Business Commons^™

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 …

Virtual Reality As A Promotional Tool: Insights From A Consumer Travel Fair, Mary O'Rawe, Alex Gibson

Books / Book chapters

Although the potential of virtual reality (VR) as a technology in tourism has been recognised for more than twenty years, (Horan, 1996; Williams and Hobson, 1995), we have witnessed a renewed interest in both academic and business circles recently (Jung, tom Dieck, Lee, & Chung, 2016). From a marketing perspective, VR offers the potential to build a sensory experience of a tourism destination or attraction, and can be used in sales contexts to complement, or indeed, supplant traditional promotional tools such as brochures. The immersive nature of the experience offers a deeper and more emotional assessment of the tourist offering …

Understanding How Social Entrepreneurs Fit Into The Tourism Discourse, Ziene Mottiar, Karla Boluk

Books / Book chapters

This chapter discusses how social entrepreneurs fit into the existing tourism discourse. It examines four areas of literature in particular, tourism entrepreneurs, sustainability, destination development and intrapreneurship, and analyzes how introducing the concept of social entrepreneurs into these discussions is useful, and contributes to our understanding. Furthermore the paper illustrates that as social entrepreneurs are relevant to a broad range of issues in the tourism literature this should prevent the development of research silos where social entrepreneurship scholars seek out their own vein of research. The nexus of common ground and interests, as displayed in this chapter, should enhance the …

Economic Recession As A Catalyst To Increased Collaboration In Rural Tourism, Catherine Gorman, Ziene Mottiar

Books / Book chapters

Purpose: This chapter illustrates the collaborative strategies used by a rural village and community to counteract the rapid decline in economic and social activity in tourism that occurred during and after the recession in Ireland.

Design/methodology/approach: A review of literature focuses on collaborative strategies evident within a rural context, and considers benefits, challenges, inter and intra- relationships including ties, structure and communication. Motivational factors relating to social and economic need are also discussed. The case study is set in context with a brief review of the Irish economic environment, rural policy and rural tourism.

Findings: In a community rich in …

A Review Of Key Factors Affecting Consumers' Adoption And Usage Of Self-Service Technologies In The Tourism Sector, Jennifer Lawlor, Petranka Kelly, Michael Mulvey

Books / Book chapters

During the past ten years self-service technologies (SSTs) have attracted research attention especially in the banking, retail and airline sectors. The infusion of technology in the service encounter has been identified as being advantageous to both the service provider and the consumer, provided that SSTs gain adoption among consumers. In light of the importance of consumer participation in SSTs, this paper reviews the state of the SST adoption literature in an attempt to identify the most important influencing factors. Seven factors emerged as the ones of key research interest in the literature and they are discussed in more detail. These …

Contemporary Issues In Irish And Global Tourism And Hospitality, Geraldine Gorham, Ziene Mottiar

Books / Book chapters

This book contains an edited collection of papers presented at the Tourism and Hospitality Research in Ireland Conference 2009 (THRIC). This annual conference provides an invaluable opportunity for Irish and international tourism and hospitality academics and practitioners to debate the key contemporary challenges facing the sector. Based on this selection of conference papers a broad range of issues are addressed in the following chapters. These are issues, which are pertinent not only for Irish tourism and hospitality academics, policy makers and industry, but also resonate with international counterparts. Contributions to this book are made by an eclectic mix of highly …

Smes In Tourism: An International Review, Ziene Mottiar

Books / Book chapters

Ireland has become known as the Celtic Tiger due to average annual GNP growth of 9 percent during the 1990s. The reasons for this growth are many and varied and tourism and tourism firms have played no small part in this rapid growth. In total the sector sustains approximately 150,000 jobs (or job equivalents) amounting to 8.6 percent of total employment (Bord Failte, 2001). In some ways the tourism sector is representative of the broader industrial profile of Ireland with a number of large international firms but the majority of firms are SMEs. Both types of firms have gained from …