Pascale Marcotte

Is the World Heritage label used as a promotional argument for sustainable tourism

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out if Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), in charge of promoting World Heritage Sites (WHS), use the World Heritage label in their electronic promotional tools, and if so, do promotional arguments include considerations linked to sustainable development.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative and qualitative study was conducted of web site content created by local, regional and national DMOs representing 120 organizations of World Heritage Cities member cities.Findings – Results show that Western European cities are the primary users of the World Heritage label in their promotional material. Cities that obtained their label less than ten years ago use it more often for promoting tourism. Concurrently a significant theme associated with WHS categorisation is the presentation of a must‐see “tourism product”. Conversely the advertising contains little information about the protection of the site or sustainable development actions undertaken since t...

L’approche expérientielle et les valeurs que les touristes accordent à la villégiature en forêt

Résumé Cet article traite des valeurs que des touristes provenant de milieux urbains accordent à la villégiature en forêt. Les résultats de cette recherche exploratoire proviennent d’entrevues effectuées dans des groupes de discussion auprès d’une douzaine de touristes. C’est à partir de l’approche expérientielle qui propose que les valeurs se forment à travers l’interaction entre l’objet et l’individu que nous avons relevé cinq valeurs propres à la villégiature en forêt. Les valeurs accordées à un séjour de villégiature en forêt sont les valeurs utilitaire, hédoniste, esthétique, sociale et de liberté. Ce type de villégiature permet notamment aux individus d’accéder aux loisirs et au repos, de vivre des sensations de plaisir, de retrouver des membres de leur entourage, d’apprécier le paysage et de se détacher du quotidien.

The practice of leisure activities: commitment for health and normativity

This issue of Society and Leisure invited researchers to reflect on the effects, positive and negative, of practicing, or the cessation of practicing, leisure activities on the physical and psychological health of individuals. That the practice of leisure activities promotes the well-being of people and societies is a well-known fact. Indeed, since the turn of the twentieth century, therapeutic virtues have been attributed to ‘good’ leisure. An assiduous practice of physical and social activities promotes physical and psychological health, and supports integration and social ties. Taking time out for leisure is, therefore, considered healthy for the body and the spirit, just as absence from leisure activities results in a situation of exclusion, socially as well as economically. This requirement of time and leisure activities makes the practice of leisure a standard of normality. Activities of leisure, at any age, would not only be ‘like everyone else,’ therefore, normal, but deliberately desirable. Nevertheless, it appears that even ‘good’ leisure practices are not always as beneficial as social discourse implies. These practices, without being neither excessive nor deviant, can also have negative consequences: they can increase the stress related to the lack of time, transform the balance of sociability, or increase expectations about one’s own body. Rather than increase health, they can also cause a sense of social exclusion or loss of identity when practices must be temporarily or definitively ceased. The articles in this issue lead us to reflect on the paradoxical role of leisure at a time when its injunction no longer brings more health; no longer guarantees the quality of life and social inclusion that it promises, but, on the contrary, when the ‘normativity’ of leisure becomes a constraint and excludes. Fuchs, Perrin and Ohl’s article, ‘Using Sport to Cope with Cystic Fibrosis,’ presents people with cystic fibrosis, a disease characterized by respiratory and digestive disorders which get worse over time. This unavoidable degradation of health imposes major limitations on the practice of sport. If, at the beginning of the disease, sports are a way for some people to control the disease, to affirm the normativity of their bodies, to maintain a ‘sense of belonging to the world,’ at other times, the practice of sport increases the sense of loss of health and physical integrity. Activity thus appears paradoxical, at times being a source of hope, and at others, a confrontation with even greater suffering. Ferez et al. present the results of a survey conducted among people living with HIV. HIV/AIDS has been around for more than a quarter of a century. Control of this disease has improved greatly, but the taboos and stigmas remain in all spheres of life for these people, including the sphere of leisure. The fear of exclusion remains present and may

Leisure: Commitment and disengagement. Analysis of the processes and time constraints

The outcome in this issue is the result of long collective work begun in 2008. At our initiative, several Quebec, French and Swiss researchers found themselves within an international network of research on leisure. Thanks to funding from the FrancoQuébécois University Council in 2008 and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2009–2011, several student–teacher exchanges, seminars and symposiums in France and Quebec were organized to share experiences and knowledge of each other and open up avenues of new research. The convergences and aspirations of the network successively oriented research on the integration of communities through leisure experiences in varied contexts, on the dynamics of transmission and circulation of knowledge within leisure and, finally, the links between the processes of commitment and disengagement in leisure. Initial observations oriented our choice of call for papers: specific literature on leisure extensively discusses the concept of commitment, particularly in functionalist and motivational perspectives. Today, leisure carriers have attracted the interest of researchers. However, in terms of process and temporalities, it should be chronologically articulated, especially the dialectic commitment and disengagement in the experiences of leisure.