Michelle Whitford

• Ph.D.
• Griffith University

With the transition to mixed mode teaching due to COVID-19 wherein convenors are expected to deliver classes both online and in-person, engaging students can be challenging. This working paper outlines the collaborative efforts of a team working to redesign an Event 52Management major for hybrid delivery based on the principles of flipped learning...

Tourism is acknowledged as a vehicle that can help sustain both tangible and intangible elements of Indigenous cultural heritage, including languages, stories, song, art, dance, hunting methods, rituals and customs. Often, cultural heritage products developed for tourism promise to provide many socio-economic opportunities for the communities invol...

Authentic intangible cultural heritage (ICH) provides a community with a unique selling point in the globally competitive tourism industry. The process of commodification of ICH, however, has threatened its authenticity and thus sustainable tourism approaches are required to achieve successful transmission and promotion of ICH as a sustainable tour...

Tourism is often employed as a vehicle for facilitating social-economic development, however its usefulness has been somewhat limited in relation to addressing social issues, and in particular, those issues relating to poverty. This is partly due to the lack of cross-sectoral interactions and knowledge exchange between private, public and third sec...

Ethical tourism initiatives have increasingly been framed as tools to educate tourists about global citizenship (GC), yet it is unclear how these initiatives are conceptualised, planned and implemented by tourism providers. This paper focuses on a form of ethical tourism known as microfinance tourism (MFT). It critically explores MFT providers’ per...

Increasing interest in poverty alleviation at the beginning of twenty-first century has facilitated the rapid growth of various anti-poverty tourism interventions (ATIs) around the globe. The tourism?poverty alleviation link, however, is still not well established, partly due to a paucity of appropriate evaluation approaches that are capable of sim...

Indigenous policy in many countries including Australia is focused on enhancing the socio-economic situation of Indigenous peoples through the encouragement of sustainable business models, including tourism business. Arguably, however, there are too few examples of sustainable Indigenous tourism businesses. Several authors have acknowledged that ra...

The Indigenous tourism focus of the 16 papers in this special issue provides readers with an opportunity to explore the dynamics behind an array of issues pertaining to sustainable Indigenous tourism. These papers not only provide a long overdue balance to the far too common, negatively biased media reports about Indigenous peoples and their commun...

Indigenous tourism is a global phenomenon, encompassing a range of complex, multi-layered issues. The foci of Indigenous tourism research are multifaceted, reflecting a plethora of stakeholders with differing perspectives and values about the direction, development and sustainability of the sector. The academic literature consistently highlights th...

Abstract Responding to the rapid growth of outbound travel from China, Australia's national tourism body, Tourism Australia, is investing considerable efforts into strategically positioning the Australian tourism industry to be 'China-ready' through targeted marketing programs, formalized policy and planning, and industry education and training. Ye...

Indigenous tourism is positioned as an integral part of Australia's tourism product offering. Yet participation in Indigenous tourism experiences by both international and domestic markets is in decline. The demand for, and interest in, Australia's indigenous culture that has been consistently portrayed by Australian government agencies has not tra...

Indigenous tourism has become an important, albeit niche, part of Australia's tourism industry, supported by Federal, State and Territory governments seeking to leverage tourism as an economic opportunity for indigenous peoples while concomitantly providing a ‘product’ point of difference for the country. While there have been a number of demand dr...

Indigenous cultural festivals are increasingly being recognized for their contribution to the growth and vitality of communities around the globe. Such festivals invigorate the communication and celebration of indigenous culture, tradition, and rituals. Additionally, indigenous cultural festivals are often used as a draw card to attract tourists to...

Governments are increasingly involved in public–private partnerships to attract, support, and/or stage events. This involvement often leads to governments becoming embroiled in highly politicized battles that focus on issues including community benefit, mitigation of impacts, transparency in decision making, and lack of consultation before, during,...

Tourism and events have been identified as providing opportunities to revitalize regional and remote economies. In Australia such areas have limited economic opportunities and are constrained by a range of development barriers, including access to markets and human capital. Importantly, tourism in particular is seen as an economic activity that pro...

China’s exhibition industry has experienced considerable growth over the past decade; however, recent studies have identified a number of issues bioecting its future growth, including an inability to retain customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) offers a potential solution to this problem. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that CRM ha...

There is a need to better understand the interests of actors in the planning and management of major events. The diversity of actor perspectives about an event creates a wicked problem set that event organisers and public officials find difficult to understand, let alone address. This paper focuses on problem identification as one stage in the even...

Festivals and events are widely recognized as having the potential to deliver sociocultural benefits for host communities and destinations. In countries such as Australia, Indigenous communities are looking towards festivals as vehicles to facilitate capacity building, self-determination, and reconciliation. Given this context, this article utilize...

Political and sociological shifts have profoundly affected state, business and civil society relationships. This paper explores governance as a new form of public–private policymaking wherein stakeholders deliberate on and take action to achieve common goals. It examines how different public spheres facilitate (or not) sustainability debates, and s...

Increasingly, the challenge for local government in managing tourism is not in preparing plans and policies or undertaking new initiatives but in collaborating across internal organisational silos and across artificial administrative boundaries to provide a more integrated approach. The Managing Local Government Master Class was a programme designe...

This paper reviews the development of Australia's policies for indigenous tourism and analyses those policies for their sustainable tourism content. It notes that in Australia, tourism is increasingly seen as an instrument for sustaining indigenous communities, many of whom look to tourism for a better future. Growing intervention from Australian f...

There are increasing calls for the assumptions and values that underpin research in the social sciences to be made explicit and for more critical attention being given to the way in which knowledge is generated and validated. Inspired by such requests, this paper challenges some propositions made by Donald Getz in the paper he wrote for the inaugur...

Governments around the globe are utilising events as an integral part of their policies for regional development. Therefore, there is an increasing need to ensure event public policy has the capacity to facilitate opportunities for regional development.The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for the development of public policy for regi...

Guelaguetza is one of Mexico's premiere celebrations of indigenous dance and music. The festival occurs every July in Oaxaca City where it is a premier tourist attraction providing opportunities for socioeconomic growth and development. Yet the festival also creates negative impacts such as commodification and commercialization of the festival, whi...

Tourism is viewed as a vehicle which can produce an array of benefits for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander [ATSI] peoples. Although ATSI tourism is a small sector of the Australian tourism industry, its ability to facilitate diverse benefits should not be underestimated. While numerous Australian Governments have produced tourism policies to f...

Festivals are emerging worldwide as a growing and vibrant sector of the tourism and leisure industries and are seen to have significant economic, socio-cultural, and political impacts on the destination area and host groups. While there are a number of scholars working on developing valid models to determine the economic impact of festivals on host...

Historically, sporting events in Australia can be traced back to the early days of settlement when outdoor, physical and competitive sports dominated the leisure time of colonists. In contemporary Australia, sporting events not only continue to dominate many Australian’s leisure time but they also clearly demonstrate an ability to generate positive...

Over the last two decades, Australia has witnessed the emergence of a socially and economically significant event industry with an increasingly professional profile. Many governments, as stakeholders in the development of events, have produced policies designed to facilitate the growth and potential of events as a platform for industry and economic...

The concept of flexible learning has been the focus of the development and delivery of courses at The University of Queensland's new Ipswich Campus. Based on constructivism, flexible learning emphasises the student's central role in the responsibility for learning. This paper critically reflects on students' expectations and experiences whilst unde...

Governments, as key stakeholders in the development of events, produce policies to facilitate the growth and potential of events as a platform for industry and economic development. To date, however, there has been a paucity of research undertaken to determine the appropriateness and the consequences of government policies pertaining to events. Thi...

The proliferation of events in contemporary Australia has facilitated the emergence of an event industry, which is developing into a significant economic, socio-cultural and political phenomenon. Events have the capacity to generate positive economic impacts, including increased revenues and employment (Ritchie, 1984; Dwyer, Mellor, Mistilis & Mule...

A growing number of events take place in rural and peripheral communities (Higham & Ritchie, 2001) and events play a central, social and political role in different societies and cultures (Alomes, 1985). Moreover, events can provide the opportunity for communities to not only enhance their image (Wolman & Spitzley, 1996) but also to promote growth...

Successive Australian federal and State governments have produced tourism policies to facilitate the development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander [ATSI] tourism. However, the effectiveness and appropriateness of these policies has been questioned. This paper describes a qualitative study examining federal and Queensland State governments' A...

The Annual Sports and Cultural Festival is an Indigenous sporting and cultural event that has been held annually in Brisbane, Queensland since 1993. The event aims to provide an opportunity for the Indigenous community of Brisbane to gather, celebrate and reconnect with family and friends, while sharing and showcasing Indigenous culture, art, music...

Processes of globalisation and the concomitant need to establish place identity in a globally competitive marketplace are frequently cited as factors underpinning national government involvement in the support of events. Yet despite increasing involvement in activities aimed at attracting events, little attention has been paid to the way in which t...

Indigenous tourism has become an integral, albeit niche part of Australia’s tourism industry (Hollinshead 1996; Moore & Herron 1997) with federal, state and territory governments seeking to grow ‘Indigenous involvement in the tourism industry to not only capitalise on the potential for the industry to provide wealth creating opportunities for Abori...