Clare Weeden

Ethical tourism: An opportunity for competitive advantage?

An an industry, tourism is considered the world’s largets and most important,1 each year carrying millions of international travelers around the world.2 The UK tour operations industry is dominated by mainstream operators offering a high volume of low-priced holidays. Alongside the mass market exists a specialist operator industry that, in order to sustain competitiveness, offers niche products. One such product, ethical tourism, has grown in prominence over the past decade, and this paper seeks to establish whether specialist tour operators consider ethical tourism to be niche market opportunity. It will explore the concept of ethical tourism, examine specialist operators’ perceptions of consumer demand for ethical holidays and determine the essential attributes for ethical operators in this specialist field. Conclusions will be drawn as to whether specialist operators providing ethical tourism believe they can gain competitie advantage at a premium price.

A review of gay and lesbian parented families’ travel motivations and destination choices: gaps in research and future directions

Academic tourism research is traditionally concerned with individual decisions and fails to address the viewpoint of the family unit. Indeed, while family tourism remains unexplored, lesbian and gay parented family tourism is further overlooked, with little attention in tourism research given to families whose configurations do not fit the heteronormative model, namely the ‘mother-father-children’ trinomial. This paper critically reviews the literature on the topics that offer insight into same-sex parented family tourism and identifies gaps in knowledge in four different areas: travel motivations, destination choice, family decision-making, and strategies used by lesbians and gay men to manage sexuality in public spaces. The paper ends with recommendations designed to progress theoretical and empirical research.

Cruise and Learn: Reflections on a Cruise Field Trip

This article reflects on the significance of field trips for undergraduate experiential learning. Experiential learning is critical to the development of managers as future reflective practitioners, and this case study makes a significant contribution to debate about field trips at a time when UK university spending cuts threaten their future provision. Based on a qualitative study, this article highlights the experiential learning generated by an undergraduate field trip that took place on a 7-day cruise out of Southampton, UK, during March 2009. Students reflect upon their learning experiences, both personal and professional, and their perceptions of the value of such learning experiences for their knowledge and understanding of cruise management. The article also discusses associated benefits of field trips, such as student self-development, the facilitation of group cohesion, and the marketing opportunities for educational institutions. The implications of the findings are useful for educators as well as the wider cruise community.

Lesbians and Gay Men’s Vacation Motivations, Perceptions, and Constraints: A Study of Cruise Vacation Choice

ABSTRACT This study explores the push-pull vacation motivations of gay male and lesbian consumers and examines how these underpin their perceptions and purchase constraints of a mainstream and LGBT1 cruise. Findings highlight a complex vacation market. Although lesbians and gay men share many of the same travel motivations as their heterosexual counterparts, the study reveals sexuality is a significant variable in their perception of cruise vacations, which further influences purchase constraints and destination choice. Gay men have more favorable perceptions than lesbians of both mainstream and LGBT cruises. The article recommends further inquiry into the multifaceted nature of motivations, perception, and constraints within the LGBT market in relation to cruise vacations.

Book Review: Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play

Tourism Mobilities offers a comprehensive insight into a new perspective on the complexities of tourism and its changing place in society. Essentially the book presents the view that in order to understand tourism’s dynamic nature it is necessary to adopt an equally flexible understanding of what constitutes tourism, who consumes it and, perhaps most importantly, how it is being consumed. The editors suggest leaving behind the traditional notion of a static tourism being experienced in distinct and separate tourist places, and taking the perspective that as tourism becomes less predictable, so it can take place everywhere, in real as well as in virtual spaces, resulting in the boundary between tourism and everyday (real) life becoming increasingly fluid. To provide evidence of this mobility and movement, and tourism’s capacity to stimulate play and playfulness, the editors have gathered together a collection of case studies from recent or current postgraduate students, staff and visitors working at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. The book is clearly laid out and is divided into four distinct parts that share common themes, plotting the development from traditional places of play and the performance of tourism, through the redesign of urban sites for tourism purposes, to new ways of viewing sites that are not normally associated with tourism. Part 1 contains case studies that examine a traditional place of often aspirational play, the beach, and how different tourist groups consume its space. The first chapter examines the so-called paradise islands of the Caribbean and re-examines the region in view of the multiple mobilities experienced by its people through the centuries, tracing the development of and connections between hedonism and Edenism. The second chapter focuses on the island of Cyprus and examines the extraordinary appeal of ‘islandness’ for tourists, warning that islands which pay scant attention to tourism’s potential for mobility will fail to sustain their livelihood. The third chapter investigates the discursive narratives of ecotourists in Belize, examining not only their motivation and behaviour but also their capacity to reorder space and place to suit their holiday needs. In contrast, the last chapter in this section looks at water instead of beach as a place for play, and discusses the social performances of surfing, where the ultimate in movement and mobility – the wave – creates new challenges, uniting the surfer with the sea rather than with the beach. Part 2 deals with issues of art and heritage, exploring the mobilization, staging and performing of tourism in museums, World Heritage sites and historic towns. The first chapter presents a case study on Harrogate in the north of England, a long-established tourist destination whose incarnations and reincarnations have resulted in the town’s current crisis of identity. Continuing the theme of changing identities, the second chapter discusses the ‘world heritagization’ of Machu Picchu and its transformation from