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Widening participation has been a vehicle to facilitate access and support towards the successful completion of university studies for underrepresented groups who are less likely to pursue higher education. Yet, despite its widely accepted importance and adoption across countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, studies to date remain largely fragmented – often employed through the lens of a single institution, or a particular priority group. Amidst this backdrop, universities and other higher education providers are increasingly probed as to their role in supporting social capital mobility, of which widening participation plays a vital component in delivering wider societal imperatives. In addition, the COVID-19 effect has worsened university participation and completion rates, as the global pandemic has placed vulnerable students (often those involved in widening participation initiatives) in more precocious conditions than ever before. Nevertheless, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review comprising 102 journal articles that derive 15 meta-themes to provide a timely introspection of widening participation, show key trends over time, and chart future areas of investigation for scholars and practitioners in this space.

Widening participation has been a vehicle to facilitate access and support towards the successful completion of university studies for underrepresented groups who are less likely to pursue higher education. Yet, despite its widely accepted importance and adoption across countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, studies to date remain largely fragmented – often employed through the lens of a single institution, or a particular priority group. Amidst this backdrop, universities and other higher education providers are increasingly probed as to their role in supporting social capital mobility, of which widening participation plays a vital component in delivering wider societal imperatives. In addition, the COVID-19 effect has worsened university participation and completion rates, as the global pandemic has placed vulnerable students (often those involved in widening participation initiatives) in more precocious conditions than ever before. Nevertheless, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review comprising 102 journal articles that derive 15 meta-themes to provide a timely introspection of widening participation, show key trends over time, and chart future areas of investigation for scholars and practitioners in this space.

COVID-19 has significantly disrupted global landscapes and forced a quick adaptation towards new ways of conducting higher education, with almost all tertiary institutions compelled to embrace online teaching and learning quickly. In addition, this crisis presents an opportune moment to reflect on the why and how higher education assessments should be framed through a blue ocean strategy for disciplines such as tourism and hospitality. While the blue ocean strategy has emerged within tourism and hospitality practice, little is known as to how this is manifested in the context of educational settings, and especially academic voices as part of such radical transformations following COVID-19. To address this gap in knowledge, this research traces the journeys of 16 Chinese academics transitioning as educators before, during, and after the outbreak of COVID-19 through the theory’s four actions framework of eliminate, reduce, create, and raise. The findings revealed how the pandemic challenged their philosophical stances of who we are as assessors, the dilemmas of technology-mediated learning and assessment, indicators of professional development, and assessing outside one’s comfort zone. Derived from these outcomes is a conceptual framework around a blue ocean strategy to repurpose the role of assessments from a narrative of what and how, to what now and how else of tourism and hospitality education.

Daigou may be simply understood as purchasing on behalf of others. However, as an informal economy, Daigou trade between buyers and sellers is now a lucrative market and has emerged as a distinctive tourism segment. While Daigou occurs on the back of technological platforms that facilitate electronic commerce between customer to customer, academic literature on Daigou from a Chinese outbound tourism perspective remains scarce. Prompted by this dearth in knowledge, this research explores the emerging practices of Daigou tourists as a subset of Chinese outbound tourism through an online questionnaire survey conducted with 300 respondents from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Through descriptive statistics and Multiple Correspondence Analysis, the research revealed that Daigou tourism is a heterogenous market and are driven by product quality, profit margins and country of origin associations. This offers distinct theoretical and managerial contributions and elucidates a more nuanced understanding of the Daigou phenomenon as a fluid, under-regulated and micro-entrepreneurial practice in tourism.

Tham A., Kim S. (2018) Factors Hindering the Intention of Tourists to Visit Film Tourism Locations: The Case of the Korean TV Drama Descendants of the Sun (DOTS). In: Kim S., Reijnders S. (eds) Film Tourism in Asia. Perspectives on Asian Tourism. Springer, Singapore. Available here