findings of a research project that investigates the dark tourism products offered by European cities. A series of keywords were developed following a review of the dark tourism literature and this was used carry out a content analysis of the Destination Marketing Organisation websites for Europe’s ten most visited cities. The content analysis used Stone’s (2006) Dark Tourism Continuum to evaluate the dark tourism products offered in each destination and to present a descriptive overview of Europe’s city-based dark tourism offer. The paper concludes that there are a wide range of dark tourism products available to urban tourists in Europe, but that these are rarely conceptualised as such. The mixture of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ dark tourism products presents difficulties in categorisation and standardisation of the urban tourism offer, but this is a potential area of new product development for DMOs across Europe.
This review considers the UK Government's 2011 tourism policy document. The policy was produced during a period of public sector restructuring in the UK and also during the global economic crisis, which began in 2008. The policy sets out a number of reforms to the governance of tourism at the national and local levels, which aim to increase the level of private sector involvement in leading and developing the tourism sector and to reduce the sector's dependence on public funding. During a period of economic slowdown in the UK, the tourism industry can make a significant contribution to growth, but it is not yet clear whether these proposed reforms will support or impede the future development of the tourism industry in the UK.
In this paper, we introduce the themes and approaches that are covered in this special issue on tourism, governance and sustainable development. Firstly, we present a discussion of the themes and topics that have informed the creation of this special issue and, secondly, we provide an overview of the content of each paper that is included within it. This editorial piece provides a useful introduction to the relationship between tourism, governance and sustainable development that can be used by researchers as a starting point for their own research. The special issue itself helps to address the relative lack of research in this area in the context of developing countries and emerging economies.
Purpose - Dark tourism is a topic of increasing interest, but it is poorly understood when considering its significance for mainstream and commercial tourism. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of dark tourism in the top ten most visited European tourist cities and propose a dark tourism index for Europe's tourism cities. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from the websites of the cities' Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) using a content analysis methodology, based on keywords related to dark tourism taken from the research literature in this area. Descriptive statistics were produced and the variance between the frequencies of keywords related to each city was analysed for statistical significance. These results were then used to construct a darkness ranking of the cities. Findings - There are significant differences in the extent to which dark tourism products and services are promoted by the DMOs of Europe's top ten most visited European cities. The ranking of cities by darkness does not correspond to the ranking by visitor numbers, and further qualitative analysis suggests that, that the ranking is also independent of the actual presence of dark sites within the destination. This implies that European city DMOs are engaging with the emerging dark tourism market with to varying degrees. Research limitations/implications - The purposive sample of ten cities can be extended in future research to increase the validity of the findings of this paper. A further limitation is the selection of keywords for content analysis, which have been developed following the literature review contained below. Future research could develop an extended list of keywords using a systematic review process. Practical implications - This paper shows that it is possible to create a ranking of tourist cities in terms of their darkness, and that this methodology could be extended to a much larger sample size. This links dark tourism research to the urban tourism literature and also offers possibilities for creating a global ranking that could be used by destinations to judge their success in engaging with the dark tourism market, as well as by tour operators seeking to develop products for the same market. Social implications - This paper will offer DMO's and others the opportunity to hone their tourism products more effectively in a way which offers a better understanding of tourism, and therefore provides for better management of its issues. Originality/value - Dark tourism is a growing niche area of study, and this paper seeks to provide a framework to better understand supply-side aspects of it.
Tourists are increasingly using drones on vacation, but how they use them and the nature of the videos that they produce are not well understood. Conceptual advances in the study of tourist videography have produced a new model of these practices which is applied here to explain the nature of tourist videography with drones. An international sample of 351 vacation drone videos was subjected to content analysis, and an analysis of their metadata. The results show a significant variation in the content, technological and social practice of production of vacation drone videos depending on the type of video creator and, therefore, empirically validate and expand extant knowledge of drone videography as an emerging visual practice in tourism contexts. The findings establish that analysing the videos from the perspective of videography generates insights that are of value to destination management organizations and tourist businesses. We conclude that destination management organizations should see vacation drone videos as a new type of user-generated content for their destinations, as well as a potential source of innovative marketing ideas, and that they should engage more proactively with vacation drone videographers to maximise the impact of this opportunity. •Vacation drone videos are new type of user-generated content used for innovative destination marketing.•Content analysis of vacation drone videos supported by analysis of metadata.•The social dimension of tourism drone videos plays a more important role than the technological dimension.•Tourists and influencers, as drone vacation video creators, are more oriented to self-promotion.
National tourism policy in Bangladesh is a relatively new development and this research is the first to focus on the implementation of tourism policy in Bangladesh. Taking a social constructivist perspective, interviews were carried out with 13 elite stakeholders, from the public and private sectors, who are associated with the creation and implementation of tourism policy in Bangladesh. The data were analysed qualitatively using a content analysis approach to examine perceptions of the policy implementation process, and its success. In the case of Bangladesh, it is the persistence of hierarchical governance structures that appears to be hindering the effective implementation of tourism policy. This can be seen in the selection of priority areas by the government, the preferred policy instruments, and in the ways in which the private sector is being incentivised to support national tourism development.
The sustainable development of tourism is a major concern for destination management organisations (DMOs) in heritage tourism. Smart tourism advocates claim that technologically-driven innovations can help DMOs to optimise tourism development by addressing issues such as carrying capacity, stakeholder management and community involvement. This study enhances the understanding of smart tourism governance (SG), showing how contextual factors affect DMO perspectives of SG. A mixed-methods approach was used to investigate heritage tourism destinations in the United Kingdom. The results demonstrate that well-established DMOs do not perceive SG as potentially beneficial, as they already perform well in many areas in which SG promises improvements, such as citizen engagement, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement. Despite this, this research highlights the aspects of SG that these destinations can take advantage of as social inclusion, environmental performance and the provision of citizen-centric services. All of these can help heritage tourism destinations to optimise their tourism development. This research additionally demonstrates the effect of contextual factors, such as the level of public-sector support for tourism and the growing influence of non tourism stakeholders in destination management, on DMO perceptions of SG and makes recommendations for how developments in the use of SG by DMOs can be made, in light of these.
Tourist motivation, as a core of travel behavior, significantly influences consumer intentions and has attracted academic attention for decades. A plethora of studies analyse sets of internal and external motivators, while methodologies that exclusively focus on a single factor, such as age, that can sometimes have a determining influence in multi-attraction destinations, are less prevalent. This study introduces a fuzzy logic approach to develop a new model for analysing the internal motivations of different-aged consumers in multi-attraction urban destinations. Fuzzy models, as a mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information, have the capability of recognizing, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and utilizing data and information, which typically for urban tourist motivations, are vague and lack certainty. This research tests the model in a real-life setting, using the example of Novi Sad, a mid-sized European city, which is typical of many similar cities who are attempting to develop sustainable tourism by attracting older tourists. The new model shows how tourist motivations for multi-attraction destinations are affected by age, through a specially developed m-file for MATLAB, so that it can be applied and tested in other tourism contexts. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable destination management and marketing are described.
National culture can influence entrepreneurship by creating a specific cultural framework that defines the possibilities for the recognition of opportunities for entrepreneurial activities, as well as their social desirability. Very large corporations, especially those that dominate a region, also have their own organizational cultures, which in turn influence local social culture, and which can constitute a specific subculture within society. The "Kolubara" mine is the largest in Serbia, employing more than 11,000 workers. As most of its employees are living close to its headquarters, the small town of Lazarevac (Central Serbia), the culture nurtured within this organization and among its employees is heavily intertwined with the social culture of the inhabitants of the town. The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) approach was used to investigate the relation between this organizational culture and national culture, by measuring the nine GLOBE cultural dimensions of the "Kolubara" employees and of the inhabitants of Lazarevac. The results of this are discussed and analyzed in the context of the ongoing economic transformation in many post-socialist economies. This study highlights the readiness of the people of small industrial towns, such as Lazarevac, to adapt to this ongoing transition and to undertake entrepreneurial activities in tourism during periods of industrial restructuring and the growth of service industries in former industrial areas.
Entrepreneurship is vital to the success of tourism and hospitality and the sector makes an important contribution to many island economies. Despite this, far too little attention has been paid by researchers to tourism and hospitality entrepreneurship in islands (THEI). This research helps to address this gap through a systematic review of the literature, conducted to provide a platform for further research and to help investigators set their research priorities. Using the Scopus database and the PRISMA technique, a total of 132 articles were included in bibliometric and thematic content analyses. Although there has been an increase in THEI research, this has tended to focus on the Asia-Pacific region. It is suggested that researchers consider redressing this geographical bias and conduct more quantitative and comparative THEI studies. Further opportunities exist to investigate the characteristics and behaviors of island entrepreneurs and the impacts of the industrial and spatial aspects of THEI.
Unmanned hotels are regarded as the future of hospitality in a post-Covid 19 world, based upon smart, contactless technologies. The purpose of this research was to determine if unmanned smart hotels create more positive outcomes such as enhanced experiential satisfaction and loyalty. Grounded on Cognitive Appraisal Theory, scholars support the notion that psychological states such as experiential motivation and confidence enhance outcomes. An online survey was conducted with 364 guests of unmanned smart hotels. Structural equation modeling results with partial least squares path analysis indicated that experiential quality, confidence, motivation, and satisfaction were positively associated with loyalty. Several recommendations were provided for the unmanned smart hotel literature and practices with regards to improving the effectiveness of guest experiences. •This study examines the experiential pathway of the unmanned smart hotel.•Cognitive Appraisal Theory was used to explain the proposed relationships.•Data were collected using purposive technique and analysed via PLSPM.•Results found that loyalty was affected by quality and psychological states.•Psychological states and satisfaction sequentially mediated the direct path.
This paper aims to extend dark tourism scholarship concerned with existential aspects of the human nature and the power of ‘dark places’ to provoke our thinking about the meaning and purpose of human existence. Our main focus is on the artistic expressions in the form of murals that have emerged in the years following the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, questioning the significance and meanings they have for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, in the context of tourists' perceptions and, more generally, in the context of our being in the world. To that end, we deconstruct the tourist experience of dark sites through knitting together dark tourism, existentialism and street art.
Purpose This study aims to examine the influence of neoliberalism and managerialism on the recruitment of tourism academics in the UK. The study analyses how sustainable the recruitment and retention of talents are in the tourism industry. Importantly, this study provides particular focus on sustainable tourism roles, as well as the impacts of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative content analysis focuses on academic jobs in tourism advertised on Jobs.ac.uk between June 2020 and July 2021. Findings Study findings reveal how, in the case of the UK, current educational ideologies, including neoliberalism and managerialism, significantly influence curriculum and recruitment. Such an approach facilitates the hidden curriculum of undisciplined tourism programmes and significantly constrains the prominence of sustainability principles. The development of curriculum, student life course and recruitment of academics are influenced by several variables (personal, environmental, behavioural), which must be identified to enable decision-makers to engage in efficient planning. Originality/value This study provides a unique focus on the recruitment of tourism academics encompassing crucial factors like sustainable tourism and COVID-19. The proposed framework creates the foundation for the investigation and discussion of academics’ recruitment in different contexts. This study also offers several new avenues for future research.
Dark tourism has attracted increasing academic attention, but the extent to which it exists as a separate form of tourism from heritage tourism is not yet clear. Despite the growth of UNESCO World Heritage Site designations, little research has considered the relationship between dark tourism and World Heritage Sites. Because the development of dark tourism is beset with ethical concerns, heritage professionals can have negative perceptions about the acceptability or attractiveness of it for the sites that they are involved in managing. This research used a qualitative Delphi Panel method to evaluate stakeholder perceptions of the potential development of dark tourism to the Greenwich Maritime World Heritage Site in London, United Kingdom. The findings show that stakeholders are broadly supportive of tourism to the site and positive about future tourism growth. Despite this, they did not support the development of dark tourism to the site because it was perceived as inauthentic, tacky and sensationalist. In order to address this issue, recommendations are made that future attempts to develop dark tourism at WHS should involve enhancing the knowledge of stakeholders about dark tourism, and of the resources within their sites that could be included in a dark tourism offer to tourists.
Employees of retail travel agencies in sales roles can have long-lasting, direct contact with tourists which, in the case of poor customer service, can be extremely problematic for businesses. Because of this, it is important to understand how employees manage their emotions to help them to remain satisfied with their work, thus contributing to the satisfaction of tourists. However, job satisfaction, emotional intelligence and emotional labor in tourism have not previously been studied together as variables in a single model. This research analyses the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between job satisfaction and emotional labor in travel agencies, as well as job satisfaction as an antecedent of emotional labor. Data were collected from 160 employees of 45 travel agencies in the Serbian cities of Belgrade and Novi Sad. Results show that employees' emotional intelligence mediates the positive relationship between job satisfaction and emotional labor. Management implications: Increasing employees' emotional intelligence through training and development and actively recruiting employees with high emotional intelligence will reduce emotional exhaustion and improve customer satisfaction for retail travel agencies. Future research should include employees from other countries, in order to make comparisons and to validate results, as well as to test the created model by structural equation modelling (SEM), involving some other possible mediators, such as socio-demographics, personality traits or work motivation.
The use of drones to produce videos has generated a large amount of visually appealing footage of various destinations. They attract much attention, but there are issues that affect their production, and their relevance to destination marketing. This research examines YouTube meta-data and spatial overlay analysis of shared aerial drone videos from the United Kingdom (UK). The results suggest that shared aerial drone videos have some unique user-generated content (UGC) characteristics and their spatial distribution tends to favor more populated areas. Theoretical and practical implications for destination marketing are further discussed.
In order to analyse the ways in which problematic ethno-national behaviour at dark events in the Western Balkans undermines the transition from conflict, to post conflict and then peaceful societies, this research employed a sociological discourse analysis to critique the role dark events play in post-conflict tourism development and peaceful coexistence. Accordingly, by combining previous analyses of dark commemorative events with a new analysis of sport events, this research explains the relationship between event tourism and 16th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) focused on peace, justice and strong institutions. This media-based analysis shows that dark commemorative and sport events share similar historical contexts, dissonant heritage and the dark leisure practices of attendees. These dark events attract tourism flows across national boundaries in the region, as well as including more widely dispersed diasporas, and international media and politicians. The prevalence of dark events in the region, which feature strongly in tourism flows, require significant attention in order to promote sustainable development. The findings of this research can be used to develop future research into the relationship between dark events and SDG16, using methods that build on this exploratory study and the new model of dark events that it provides.
This exploratory study explores perceptions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and organizational readiness to adopt AI, in the exhibition sector of the events industry. A theoretical framework synthesizing the Technology - Organization - Environment framework and the Technology Readiness Index was developed to guide this qualitative study. Seventeen senior managerial representatives from exhibition organizations across nine Western European countries were interviewed, and a reflexive thematic approach was adopted to analyse the data. The findings suggest that the European exhibition industry is a slow adopter of AI, which may impact its future competitiveness, despite the stimulus provided to AI adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. The degree of confidence in organizational technological practices, financial resources, the size of the organization, and issues of data management and protection, as well as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, motivate or inhibit readiness for AI adoption in the event industry. A new Exhibition Sector Readiness for AI Adoption Model is presented in this research that managers and researchers can use to analyze inhibitors and motivations for AI adoption, which is contextualized for the current challenges facing the exhibitions sector. •Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers significant benefits to the events industry.•Qualitative research reveals European-wide perceptions of AI adoption in events.•The exhibitions sector of the event industry is a slow adopter of AI.•A new model is proposed to understand and guide AI adoption in the exhibitions sector.
Understanding activity preferences and their antecedents is essential for creating personalized tourism offers and effective destination marketing, vital components of a sustainable tourism destination. Previous studies have provided insights into tourist behavior and activity choices, but without research on activity preferences and their relationship with perceptions of destinations. The literature still lacks an integrative model exploring the antecedents of activity preferences, including tourist characteristics, destination personality, and destination image, and explaining the nature of the relationships between them. This research proposes and tests a structural model of individual characteristics, destination image, destination personality, and activity preferences. A survey was conducted on a sample of 502 visitors to The Trail of Roman Emperors in Serbia. The results confirmed the influence of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness) and destination personality (sincerity and ruggedness) on activity preferences. Additionally, the model revealed the significant influence of individual characteristics on perceptions of destination personality and image. Managerial implications were given in light of the importance of this research for destination branding that will support long-term destination sustainability.