Critical Connections (Asynchronous Session)
Exploring the Over-tourism Phenomenon in Alexandria, Egypt View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Abeer Attia, Rania Ragab, Nashwa Fouad Attallah
Recently, the word over-tourism has received worldwide attention, and it has become a topic of concern to many destinations as the peak season in the most popular destinations has been growing at a higher numbers of tourist arrivals. This has given rise to the anti-tourism sentiment among local residents, especially those living close to the intensely visited districts. Several studies have addressed this phenomenon in the most popular European destinations. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to shed light on the over-tourism phenomenon in Alexandria during summer, the second largest and important city in Egypt and has a special charm as the pearl of the Mediterranean. The researchers investigate the causes and impacts of this phenomenon in Alexandria during summer based on personal observation, interviews with the local residents, and the responsible persons in the Central Administration for Tourism and Resorts in Alexandria, as well as, document analysis, including research papers, online articles, press releases and books, and institutional reports in order to offer suggestions for measures to be taken to face over-tourism, and to provide useful directions for future visitor management in Alexandria.
Featured Measuring Sustainable Tourism: Case Study of Jambughoda Wildlife Sanctuary
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tanya Kewalramani
This thesis explores sustainable tourism as a catalyst to safeguard intangible cultural heritage by studying the case of Jambughoda Wildlife Sanctuary, India. This study also scrutinizes the role tourism initiatives play towards achieving the SDGs at the site. However, one cannot study the impact of sustainable development without measuring it which is meaningless without the indicators. To employ an indicator-based approach, indicators need to be developed from the grassroot level with a bottom up approach as each destination has different features. The author has mapped the interrelationship between tourism and cultural-natural heritage. The indicators for this study were devised to measure whether sustainable tourism is serving as a catalyst to safeguard and revive cultural heritage knowledge system and practices with economic, environmental, and socio-cultural sustainability, and thus, promoting solidarity economy. To measure the sustainability, a matrix-based indicator system is developed based on participant observation and semi structured interviews. This thesis also explored how the indigenous communities must apply the concept of ploughing back of profits to retain the earnings from tourism towards safeguarding and promotion of their cultural heritage. This study is an example of Pareto efficiency as well. The conclusion indicates that institutional leadership is required to steer and delve the communities towards sustainability. The author has identified the tour operators as a key stakeholder and the link between the tourists and local community, which makes them the drivers for sustainability and a funnel to implement the policy measures required for sustainability.
Featured Cruise Tourism and Criticality of Infrastructures View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Allegra Celine Baumann
Technical, net-worked infrastructure systems are the basis for modern cities and essential for the functioning and development of tourism. However, increasing tourist numbers can outrun system capacities and lead to their failure or breakdown. In this context, cruise tourism is of high relevance as this tourism sector creates high pressure on these systems by the temporal and spatial concentration of cruise tourists in a city. City governments address technical, net-worked infrastructure systems in their strategies to cope with tourism effects. In this process, they ascribe different levels of criticality to these systems, whereby some systems are dealt to be more relevant than others. Using the case study of Dubrovnik in Croatia and a qualitative research design with semi-structured expert interviews, this paper examines how criticality is ascribed in the context of cruise tourism and the impact on introduced measures to cope with tourism effects.
Race, Positionality, and Responsibility in the Transitioning Plantation Museum: Examining Challenges and Opportunities in Narrative Slavery in Plantation Museums in Louisiana, USA. View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Doron Eldar
Plantation museums across the southern US have attracted researchers’ attention for their whitewashing narration of the region’s antebellum history. Recognizing these heritage sites’ harmful contributions to racial inequality and lack of cultural sensitivity, researchers increasingly call for progressive changes to the plantation museums’ narration of slavery. These calls for change, however, consistently neglect to address the important question of how plantation museums should change to become sites challenging racializing processes rather than reinforcing them. To better understand the dynamics and dilemmas faced by plantation museums choosing to narrate the history of enslavement, I researched two plantation museums in Louisiana’s River Road. The first is the Whitney Plantation which stands out as a plantation museum that opened with the direct intention to challenge the master narrative and center the enslaved experience. The second is the Oak Alley Plantation, which recently transitioned from a whitewashed narration to one attempting to center slavery. By examining these two cases my paper explores the uneasy tension between 1) the need for white "memory agents" to take responsibility and carry the burden of tackling "white ignorance" and 2) the fact that such a dynamic renders those who previously whitewashed slavery to be the narrators of this history.
Political Ideology and Rural Tourism in the U.S.: Exploring Social Judgments between Residents and Hosts View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chantell La Pan
This study explores the relationship between political ideology, social judgements, and resident’s perceptions of tourism in rural areas. The study used semi-structured interviews to better understand individualistic (i.e., agency) and social (i.e., communion) tendencies among Vermont (USA) farmers and determine whether these beliefs manifest in pro-tourism or anti-tourism attitudes the study population. Participants were recruited from an existing list of VT agritourism farmers as well as through a convenience sample of farmers selling their products at farmers markets. A total of 20 interviews were conducted that ranged from approximately 30 minutes to 3 hours in length. For comparison, the study population included both farms that already offer farm tourism and those that do not. Interviews were audio recorded and recordings were transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed according to Grounded Theory and included open, axial, and selective coding. Results suggests that while many Vermont farmers feel disconnected from national politics, they are intimately tied to local and state politics. Farmers generally felt that the state and local political climate was friendly to farmers, but they also felt that farmers themselves were responsible for their own successes and failures and did not heavily rely on state or national policies. Tourism was generally well-regarded by both agritourism and non-agritourism farmers as well as those across the political spectrum, but willingness to host tourists varied.
Overcoming Mass Tourism in the Caribbean Small Island Developing States View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marina De Moraes Lopes
The increasing reliance on tourism in the Caribbean economies has grown to unsustainable levels. It is well known that the leakage of investments in the region is one of the biggest in the world and that traditional sectors, such as agriculture, are being greatly affected due to the drainage of labor into the touristic enclaves. These countries share a common past of colonialism that has left them in a rather fragile economic situation. Most of them are Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which makes them more susceptible to external shocks and climate change. The objective of this study is to analyze how the model of mass-tourism guided by the notions of classical development contributed to the production of even more dependent economies and how paradigm shift to sustainable development has helped shaping the new trends of tourism. By doing this, the research aims to help guide policy makers and tourism specialists when assessing possible solutions to mass-tourism and over tourism problems in the Caribbean SIDS.
Academic Training for Adventure Tourism Professionals in Valencia, Spain View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Martín Talavera, Lázaro Mediavilla Saldaña, Virginia Gómez Barrios, Vicente Gómez Encinas
In the adventure tourism sector, one of the aspects that most concerns the collective is to offer a complete and quality service. For this, human resources are a fundamental component. This study attempts to analyse the current situation of training in adventure tourism in the “Comunidad Valenciana” and analyses the existing training possessed by workers in order to see if the real needs of the sector are met. In Spain, there are some official qualifications that try to cover the legal requirements requested within the adventure tourism sector. These are sports training (sports technicians) and educational training (Degree in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, Technician in Conducting Physical Activities in the Natural Environment and Higher Technician in Physical-Sports Animation). The priority qualification that guides have is Sports Technician; however, these qualifications do not cover all the existing offer. Of the 67 activities recognised by Valencian legislation, only 26 have a recognised sports qualification. The professional training of "Technician in Conducting Physical Activities in the Natural Environment" is the qualification that includes a greater number of modalities within its competences (cycling, trekking, horse riding). So, this qualification offers greater versatility and allows to act as a guide in more activities. However, this qualification is not common among the group of workers in adventure tourism. In Europe, professional training is regulated from the field of tourism and outdoor leisure, to make the training much more specific and acquire skills in line with the real needs of the sector.
From March to Plight of the Penguin: Confronting Antarctic Tourism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pat Mahoney
Penguins, while they adorn the covers of travel catalogues as iconic images of Antarctica and are symbolic markers of tourist’s conquests on expedition websites, today these charismatic creatures are disappearing from the White Continent. This paper investigates the intersection of anthropogenic-driven climate change and accelerating tourism on penguin colony collapse in Antarctica. I argue that the “plight of the penguin” is a consequence of the vast impact of the “Anthropos”, where penguin colonies collapse -- from lack of ice -- without ever confronting the human, as well as the direct encounter with the dramatic growth in land-based tourism. As Antarctic ice extent decreases penguin colonies either collapse or are forced into arduous migrations, with shrinking ice there has been a marked increase in tourist arrivals with penguins as the main attraction (IAATO). Despite the global cruise industry experiencing a 70% drop in passengers due to COVID-19, and international tourist arrivals plummeted as much as 97%; once the industry tried to return to normal, some the quickest global travel circuits to advertise that they were “open for business” where in the Arctic and Antarctic regions (Cruise Watch; UNWTO). Meanwhile, Chinstrap penguin colonies have decline by 77% (Greenpeace 2020), with 90% of the Emperor penguin colonies projected to disappear by 2100 if climate change goes unabated (British Antarctic Society). The concentration of colony losses is occurring on the Antarctic Peninsula and in Western Antarctica, regions which are most directly impacted by tourism (Mahoney 2020). This relationship is anything but a coincidence.
The Effect of Transportation Accessibility on People's Participation in Leisure Activities and Their Subjective Well-being View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yuichiro Kawabata
This study focuses on how policy makers can improve people's subjective well-being through leisure activities. It examines whether or not transportation accessibility to leisure sites can improve people's subjective well-being by increasing the frequency of primary activities (e.g. going to concerts, watching movies at theater, playing sports) and the accompanying activities (e.g. having dinner, shopping). The analysis may lead to proposals of next-generation transportation policies, and the analysis including accompanying activities is especially valuable because there are few previous studies on them. This study is in the context of research on the evaluation of transportation policies using subjective as well as objective indicators. The examination of the effect was based on psychological analyses of the data collected through an online survey. We conducted the survey in three cities (Tokyo, New York, and London) and the questionnaire includes people's participation in primary and accompanying leisure activities, objective and subjective accessibility to leisure sites, and people's subjective well-being. The result showed that, depending on the mode of transportation used, subjective improvements in transportation accessibility increases the frequency of primary and accompanying leisure activities, and the participants' subjective well-being. This study suggests that urban transportation policy should include the improvement of accessibility to leisure activities as an objective, and that leisure should be arranged as integrated experiences of primary and accompanying activities.
