Month: November 2017

Dark tourism: Cemetery tourism

I was interviewed briefly early in the year for the industry publication, funeral service times.  You can read the final article here, or by clicking the image below.  Along with a colleague, Raymond Powell, I’ve had a book chapter published before on dark tourism and we have a journal article in the International Journal of Tourism Cities coming out on the topic of dark tourism and European cities, scheduled for the start of 2018.

The star of this industry article however, is Sheldon Goodman, the co-Founder of Cemetery Club, who spoke at an event hosted by our Tourism Research Centre in May. Sheldon gives an excellent account of cemetery tourism and the cemetery tours that he leads.  If you’re looking for an interesting case study to support your own research into dark tourism, Sheldon’s work is great place to start.

Events Management: An Introduction – 2nd edition now available!

The 2nd edition of our events management textbook, ‘Events Management: An Introduction’ has just been published by Routledge.  As well as a great new cover, it has updated international case studies throughout, new industry person spotlights, lots of new material and it is now also full of great colour photos.

My freshly arrived copy of the book!

You can buy it from all the usual places, like Amazon, and if you’re a teacher or researcher interested in an inspection copy, just go to the Routledge website to request one.

Big Events in Small Destinations

I recently spoke at the 2nd annual International Conference for Students in Tourism and Gastronomy, in Skopje, Macedonia.  My presentation was about how small tourism destinations, especially in emerging economies, can use major events as part of their tourism branding.  You can view my presentation below:

To get an idea of what my presentation was about, have a look at this short video about the recent stage of the World Triathlon Championship that was held in Jersey, a small island of 100,000 people off the coast of France.  With a worldwide television audience of 3 million people, hosting this event provided media exposure that Jersey Tourism could never afford.

This was a great event, which I also spoke at last year.  This year was even more successful, with presentations from Ljupco Janevski  from the Macedonian National Tourism Agency, Thiago Ferreria from Serbia4Youth and Prof. Dejan Metodijeski from the Goce Delcev University of Stip.  I’m looking forward to supporting the event again next year as it continues to grow and become an important tourism event in the region.