Chris Ryan

Syrian Refugees and their re-entry to ‘normality’: the role of service industries

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes data derived from an exploratory study based on interviews with 26 Syrian Refugees, indicating how they used past experiences and qualifications to obtain employment in the UK and Germany. The paper also describes in outline a chronology of escape, reaching Europe, traveling through Europe, and finally accessing a new ‘normality’ through obtaining employment in the service industries or continuing past study. Their stories are used to further theoretical components of resilience and associated concepts of adaptability and overcoming vulnerability. Reference is made to the structure of resilience and the role of social networks made more accessible via the use of smartphones and social media.

Carrying capacity and its implications in a Chinese ancient village: the case of Hongcun.

ABSTRACT Hongcun, an ancient village in Anhui in China, is an UNESCO-gazetted village because of its Huizhou architecture. It attracts over 1.6 million visitors per annum. Based upon a simple spatial model, the results of this study indicate that its social carrying capacity is being vastly exceeded, and the consequences are discussed in terms of the impacts on village life using data derived from a survey of residents. In terms of addressing the issues of crowding, it is suggested that a number of future choices face the village, ranging from the imposition of quotas on visitation to sustain and protect its UNESCO status by significantly reducing overcrowding, or alternatively, to embrace mass tourism to become akin to a theme park that is based on Huizhou culture.

Visitors to Heritage Sites Motives and Involvement—A Model and Textual Analysis

Any tourist evaluation of place is partly shaped by the tourist’s own culture, and this may be even more so when the site gazed upon is representative of a different culture and/or heritage. However, this article suggests that differences of evaluations may be overemphasized if the research concentrates solely on the variable of nationality. The physical characteristics of place, the interpretation offered, and possibly other features such as the level of crowding all have a role to play. The common experience of these factors by tourists of different nationalities may create a commonality of evaluation despite differences in tourists’ cultures. The study reported here of more than 200 respondents uses textual analysis to find similarities and differences between Australian, Chinese, German, and New Zealand visitors to a Maori cultural site in New Zealand.

Huimin (Grace) Gu: a key academic in China’s hospitality industry

It was a pleasure to be invited by Professor Kozak to contribute to their series on notable scholars in tourism and hospitality education by writing an evaluation of Professor Gu (Grace) Huimin. For many of us in the Asia Pacific, Grace is a well-known figure through her presence at international conferences, where often she has presided in a gentle fashion that befits her chosen English name. However, I suspect that many western colleagues are not fully aware of the significant contribution she has made to hospitality education in China, and the very high regard in which she is held. In an understated way she has also made possible many opportunities for western scholars to get to know China better, and who through her association with scholars working in the USA and elsewhere has bridged the gaps that existed between Western and Chinese thinking. I hope this introduction to Gu will help us better acknowledge the contribution she has made to our field.