Drones and Tourism Marketing

Our new paper, on the potential of shared drone videos for tourism destination marketing has just been published in the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing.  If you don’t have access to it, please just get in touch.

In the paper, we provide the first analysis of shared drone videos of the United Kingdom that examines their value for tourism.  Some of these are beautiful, like this one by TheTravellingClatt:

Our research is the first to categorise and analyse user shared drone videos of a tourism destination, and we make some suggestions for how Destination Marketing Organisations can make better use of these, for example:

  • Making more use of user-shared drone videos of their destinations on platforms like YouTube, and promoting these as well as producing ‘professional’ drone footage;
  • Providing platforms online for drone enthusiasts to share their destination footage, including on DMO websites;
  • Acting as ambassadors for drone video creators by providing safe flying zones and helping drone pilots to get access to protected sites.

CHME 2019 – Transforming Hospitality

 

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CHME 2019 – Transforming Hospitality

21 May – 24 May 2019

University of Greenwich, London

Register now at www.gre.ac.uk/CHME19

The University of Greenwich are delighted to be hosting the 28th annual conference of the Council for Hospitality Management and Education – ‘Transforming Hospitality’ which has a focus on how hospitality enables us to understand the complex social and cultural structures and practices within which it operates. New multidisciplinary enquiries are redefining what hospitality is with a view to contributing to what hospitality is becoming – a tool that allows us to critically appraise the changes that are taking place in the world around us.

This conference aims to showcase insightful and influential research and help to set future research agendas within critical hospitality studies, hospitality management, health, and urban hospitality. To share the best practice in scholarship and pedagogy, this conference will also provide opportunities for those academics and industry professionals wishing to contribute to enhancing the value of pedagogic research.

Full details of the conference, including the call for papers, can be found at: www.gre.ac.uk/CHME19

Conference Tracks
Track 1: Hospitality Management
Track 2: Critical and Cultural Studies of Hospitality
Track 3: Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Hospitality Management Education
Track 4: Urban Hospitality
Track 5: Hospitality and Wellness

Attendance Fees:
Early Bird Fee: £440 Non-members, £340 Members, £210 Student

Full Conference Fee: £480 Non-members, £380 Members, £250 Student

One Day Fee: £200

Gala Dinner for your guests: £110

 

Register now at www.gre.ac.uk/CHME19

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.

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A commemorative events held to remember Russian POWs who died during the first World War, on the Isonzo Front, in Slovenia                                                                        Photo: FB dr. Miro Cerar – uradni profil

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

Cultur WB

Last week, I was very pleased to be invited to speak at the launch of the Cultur WB network, in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. Cultur WB is a new network to support the development of Cultural Tourism across the Western Balkans region that has been set up with ERASMUS+ funding in a project with partners from Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Austria and Germany.  When I was there the project was also bringing in new contributions from the UK, Greece and Albania.

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The Cultur WB partners in Sarajevo

The Cultur WB project aims to not only strengthen ties between people working on cultural tourism as practitioners and researchers in the region, but also to to develop life-long-learning programmes for people working in tourism and new Masters programmes in cultural tourism.  At the launch event, I gave a presentation on how small and emerging destinations can use cultural events to develop their tourism, and how we should think about measuring the impacts of these events.  You can view the presentation below:

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The launch event was fantastic, with presentations from politicians, academics and practitioners.  Sarajevo itself is an amazing city and the organisers of the event, Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures, are doing an incredible job of trying to get their city onto the Cultural Tourism map, which I have no doubt they are succeeding in.

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.

Trinity House

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.

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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’.

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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.

Moon Festival

I’ve recently become involved with a fantastic new festival, as part of their advisory board.  Moon Festival is a unique multi-event festival, taking place now and culminating in events to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the moon landings in July 2019.

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Their really exciting programme, which celebrates the moon in ways involving different cultures, times and disciplines, includes film screenings, night boats, a food market with a lunar slant, music events, a street party and much more.  To find out more, visit their website, or follow on twitter, facebook and instagram.

Overtourism vs. Undertourism

I gave the presentation below as a keynote at the 12th International Iguassu Tourism Forum, which was part of the Festival des Cataratas in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil.

In my presentation, I explained the origins of the term overtourism and showed how important it had become in the media for explaining the impacts of tourism.  But, I also suggested that the term wasn’t very useful for tourism researchers as we already had some fundamental concepts that helped us to explain these impacts, as well as the destination management knowledge to fix them.

A core part of this presentation was the idea that a lot of the current media reaction to tourism is the very old-fashioned idea that mass tourism and, by extension, mass tourists themselves, are somehow bad for destinations.  However, the real issue is how we make sure that we harness the great positive impacts of tourism and manage the negative impacts successfully. I also used examples from UK seaside towns and around the world to suggest that the real danger facing most destinations is actually undertourism.

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The fantastic team who organised the event

Any Stupid Questions About…Tourism: Podcast

This week, I’m interviewed on the ‘Any Stupid Questions’ podcast, on a show that is all about tourism.  Three very funny comedians ask me questions about tourism, and I do my best to answer.  You can listen by going to Acast or iTunes, or by clicking on the image below.

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“This week, host Danielle Ward is joined by Dr James Kennell, principal lecturer on Tourism, Events & Hospitality at Greenwich University in London, who can tell us literally everything about tourism. Danielle is joined by comedians Jessica Fostekew (The Guilty Feminist ) and Nat Tapley (The Revolution Will Be Televised, HistoryHit.tv).

Questions asked and answered include:

  • How many Queens does our economy need?
  • Why shouldn’t you pay attention to Americans and Brits on TripAdvisor?
  • When’s the best time to book a holiday?
  • Why is foreign money easier to spend?

….so if you’ve sort of been guessing the answers based on a gut feeling, why not listen and find out for sure? And then subscribe to stay equally informed about other issues, as we get around to them.

All our guests are on Twitter, so go and say hello – @jameskennell @jessicafostekew and @natt, and Danielle is @captainward. And the show itself now has a Twitter account: @AnyStupidQs. Follow it for information about upcoming episodes, recordings, and extra bits of the show that had to be cut for any reason (usually it’s just a bit off-topic; this week it’s because we wanted the show to be under 45 minutes long).”