Collective monograph

Tourism marketing is a vital tool in promoting the overall health of the global economy by not only bringing necessary revenue to a particular region, but also providing an opportunity for tourists to explore another culture, building tolerance and overall exposure to different ways of life. Strategic Tools and Methods for Promoting Hospitality and Tourism Services provides interdisciplinary perspectives in the areas of global tourism and hospitality. Highlighting cultural boundaries of strategic knowledge management through the use of case studies and theoretical research, as well as the opportunities and challenges of tourism marketing, this publication is an essential reference source for academicians, research scholars, marketing professionals, graduate-level students, and industry professionals interested in international travel and the vacation industry.

The concept of the green economy has now entered mainstream policy debates and been endorsed by a range of United Nations and other organizations. The Rio+20 UN conference specifically drew attention to the green economy approach in the context of sustainable development to move away from business-as-usual practices, act to end poverty, address environmental destruction and build a bridge to the sustainable future. It is increasingly recognized that the tourism sector can make a major contribution to the green economy through more sustainable practices, climate change mitigation and ecotourism. The role of tourism sector will continue to be crucial in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda too. However, there are ambiguities about how tourism and allied industries can maximize their contribution to human well-being and ensure environmentally sustainability, embracing issues of political economy, geography and business ethics. In this context, this book provides consensus about what the green economy entails, what role tourism can play in a green economy, early responses from many countries, on-going and emerging research initiatives that will enable tourism’s transition to a green economy. The chapters address three key themes: understanding the Green Economy concept and the role of tourism; responses and initiatives in greening tourism; and emerging techniques and research implications. A wide range of case studies from around the world and in different contexts is included to demonstrate the extent of the challenge and range of opportunities for the tourism industry.

This book discusses the complexity of understanding how tourism impacts the world and how the world impacts tourism – from the global scale to the local and individual scale.

The volume includes a set of selected papers extended and revised from the I2009 Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering (KESE 2009) was held on December 19~ 20, 2009, Shenzhen, China. Volume 1 is to provide a forum for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of Computer and Software Engineering to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the future research directions of these fields. 140 high-quality papers are included in the volume. Each paper has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 program committee members and selected by the volume editor Prof. Yanwen Wu. On behalf of this volume, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of authors and referees for their efforts reviewing the papers. Hoping you can find lots of profound research ideas and results on the related fields of Computer and Software Engineering.

This book provides a management perspective on the full historical, contemporary, and geographic landscape of hospitality and tourism (H&T) in Africa. In so doing, it critically assesses and challenges the applicability of Western theories within the African context and draws attention to the insights offered by African management concepts. A variety of key topics are examined, including, for example, H&T management practices and management innovation in Africa, the drivers of and variation in uptake of Western management practices, policies and strategies to promote the development of H&T organizations, the influence of management practices on the competitiveness of African countries as tourism destinations, and areas for improvement of H&T organizations in Africa in the digital age. The approach is multidisciplinary. Both local and global perspectives are presented by authors from Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia, with inclusion of intra- and inter-country comparisons. This book will be essential reading for scholars, students, businesses, and policy makers with an interest in H&T in Africa.

Tourism is facing a new paradigm that has been brought on by the introduction of experiences in the development, management, and promotion of tourism. Associating experiences to tourism destination and products allows tourists to relate to their vacations differently and helps to fuel a destination’s competitiveness and compliance with new needs and motivations that are being driven by the tourists. When properly design, managed, and developed, tourism experiences can contribute to the destination’s overall sustainability by maximining tourism’s positive impacts and fostering their spillover to local communities. Planning and Managing the Experience Economy in Tourism is an essential reference book that seeks to advance research on tourism experience as well as investigate how tourism experiences can create and increase tourism competitiveness. The book explores how the experience concept has evolved in the last decade, alongside the needs and motivations of consumers, and how it can be conceptualized, designed, managed, and implemented both at the tourism firm and destination levels. Delving further into concepts like creative tourism, destination attributes, and smart experiences, this book serves as a dynamic resource for travel agencies, tourism managers, tourism professionals, marketers, destination managers, government officials, policymakers, academicians, students, tourism officials, planners, and researchers.

This international case study book provides 28 expertly curated case studies on entrepreneurship and innovation in tourism, each with detailed implementation instructions for the instructor to maximise student participation and learning. The dynamic characteristic of the tourism industry under the influence of micro and macro environment factors requires future professionals to be equipped with appropriate skills and competencies to deal with change and development in real-life practices. Curated and developed by industry experts and practitioners, these case studies embody real-world scenarios with the aim of best preparing students for their future careers. This compelling set of case studies explores the dynamics of entrepreneurship in global context, analyses emerging markets and new business models, and elicits the implications of innovation and entrepreneurship in different contexts and within a transdisciplinary perspective. The cases illustrate innovation and entrepreneurship as an accelerator of tourism growth and development, under a sustainable perspective. With reflective questions throughout to aid both in-class discussion and self-study, this book is an ideal study resource for use in higher and vocational education, and its unique, teaching-led approach positions it as a vital study tool for instructors and students alike.

Political economy, in its various guises and transfigurations, is a research philosophy that presents both social commentary and theoretical progress and is concerned with a number of different topics: politics, regulation and governance, production systems, social relations, inequality and development amongst many others. As a critical theory, political economy seeks to provide an understanding of societies – and of the structures and social relations that form them – in order to evoke social change toward more equitable conditions. Despite the early influence of critical development studies and political economy on tourism research, political economy has received relatively little attention in tourism research. Political Economy and Tourism the first volume to bring together different theoretical perspectives and discourse in political economy related to tourism. Written by leading scholars, the text is organised into three sequential Parts, linked by the principle that ‘the political’ and ‘the economic’ are intimately connected. Part one presents different approaches to political economy, including Marxist political economy, regulation, comparative political economy, commodity chain research and alternative political economies; Part two links key themes of political economy, such as class, gender, labour, development and consumption, to tourism; and Part three examines the political economy at various geographical scales and focuses on the outcomes and processes of the political act of planning and managing tourism production. This engaging volume provides insights and alternative critical perspectives on political economy theory to expand discussions of tourism development and policy in the future. Political Economy and Tourism is a valuable text for students, researchers and academics interested in Tourism and related disciplines.