Geography Commons^™

Review Of: Tourism Development, Governance And Sustainability In The Bahamas, Julian Philipp, Julia Schiemann, Hannah Zehren

International Journal of Islands Research

Book Review of: Rolle, S., Minnis, J. and Bethell-Bennett, I. (Eds.) (2020) Tourism Development, Governance and Sustainability in The Bahamas, Abingdon, Routledge

Climate Change And Tourism In The Seychelles: Perceptions And Measures, Tatjana Thimm

International Journal of Islands Research

The aim of this paper is to find out in how accommodation providers in the Seychelles perceive climate change and what mitigation and adaptation measures they can provide. In order to answer these questions, a qualitative mixed-method-approach, comprised of twenty semi-structured interviews, an online-survey and participant observation was used. Results show that accommodation providers especially perceive the effects of climate change that directly affect their business and that they have already partly implemented some mitigation and adaptation measures. However, strategies and regulations are needed at the Seychelles’ government level and on a global level to actually achieve CO2 neutral travel.

Fade Event Explores The Digital Future Of Arts Festivals, Enya Moore Dr

Other resources

On September 14th 2023, stakeholders from Dublin's festival community, including representatives from the Arts Council, the Department of Rural and Community Development, and the Dublin City Arts Office, participated in a public engagement event at TU Dublin's Grangegorman campus. Entitled Festivals, Audiences and the Digital Experience (FADE), named after an ongoing research project of the same name, the event explored the intersection of creativity, technology and community at the heart of festival making in Dublin. The event formed part of the 'Revealing Grangegorman' series, a programme organized by TU Dublin to celebrate the campus and its infrastructural growth during the …

Review Of: Pandemics, Disasters, Sustainability, Tourism: An Examination Of Impact On And Resilience In Caribbean Small Island Developing States, Andrew Halliday

International Journal of Islands Research

Review of: Bethell-Bennett, I., Rolle, S.A., Minnis, J. and Okumus, F. (Eds.) (2022) Pandemics, Disasters, Sustainability, Tourism: An Examination of Impact on and Resilience in Caribbean Small Island Developing States. 265 pp. Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley. ISBN: 978-1- 80382-107-8.

Keywords In Unesco Websites: The Role Of Image In Destination Marketing, Ninfa Pagano

International Journal of Islands Research

Online communication plays a vital role in tourist image formation and travel choices in the digital era. In this way, institutional communication performs a central role in tourism, influencing the market through text and keywords choice on websites. This study aims to analyse online communication by focusing on tourism discourse, i.e. English language as a specialised and promotional discourse in tourism, with a special emphasis on Dann’s rhetorical strategy of keywords. The present study explores the communication used in UNESCO websites and its contribution to tourist destination image formation through corpus-based Discourse Analysis. The focus on a selected number of …

Giving Voice To Australia’S Professional Tour Guides: Perspectives Of Their Social Identity, Birgitta E. March Mrs, Kim Williams Dr, Caroline Winter Dr

International Journal of Tour Guiding Research

Professional tour guides (PTGs) play an instrumental role in Australia’s tourism industry, however, there is little understanding of their perspectives regarding their challenges, expectations, belonging, and recognition. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they lack a voice and feel neglected within the tourism industry. This study adopted an interpretivist approach to capture the voices and perspectives of 19 Australian PTGs, through focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews. This qualitative study was seen through the lens of Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory (1974). A key finding is that the tour guides’ strong sense of belonging is the motivating factor to address the lack of …

An Examination Of Destination And Business Place Identity Along The Wild Atlantic Way (Ireland) Tourism Route, Ziene Mottiar, Theresa Ryan

Conference papers

An examination of the layers of business place identities resulting from the creation of a road tourism route: an exploration of the Wild Atlantic Way

Proposal and originality (500 characters)

This paper is focussed on the Wild Atlantic Way (WAW) in Ireland and explores the concept of entrepreneurial place identity in terms of tourism routes. Place identity has been shown to be important for tourism entrepreneurs as it affects their self- efficacy (Haller, Assaker and Lee, 2013) and their strategies (Mottiar, 2016). This paper seeks to explore how tourism businesses have altered their identity as a result of the WAW. …

“For Posterity, It’S Something Important To Do”: Festivals, Digital Practices, And Conserving Community Heritage, Enya Moore Dr.

Presentations

This presentation highlights the importance of preserving arts festival activities and uses empirical evidence to underline the significance of the digital turn for archiving this kind of intangible heritage. As Del Barrio et al (2012, pp. 235) argue, cultural festivals are an emblematic example of immaterial cultural heritage, 'since they are experience goods which expire at the moment they are produced and not only express artistic innovations in the field but also draw on previous cultural background, perceived as accumulated cultural capital’ . Data gathered through qualitative fieldwork with rural festival makers are used to explore the potential that digitising …

Playing From The Edge: Music Festivals And Broadcasting Practices In The West Cork Region Of Ireland, Enya Moore Dr., Bernadette Quinn, Brian Vaughan Dr

Presentations

A study of arts festivals' experiences of adopting digital practices in the period 2020-2022. The context is rural and the qualitative data were gathered in West Cork in the south west of Ireland.

Travel Agencies And Tourist Guides Adapting To Crisis: The Portuguese Case, Ilídia C. G. Carvalho

International Journal of Tour Guiding Research

Tourism is constantly changing and new paradigms arise. Most recently, travel agencies and tourist guides have been facing difficulties and have had to quickly adapt themselves to be able to keep a position in the tourism market. COVID-19 brought major changes to travel and experience in destinations and it certainly increased the use of technology, which has totally changed communication systems and relationships in tourism. For this paper, interviews with Portuguese travel agents and tourist guides were carried out and were later analysed allowing the author to gain insights into the current situation regarding these two stakeholders, which were previously …

Smart City Tours As An Innovative Way To (Re)Discover Urban Environments In An Italian Context, Miriam L. Weiß

International Journal of Tour Guiding Research

This article explores the foundations upon which to build innovation and further professionalise the tour guiding sector in an Italian context. It is based on a cooperation initiative started in March 2020 just at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic which proposes smart city tours as innovative, sustainable, and creative ways to (re)discover urban environments with the expected impact to make tour participants think, influence post-tour behaviour towards sustainability, and to provide a differentiated view of a visited place. The study is designed as a formative evaluation prior to introducing measures that allow further exploitation of the potential for smart …

Tour Guides And Access To Trails: Problems In The Baħrija Area Of Malta, David Pace

International Journal of Tour Guiding Research

The Maltese islands barely cover an area of 300 square kilometres and yet, they enjoy a varied landscape characterised by cliffs, ridges, hills and valleys. There are over a hundred valleys on the main island of Malta and many provide important waterways during the rainy season and present some of the most beautiful and varied scenery. The most accessible include the Qlejgħa valley and White Poplar Valley (Wied il-Luq). Both are frequented by thousands of visitors, particularly during the weekends and are also quite popular with tourists during the winter months. Malta’s high population density, the influx of millions of …

Ijtgr Volume 3 Table Of Contents, Kevin A. Griffin, Luis Miguel Brito, Glen Farrugia

International Journal of Tour Guiding Research

No abstract provided.

Developing A Visitor Profile: The Hill Of Tara For Hill Of Tara Conservation Management Plan, Catherine Gorman, Kevin Fogarty, Emylii Santana Souza, Gabriela Stasiulyte

Reports / Surveys

A Conservation Management Plan for the State-owned lands at the Hill of Tara was commissioned by the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in January 2018. As an element of this at the request of the Heritage Council and the Discovery Programme, a visitor profile was undertaken by staff and students of the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). According to the Office of Public Works (OPW), over 200,000 people visit Tara archaeological site each year, and the site is being actively promoted as part of the Ireland’s Ancient East brand by Fáilte Ireland. …

Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation In A Small Archipelago: The Role Of Ecotourism In Malta, Karl Agius

International Journal of Islands Research

The aim of this paper is to present the potential of ecotourism to develop into a niche contributing to climate change adaptation strategies whilst making the existing tourism industry more resilient. The paper provides an overview of mitigation measures adopted in Malta by the aviation, tourism and hospitality industry as well as policy makers in the archipelago to respond to major challenges that climate change poses for tourism. These changes are vital to lure ecotourists and to support ecotourism development. Six main themes emerged from the research in the context of the role ecotourism can play as an adaptation to …

A Relational Approach To Networks In A Tourism Destination: Business And Family Networks In San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily, Giovanni Ruggieri, Salvatore Iannolino

International Journal of Islands Research

This article constructs a relational framework using the principles of the Network Approach to examining the business exchange structure of a tourist destination. Network Analysis is the methodology to analyse the metrics of collaboration and cooperation among destination companies. The model was applied in a remote tourist destination named San Vito Lo Capo on the island of Sicily, where tourism has significantly expanded in the last twenty years. The focus is on how groupings of small companies within family relations can govern and be responsible for tourism destination cooperation. As the main result, the existence was identified, of a relational …

The Nexus Between Tourism Demand And Regional Characteristics: The Case Of Japanese Islands, Kantaro Takahashi

International Journal of Islands Research

This paper explores the relationships between tourism demand and regional characteristics of the Japanese islands. A regression model was carried out for 113 islands designated by the Remote Island Development Act, which is one of the laws designed to promote rural areas in Japan. Results show that the transportation situation was related to the demand of arrival tourists, whereas the results were insignificant for the model with the response variable as lodging tourists. Meanwhile, location factors were significant for lodging tourists—that is, open sea areas have more lodging tourism demand than islands in inland sea areas. Furthermore, this study found …

Ijir Title Page And Table Of Contents Vol. 3, Kevin A. Griffin, Giovanni Ruggieri, Patrizia Calò, Razaq Raj

International Journal of Islands Research

No abstract provided.

The Arts And Changing Rural Places, Bernadette Quinn Dr

Blog Posts

This blog post reflects on how recent changes to rural Ireland is influencing the arts. It recognises that rural places are very vibrant and dynamic, and that this offers many opportunities and challenges from an arts perspective. The blog also reflects on a panel discussion that the FADE project team hosted on ‘The arts and changing rural places’ at the Arts Council & Local Government’s biennial Places Matter conference in March 2022.

The research activities conducted for this publication were funded by the Irish Research Council.

Machine Learning With Kay, Lasith Niroshan, James Carswell

Conference Papers

Computational power is very important when training Deep Learning (DL) models with large amounts of data (Wooldridge, 2021). Hence, High-Performance Computing (HPC) can be leveraged to reduce computational cost, and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) provides significant infrastructure and services for research and development to both academia and industry. A portion of ICHEC's HPC system has been allocated for institutional access, and this paper presents a case study of how to use Kay (Ireland's national supercomputer) in the remote sensing domain. Specifically, this study uses clusters of Kay Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for training DL models to extract …

Active Leisure And Ageing In Rural Ireland: Exploring Perceptions And Motivations To Facilitate And Promote Meaningful Physical Activity, Angie Hartnett, Catherine Gorman

Articles

The life expectancy of the world population is increasing and the art of aging well is of global interest (European Commission, n.d.). In Ireland, the number of people over the age of 60 will increase from 1.1 million currently, to 2.44 million by 2041, constituting nearly one third of its total population (Institute of Public Health, 2018). Despite the benefits of regular physical activity (pa), particularly with the frail (≥65 years and requiring a walking aid), rates of participation remain low (Colley et al., 2011). Health concerns raised, such as smoking and weight issues, are more prevalent in this cohort …

Social Production And Consumption Of Space: A Lefebvrian Analysis Of The Kumbh Mela, Christine Buzinde, David Manuel-Navarrete, Jyotsna (Josi) M. Kalavar, Neena Kohli

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest pilgrimage gathering on the shores of the River Ganges. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (1991) trialectics of space framework, this paper interrogates the spatial dynamics of the Kumbh Mela through the spatial meanings espoused by local and international pilgrims. Accounting for dominant discourses that frame the event as occurring in and around a sacred waterscape, five focus groups with pilgrims were conducted at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India. The findings indicate that local pilgrims were aware of river pollution, but they used discursive strategies to decouple this material fact from their lived spiritual experiences; from …

The Effect Of Covid-19 On Independent African Churches (Iacs) In Johannesburg, South Africa, Constance Nyika, Milena Ivanovic, Kevin A. Griffin

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper explores the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the religious tourism activities of the four most prominent Independent Apostolic Churches (IAC) operating in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is an interpretive qualitative research study based on data from 15 telephone-based semi-structured interviews with congregants and church leaders of the Zion Christian Church, Zimbabwe (ZCC Mutendi), The Apostolic Church of Johane Marange, The Apostolic Church of Johane Masowe and Apostolic Faith Church, Mugodhi. Thematic content analysis was used for data analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the religious tourism activities of all four IACs in the study as they …

Festivals And The City: The Contested Geographies Of Urban Events, Andrew Smith, Guy Osborn, Bernadette Quinn

Books / Book chapters

This book explores how festivals and events affect urban places and public spaces, with a particular focus on their role in fostering inclusion. The ‘festivalisation’ of culture, politics and space in cities is often regarded as problematic, but this book examines the positive and negative ways that festivals affect cities by examining festive spaces as contested spaces. The book focuses on Western European cities, a particularly interesting context given the social and cultural pressures associated with high levels of in-migration and concerns over the commercialisation and privatisation of public spaces.

The key themes of this book are the quest for …

Event Tourism, Public Policy And Socio-Cultural Development In Dublin, Bernadette Quinn, Ana Maria Fernandes Dr, Theresa Ryan Dr

Articles

In a highly globalised, competitive world, urban strategies often highlight festivals and events as activities which can attract tourists and investors, extend the tourism season and boost the economy. Event tourism as a term is now well established in the tourism lexicon, however, it is usually employed in quite a limited way that offers only partial insights into a complex phenomenon. To redress this deficit, this paper examines the case of Dublin, where for the last twenty-five years, policy-makers have been using festivals and events to boost the city’s international standing. The aim is to investigate whether policy-makers can strategically …

Portuguese Continental Islands As Coastal And Maritime Tourist Destinations. Ria Formosa: An Exploration Of Its Media Impact Through Marketing, Adalberto Dias De Carvalho, Cristiana Oliveira

International Journal of Islands Research

This paper highlights the tourism promotional impacts of the tourism marketing strategies and the related media activities in relation to the Ria Formosa Natural Park, a set of islands located in the Algarve, in southern Portugal. It seeks to understand which representations are induced in the potential customers of a directly targeted tourist market. For this, we will use the conclusions of scientific studies on the geographical and physical reality of this territory and the content of the messages spread by intentionally directed marketing as well as the news spread by the media. Here we particularly reflect on the prevailing …

Island Sustainability-Predicted Impacts Of Climate Change On The Tourism Sector In Malta: Recent Experiences And Anecdotes From A Small Island, Andrew Jones Dr, Julian C. Zarb

International Journal of Islands Research

This paper aims to review threats to, and consequences of current climate change predictions on tourism in Malta. The paper reviews recent published research on the impacts of climate change and consequences of such on the physical social and economic character of tourism operations in the Maltese islands. The validity and practicality of management options to tackle the complex nature and juxtaposition between tourism growth, environment and climate change, and tourism destination management are considered, including an evaluation of management responses, the efficacy of local governance and current and future policy options and choices. The research methodology is primarily focused …

The Potential Impacts Of Climate Change On Avitourism To Islands: The Example Of Fair Isle, Scotland, Richard W. Butler Professor

International Journal of Islands Research

This paper discusses the potential impact of climate change upon a specific form of tourism, avitourism (birdwatching), and the resulting effects upon islands dependent upon this form of tourism. Bird populations, distributions and migratory patterns are all vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, extreme weather events and changes in the marine environment, as are the islands which provide their habitat. Avitourism is a lucrative and non-consumptive form of tourism that is of major importance to some small islands, particularly those that have unique indigenous breeding species and/or are visited by migrating species on a regular basis. A number of …

Ijir Table Of Contents Vol. 2, Giovanni Ruggieri, Patrizia Calò, Kevin A. Griffin, Razaq Raj

International Journal of Islands Research

No abstract provided.

Museums And Shrines: Reflecting On Relationships And Challenges, Lorenzo Bagnoli, Rita Capurro

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The aim of this paper is to introduce a method for analysing a specific kind of contemporary tourism positioned between two different traditional customs: visiting museums and going to pilgrimage sites. The case studies provided are focused on Italian shrine museums where it is difficult to ascertain whether visitors are cultural tourists or pilgrims or a combination of both. Regardless, the tourist flows and networks created by Italian shrine museums can provide promising elements for local development. Four case studies that are representative of different regions in Northern Italy and have specific features in common have been chosen: shrines dedicated …