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Tourism is one of the world economy pillars. In the last decades, it underwent an evolution related to consumer behaviour and technological progress. Facing this evolution, several efforts were made by companies; for example, some of them looked for new ways to create value. Despite a great number of studies conducted, the literature shows less evidence related to the variables that affect value creation in tourism companies. Hence, the objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework of value creation measurement in tourism through mapping the most frequent indicators in literature. To do so, the authors asked the following research question: what indicators of value creation in tourism were the most mobilized during the last twenty years? Then they performed a meta-analysis based on value creation papers published during the period ranging from 1997 to 2017. Furthermore, based on the NVivo 11 coding method, they processed 747 indicators, of which they considered that 66 were more frequently used as they had been cited at least twice. The main ones are service quality, customer satisfaction, environmental management, and profitability. They grouped these frequent indicators in five categories, namely: customers (10), employees and skills improvement (9), environment and natural resources (6), finance (20), and internal processes (21).

Ethnographic research in communities or nations that are not your own can be ethically troubling projects, where the line between tourism, colonialism, and “legitimate” research is blurred at best, non-existent at worst. Social scientists often engage in these types of projects with good intentions—a desire to help and to use the privilege bestowed upon them by their institutions and granting bodies to do some good in the world despite the growing recognition among academics about the dominance of Eurocentric thoughts and approaches in social research. However, it is sometimes difficult to determine what makes an insider and an outsider, particularly in contested regions where ethnoreligious identity rather than citizenship is the limiting factor. In 2012, I travelled to Israel to conduct critical ethnographic fieldwork. The project was conceived as an exploration of the role of education in the perpetuation of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Drawing on the contention that autoethnography is an inclusive method and a means to decolonize the Eurocentric research practices often associated with field research, in this paper, I aim to disrupt my own perceived insider status, to (un)settle and to (un)learn.

The British colonial imagination portrayed Sri Lanka (or Ceylon) through the themes of garden, paradise, and jungle. These themes have influenced travel narratives about Sri Lanka. Given the hierarchies of the global travel industry and the dominance of the “Western gaze,” countries of the Global South such as Sri Lanka exist in a narrative cycle where they have to create travel content that aligns with the “Western gaze.” However, Western travel narratives now exist alongside those created by Sri Lanka’s travel authorities and vloggers—through the “subaltern gaze.” My paper traces the colonial construction of “Ceylon” as a nation and its influence on the island’s depiction in travel narratives by analyzing the content of early travel films and photographs, modern videos, posters, and articles. I explore how contemporary travel imagery created by Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities and citizens is un-making the entrenched imagery of the island. And as Sri Lanka finds itself between national and geopolitical changes, the “subaltern gaze” will continue to redefine travel images.

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the adaptation of the tourism sector to ongoing digitalization. It does so by examining how destination management and governance are being changed with the so-called digital transition of human societies and economies. Whereas the tourism literature tends to address this issue from a techno-centric perspective, embedding research in notions such as smartness or smart tourism destination, a more critical approach is adopted in this study. This is done by confronting extant techno-centric conceptual frameworks with empirical findings regarding the challenges encountered by public and private tourism practitioners involved in the management of the destination Brussels, Belgium. The study results highlight how the challenges posed by digitalization are far from being confined to the field of technology. Indeed, they seem to be deeply intertwined with structural economic, social and environmental issues.

Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach that combines the reflections and efforts of different actors, academics, local stakeholders, and external experts, in order to seek solutions to concrete problems while producing reflections that are applicable in a broader context. This paper hypothesizes that PAR is a relevant research method in rural Mexico and applicable to alternative tourism because of the social transformation potential of participatory processes. The case study conducted in Yokdzonot (Yucatán, Mexico) with the Zaaz Koolen Haa cooperative illustrates this point of view while also highlighting the challenges of such an approach. A five-year project, involving about 100 actors, was carried out in this community and made it possible to experiment with different PAR tools, to achieve short- and medium-term results, including diagnoses, decision making, and organizational changes, and to produce projections for the management of the alternative tourism initiative. Among other things, this PAR project helped to highlight the virtues of learning communities in intercultural contexts. The difficulties encountered are attributed in part to the particular context of the community in its relationship to tourism, but they also make it possible to highlight recurring challenges in the PAR framework.

This paper explores the use of narratives in the transformation of historic sites in the polar regions into attractions and consumable tourism products. The analysis is based on a case study of visitation to the airship mooring mast built at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, for the 1926 “Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight” of the airship Norge. The questions addressed in this paper are: How does cultural heritage in the polar regions operate as a tourist attraction? What is the role of tourism narratives in creating a tourism attraction? Direct observations constituted the main research method. Based on Dean MacCannell (1976) and Neil Leiper (1990), a tourism attraction is a system comprising a tourist or human element; a nucleus or central element; and a marker or informative element. Tourism narratives enable the different elements of the tourism attraction system to “click” together into a coherent whole. Through narratives, the mast becomes a place of significance and a symbolic marker of the North Pole and polar exploration. The application of this approach to other sites in Antarctica and Svalbard is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the efforts of the Centre local de développement (CLD) on the Lower North Shore of Quebec to develop a small-scale ecotourism industry in the region. The first section of the paper defines the LNS region to provide a context for analysis. The second section analyses the five-year plan for ecotourism development completed in 2002 applying Blamey’s (2001) three dimensions of ecotourism—nature-based, environmentally and culturally educative, and sustainably managed—to evaluate how well those concepts have been integrated into the plan. The last section provides concluding remarks and argues that the sustainability of ecotourism in the region will depend on the financial and technical support of public and private agencies in implementing the plan.

This paper questions the “Destination Île à Vache” tourism megaproject that claims to be (eco)touristic. We argue that the implementation in Île à Vache (Haiti) of this megaproject is rather contradictory to the theoretical foundations of ecotourism and is part of a dynamic of dispossession and land grabbing. Based on a qualitative field investigation conducted in Île Vache between December 2019 and January 2020, our argument confronts three major characteristics of ecotourism with the implementation of the project. First, the results of this research show the exclusion of the local population from the project. Second, the socio-environmental impacts of the project also question its ecotourism basis, as its implementation was more of a threat to the environment. Finally, we found that it weakened the socioeconomic conditions of the island’s farmers instead of improving them. We therefore conclude that Destination Île à Vache as a tourism megaproject illustrates the thesis that megaprojects cause dispossession, displacement, and impoverishment of the populations concerned.

This paper deals with the potential of autonomous public vehicles with an electric power system for alpine tourism destinations. The dilemma of those regions is that they have a high demand for mobility, which is at the same time a risk for their most important assets, such as pure air and tranquillity. This study investigates the opportunities and challenges of public electric autonomous vehicles and focuses on the elements that could hinder a tourism destination from adopting this technology, based on expert interviews. Moreover, it evaluates opinions and concerns of future users of those vehicles. The findings show that public electric autonomous vehicles seem to be a valid solution for alpine tourism destinations that aim to be more sustainable and better aligned with the needs of their tourists. However, those vehicles must be managed in a smart way to avoid an increase in traffic. Technologically, they still need to be improved and be adapted to a challenging alpine environment.

This paper aims to conceptualize the sports tourism market in general, and the mountain sport tourism market in particular, from its sociological and economic foundations. To this end, it analyzes the evolution of economic models and social organization in sport and tourism, and the convergence of the latter in the context of the development of the territories. The hypothesis defends the idea that the progressive convergence of socioeconomic factors of sport and tourism has fundamentally contributed to create the conditions for the development of mountain sports tourism. The article confirms this hypothesis by highlighting: 1) a social and economic context favorable to sport and tourism; 2) a convergence of their economic models; and 3) a specific process of professionalization and rationalization of the offering. It also emphasizes the contribution of interdisciplinarity in understanding the foundation and functioning of complex markets. The article thus puts into perspective the link between society, economy, and territory in the context of sport tourism. It also shows the strength of the cumulative knowledge approach and methods based on sociology and economics.

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Économie et Solidarité is the property of Presses de l'Universite du Quebec and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research on the outdoor activities of disabled persons is quite underdeveloped. A few recent studies nonetheless focused on accessibility, usually tackling the topic from a spatial arrangement, or cultural angle. In this paper, we propose to grasp the question as a material and social innovation, through the frame of the actor-network theory. More precisely, the article deals with a single-wheeled all-terrain wheelchair, also known as the joëlette, which gives access to unpaved paths. Through its sociotechnical characteristics, the joëlette reveals itself as a hybrid device: it is both an output, and a generator of interdependencies. In line with the sociological analysis of innovations, we describe the trajectory of the object, from its handcrafted invention to meet the needs of a teenager suffering from muscular dystrophy, to its entry into a process of innovation: the impulse of a social dynamic, its industrial diffusion, and extension of uses within a broadened network. The approach was developed over a long period of time (from 1987, when it was invented, to 2016), making it possible to grasp the laborious process of translation that transformed the object and its uses. These many evolutions enabled to solve both social and technical issues, consistently with the promotion of an inclusive approach of outdoor activities.

Destination management organizations (DMOs), such as Québec City Tourism, are usually responsible for all tourism-related research and for measuring the performance of that specific economic sector on their territory. The current COVID-19 crisis will disrupt most of the ongoing projects as well as those planned for the next few years. Future research projects will have to be adapted to the new requirements of information and to the habits and preferences of post-coronavirus potential tourists. As for performance measures, several factors will change the methods used to collect and create current performance indicators. This paper presents the impacts that the COVID crisis will have on tourism research projects and on performance measures for Québec City Tourism.

This paper analyzes copresence patterns among travellers in a suburban station. The authors investigate how tourists and other travellers experience physically and socially the spaces of public transport. In a first part, a field study is introduced after a multidisciplinary theoretical background (sociology, geography, ethnology of stations). It helps selecting the best moment to develop the methodology, that is, the moment in which the diversity of users and behaviours is maximized. In a second part, two field results are presented: first, Sunday afternoon as being the best moment to observe copresence, and second, the configuration of social interaction as obeying a dualistic structure. A third part questions the opposition between the experience of copresence as being a polite and distant coexistence among some users and a much warmer interaction among others. The explanation for such a divide lays first in the unequal mobility skills tourists and non-tourists may mobilize and, second, this opposition seems connected to the construction of a mobile community identity in the long term.

Located approximately four hours southeast of San José on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca is a burgeoning tourist town thoroughly characterized and “eroticized” in guidebook, anthropological, and ethnographic representations, as a place where “tourist women come to ‘hook up’ with local, Afro-Caribbean men.” Drawing on recent developments at the intersections of affect studies and the anthropologies of tourism, in this experimental paper, I seek to augment and accomplish a disruption of such representational and critical assessments, specifically, through a retooling of salient tourism studies concepts such as encounters and contact zones, toward a theoretical orientation that explores “eroticization” as an affectively charged, durative, and ongoing process of becoming. In doing so, I further experiment with ethnographic writing practices and conventions adequate to this task, thereby enacting a mimetic performance of affects toward an extension of their disruptive potentials. To that effect, I take up locally and touristically inflected notions of vortices, understood as seductive and relational affectively charged pulls that draw tourists and locals alike into new and ongoing infrastructures of difference, for better or for worse.

Tourists pathways in Los Angeles. Between Movement Optimization and Spatial Skills. This paper offers a reflection to explain and understand the path of tourists in Los Angeles. The path is here understood as one of the spatial stakes that individuals need to deal with when they inhabit a place. The fact that we find a logic of movement optimization within some practices and discourses is one illustration of this issue. Using maps, we draw the itinerary of some tourists in Los Angeles; we can thus observe big differences in the length of their respective itineraries. The article argues that these differences are not just a question of taste but also depend on tourists’ skills in coping with space.

With international migration on the rise, researchers are interested in understanding the link between migration and tourism more than ever before. In this paper, we introduce some of the main concepts used in studies on migration and tourism, which lead to our discussion of lifestyle migration. We then examine the case of the Québécois in Florida in light of the literature on lifestyle migration and assess whether this case fits the definition and characteristics of lifestyle migration. Our analysis is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with thirty Québécois migrants in Florida. We find that even though our case study does not adhere to the classical definition of lifestyle migration as it does not meet the restriction of relative affluence, it is representative of the characteristics of this type of migration, and class issues play a significant role in the lives and experiences of the migrants.

Typical innovation of the end of the 1990s, the creation of snowparks has widely participated in the renewal of the winter sports offer in the 2000s. They quickly became widespread and are now essential to the attractiveness of mountains resorts. Many transformations occurred, on several plans: spatial, but also organizational and social. This article, based on multisite fieldwork, combines ethnography, interviews, and documentary analysis. It focuses on the examination of two dimensions: sociocultural and political. Beyond the technical dimension, the paper underlines how the design, the shape, and the maintenance of these practice spaces gave rise to a new management model, both participative (with many stakeholders) and embedded in a cultural context that implies specific stakes and norms.

This paper is devoted to the developments concerning the issue of disciplinarity and non-disciplinarity of tourism studies. The topic is embedded in a wider context of the academic identity of the community of tourism researchers. As the theoretical foundations for the discussion some concepts of non-classical sociology of science (rooted in Thomas Kuhn’s theory of development of science and ideas of the “Strong Programme”) were used. In order to analyze the problem theoretically and empirically, a three-stage research framework was adopted, commencing with a directed review of Anglo-American and Francophone literature, followed by a survey of a purposeful sample of tourism academics and concluding with a further analysis of the literature, this time confronting empirical findings with the identified scholars’ stances. The empirical research included a survey carried out among approximately 270 scholars of tourism from almost 50 countries from all the continents.

We regard this invitation to prepare a paper on the topic “Tourism Sciences or Tourism Studies” as both a privilege and a challenge. It is a privilege, in that it provides an opportunity to present a personal perspective on a topic that has been discussed and debated for some time, yet it is a challenge also, because there has been only a modest resolution of the issues involved. Tourism science is designed to provide a theoretical understanding of tourism. Tourism studies (as the applied study of tourism) are designed to enhance our ability to effectively manage the destination and, in doing so, enhance the well-being of the residents of a tourism destination. It is hoped that the overview of the material we used to make the distinction between tourism science and tourism studies has been helpful. While we would have liked to provide much greater detail in order to make certain of our arguments more effective, we have faced fairly severe space limitations. We can only hope that we have still been able to convey the essence of our message.

While assessments of tourism attractions are among the fundamentals of tourism planning, they are the “poor cousins” of accessibility, transportation, and accommodations analysis (Pearce, 1991). Ranking tourism attractions in China is fraught with complexity because of the market’s tremendous growth and idiosyncratic character. The entire country as a tourism landscape is only now opening itself up to external review and the open doors are revealing the profound depth of the experiences that are available. The coastal/interior dichotomy of China is ongoing. The interior of China continues to be fraught with a menu of problems that confound economic and touristic development: geographic isolation, poor management, ethnic conflict, economic inefficiency, and ecological degradation (Wei and Fang, 2006). Consequently, the Chinese government, under the aegis of the Western Development Strategy, has been launching an enormous effort to redirect development away from the coast and into the less prosperous interior. Because tourism is being touted by the central government as an economic pillar, tourism growth represents one way in which to attempt to develop the country’s interior regions. At the same time, the interior of China has an enormous endowment of heritage resources. This means that sustainable tourism in China will depend, to some degree, on how well the country can protect its heritage assets. Concerns about whether heritage assets will be neglected, destroyed, redeveloped, overused, or overcommercialized are all valid concerns regarding sustainability. In this paper, we look at a variety of tourist attractions in Gansu Province. Surprisingly, “only limited research attention has been paid specifically to tourist attractions, although they occupy a vital position in tourism development” (Hu and Wall, 2005: 617-618). We then demonstrate a range of evaluation criteria that can be employed to explore the tenability of using public money to further develop these attractions. There is little variation in the two evaluation scenarios undertaken. In this case, different weightings are not affecting the results that much as some venues are vastly more suitable for development. The interpretation of the data is twofold: focus on the Lanzhou sites and divert the Dunhuang tourism venues solely into the luxury market. The luxury market involves fewer tourists and higher on-site revenues. That tactic must be undertaken as desert tourism needs to be marketed carefully due to the overt fragility of the environment as well as the costs of shipping water to the attractions. Overall, the evaluation framework employed is expedient: it uses available data that can be hard to find in China, it is easy to calculate, and it is user-friendly to analysts and decision makers alike.

It is difficult to put a precise date on the start of tourism education but, as the author has already commented (Airey 2005b: 13), it was during the 1960s that “a number of key changes in tourism [itself], in education and in society more generally,” led to the emergence of tourism “both as a clear area of study in its own right and as a subject for study to diploma and degree level and for research.” It was during that decade that many of the early tourism programmes began. They are now celebrating their 40th anniversaries. At this milestone it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which tourism education has reached the stage of maturity associated with 40 years. The purpose of this paper is to make this reflection and, in doing so, to explore the ways in which tourism has emerged and changed and, indeed, has matured. Clearly tourism as a subject for study and tourism education itself has come a long way in 40 years. It has moved well beyond simply the study of an industry or preparation for first employment, and those working in the field have explored and developed the knowledge territory and, after considerable debate, have arrived at broad agreement about a curriculum. From this point it has joined a more mainstream of education reflected here in the consideration about what makes effective teaching in tourism; debates about the broad directions of the curriculum to meet changing knowledge environments; and critiques about the knowledge base itself and how it is developed.

Communities, in particular traditional users of natural resources, are often concerned about threats to their livelihoods and destruction of their environments but do not have the awareness, skills and political power to control the development that comes from the tourism industry. Education and collaborative partnerships are one approach that can help destinations achieve more sustainable tourism. Looking at Chumbe Island, a small island located in the Indian Ocean channel off the coast of the semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar in Tanzania, this paper examines innovative education and multi-stakeholder partnerships that have helped to avoid negative environmental and social impacts on the communities who live in the area. The environmental education programs, employment and capacity building of the Chumbe Island Coral Park Project will be focused upon.

This paper illustrates an innovative approach to enhance rural livelihoods through community tourism in Uganda. Following pro-poor tourism principles of local participation and linking with existing systems, Gorilla Friends Tented Camp opened in Ruhija village, where mountain gorillas were recently habituated for gorilla tracking tours. In a village that had no previous tourist accommodations and few opportunities for villagers to earn income, a percentage of profits from Gorilla Friends Tented Camp are returned to support other livelihood enhancement initiatives in the village. While much of our previous research has focused on identifying and developing local capacity to participate meaningfully in Uganda’s tourism industry, attention must also be paid to tourists’ experiences at the site to ensure continued viability. Findings based on interviews with tourists to Ruhija illustrate the need for national partnership networks to support local community tourism. Additionally, understanding how tourists came to and experienced the community will assist the local people with sustainability of their operations and activities, and inform continued innovation in community tourism development in Ruhija.