Diversity Tourism
Beyond Accessibility: How Does the Tourism Industry Compare?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stefanie Benjamin, Samantha Oleniak, Ethan Bottone, Miranda Lee
Underrepresented populations including people of color, LGTBQ, and people with disabilities, are growing markets in hospitality and tourism and make a significant economic impact on the industry. However, many of these minority groups are not properly represented in tourism marketing materials that traditionally cater toward White, cisgender, heterosexual and able-bodied men that perpetuate a White male touristic gaze (Alderman, 2013). This study focuses on people with disabilities since this minority is a fast-growing tourism sector that also includes the ageing baby boomer generation. Further identifying the significance of this target, a recent podcast from Skift (2017), the travel resource center shared that, "Statistics are scarce, but according to a study commissioned in 2015 by the Open Doors Organization, adults with disabilities in the U.S. spend $17.3 billion a year on leisure and business travel. Over the two years before the study, 26 million adults with disabilities took 73 million trips." Much of tourism marketing and advertising still needs to be more inclusive of this growing minority target demographic. Thus, this presentation will explore how people with disabilities are represented, within southeastern U.S. tourism marketing materials including brochures and internal marketing (i.e. DMO / CVB, civic leaders, hoteliers and attractions) through a content analysis (Elo & Kyngas, 2008. Furthermore, provide foundational insights to answer the following research questions: In what ways are people with disabilities included in tourism and hospitality marketing materials? How can tourism and hospitality marketing materials be more inclusive for people with disabilities?
Pink Dollar Tourism in India: Opportunities and Challenges
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Milind Fadnavis
India has sent powerful signal to world after supreme court decision decriminalizing LGBT.Author in this paper has shared findings of exploratory research on opportunities and challenges if India wants to capitalize on this decision. Sample size chosen was 40 and comprised of ten members each of lesbian, gay, transgender and bi-sexual community. All respondents were from central India and were from middle or higher middle class. Focus group interview method was used and each group i.e. lesbian, gay) was separately interviewed. Issues such as preferred destinations, duration of stay, season, type of accommodation, budget constraints if any, other concerns shown were covered. Except for group of transgenders, all other groups were enthusiastic about going out and enjoy the newly found freedom. Trans-genders preferred Stay-cation due to issue of harassment and were not comfortable going out of safety zone. Bisexual preferred commonly popular destinations but gay and lesbians chose to go to isolated places where their privacy was not an issue. Those from Information technology sector and had exposure to western world wanted to go to bay area. All groups opted for five days package and decided to choose accommodation based on reviews. Safety was the biggest concern for all respondents and transgenders were vocal on this issue. Ten respondents with no budget constraints wished to opt for luxury cruise. None of them were ready to believe in advertisements and decided to believe reviews from own community. Sample size was forty and findings from study can not be extrapolated Pan India.
A Gender-deficit Study of Inbound Tourists and Outbound Travelers in Taiwan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kuo Yin Hao, Yu Ting Chiu
Sourced from official government data, a 15-year-spectrum data for monthly inbound tourists and outbound travelers from 2003 to 2017 for top 10 markets in Taiwan were collected and analyzed by this study. Aimed to demonstrate, explore, cluster, and monitor the spatiotemporal deficit with respect to different genders, this study not only explored the static phenomenon that deficit or surplus of different gender occurred in each market, but monitored its dynamic disturbance as well. Statistical procedures including correlation analysis, K-mean clustering, MANOVA analysis, and MDS, were respectively adopted to discover the correlative relation among each different market, determine each observation into proper group, testify the hypotheses of heterogeneous cluster centers significantly exist, and down-level the spatial complexity from high-dimension to 2-dimension in order to better interpret the patterns revealed behind the original space.
