Online Lightning Talks
A Focus on Pedagogical Renewal: Hospitality Graduates' Preparedness for Employment
Online Lightning Talk Ngizimisele Ndlovu, Xena Michelle Cupido
Higher education is increasingly under pressure to prepare hospitality graduates for future employment to cater for the continuously growing sector of the tourism and hospitality industry. This growth calls for a need to renew the teaching and learning methods of equipping hospitality graduates with the skills and knowledge required for employment which hospitality graduates are currently lacking. Through the use of the Change Laboratory (CL) method, an expansive learning process engaged hospitality graduates to find collective interventions to improve the teaching and learning techniques with the aim of improving graduates’ skills and knowledge for employment. This paper reports on the findings of the CL where in-depth interviews were held with hospitality management lecturers for the collection of mirror data. Using the CL expansive cycle, hospitality management graduates were exposed to four workshop sessions for discussions with the aim of coming up with a solution to the needed change on hospitality graduates’ preparedness for employment. The findings reveal contradictions between hospitality lecturers and hospitality graduates’ opinions on the hospitality graduates’ preparedness for the field of work. The study also outlined lack of graduates’ preparedness for employment due to teaching and learning challenges encountered during the graduates’ study period. The study reveals a need for pedagogical renewal at tertiary level and a need for the hospitality management lecturers to have a relationship with the hospitality industry in order to be in line with the ever changing hospitality sector skills and knowledge needs.
Pele’s Curse? Consequences of Taking Piece of the Rock Souvenirs
Online Lightning Talk William Lenz
Travelers collect souvenirs to preserve their connection to a particular place. a particular time, and to a particular image of themselves. The tourism industry supplies countless souvenirs--location-marked T-shirts, shot glasses, and magnets--to commemorate visits to popular destinations. But some travelers seek a souvenir that appears more personal and authentic, what Beverly Gordon terms “piece of the rock” souvenirs (1986). These travelers might scoop up sand from the beach, pick up a stone on a trail, or collect a flower from a meadow. What can be the harm in taking a handful of sand, a simple rock, or one of Nature’s beautiful blooms? A significant number of tourists who have collected natural souvenirs report that they feel they have been cursed, that upon returning home with their souvenirs they suffered severe misfortune. They believe the cause and effect is indisputable. This study examines the consequences of taking piece of the rock souvenirs such as lava stones from Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii by analyzing tourists’ accounts posted to social media. What are the attitudes of tourists who take physical objects as souvenirs? Can taking pieces of places really trigger a supernatural curse? What ethical issues does a souvenir curse represent? What does belief in these curses suggest about contemporary cultural attitudes toward souvenir collecting, tourism, and the environment? What anxieties about the self and identity construction do the curses reveal? What does Pele’s Curse tell us?
Sustainable Practices in Rural Tourism: A Case Study from Třeboňsko Region
Online Lightning Talk Helena Kubickova
Under the constant pressure of sustainability in the past decade, several new types of tourism have arisen considered to be green and environmentally friendly. One of them is rural tourism. To keep sustainability, the supply of rural tourism should ideally optimize its services following sustainable regional development. Especially, when it runs a business close to or in a protected landscape area.T he goal of this paper is to analyze the arrangement of tourism services providers in terms of sustainable tools implemented in their entrepreneurship. Based on primary data collected in 2018 by the questionnaire survey, the paper unveils if do 214 sampled tourism service providers implement elementary sustainable tools in their business such as waste sorting and towel change policy while offering accommodation. The analyzed sample occupies the protected landscape area Třeboňsko located in the south part of the Czech Republic. Moreover, this region is as well protected as UNESCO biosphere reservation which makes the area more valuable and the level of protection more important. Talking about the results, the majority accept this practice as compulsory to their business thus can harm their competitive ability in case of absence. However, they inform their customers by leaflets about the topic and appeal to the customer's own decision. To sum up, the results show that basic tools for sustainability fulfilling are rather implemented by sampled tourism service providers. On the other hand, these practices are only the first step and many more tools should be presented.
