Author: James Kennell

Island Tourism Symposium

The Tourism Research Centre at the University of Greenwich, in partnership with the Observatory on Tourism for Island Economies (OTIE), is holding an afternoon symposium on island tourism, which will be held at our World Heritage Site campus in London on Friday 28th February 2020, 2pm-6pm.

Image result for island tourism

This event will be of interest to island tourism researchers, including postgraduate students, and will be an opportunity to network, discuss new research in island tourism, and learn more about the work of OTIE, Europe’s leading association for the study of tourism in island economies. This is a free event and the programme will include:

A Social Network Analysis of Island Tourism Enterprises: San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily

Prof. Giovanni Ruggieri, Researcher in Tourism Economics, University of Palermo, Italy

Tour of the Pacific Encounters Gallery: https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/we-recommend/attractions/pacific-encounters

Dr Aaron Jaffer, Curator of World History and Cultures, National Maritime Museum

Tourism and Hospitality Entrepreneurship in Islands

Paul Booth, Tourism Research Centre, Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, University of Greenwich

Panel Discussion on Contemporary Issues affecting Island Tourism Destinations

Chaired by Dr Samantha Chaperon, Tourism Research Centre, Department of Marketing, Events and Tourism, University of Greenwich

Places at this event are free, but limited.  Please register you place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/island-tourism-symposium-tickets-90634535335

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Dr Samantha Chaperon s.a.chaperon@greenwich.ac.uk

Tourism Policy Implementation in Bangladesh

Our new paper, on the implementation of tourism policy in Bangladesh has just been published online in the journal Tourism Recreation Research. If you don’t have access, and you would like to read it, please just get in touch!

Cox’s Bazar by Idolhunter Lckuang CC BY-SA 3.0

“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.”

Tourism and Hospitality Entrepreneurship in Islands

Our new paper, on entrepreneurship in the tourism and hospitality industries in island contexts, has just been published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management. In the paper, we conduct a systematic literature review on the topic, which has received little attention up to this point. The abstract is below. If you would like to read the paper, please just get in touch.

“Entrepreneurship is vital to the success of tourism and hospitality and in turn 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).  A systematic review of the literature was conducted to provide a platform for further research and to help investigators set their research priorities and thereby advance understanding of this important field.  Using the Scopus database and the PRISMA technique, a total of 132 articles were included in bibliometric and thematic content analyses. The review revealed that, although there has been an increase in THEI research, this has tended to focus on the Asia-Pacific region rather than the European and North American contexts.  It was also found that, hitherto, the generalizability of much THEI published research is limited.  It is therefore suggested that researchers consider redressing this geographical bias and conduct more quantitative and comparative THEI studies.  Further opportunities exist for scholars to investigate the characteristics and behaviors of tourism and hospitality island entrepreneurs as well as the impacts of the industrial and spatial aspects of THEI.”

UK : China collaboration in the events industry

I recently gave the keynote presentation below as keynote for the Zhejiang Global Exhibtion Forum in Hangzhou, China. You can view the presentation, below. In it, I emphasised three areas of potential collaboration: the fusion of creative and tech; incentive travel; city-city partnerships for event destinations.

James Kennell presenting

Event Management in the Chinese Century: CFP

There are now revised timelines for submission – see end of this post

With my colleague, Dr Mingguang Liu, from Zheijang International Studies University, we have just published a call for papers for a special issue of the journal Event Management on ‘Event Management in the Chinese Century’. You can read the full CFP here.

Changes in political economy, the rise of emerging economies outside of the traditionally USA-dominated trans-Atlantic region and the globalisation of culture enabled by democratised technological channels, have led to profound shifts in the balance of the global economy. Attempting to explain this geopolitical shift, commentators and academics have introduced terms such as the ‘Chinese Century’ (Beckley, 2012; Brands, 2018; Hartley, 2008; Hongling, 2015; Pan, 2013; Stiglitz, 2015), the ‘Pacific Century’ (Borthwick, 2018; Scott, 2008) and the ‘Asian Century’ (Atonopoulos, 2017; Morrison, 2014).

The aim of this special issue is to consider the impact of these macro-level changes on the events industry and research into events, and to help to address a geographical, but also an ideological and cultural, imbalance in events management research, which has tended to focus on the traditionally dominant global economies of North America, Western Europe and Australasia (Kim & Kaewnuch, 2018; Robertson et al., 2018; Spracklen & Lamond, 2016). Recent research has begun to engage with this new context in areas as diverse as education (Werner et al, 2018), events and public diplomacy (Wang, 2018), regional development (Hussain, et al., 2018), the growth of the Chinese events industry (Liu & Lou, 2018) and mega events (Liang, et al., 2016).

Anticipated themes

Papers for this special issue should engage with the context of the Chinese Century, and the implications of this for events management research and practice.  Relevant, recently published research has include the following thematic areas, suggesting that they are worthy of further examination, although the list is not intended to be exhaustive. 

  • Event Management Education
  • The Development of the Chinese Events Industry
  • The Political Economy of Events and Public Diplomacy using Events
  • Events and Regional Development
  • Innovation in the Events Industry
  • Events and Urban Development
  • Mega-Events

Manuscript submission

Authors should submit to James Kennell (j.s.kennell@gre.ac.uk). In the first instance, authors should submit an abstract for consideration and feedback, according to the timeframe below.

Timeframe

2nd Call for papers: February 2020

Abstracts for consideration: 31st March 2020

Feedback on abstracts: 10th April 2020

Submission of manuscripts: 6th November 2020

Planned publication date: 2021

Journal of the Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić” SASA

I have recently been invited to join the Journal of the Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić”, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, as an Associate Editor for the Human Geography section.  The journal is published by a national academy which is the most prominent academic institution in Serbia, founded in 1841.

cover image of the journal

I am delighted to become involved with this excellent journal, which has an online archive stretching back to 1951, and which publishes papers related to tourism which are aligned with the journal’s focus and scope.  It is listed on various academic databases and has recently been accepted for listing on ESCI (Web of Science) and Scopus.

If you would like to discuss a potential submission with me, please just get in touch.

Tourism, Governance and Sustainable Development

With my colleague, Professor Francisco Antonio dos Anjos, we have just edited a special issue of the journal Sustainability.  This is an open-access journal, so it is free to everyone to read and download.  There are fifteen papers in the special issue which deal with issues related to sustainable tourism in countries as diverse as Iraq, Colombia, Slovakia and Indonesia.

One of our aims with this collection, was to add to the tourism governance literature, with research from developing countries and on using new methods and approaches.  This special issue certainly does that, and you can read a summary of the contents in our editorial piece.