Nicolai Scherle

Swimming in Cultural Flows: Conceptualising Tour Guides as Intercultural Mediators and Cosmopolitans

Tour guides have traditionally played a key role in linking tour operators, incoming agencies and tourists. More than most other people employed in the travel business, they are constantly involved in reconciling native and foreign cultures. Ideally they function as intercultural mediators; that is, as pathfinders and mentors who reveal unfamiliar destinations to their guests in a culturally sensitive manner. Caught up in a cultural flow in both their professional and personal lives, they move back and forth between divergent cultures and develop a distinctly cosmopolitan lifestyle. This article examines various aspects of the profession and cites several tour operators and tourists regarding the role of tour guides as intercultural mediators.

International bilateral business in the tourism industry: perspectives from German–Moroccan co-operations

This paper reports on an exploratory programme of research into the bilateral relations between German and Moroccan tourism businesses. Recently, Morocco embarked on an ambitious programme of tourism reform as part of a wider scheme of social and economic change. While greater contact between Moroccan and external businesses is desired, there is little understanding of how these relationships function and, hence, their ability to impact upon the outcomes of the reform programme. This paper employs concepts of inter-cultural contact, communication, competence and conflict resolution developed in linguistics and international management to explore the bilateral relationships between German and Moroccan businesses. Culture-free and culture-bound paradigms underpin different perceptions of inter-culturality for strategies for the management of inter-cultural contact. Empirical evidence suggests that there is a mismatch between the paradigms adopted by German and Moroccan businesses, respectively. This leads to conflict. Approaches and tactics for conflict resolution are similar on both sides. Tourism strategies that desire or require inter-cultural business contact should be informed by the approaches of international management among indigenous and external tourism businesses.

Performing Co-produced Guided Tours

Tour guides have traditionally played a key role in linking tour operators, incoming agencies and tourists. However, very little attention has been given to the competences that involve performative aspects of guiding. Such performative competences involve the complex maneuvring in native and foreign cultures, intercultural mediating, functioning as pathfinders and mentors, and negotiating in unfamiliar destinations to their guests in a culturally sensitive manner, and coordinating group movements in space. The article examines the complexity involved in guided tours, and consequently the need for a deeper understanding of the performative aspects of guided tours. The article concludes that the performative aspects of guiding tourists involve interpretations, mediations and translations through verbal and bodily communication. It also involves the ability to engage by producing intense moments through narratives and creative affordances. One final conclusion from this work is that it is a challenge to actually use the variety of scientific perspectives offered within tourism education programs in order to produce hybrid study outcomes, but, it could also be seen as the pragmatic approach that tour guides adopt in practice.

The Tourism Industry and the Process of Internationalization in the Middle East: The Example of Jordan

SUMMARY Ongoing internationalization processes have resulted in significant changes on the supply side in many fields of the economy and specifically in tourism. Although the scientific discourse is working hard to keep pace with these rapid changes, there is nevertheless a considerable deficit in research on the problems and risks as well as the potential and opportunities associated with intensifying processes of internationalization. This paper focuses on the internationalization process of small and medium‐sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) in the Middle East, specifically in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which continues to be a tourist destination for Westerners in spite of major political and other crises. Internationalization of SMTEs is a complex process, and studies that take a more holistic view of this phenomenon are needed. This paper will therefore attempt to investigate the internationalization process in Jordan from a problem‐centred perspective and to critically examine and discuss it on the basis of comments made by leading actors in the Jordanian tourism business. The thus gained insights should help to reduce the still existing theoretical deficits in the study of the internationalization process. Particularly, the impact of the Arab Spring on the Jordanian tourism market must be included in a critical assessment. Copyright

German Perspectives on Tourism Geography

Abstract This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.

Ethnic Identity, Heritage and Tourism

Zapotec Women: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Globalized Oaxaca, 2nd edn Lynn Stephen Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, ISBN 0 8223 3641 3 Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late...

Tourism Lobbying in Bavaria: Between Ignorance, Parochialism and Opportunism

Abstract The subject of lobbying in the context of destinations is still a largely unstudied research field both in relation to specific destinations and from the perspective of planning. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that—despite its ambivalent public perception—successful lobbying is a crucial success factor in the positioning of destinations on a highly globalized tourism market with its rapidly changing supply and demand structures. In this article, we analyze the current lobbying structures in Bavaria, one of the leading European destinations. Bavarian tourism finds itself in an exceedingly complex situation today caught between diminishing competitiveness, especially considering the persistent investment backlog, and exceedingly ambitious tourism policies. Using semi-structured interviews we investigated how key policy-makers and representatives of the tourism business currently appraise tourism lobbying in Bavaria. From their assessments, we derive recommendations that should help to optimize lobbying structures and processes.

Reflections on Cosmopolitanism as a Normative Guideline for Practical Wisdom

Due to current socioeconomic transformation processes such as globalization, individualization and shifting demographics, the challenges for organizations with respect to their stakeholders are growing more and more complex. One of the main implications of these transformational processes is an increasing organizational heterogeneity, which ideally should be understood not only as a challenge, but also as an opportunity to increase the competitiveness of the organization in the medium- to long-term. This paper is concerned with the two highly traditional and largely timeless concepts of cosmopolitanism and practical wisdom, which on the one hand offer a constructive impetus for dealing with organizational heterogeneity, and on the other hand provide valuable, thought-provoking impulses in an increasingly transnational world.

Krisen und Krisenmanagement im Tourismus – Eine konzeptionelle Einführung

Krisen im Kontext von Tourismus sind ein weitgehend systemimmanentes Phanomen, auch wenn dieses nur bedingt zum Image einer Branche passt, deren konzeptionelles Selbstverstandnis in erster Linie auf einer ,heilen Urlaubswelt‘ aufbaut. Zudem weisen Krisen in Anbetracht einer zunehmend vernetzten, transnationalen Welt immer haufiger grenzuberschreitende Dimensionen auf; ein Umstand, der den Umgang mit Krisen immer komplexer respektive herausfordernder macht. Vor diesem Hintergrund kann es sich kaum eine Destination bzw. Tourismusorganisation mehr leisten, auf eine Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Thematik zu verzichten – im Gegenteil, ein proaktives, strategisches Krisenmanagement stellt vielmehr in der heutigen Zeit eine Conditio sine qua non dar. Der vorliegende Beitrag, der primar als Einfuhrungskapitel fungiert, erschliest die zentralen Schlusselbegriffe der relevanten Thematik. Im Fokus stehen unter anderem Krisenbegriff, Krisengenese und Krisenursachen sowie Krisenwahrnehmung und Krisenauswirkungen. Daruber hinaus wird ein konziser Einblick in zentrale Charakteristika eines proaktiven, strategischen Krisenmanagements gewahrt.