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The purpose of the article is to demonstrate and explain some of the indirect consequences of “green exercise”. Members of the public may participate in green exercise programmes for in order to improve their health and most often to lose weight, but also see additional positive changes in their understanding of the natural world and their appreciation of nature. As Pretty et al. (2005) have argued, the arguments in support of environmental conservation frequently boil down to economic or ethical reasons. The emotional benefits of the environment are rarely mentioned except in the research literature on green exercise, and Pretty et al. are notable contributors to this body of work. However, there is general recognition that, in its simplest form, the natural environment makes most people feel good. There is a link between the quality of neighbourhood environments and wellbeing, for example (Barton et al., 2009). This knowledge is not new, but the direct link is rarely researched.

This article introduces the basis for research relating to the management and monitoring of student expectations within a new Events Management degree. It is important to gain an understanding of the Events Management students’ expectations and backgrounds. This research offers a starting point in exploring how teaching and learning practices can accommodate student learning and satisfaction. The root of this research lies with the Student Voice Initiative (Fielding, 2004), in which students are seen as the co-producers rather than higher educational consumers. We have established a wide-reaching discourse with students regarding their expectations and experiences of the new degree programme, in order to promote better communication channels between both groups. This research is prompted by a noted evolution in the student character; ‘they are supposed to become unique, successful individuals, making their own choices and plans to accomplish autonomy’ (Harris, 2004, p.6). As educators we have a responsibility to respond to societal changes in student expectations in order to benefit their student development and experience. The methods used take particular account of the student need for autonomy and individuality through participatory activities, qualitative methods and flexibility. The aim is to reflect on current departmental practice and also to respond to and accommodate the emerging student voice. We present our plans for this co-production of research at the early stages of development.

In this paper we explore the role of in-migrant owners of small tourism firms in promoting entrepreneurship and developing competition in the tourism economy of Northumberland. We hypothesise that through a combination of extra-local networks and local embeddedness these business owners are not only succeeding themselves but they are stimulating other local businesses by increasing local trade, heightening competition and raising standards and aspirations. The role of in-migrants is further explored in theoretical terms. Their networking behaviour and the importance of what Saxena [1] terms “relational capital” in the process of integrating rural tourism into the wider local economy is of particular interest given that some of these business owners are recent arrivals into the area. Of further interest are the links between place, community and local products, services and activities. The ability of in-migrants to create a sense of place and as well as embedding their businesses within the local economy is discussed.

The use of Geographical Information Systems is explored, in the context of monitoring long-distance walking trails in Ireland, and in the creation of an inventory of trail facilities. The use of simple indicators to monitor trail condition is also investigated. This study focuses on two contrasting Waymarked Ways: the Burren Way and the East Munster Way. The paper therefore seeks to explore the creation and maintenance of the GIS database, and the use of indicators to monitor environmental conditions. The environmental quality of trails is of interest to both the user and the manager of the route. It affects the user in terms of their experience of the trail and the region. The route manager is, effectively, concerned with improving or maintaining the environmental quality of the route for users. The study will include: (a) Factors affecting the user when on the trail – erosion, litter, scenery/ views, etc (b) Connectivity and access. The checklist indicators and results, and the use of GIS will be evaluated. Significant results include a concentration of poor results around parking places on the East Munster Way. Many of the survey points where scores were poor, fell within a 2km radius of parking facilities. The same, however, was not true of the Burren Way.

The project explores methodologies available for environmental quality and landscape character assessment to managers of long-distance walking routes in Ireland. GIS and field surveys are utilised throughout. There is no existing surveying methodology of this type in Ireland, and this presents the opportunity to develop such a scheme. The Waymarked Ways are a network of walking routes. They are managed locally, often by voluntary groups, overseen by the National Waymarked Ways Advisory Committee (part of the Irish Sports Council). The paper discusses ongoing work the Burren Way. Studies on user activity, route access and landscape character develop a profile of users and examine environmental conditions in the catchment of this route. This information can be used in future to aid monitoring and management. Specifically, it will aid the identification of vulnerable and robust areas in the route catchment, and those that are attractive to users. A questionnaire study of users profiled respondents’ age, mode of travel, and accommodation (if holidaying locally). It then examined attitudes to the local environment and conditions on the trail. Electronic counters on the route recorded 673 and 857 passers-by at two locations, in August and September 2003. User activity was concentrated weekends and afternoons, with higher numbers in August. Data from the landscape character survey of the catchment is used to examine user preferences and attitudes. Results suggest that users access the trail by car, driving from a start point within County Clare. Parking is therefore of importance in identifying where walkers’ activity is concentrated.

This is a feature article looking at Landscape Character Assessment from a European perspective. It explains the draft guidelines for Landscape Character Assessment in Ireland, with reference and comparison to the existing UK guidelines published in 2002 by the Countryside Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage. The paper covers the uses and users of Irish LCA, its history in Ireland and its current status.

The paper considers the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in locally led sustainable tourism development in the Glen of Aherlow, County Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland. The area has a small, but valuable, rural tourism sector relying mainly on the natural beauty of the landscape. It is hoped by local residents that tourism can be developed to improve the local economy without harming the environment. While the paper focuses on the Glen of Aherlow, the circumstances are similar to many parts of rural Ireland outside the major tourist destinations. The results of the GIS-based applications are discussed in detail and their accuracy and repeatability for other grassroots sustainable projects are evaluated. Findings of this research included sustainable maxima for the total number of visitors and a zoned map of the Glen. As well as indicating possible areas for redevelopment, this map also delineated potential protection zones. Other issues discussed include the application of GIS techniques for information sharing across agencies and within the local community.

The project explores methodologies available to managers of long-distance walking routes in Ireland for the management of the local environment, environmental- and landscape- assessment. Grassroots participatory GIS and field surveys are utilised throughout. There is no existing surveying methodology of this type in Ireland, and this presents the opportunity to develop such a scheme. The Waymarked Ways are a network of walking routes. They are managed locally, often by voluntary groups with local authority involvement, and are overseen by the National Waymarked Ways Advisory Committee (part of the Irish Sports Council). The paper discusses ongoing work the Burren Way. A questionnaire study of users profiled respondents, then examined attitudes to the local environment and conditions on the trail. Data from the landscape character survey of the catchment is used with a collaborative planning approach to examine user preferences and attitudes. Results suggest that users access the trail by car, driving from a start point within County Clare. Parking is therefore of importance in identifying where walkers’ activity is concentrated. The Grassroots GIS system has been developed as a means of managing a local resource by the local community, but for the benefit of local, national and international users.

The research investigated the patterns of use on two long-distance walking routes in the Republic of Ireland. Surveys were conducted on the Burren Way in County Clare and the East Munster Way in Counties Tipperary and Waterford. GIS-based mapping was used, in conjunction with participative mapping techniques which took place during focus group sessions and the paper concentrates on this aspect of the research. Focus group participants were voluntary members of the walking routes’ management committees. The process of participation and the data gathered for the GIS is outlined. The study presents a GIS developed in the context of natural resource management with the inputs of the voluntary management committee’s local knowledge. It also offers a consideration of visitor behaviour and preferences in relation to landscape character and rural tourism. Further data collection took the form of user questionnaire surveys, surveys of local accommodation providers, and online surveys of visual preferences. While all of the data collection methods, when used alone, have their drawbacks, the combination of various methods produced an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging picture of the patterns of use of the two routes, based on user behaviour and preferences and on the behaviour of local walkers and the route management committee. As well as providing a “snapshot in time” view of route usage, the information collected during research was used for future planning and management. It was used to identify possible diversions and improvements to the existing route, as a means of predicting where walkers would prefer to walk, while also attempting to protect the local environment by diverting walkers away from the most fragile environments.

A short paper outlining personal experiences of how a recently completed PhD has influenced teaching in tourism in Higher Education. The paper outlines understanding of research-informed teaching as a concept and then uses the example of personal experiences of using research material gathered during the PhD for teaching purposes. It considers the various applications of research beyond personal study. PhD research does not just add to subject-based knowledge but also informs the way in which we, for example, structure lectures, organise seminars or interpret research methods. This is referred to by Griffiths (2004) as research-led and research-oriented teaching. Research can also act as the “bridge” into the study and teaching of tourism and in this case, the author’s background is not in tourism specifically, but geography, planning and environmental management. This is also discussed in the context of the wider study of tourism as an academic discipline.

The research presented here considers the use of the Burren Way, a long-distance walking route in the northwest of Co. Clare. It is one of thirty two waymarked ways in Ireland, which area managed on a day-to-day basis by local volunteers under the authority of the central National Waymarked Ways Advisory Committee (NWWAC). Questionnaires, which were administered on the route, investigated users’ preferences and motivations for use, while online questionnaires investigated the landscape preferences of the wider walking community based on photographed scenes’ attractiveness to respondents. Further research comprised an electronic count of passers by at two points on the route, and a participative mapping exercise to investigate stakeholders’ patterns of route use. Spatial patterns of use where then further investigated using GIS overlays of preferences and commonly-walked routes with digital data on landscape character and land cover (CORINE) data. Results show that, while northern sections of the route pass through potentially attractive landscapes and are generally popular among stakeholders and walkers alike, the southern sections of the Burren Way are used less and considered less attractive. Suggestions are therefore made for improvements to the route of the Burren Way, based on current patterns of use, the findings of the preference survey and the existing environmental designations in the region. It was found that many additional routes could be developed within a small area, creating a network of loop walks. These new routes lay within potentially attractive scenery, did not cross private land and avoided busier roads – all of these criteria were identified by participants as affecting their enjoyment of the route. Environmental considerations were also included, and the improved routes avoided the most fragile land and designated the SACs, SPAs and the National Park.

In line with the conference theme, we have started from an observation that alternative, minority and elite forms of sustainable tourism have for many years been over-represented in the academic journal literature, thereby overshadowing (or even foreclosing on) important debates on the future of mass tourism, as well as other forms of tourism (such as social tourism, domestic tourism and even virtual tourism) that might contribute to a more meaningful debate about the nature of sustainability (or move us beyond this discourse). The paper presents a survey of the coverage that tourism journals have given to such issues in the belief that we need a more critical awareness of how our knowledge about tourism development has been shaped by deeply-held assumptions on the part of scholars. We began by using Google Scholar and CABI for articles over the last 15 years with keywords “sustainable tourism” in the title: perhaps predictably, this yielded several thousand results. We therefore narrowed our searches to the top 10 tourism journals, using the rankings suggested by McKercher et al (2006). The appearance of this keyword/ phrase was then charted by date, to demonstrate a “sustainable tourism lifecycle”, in which the term gained popularity in the academic literature, widening its influence from specialist forms of tourism to more general, and then appeared to “stagnate” in later years. As a term, it appears recently to have fallen out of favour. We suggest some reasons for this pattern. In addition, we have undertaken a more detailed analysis of coverage based on year of publication, journal title, study location, type of tourism, research paradigm and method (quantitative, qualitative or mixed).

Tourism studies at Masters level are often divided into subsets of tourism such as environmental tourism, rural tourism and sports tourism. This textbook provides an overview of types of tourism, and common themes studied in courses to allow undergraduate students to become familiar with a wide range of tourism topics at a foundation level, allowing them to make an informed decision about their future studies and career. It will also be a useful text for providing a broad brush introduction to the major topics that are covered in undergraduate courses. Popular subjects like urban tourism, festivals and events and heritage and cultural tourism are covered. Readership: Undergraduate students in tourism studies and tourism management.

The project aims to compare the various means of assessing environmental quality of walking routes. These means will then be used in developing a methodology for an environmental quality audit of walking routes in Ireland. Study sites are located in the Burren, Co. Clare and by the River Suir, Co. Tipperary. Both footpaths are long-distance (at least 20 miles), cross mainly rural upland landscapes and are Waymarked Ways (part of a network, overseen by the National Waymarked Ways Committee, itself part of the Irish Sports Council). The environmental quality audit will involve the creation of a route inventory and a database of survey results. The survey has already been piloted, and takes the form of a checklist, used at frequent intervals along the course of the walking route. All of this information is entered into GIS. GIS will be used throughout the project, for mapping, data storage, and search and query functions. It can also be utilised for more complex operations such as map analysis with reference to specific problem, spatial modelling for broad analysis of geographical data and helping in management plan development. Specific problems to be analysed will be, for example, choosing the best location for trail signage or visitor car parks. Spatial modelling, on the other hand, refers to the development of a computer model of the entire trail showing all its features and facilities. This type of model will be used in trail assessment and management, and is a means of presenting and analysing large amounts of spatial data.

Tourism is viewed as an increasingly important component of rural economic potential, especially in peripheral regions of the UK. As a sector, however, it is dominated by low skilled employment, seasonal demand cycles and perceived low levels of innovation and entrepreneurship. In this paper we explore the role of in-migrant owners of small tourism firms (STFs) in promoting entrepreneurship and developing competition in the tourism economy of Northumberland. We hypothesise that through a combination of extra-local networks and local embeddedness these business owners are not only succeeding for themselves but they are stimulating other local businesses by increasing local trade, heightening competition and raising standards and aspirations among all STFs.

In this paper we explore the role of in-migrant owners of small tourism firms in promoting entrepreneurship and developing competition in the tourism economy of Northumberland. We hypothesise that through a combination of extra-local networks and local embeddedness these business owners are not only succeeding themselves but they are stimulating other local businesses by increasing local trade, heightening competition and raising standards and aspirations. The role of in-migrants is further explored in theoretical terms. Their networking behaviour and the importance of what Saxena [1] terms “relational capital” in the process of integrating rural tourism into the wider local economy is of particular interest given that some of these business owners are recent arrivals into the area. Of further interest are the links between place, community and local products, services and activities. The ability of in-migrants to create a sense of place and as well as embedding their businesses within the local economy is discussed.