The Dark Side of Family Tourism

This month we published Control, Abuse, Bullying and Family Violence in Tourism Industries by Elisa Zentveld. In this post the author explains what motivated her to write the book.

I decided to write this book after journeying through three different court matters related to untangling myself and my four children from family violence. I had been a tourism academic for about the same amount of time I was married to an abusive and controlling man. I never really thought about my experiences of tourism until after I separated from living with family violence.

Why was it that I did not like to travel places? Why was it I could not remember much about the trips? Why was it that I would look at the view but not see it? It is only with the clarity of thinking after separation that the pieces of the puzzle start to connect.

As the title suggests, this book is about control, abuse, bullying and family violence. These are matters that might impact any person and take place in any industry, although in some cases these may be especially heightened in times of celebration and events. Many businesses that serve tourists rely heavily on young casually employed workers, which can present as a more vulnerable group and as such sometimes more problems can arise in those workplaces. This book outlines how these problematic components impact the tourism system. Whilst tourism is viewed as a time for “happy holidays”, family violence happens behind lots of different closed doors – not just the ones at home.

I spent more years living with family violence than I wanted to, as I stayed until the youngest two (twins) of my four children were almost 12 years of age. As much as I was longing for freedom, I had researched enough to know that the children may very well be worse off if I separated too early. That may make no sense to many people, but as my book explains, many people are left with harmful court orders forcing children to have significant contact with a perpetrator of family violence. Such orders can result in some victims regretting separating and feeling things are worse.

I did a lot of planning and strategising for my three separate court outcomes. I spent every night for so very many months reading the Family Law Act and case law. For my third court journey, I took 6 weeks off work to plan how to change the children’s names through court. The outcomes from the three court journeys resulted in me being awarded sole parental responsibilities, a five-year intervention order, and the children’s names changed. These outcomes were better than what so many other victims are handed down, although were far from a smooth passage as is explained in my book. And so, I thought – all that learning had to be for a bigger reason than just me and my children.

That was the seed for this book. To grow the seed, more thinking was done, and I started thinking more about tourism experiences for people who live with family violence, or with harmful court orders. Tourism is supposed to be for rest, relaxation, and escape; but family violence does not go on a holiday. There is no break from it. In fact, it often gets worse. The more I wondered and talked to people the more I realised that the tourism models were flawed and were an illusion that did not include a major segment of society – those living with family violence. I realised that some children cannot even see maternal families who reside overseas because the perpetrator doesn’t allow it, and in some cases, the family court doesn’t either (to “be fair” to both sides). The data for family violence incidents at times such as Christmas and sporting events are nothing short of alarming.

And so, the seed of an idea for this book grew to maturity. I hope this book provides useful information to further our understanding of control, abuse, bullying and family violence around the globe. We also need to be mindful of the duality of abuse whereby some people endure abuse at work and then go home to endure it at home. There is no time to feel safe. We need better systems at work and in the court. Can a person who is abusive to their partner be a good parent? That should be at the front of the minds of anyone making decisions in the child’s best interests.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Femininities in the Field edited by Brooke A. Porter and Heike A. Schänzel.

Millennials, Generation Z and the Future of Tourism

This month we are publishing Millennials, Generation Z and the Future of Tourism by Fabio Corbisiero, Salvatore Monaco and Elisabetta Ruspini. In this post the authors explain how studying the attitudes, motivations and behaviours of younger tourists can help to identify future trends in tourism.

The famous quote “Savoir pour prévoir et prévoir pour pouvoir” (To know in order to predict, and thus to act) formulated by Auguste Comte during one of his university lectures, fully describes the future-oriented character of sociology, which, since its origins, has been conceived as a discipline aimed at both the study of society and social change. Sharing the idea that foresight is a useful analytical tool to anticipate the society of the future, the book Millennials, Generation Z and the Future of Tourism focuses on the study of tourism and its possible developments as a social phenomenon in the short to medium-long term.

In the book, the exploration of possible and probable futures uses a particular lens: the generational one. In order to forecast the future of tourism demand and facilitate its meeting with supply, the chapters in the book start from the characteristics and needs of the new generations (Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Alpha). Young people are the main actors of social change: they are perfect trendsetters because they link both past, present and future and outline social trends. Thus, studying attitudes, motivations and behaviours of younger tourists is a useful starting point in understanding new travel processes and practices, unprecedented trends in tourism preferences and consumption, new dynamics and meanings attributed to travel.

Beyond the territorial and cultural specificities, some common values and choices that can help the identification of future tourism trends emerge from the analysis.

First, digital technologies have profoundly influenced the travel behaviour of younger tourists: Millennials and members of Gen Z are using new technologies not only to organize and communicate their travel experiences but also to disengage from a mass use of tourist activities and promote sustainable tourism practices. Second, the tourist gaze of future travellers appears to be increasingly attentive to sustainability, authenticity, respect for territories’ material and intangible resource. A third aspect concerns the openness of the new generations to changing gender identities and sexual orientations: they show stronger support for gender egalitarianism and are much more likely to be allies of LGBTQ+ communities than generations before them. The book also focuses on forms of social exclusion in the tourism sector (gender inequalities and discriminations linked to sexual orientation) and tries to understand how the new generations are facing these challenges.

The book brings a new theoretical paradigm to the study of tourism and its future development, emphasising the contribution of the younger generation to the renewal of tourism and its revival after the pandemic. As extensively discussed, tourism has shown itself to be changeable and resilient, even in the face of crises and downtime periods. The post-Covid recovery of tourism flows is a clear example of how tourism never stops, but always finds new and original ways to meet the social need to travel. The same has happened in the past, for example in response to natural disasters or in the face of the scourge of terrorism. Tourism has always renewed itself over time, experimenting with new and novel ways of moving and travelling, and the younger generations play a crucial role in this process of change.

For more information about this book, please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Gamification for Tourism edited by Feifei Xu and Dimitrios Buhalis.

Is the Future of Tourism Something Akin to “Outbreak”, “Westworld”, “Blade Runner” or “Eyes of Darkness”?

We recently published Science Fiction, Disruption and Tourism edited by Ian Yeoman, Una McMahon-Beattie and Marianna Sigala. In this post Ian discusses the aims of the book and highlights some of its key chapters.

As the Scenario Planner at VisitScotland in 2006, I facili­tated a team to model and construct a set of scenarios which replicated the present COVID-19 pandemic reality. This is an exam­ple of science fiction coming true and a journey beginning. Science fiction was used to explore the possible and impossible, to construct futures based upon technologies which had not been invented, to think about the transformation of tourism, and to predict the end of tourism based upon a natural disaster. The process took rationality to its limits. However, as academic researchers we would normally view science fiction as nothing more than a piece of creative writing. It is not something based upon fact but imagination; it is not real but fantasy. COVID-19 has challenged our thinking, as in Dean Koontz’s prediction in the Eyes of Darkness about Wuhan 400 or the 2011 film Contagion which portrays spread of a virus, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease and the loss of social order in trying to halt its spread. Science fiction has become reality.

Thinking about the future

Science fiction is a ‘thinking machine’. It is about imagination and is right at the centre of scenario planning – the main research methodology used in futures stud­ies. Thus, the purpose of this book is to understand the role of science fiction in tourism research and how it is used to portray and make us rethink the future of tourism. It explores if science fiction can be of benefit to tourism researchers in a rapidly changing world, as it provides them food for thought and a way of thinking, rethinking and de-thinking of tourism futures. It helps set research agendas, directions and scope of research. In this vein, science fiction can be seen as a useful approach to foster and support transformation in tourism research.

Why change is necessary

Given the implications of COVID-19 and the overdue changes required in tourism, this book is more than just topical in nature and focus; it is also much needed to direct and foster tourism research that envisions beyond the past normal. As such, we fundamentally address the requirements for transformational tourism thinking and research through the contributions of the authors in this edited collection. Holistically, the combined contribu­tion of the chapters is to understand and construct a theoretical position or framework between science fiction and the future of tourism. If one can find an underpinning theory, then we have the basis of using science fiction as a theoretical lens and methodological approach to explore, frame and even form the future of tourism. By focusing on a specific form of tourism or topic, every book chapter uses a practical example and evidence to dis­cuss and explain the theoretical underpinnings, as well as the methods that others can also use to vision and rethink tourism futures.

Highlights of the book

In Chapter 6, Life Without Limits: Design, Technology and Tourism Futures in Westworld, Gurevitch uses a design theory per­spective which intertwines media, tourism futures and design. He explores the disruptive potential of technology to deliver experiences and the desire of tourists to feel free from the moral, social, economic and political con­straints of their daily lives.

In Chapter 8, Wildlife Tourism in 2150: Uplifted Animals, Virtual and Augmented Reality and Everything In-between, Bertella discusses the current research in both tourism and other disciplines in order to make a considered predic­tion about the future of wildlife tourism in 2150. Bertella examines the authenticity of future wildlife tourism where technology has been used to enhance the tourism experience.

In Chapter 9, Tears in the Rain: Tourism in the World of Blade Runner and Total Recall, Bolan addresses the worlds and their technology as depicted in the science fiction works by Philip K. Dick and explores their impact and influence on tourism. He examines the transformational impact of technology in tourism, from rep­licants to memory implants and self-driving cars to holograms.

In Chapter 10, Destination of the Dead: The Future for Tourism?, McEntee and col­leagues consider tourists a plague of zombies within the context of over­tourism and sustainability. The chapter takes a novel look at tourism and its impact on the people and places that experience excessive numbers of tourists. Zombies are now a clear genre in popular culture, appearing in countless movies, TV programmes and comic books, all of which depict crowds of mindless bodies shuffling along aimlessly while leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The same could arguably be said for some tour­ists, slowly walking along looking upwards at buildings with a selfie stick in hand while busy locals go about their daily business.

Towards a theoretical framework

Tourism futures needs a theoretical frame­work to contribute towards the evolution of tourism research. But as Yeoman and Beeton note, tourism futures is often presented with­out a foundation, is often misunderstood, and those that write about the future tend to emphasise presentism. What COVID-19 has taught us is the importance of moving beyond presentism and not thinking about the future as a linear projection based upon previously studied interrelations of known (economic) variables. Hence, the value of this edited collection is it encourages us to make a quantum leap in the terms of how we view and how we can afford to think about the future of tourism and tourism research. It takes us beyond the positivism to the non-linearity of interpre­tivism and a multiplicity of futures.

The book gives us a theoretical framework to study the future of tourism based upon science fiction. From an ontological perspective, the assumption is that the future needs to be explained by how the future will occur through science fiction. From an epistemological perspective, the book identifies a number of concepts including plurality, disruption and transformation, hyperreality of authenticity, dystopia, liminality, scepticism and the importance of narrative.

What next?

Many science fiction movies and books come in sequels. So, COVID-20 we suppose, but hope not! Indeed, that is not a science-fiction-inspired thought anymore but very much a possibility. We can only suggest you read a good science fiction novel and draw your own imaginings about the future of tourism. That’s what we did, and Captain Kirk was our inspiration, along with films such as Soylent Green or Star Wars. Delve into those alternative, imaginative worlds and ask yourself, what if they were to come true?

Ian Yeoman

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like The Future Past of Tourism edited by Ian Yeoman and Una McMahon-Beattie. 

Exploring the Complexity and Nuances of Sex in Tourism

This month we published Sex in Tourism edited by Neil Carr and Liza Berdychevsky. In this post the editors explain why this remains a relatively under-researched field and how discussions can be brought out in the open.

Sex in tourism (not to be confused with sex tourism, which is only a small part of sex in tourism), incorporating the light, dark and shades of grey in between, is an understudied area of research in comparison with its position in the tourism experience. This reflects the point that even in contemporary sex-saturated society, people are generally uncomfortable talking about or even acknowledging sex. This is especially the case if we seek to study or talk about sex in ways that are perceived to be non-moralistic or conformist. The result is that academics are often ‘discouraged’ from pursuing research involving sex in, and beyond, tourism.

Yet sex in tourism is such an important topic that touches on the wellbeing of so many people, and non-human animals, that to not research and talk about it is not the answer. What drives those working in the field is a desire to help improve the wellbeing of those touched by sex in tourism in myriad ways and those yet to be touched by it.

As such, this book represents some of the important work going on in the under-researched field of sex and tourism and aims to bring discussions about it, in all its diversity, into the public sphere. In doing so, the book explores the complexity and nuanced nature of sex in tourism. It encompasses issues of empowerment, freedom, exploration, abuse, entertainment, ethics and morality, and draws on work spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa and cyberspace.

This book is situated as a beginning, or potential beginnings, from which open, serious conversations can go on to examine and understand sex in tourism in all its diversity, in a way that not only pushes knowledge forward, but enhances the wellbeing of people.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Gay Tourism edited by Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta. 

The Future of Wildlife Tourism

This month we published Wildlife Tourism Futures edited by Giovanna Bertella. In this post the editor explains how the idea for the book came about.

It was during one of my walks in the forest that I started wondering how wildlife might coexist with tourism in the future. Having witnessed the boom of whale watching in the Arctic, I had serious concerns about the possibility for a bright future. Was I too pessimistic? I might have a tendency to be too critical. Sometimes worries overshadow possibilities. While I was captured by such thoughts, my dog’s attention was captured by something else. A stuffed whale! Such a strange coincidence finding a stuffed whale in the forest while thinking about whale watching. Probably a toy forgotten by a child. Still, could it be a sort of sign? Could the future of whale watching be in the forest? Could tomorrow’s whale watching be very different from today’s whale watching?

A few days after this episode, I was invited by Channel View to submit a proposal for a book about the futures on wildlife tourism. The proposal soon turned into an invitation to colleagues passionate about wildlife and tourism. This invitation included two requirements: contributors had to use critical thinking and imagination to develop future scenarios that covered various aspects of the future of wildlife tourism, such the experiential dimension of wildlife encounters, the educational and managerial aspects, and the ethical implications. 17 exceptionally engaged authors answered my invitation and, together, we started to work at the first draft of the book Wildlife Tourism Futures.

The book developed in a strange time, the COVID-19 crisis. Critically imagining the future of wildlife tourism while the world was in the middle of a pandemic derived from a zoonosis added an extra dimension to the project. Many times, I found myself wondering how close we should be to wildlife at all. Discussing challenges and future possibilities with the book chapter authors helped me to reflect deeper on what I wish and what I fear about how we approach wildlife.

Eventually, the book took the shape of a journey into Terra Incognita, the unknown land that symbolises our future. The book is now finished and we would like you to join this adventurous journey. The authors will be your guides and will show to you how the futures of wildlife tourism might be. Exploring alternative futures, you will find yourself questioning the present, pondering your beliefs, and evaluating the choices you have today in order to influence your and others’ tomorrow. Some of the futures you will visit are inhabited by caring tourists, professional and responsible operators, and include technological solutions to protect the wildlife and enable a sort of inter-species fellowship. Other futures are definitely dark, dominated by unsustainable practices that leave little or no space to wildlife. The book will not provide you with any definitive answer, suggesting that, ultimately, each of us, in our roles as students, practitioners, scholars and tourists, can contribute to build the future.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Tourism Ethics by David A. Fennell.

The Importance of Giving and Receiving in the Tourism Industry in a Covid-19 World

This month we published Philosophies of Hospitality and Tourism by Prokopis A. Christou. In this post the author explains the importance of the book’s central topics of ‘giving and receiving’ in the Covid-19 era.

In an era of numerous challenges for the tourism industry this book aims to remind travel, tourism and hospitality professionals and students of some of the core rudiments of the tourism and hospitality domain. The acquisition and channeling of certain notions and practices, such as care for the well-being of our guests are deemed crucial at an organisational and societal level. In a COVID-19 world, our guests trust that we will convey them safely to their loved ones, accommodate, feed, and guide them, while taking care of their health and well-being.

Crises like the recent pandemic lead us to reflect on our actions and behaviour towards our employees and guests. Professionalism and quality-driven service provision are vital for the sector’s success. Nonetheless, the cultivation and circulation of virtues such as care, kindness and patience are of the utmost importance if destinations, hotels and restaurants are to be associated by their guests with terms such as “genuine care”, “extraordinary experience”, “anthropocentric-driven”, “unexpected treatment”, “quality” and “satisfaction”.  

This book moves beyond the very basics of what is the professional way to greet a guest, serve a dish, answer a phone, or deal with a complaint. It provides hotel managers, tourism stakeholders, students and other readers with the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge of some of the most important and core aspects of tourism and hospitality, such as how to nurture a caring and anthropocentric organisational culture, how to contribute towards the well-being of people, how to cultivate genuine and personalised hospitality, philoxenia and philanthropy, how to trigger certain “emotions”, fulfil and satisfy the “senses”, and create “memorable experiences”.

By reading this book, tourism and hospitality professionals will better understand tourists, how and why they behave in certain ways, what they expect from them, and how the managers’ actions (towards tourists, employees, the environment and the community) may negatively or positively affect their organisation. Tourism stakeholders, such as tourism planners and regional authorities will understand how tourism development and uncontrolled tourism activity may impact on the socio-natural environment of their destination. Idiosyncratic niche forms of tourism and associated ethical issues are also covered in this book, including “dark tourism” and “religious/spiritual tourism”.     

For more information about this book please see our website. 

If you found this interesting, you might also like Tourism Ethics by David A. Fennell.

Border Watching: The Impact of Brexit and COVID-19

This month we published Tourism and Brexit edited by Hazel Andrews. In this post Hazel discusses the impact that Brexit and subsequently the COVID-19 pandemic have had on the UK.

When I was initially invited to write a book about tourism and Brexit it at first felt problematic. Although the referendum on leaving the EU had taken place nearly two years before in June 2016, when Tourism and Brexit was conceived, the UK had not left the EU and a withdrawal deal had not been settled. It was hard to envision what tourism to and from the UK would be like. In addition, Brexit was subject to on-going debate not only in the UK parliament, but also in numerous news media forums and, for me, like many others, a bit of Brexit fatigue had set in. 

However, Brexit is too important an issue to be left un- or under-explored, especially from the perspective of tourism and the ramifications that a change in freedom of movement might bring to travel practices, which sit alongside understandings of how welcoming a place the UK would be as it reconfigured and repositioned itself on the global stage. The implications of the UK’s departure from the EU has consequences far beyond the country’s immediate borders.

The referendum campaign and the resulting outcome drew attention to stark divisions within the UK, not only in terms of whether to leave or remain, but also between the countries that make up the UK and further still in terms of class and regional identities, age, education and so on. Questions of identity seemed to be at the forefront of debate.

In the immediate aftermath of the referendum result things felt strange as if something palpable had changed in the atmosphere of the country. Many regarded family, friends, neighbours and colleagues in a new light, wondering which way they had voted. Couples divorced, people left the country or began to actively seek citizenship elsewhere. Trust in the UK and those around us had changed.

Those who voted leave doubtless placed trust in the campaign leaders that exiting from the EU would herald a new era characterised by easily made trade deals and control over the UK’s external borders. Since June 2016 and the ongoing debates, it seems that trust has become a keyword in the sociocultural and political landscape of the UK.

The UK officially left the EU on 31^st January 2020, entering a transition period as the UK and EU began negotiations about their future relationship. The debates were far from over, but Brexit was no longer centre stage, it had been usurped by COVID-19.

COVID-19 has wrought damage around the world in many ways. It is understandable that it presently dominates much of our thinking. Among its side-effects has been the immeasurable damage to the tourism and hospitality sectors. However, in September 2020 Brexit was front page news again.  

This reemergence into the spotlight was based on the UK Government’s announcement that they would break international law with the Internal Markets Bill, thus changing elements of the Withdrawal Deal that they, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had themselves agreed with the EU. The move was widely condemned in the UK and EU, as well as within the United States. Questions were raised about how any other government in the world would be able to trust the UK ever again.

Campaigns to leave the EU and Johnson’s response to COVID-19 have both made appeals to a sense of national character. Among such traits is the idea of fair play, enshrined in expressions like the motto of the London Stock Exchange ‘my word is my bond’. It seems ironic then that one of the qualities that is supposed to make us who ‘we’ are could so readily be abandoned. Perhaps going forward questions will be not just based on how welcoming the UK is, but also how trustworthy.

English-Welsh Border sign on the A494 highlighting different COVID-19 rules © Hazel Andrews

Border watching has never been more important whether this be the safeguarding of the borders of our bodies against the Coronavirus and the placing of our trust in those around us to help keep each other safe, or the need to watch not only what the external borders of the UK will be after 31st December 2020, but also what the internal borders in the UK will look like in the years to come.

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Brexit and Tourism by Derek Hall.

What Do Staff Think and Feel when Creating Service Encounters in Tourism, Events and Hospitality?

We recently published Service Encounters in Tourism, Events and Hospitality by Miriam Firth. In this post the author tells us what to expect from the book.

Satisfying customers and management is not enough. What do the staff think and feel when creating service encounters in tourism, events and hospitality?

The industries of tourism, events and hospitality require service encounters to offer customers intangible products. The service encounters form customer opinion on the business and are often referred to when evaluating service quality and customer satisfaction. But what are the staff perspectives on completing these? Where is the TripAdvisor for staff who want to complain about customers who do not behave appropriately? How does the front/back of house culture affect the service? What culture shocks does an Asian staff member have when serving a European customer in a UK business? These are some of the questions students can consider when using this book. Staff voices are presented in storied incidents from graduates working as staff in businesses associated with these industries to enable understanding and reflection on staff positions when creating service encounters.

In the book I present an examination of existing key terms often taught in programmes management in further and higher education: service quality, soft skills, intercultural communication/sensitivity, emotional/aesthetic/sexualised labour, co-production/-creation, humour use, and legal frameworks are all discussed and aligned to graduate/staff storied incidents for students to consider the staff perspective. When using these stories in my own classes students naturally open up further discussion of their own stories, or opinions on the stories. I have found that these stories enable easier access to theory by considering how and where these manifest in ‘real life’ situations and support critical examination in a more approachable frame. Rather than showcasing a case study of industry, this book offers insights from the staff creating the industry.

Within the discussion presented I question the validity of consistent focus on ‘management’ and ‘customer,’ or how management can support staff to do more, or how staff can listen and work with customers to offer more. I also expand current models on service encounters to include colleagues, management and suppliers and question the large cultural positions taken in contexts of transnational flows of people (including the staff themselves).

As a former worker and manager from these industries I often think of my own stories and incidents when serving customers. The people are what make these industries a fantastic and enjoyable location to pursue a career within, but these experiences are mostly created by the staff, not the customers nor management. This book praises the work completed by staff delivering service encounters and outlines the armoury of skills and knowledge utilised when delivering an intangible product. It also shows ways in which individuals and small cultures form the experiences and how the staff not only create, but educate management and customers within these contexts.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Tourism and Humour by Philip L. Pearce and Anja Pabel.

What Opportunities do Modelling and Simulation Techniques Offer to Researchers and Practitioners?

We recently published Modelling and Simulations for Tourism and Hospitality by Jacopo A. Baggio and Rodolfo Baggio. In this post the authors explain the need for new methods in tourism and hospitality research.

Tourism is a complex phenomenon because of the many interdependent activities and organizations that deal with the movement of millions of people across the world for the most diverse purposes. The enterprise of understanding tourism’s main characteristics and attempting to predict future behaviors of tourism systems is thus complex. What is more, there is no satisfactory definition for “tourism”, despite a vast and enduring effort of a wide number of scholars and practitioners, thus making the endeavors of rigorously framing many questions even more difficult.

This complexity, as many scholars have recognized in recent times, requires tools and methods that are more sophisticated than the qualitative and quantitative techniques traditionally employed.

Today there are a number of methods that are facilitated by the availability of good hardware and software applications, which can be used to model systems and phenomena, and stimulate possible configurations and the effects that these have on many dynamic processes. These tools come from the work done in several different disciplines but are, however, not very widely diffused in the tourism and hospitality domain, even though they could prove quite effective in analyzing, assessing and predicting complex systems and phenomena, such as those observed in tourism and hospitality.

In recent years we have studied and used many of these methods, applying them in different contexts, often with a special focus on issues connected with the tourism and hospitality domains.

In Modelling and Simulation for Tourism and Hospitality we provide an introduction to the main opportunities modelling and simulation techniques and tools offer to researchers and practitioners. The approach we follow is mainly “practical”. We do not delve into complicated theoretical descriptions of the methods, and when we do, we mainly focus on highlighting the conceptual nature of the technique at hand.

Instead, we concentrate on discussing examples aiming to show the basic features, the possibilities of the different techniques and how these methods complement each other in providing a wider array of tools for all those interested or involved in studying or managing tourism or hospitality organizations. Finally, we complement the book with suggestions for further readings and with a list of software tools usable for the different modelling techniques discussed.

Jacopo A. Baggio, jacopo.baggio@ucf.edu

Rodolfo Baggio, rodolfo.baggio@unibocconi.it

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Quantitative Methods in Tourism by Rodolfo Baggio and Jane Klobas.

Writing about Brexit: The Challenge of Uncertainty

This month we published the very topical Brexit and Tourism by Derek Hall. In this post the author talks about the challenges of writing about something uncertain and ever-changing.

To many, relationships between Brexit and tourism may not at first sight seem obvious or even significant. But the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and the issues surrounding it, have influenced, and will continue to exert profound impacts upon, tourism and related issues.

The value of sterling, availability of labour and migration, agriculture, food and catering, visa policies, taxes, travellers’ health and welfare provision, transport, accommodation, regional development, imagery and identity are just some of the more obvious tourism-related dimensions of Brexit’s direct and indirect impacts that are addressed in the book.

Continued uncertainty and the successive postponement of a withdrawal date have posed an ongoing challenge in maintaining the book’s integrity. Such uncertainty was – and continues to be – exacerbated by the absence of any coherent medium- or long-term national policy for coping with Brexit’s consequences. The outside possibility that a UK withdrawal from the EU might not actually take place was also dangled, and that as a consequence the book could prove to be a hypothetical historical document, an exercise in writing alternative history.

Critical analysis within the book has needed to look beyond the superficial rhetoric and political mendacity that has surrounded so much of the divisive Brexit debates. Acknowledging that academics have their own vested interests in such debates, sustaining objective arguments within the book has also been a challenge.

As no sovereign country has previously left the EU, the precedent of Brexit opens up unknown territory and many intriguing questions to explore. Thus, for example, one chapter of the book is devoted to examining a range of possible theoretical frameworks that can be employed to understand Brexit’s impacts on tourism.

One objective of the book is to broaden and inform debate in areas that have been neglected or even ignored in the UK. Thus the position of Gibraltar, voting 96% to remain in the EU but tied to a UK withdrawal, has barely been mentioned in UK debates. This merits a chapter, as do the likely environmental consequences of Brexit. The roles and situations of EU nationals in the UK and of UK nationals living, working and retiring in (other) EU countries also receive close attention.

Long before the 2016 EU referendum, some Eurosceptics were arguing that the Commonwealth could replace the role of the EU if the UK left the latter. Such arguments later faded away, but the role of the Commonwealth has deserved further scrutiny, not least in relation to the appalling treatment the UK government has meted out to some of the ‘Windrush generation’ regarding their UK citizenship rights.

So, while the book’s focus is placed firmly on relationships between Brexit and tourism, these are set within broad (geo)political, economic, social and environmental perspectives that help to illuminate and illustrate the central themes.

Derek Hall

derekhall@seabankscotland.co.uk

For more information on this book please see our website.