David Botterill

Evaluating the contribution of beach quality awards to the local tourism industry in Wales-the Green Coast Award

Abstract The agencies involved in the Green Sea Partnership have designed a beach award scheme, the Green Coast Award (GCA) to develop tourism through sustainable management plans at rural beaches in Wales. To date there has been little evaluation of the value of the GCA. This paper aims to test the underlying presumptions that the GCA drives up environmental standards and promotes tourism through sustainable beach management. Field work was conducted over a 2-week period, selecting 11 case study beaches, five in Anglesey and six in Pembrokeshire. A semi-structured questionnaire was employed to collect data on beach user perceptions and observation techniques permitted recording of actual implementation of GCA standards. Analysis of the sample (n=469) demonstrated that beach users have very little knowledge and understanding of beach award schemes, in particular the GCA, with only 11% stating they had heard of the award and a similar low percentage stating the award was important in beach selection. However, a high degree of correlation was found to exist between what beach users believed to be important beach management issues and their perception of the high level of management of those issues on the case study beaches. Therefore, although the GCA might not be well recognised by beach users the Green Sea Partnership has accurately identified the needs of the consumer, having an indirect impact on the experience of the beach user. All case study beaches were found to offer very high environmental standards, suggesting that management measures introduced by the GCA have improved beach quality. Encouragingly, the results also showed statistically (P=0.05) that beach users who were aware that the beach visited was in receipt of a beach award were also more likely to state a beach award to be important in beach selection. The paper is concluded by suggesting that if further resources are to be invested in the GCA scheme then improved communication must be achieved between the environmental and tourism agencies and greater effort made in promoting the award.

Key concepts in tourism research.

Introduction How to Use This Book Action Research Autoethnography Case Study Constructionism Content Analysis Critical Realism Critical Theory Deduction Delphi Method Document Analysis Empiricism Epistemology Ethical Practice Ethnomethodology Evaluation Research Experiment Feminism Figurationalism Grounded Theory Hermeneutics Interview/Focus Group Modeling Narrative Paradigm Phenomenology Positivism Post-Colonialism Postmodernism Realism Repertory Grid Survey Symbolic Interactionism Visual Methods

An Autoethnographic Narrative on Tourism Research Epistemologies

Abstract An autoethnography of getting “to know” tourism through social scientific inquiry is depicted through a narrative account of a career journey that interweaves the personal, professional and intellectual. The paper is structured around three questions that provide the conventional points of departure commonly found in tourism research and the incumbent epistemological, ontological and methodological journeys made by researchers. Claims about the unsatisfactory nature of the destinations reached on these journeys will be made and illuminated by the experiences of the author. Arguments are presented for tourism researchers to take seriously the possibilities of critical realist tourism research. Some of the markers of Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy are introduced before imagining what critical realist tourism research might look like.

Social scientific ways of knowing hospitality

It is impossible that the domain of hospitality could have escaped the influence of the scientific revolution that has for the past 300 years provided western society with a ‘new’ system of knowledge. However, the low status afforded to the study of hospitality in comparison with other domains of study has until the latter half of the twentieth century tended to constrain the development of a scientific self-understanding of the field. The chapter will not, however, attempt a tour de force of all that scientific research in hospitality has discovered. It will, rather, seek to reach behind the claims of scientists and in particular social scientists to truths about hospitality. In this chapter, therefore, an attempt will be made to contribute to that self-understanding through an examination of debates in the philosophy of science. A major question that must be asked in all domains of scientific study is called the epistemological question or put more simply a question that asks ‘How can we know hospitality?’

Medical Tourism and Transnational Health Care

Medicine and tourism have become separated in contemporary popular consciousness. The former implies anything but a pleasurable experience and the latter presumes a healthy disposition for participation. We argue that this popular conception of the separation of tourism and medicine ignores an historical continuity of lineage from the 18th century pursuit of a cure at resorts and spas, to 20th century notions of holidays as worker welfare through to global patient mobility in the quest for cutting-edge medical interventions in so-called untreatable conditions. Disciplinary divisions within the academy have reinforced the separation between medicine and tourism in popular culture, but there is now an emergent challenge to re-think the medicine/tourism nexus. Under the influence of transnational health care consumption, two very contrasting traditions of Western thought are now confronting one another. This book provides a comprehensive landscape of diverse research communities attempts to capture its implications for existing bodies of knowledge in selected aspects of medicine, medical ethics, health policy and management, and tourism studies.

Transnational health care: from a global terminology towards transnational health region development.

Within European cross-border health care, recent studies have identified several types of international patients. Within the Anglo-Saxon setting, the specific terminology of medical tourism is used. The analytical purpose of the paper is to resolve this semantic difference by suggesting an alternative terminology, transnational health care that is understood as a context-controlled and coordinated network of health services. For demand-driven trans-border access seekers and cross-border access searchers, there is a need to opt for regional health-policy strategies. For supply-driven sending context actors and receiving context actors, there would be organizational benefits to these strategies. Applying the terminology of trans-border access seekers, cross-border access searchers, sending context and receiving context actors results in a transnational patient mobility typology of twelve types of international patients, based on the criteria of geographical distance, cultural distance and searching efforts, public/private/no cover and private/public provision of health services. Finally, the normative purpose of the paper is to encourage the use of this terminology to promote a policy route for transnational health regions. It is suggested that the development of transnational health regions, each with their own medical and supportive service characteristics, could enhance governmental context-controlled decision power in applying sustainable health destination management.

Exploitation or Conservation: Can Wildlife Tourism Help Conserve Vulnerable and Endangered Species?

Wildlife tourism is increasingly utilising vulnerable and endangered species as tourist attractions. This paper uses the South African cage diving industry as a case study to assess the contributions that the tourism industry can make to the conservation of the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias). The study highlights that individual operators can make positive contributions using various mechanisms such as interpretation, education and contributing towards scientific research. However when the industry is examined as a collective whole then a number of paradoxes and complications emerge. The study demonstrates that operators face immense pressure when trying to reconcile conservation objectives with business profitability and client satisfaction. This can lead to the development of inappropriate business practices that are counter–productive to the overall aims of conserving target species such as the Great White Shark.

Tourism and Transgression: Resort Development, Crime and the Drug Economy

This article aspires to open a new line of conceptual analysis in the tourism development literature by exploring the relationships between resort development, violent crime and the drug economy. At the centre of our critical realist analysis is the relationship between tourism and transgression, a relationship that we argue deserves a more central place in researching tourism development. A case study of the north coast of Sao Paulo state is reported. Primary data from field observations and interviews are combined with the analysis of published data on crime and violence in the city and media reports of violence. We synthesise a range of academic literatures, published in both English and Portuguese, in the fields of criminology, real estate management, demography, health and tourism studies in order to make our arguments. Utilising retroduction, the mechanism “immunisation” is proposed as having explanatory power in understanding the relationship between tourism resort development, violent crime and the drug economy.

Towards a Model of Sustainable Health Destination Management Based on Health Regions

This chapter: n n nIntroduces the idea of a destination management framework for transnational health care. n n nConsiders the definitions and concepts that inform an analysis of transnational health care, governance and sustainability. n n nPresents the building blocks of destination management, specifically stakeholder, ethical and branding theories. n n nDemonstrates how the linkages between destination management and transnational health care are constructed. n n nDemonstrates how regional development in relation to health and health care is an active practice in the EU.

Mature students in danger: An evaluation of the survival of older hospitality management undergraduates in the UK

Abstract This article explores the extent of the enrolment of adult learners on hospitality degrees in the UK and examines the relationship between entry requirements, institutional support and completion of courses. Both quantitative and qualitative data collected over a two year period, from a sample of UK universities, is used to evaluate what tutors and students perceive as important issues and to suggest improvements in the framework for learning. The study concluded that whilst increasing numbers of mature hospitality management undergraduates have gained access to courses they have a significantly lower survival rate than younger students. A difference in perception between students and tutors concerning factors which improve or worsen the learning scenario is reported. In addition, tutors were found to be unaware of the severity of the problem. The evidence from this study indicates that institutions need to enhance support mechanisms to ensure completion once enrolled, as well as further widening access to under represented groups of adult learners. Equality of access does not necessarily equate with equality of opportunity. Criticisms of the response of institutions to mature students are linked by the authors to wider arguments about maintaining standards and quality following a period of rapid expansion in hospitality under-graduate education.