Trends and Transformations
Exploring Labor Force Trends in the Hospitality Sector across Four Institutional Regimes: A Comparative Analysis Using Eurostat Surveys
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bayaz Mammadova
This paper investigates labor force trends within the hospitality sector across four institutional regimes in Europe where the hospitality sector contributes the highest share of employment, namely the UK (Liberal), Greece (Southern European), Netherlands (Social Democratic), and Germany (Continental). The analysis employs secondary data from 2009-2020, sourced from various Eurostat surveys, including the Labor Force Survey (LFS), Adult Education Survey (AES), Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), and Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS). Quantitative analysis was used to examine the trends in employment and changes in occupational structure over the study period. This study employs a range of statistical techniques, including descriptive statistics and regression analysis to identify patterns and trends in the data. The objective of the study is to further understand the impact of the fourth industrial revolution on the hospitality sector, as well as analyze whether and to what extent these trends lead to bureaucratization, underemployment, precarisation, deregulation and de-professionalization within the industry, especially from perspective of education. The study provides an overview of the current state of the hospitality labor market in each country, highlighting similarities and differences in employment patterns, education and training, and earnings. The findings reveal that institutional factors play a significant role in shaping labor force trends in the hospitality sector, with notable variations between the four regimes. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policymakers and stakeholders in the hospitality industry.
Utopia or Dystopia? Tourism as Invasion and the Development of Kavos, Corfu, into a Destination: A Longitudinal Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nika Balomenou
Until the 1980s, Kavos was a quiet fishing village in the South of Corfu. A lot has changed since the first tourists arrived in the 1970s. Eventually, Kavos has developed a reputation of a notorious ‘sand, sea and sex- 3s’ destination for British 18-30, working-class tourists. This reputation was cemented in Greece due to a group sex activity organised by holiday reps in 2003 that was reported on the news nationally and in the UK by TV programmes, including Channel 4 television programme ‘What happens in Kavos…’, which aired 2013-14. This paper presents preliminary results; results of the two first phases of this study from 2006 and 2016 and preliminary results and a conceptual approach of tourism as invasion. The lives of the local community changed dramatically in a very short time, with the changes impacting interpersonal relationships with economic interactions replacing family bonds in driving these relationships. This paper argues that the community suffered acute trauma which is still evident today, akin to an invasion. This study also looks at the motivations of guests under the prism of liminality and rites of passage, and examines stakeholders and power issues that inhibit change and local peoples’ attitudes towards tourism, under Krippendorf’s prism of the ‘rebellious local’.
Loyalty towards ERASMUS+ Destinations through Cool City Image and Transformative Experiences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Francisco Peco Torres, Hazel Andrews, Ana Isabel Polo Peña
The general objective of this work is to better understand the effect of new mechanisms that can enhance loyalty towards ERASMUS+ destinations. A quantitative empirical study was carried out through ERASMUS+ students in Spain. The results show that the perception of cool city image and the transformative experience of ERASMUS+ students have a positive effect on students loyalty to the city where they carried out their ERASMUS+ stay. The results also confirm the positive influence of the perception of cool city image on the transformative experience of ERASMUS+. The findings are of value to the literature and the professional sector alike. Firstly, in terms of literature, the relevance of a variable barely treated by literature, such as the cool image, is demonstrated in a context that is little exploited, such as that of ERASMUS+ destinations. Regarding the practical implications of the work, this work highlights that for ERASMUS+ students to be loyal to the destination, the destination must be projected in such a way that they perceive it as original, extroverted, vibrant and lively. This strategy can be carried out through all its communication channels (social networks, events, website, advertising, among others). Additionally, to enhance the transformative experience for ERASMUS+ students, it is important to promote events where visitors interact with local residents and their culture, as well as exhibitions in public spaces to learn more about the history and important places in the city.
Touring through Media: The Traveling Rhetoric of the Palestinian Refugee Camp
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexis Whitacre
Refugee camps have famously been conceptualized as stationary physical spaces, concrete containers of undesirable people, and isolated, forgotten places. More recently, though, refugee camps have also become notable tourist attractions, a particularly notable phenomenon in the West Bank. As visitors flock to Palestinian refugee camps, they engage in a long-standing tourist ritual of photography, though now with a contemporary twist: tourists are documenting their vacations on social media. In ‘posting’, tourists actively and persuasively relay particular narratives about the visited site—the Palestinian refugee camp. This paper positions tourists’ media content on tour as a form of multimodal rhetoric—a means of persuasion and argumentation through oral, textual, and visual methods. As tourists in the camp post to sites like Instagram, they represent camp space, framing it in ways that contribute to or negotiate its perceived values and meanings. Tourists’ social media posts constitute a type of advertisement, replete with specific and meaningful persuasive messages. When the rhetoric of the camp is digitized, it transforms the camp into a camp-as-rhetoric, turning outside viewing audiences into virtual tourists of camp spaces. Unlike the camp itself, the camp-as-rhetoric promoted on tourists’ social media accounts can travel. Thus, using rhetorical analysis of semi-structured interviews and social media posts, I contend that ‘camp-ness’ can be reconceptualized as a traveling rhetoric, rather than an architecturally defined space. By engaging in and extending traditional tourist photographic rituals, tourists digitally reframe the stationary and isolated physical space of the camp as a mobile, hybrid, and rhetorical one—a traveling rhetoric.
