CHME 2019 – Transforming Hospitality
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Category: Uncategorized
Dark Events
My latest article, written together with two colleagues from Turistica in Slovenia, has just been published in the journal ‘Event Management’. The article brings together a lot of the ideas and concepts from dark tourism and puts them into a critical events studies context, to propose a classification for ‘dark events’ – events linked to tragedy and suffering. We suggest that the concept of ‘darkness’, as it has been applied in tourism and leisure studies, is also useful for understanding certain types of events. Our paper argues that the ‘darkest’ events come with the greatest management challenges, and proposes a model to help us to identify which events are at the ‘darkest’ in these terms.
The article is based on the analysis of commemorative events in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and uses examples from a number of Western Balkan countries.
You can read the abstract of our article below:
Dark events: Commemoration and Collective Memory in the Former Yugoslavia
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.
Key words: Commemorative events; Dark tourism; Collective memory; Yugoslavia; Balkans
Sustainable Events and Historic Buildings
Our new paper, ‘The Role of Sustainable Events in the Management of Historic Buildings’, has been published today in the journal Sustainability. This is an open-access journal, meaning that anyone can read and download the paper from here.
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
Sun, Sea and Shrines – Cultural Tourism in Phuket, Thailand
Our new paper on the diversification of tourism in the Thai island of Phuket has just been published in the journal Geographica Pannonica. This is an open access journal and so the paper is free to download and read – just click here to open the PDF.
In the paper we look at the need for diversification in the tourism offer of Phuket, away from ‘sun, sea and sand’ tourism that can sometimes be problematic for the destination, and towards cultural heritage tourism that makes use of the many attractive heritage sites on the island.
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
Call for Papers – Special Issue “Tourism, Governance and Sustainable Development”
With my colleague Professor Franciso Antonio dos Anjos, from Univesidade do Vale do Itajaí in Brazil, we are editing a special issue of the journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050), on ‘Tourism, Governance and Sustainable Development’.
You can read the full call for papers here, and find out more about the journal here. If you are interested in submitting for this special issue, please just get in touch with any questions. The final deadline for manuscript submissions is 22nd February 2019.
Effective governance is a fundamental condition for the sustainable development of tourist destinations. The inherent complexity of tourism also requires that its development be accompanied by efficient planning and management processes based on the basic principles of sustainability.
Previous studies in tourism governance have identified the shift from government to governance in tourism policy; the emergence of new networked and postmodern forms of governance affecting tourism; the changing roles of destination management organizations and the complexities of tourism governance in a globalized world. However, much of this research has been carried out in the developed core countries of the international tourism industry. There is a need to bring together new research on this topic from more diverse geographical and socio-economic perspectives, as well as to re-examine the area of tourism governance in light of the many contemporary crises affecting the sustainability of tourism destinations.
Job opportunity: Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Greenwich.
We have just advertised a new job in our department at the University of Greenwich. We’re hoping to recruit a new lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality to join our department of Marketing, Events and Tourism. Ideally, we’re looking for someone who can bring knowledge of marketing, entrepreneurship, business development and innovation to our team, but we’re open to applications from candidates with a range of expertise.
You can view the job description, and download the application pack here.
We have a dynamic and research-active tourism and hospitality team at Greenwich as part of our Tourism Research Centre, and our undergraduate degrees have been consistently ranked top in London. This is an opportunity to work with a group of research-active academics who teach engaged, satisfied students on degree programmes with great industry links.
If you would like to discuss this opportunity, please do get in touch with me via j.s.kennell@greenwich.ac.uk.
Tourism and Economic Development in Suffolk
This is the presentation that I gave last week, at the Suffolk Inside Out event in Ipswich. This excellent event was organised by Events Management students from University Campus Suffolk, who brought together some great speakers and delegates from Suffolk to discuss the development of tourism and the visitor economy in the region.
The main points of my presentation were:
- Tourism makes a strong contribution to the economic growth priorities of Suffolk, and tourism stakeholders need to make that clear when they talk to politicians and policy makers
- The majority of tourism in Suffolk (94%) is day visits, but day trip spending is around £25 per day, way below the national average of £31. Increasing day visit spend should be a big regional priority.
- The growth of staycations offers the opportunity for Suffolk to grow a high value domestic tourism market, but this is very competitive and tourism businesses should consider how to offer even more high quality, high value products to the top end of this market.
Suffolk Inside Out
I’m very much looking forward to speaking at the Suffolk Inside Out event in Ipswich this Friday, which has been organised by University Campus Suffolk. The day focuses on the tourism industry in Suffolk and features speakers on topics from marketing strategy and cultural heritage tourism to financial stability.
I’ll be speaking about the relationship between tourism and economic development in Suffolk, drawing on research that we’ve previously conducted on the changing environment for tourism in the UK and some unpublished data on the economic impact of micro-enterprises in Tourism.
My contribution to Serbian TV
I recently spoke at the MEKST 2015 conference in Novi Sad, Serbia. You can read my post about this here. During the event I was interviewed by Dusan Kristic from Radio Televizija Vojvodine for a programme that they made about the conference and you can view the programme below. It is 25 minutes long and also features contributions from Angela Benson and Alan Godsave, who were also speaking at MEKST.
In the video, I suggest ways in which tourism in Serbia could be developed to attract more international tourists and the role of festivals and events in tourism development.
2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 8,000 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.
