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Empathy and tourism: Limits and possibilities
Abstract
Promoted as an emotional pre-requisite for cross-cultural understanding, the notion of empathy connects with tourism in a variety of ways. This article explores this connection by considering the current and potential role of empathy in tourism encounters and tourism studies. The discussion develops a critical understanding of the positioning of empathy in tourism, highlighting the importance of examining empathy’s limitations and risks. It is argued that important differences lay between an unquestioned or non-reflective empathy and a more ‘unsettled’ empathy, which is reflective and renders possible a productive sense of shame. The article concludes by considering the possibilities of and for empathy within tourism and tourism studies, and by suggesting questions to take the links between tourism and empathy forward.
... The abovementioned factors, however, only reflected the cognitive precedents of local residents' attitudes. Other affective elements, such as empathy on the one hand (Tucker, 2016), and xenophobia on the other hand (Ikeji & Nagai, 2021) had also caused some impacts on the attitudes of the local residents. An integrated understanding of the impacts of both of these cognitive and affective elements, nevertheless, was mostly absent. ...
... First, the existing research found that local residents' tolerance for tourism positively affected their supportive attitudes (Qin et al., 2021). The link between empathy and tourism activities was also strongly supported in a general sense (Tucker, 2016). On the other hand, it was observed that xenophobia could negatively affect local residents' perceptions of the bad impacts of tourism, which in turn influenced their attitudes toward the lodging sector in their location (peer-to-peer accommodations in Kyoto, Japan) (Ikeji & Nagai, 2021). ...
... Moreover, even though Vietnamese local residents showed much sympathy for the tourism industry, this particular opinion did not significantly affect their attitude toward inbound tourism. The relationship between residents and tourism was, therefore, more complicated than what has been reported (Qin et al., 2021;Tucker, 2016). Of course, tourism was only one of the many working sectors in the economy of a country. ...
This study examined Vietnamese local residents’ attitudes toward the reopening of their country to international tourists amid COVID-19 from March to April 2021. It began with a qualitative analysis of local residents’ opinions ( n = 240) to identify the factors that could affect their attitudes, then continued with a review of the literature to create a theoretical model. Finally, the study implemented a structured survey to collect quantitative data ( n = 412) to confirm the model. The outcomes revealed that “perceived vaccine efficacy” and “xenophobia” were two significant predictors of “attitude toward inbound tourism.” Implications of this study were then discussed.
... Empathy is critical in tourism [48] since it generates better tourist experiences and avoids negative comments [49]. Moreover, empathic behavior is integral to the hospitality industry [50]. ...
... Tucker [50] compiled the existing literature on empathy and tourism. Studies about dark tourism [51,52] show that visits to places with suffering increase tourists' empathy, just as historical empathy is enhanced by visiting historical places [53] or altruism through volunteer tourism [54]. ...
AI-based chatbots are an emerging technology disrupting the tourism industry. Although chatbots have received increasing attention, there is little evidence of their impact on tourists' decisions to visit a destination. This study evaluates the key attributes of chatbots and their effects on user satisfaction and visit intention. We use structural equation modeling with covariance procedures to test the proposed model and its hypotheses. The results showed that informativeness, empathy, and interactivity are critical attributes for satisfaction, which drive tourists' intention to visit a destination.
... Moreover, by conducting a social network analysis of tourists in Yogyakarta, Miftahuddin et al. [65] show four factors affecting tourists' perceptions of the image of the city of Yogyakarta: experience, historical culture, recreational services, and tourist destinations. Tucker [66] discusses the role of empathy in tourism as a tourist sentiment mainly present in dark attractions. In line with what was mentioned by Tucker [66], other researchers sought to shed light on tourists' emotions in visiting dark sites, such as in the case of Isaac and Çakmak [67], who studied visitors' emotions at Tuol Sleng Genocide Prison Museum (S-21) in Phnom Penh. ...
... Tucker [66] discusses the role of empathy in tourism as a tourist sentiment mainly present in dark attractions. In line with what was mentioned by Tucker [66], other researchers sought to shed light on tourists' emotions in visiting dark sites, such as in the case of Isaac and Çakmak [67], who studied visitors' emotions at Tuol Sleng Genocide Prison Museum (S-21) in Phnom Penh. Moreover, Curnock et al. [68] bring an environmental perspective on how empathy may affect tourists' sentiments. ...
Identification of tourists’ sentiments is relevant to the destination’s planning. Tourists generate extensive User Generated Content (UGC)—embedding their sentiments—in the form of textual data when sharing experiences on the Internet. These UGC tend to influence tourists’ decision-making, thus, representing an important data source for tourism research and planning. By obtaining data from Mafengwo and Ctrip, sentiment analysis was conducted to shed light on the sentiment tendency of Chinese tourists in seven Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Eleven thousand two hundred four reviews were obtained between January and March 2021. The data shows that Chinese tourists’ sentiments towards the PICTs are overall positive. Yet, they pay more attention to practical issues such as transportation, visa and fees, and their sentiment orientations are influenced by tourism resources, weather, and perceived safety. Moreover, the study demonstrates that the needs of Chinese tourists in the region are influenced by their physiology, security, self-esteem, belonging, and self-actualisation needs. The study contributes to theory and practice by constructing an exclusive set of Chinese sentiment lexicons for tourism research based on data from the PICTs. This lexicon complements but also contradicts previous studies. In addition to being relevant for the studied region, it can inform similar destinations that may or may not have a relevant Chinese tourism market.
... Empathy, a vicarious and spontaneous sharing of affections, can be provoked by witnessing another's emotional state, by hearing about another's conditions, or even by reading (Keen, 2006). While Hollan andThroop (2011) andTucker (2016) position empathy as the sharing of another person's perspective and unlike other "altruistic emotions" such as sympathy, empathy has an added dimension of "identification with the other (person). " Given the human relational aspects of tourism, empathy inevitably plays a covert role in the construction of experiences in all contexts. ...
... To date, tourism studies have mostly focused on the "results" of empathy, i.e., positive effects of the tourists' empathetic responses on their experience of touring destinations; of particular interest is the experience of being there among "others" (Tucker, 2016). However, there is a noticeable literature gap in the study of the connection of empathy to heritage narration in tourism studies (i.e., what causes empathy, how empathy is processed and what strategies are used to evoke empathy), especially narrative empathy. ...
While research in heritage tourism tends to focus on cultural and anthropogenic motivations and drivers, this paper seeks to examine how social-media narration amidst a broader backdrop context in Chinese mass culture creates, perpetuates, and reinforce feline-focused narratives and practices among social media young followers. Drawing on text and image-based analyses of postings of cat sightings within the official Palace Museum account on a key Chinese microblog, this study reveals the application of three vital narrative strategies at work and corresponding empathic responses: ambassadorial, bounded, and broadcast. The Palace Museum has achieved an enhancement of interaction and emotional exchange between the heritage of Palace Museum and youths and generated a process from attention to emotional engagement and eventually to emotional identification on the part of youths in their attitude toward the heritage of Palace Museum through the workings of three key narrative strategies on Chinese social media. In doing so, this research illuminates the potential of social media-based narratives and charismatic animals in the revitalization of cultural heritage sites and the contributions of setting narrative strategies in engaging the younger audiences while also revitalizing the cultural heritage of the Palace Museum.
... During a long-term pandemic and nationwide lockdowns, although risk messages tend to reduce travel intentions, empathy may alleviate the negative impacts. Moreover, due to the emotional continuity of empathy (Miles, 2002;Tucker, 2016), highly empathetic individuals may sympathize with the unfortunate conditions of tourism and this may have a beneficial effect on their post-pandemic intentions to help the tourism sector recover. In other words, it could be posited that empathy moderates the negative impacts of risk messages on post-pandemic travel intentions. ...
... This provides evidence and a theoretical basis for analyzing the effect and boundary conditions of risk messages. Currently, empathy is attracting more attention in tourism studies, such as on hospitality service quality, dark and heritage tourism (Miles, 2002;Tucker, 2016). Empathy plays a second important role besides attributions of responsibility to analyse the relationships between crisis situations, crisis and risk communication, and outcomes (Schoofs et al., 2019). ...
The moderation roles of empathy and perceived waiting time (PWT) on post-pandemic travel intentions have not as yet been investigated. This study of 684 Chinese resident respondents elicited how COVID-19 risk messages affected post-pandemic travel intentions. The results showed that people exposed to messages in the risk-amplifying frame had lower basic travel and destination travel intentions than those who were exposed to messages in the risk- attenuating frame. Empathy had a beneficial effect on basic travel intentions and had an inducing effect on destination travel intentions only in high-risk situations. High PWT tourists had more positive destination travel intentions in the risk-attenuating frame. The findings provide a theoretical basis for future research as well as practical implications for destination risk communications and market restoration during a public health crisis.
... More is involved here than 'seeing' or 'feeling the perspective of others. As Tucker (2016) warns, some museums and tourist attractions merely seek to evoke lazy empathy, where the individual is not provoked into changing their way of being or doing for the good of the other (see also Cretan et al, 2019). Considering forgotten voices and stories and encouraging visitors to understand and identify with their experiences is a good step, but action and praxis (change) must follow. ...
... Theories of empathy have had limited application in a tourism setting (Tucker, 2016) and there is a dearth of research on conative empathy despite its potential to facilitate critical action and change (praxis). Studies linking complexity and empathy are even rarer, but Mehran, Hossein and Olya's (2020) study make a start. ...
This conceptual paper aims to facilitate an understanding of regenerative tourism by utilizing a complex systems perspective, taking a relational and integrated approach to the complexity, emergence, dynamism, and the wicked problems that arise. It requires understanding them from the perspective of key stakeholders, with care and attentiveness to those least able to speak for themselves and most vulnerable to emergent issues and threats like climate change. It is argued here that an ethic of care and empathy nurtures relational understanding and inclusiveness of vulnerable groups, communities and Nature, too, as key stakeholders, along with diverse knowledges and perspectives for critical action and change (praxis). Three main types of empathy are discussed: cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and conative empathy. It is further argued that conative empathy is action-oriented and paves the way for inclusivity, critical consciousness and action to facilitate healing, social justice, communal well-being and a healthy, flourishing planet.
... El objetivo de la investigación consiste en analizar la diferencia en el nivel de empatía en el servicio al turismo en hombres y mujeres, desde una perspectiva organizacional, a partir de la activa participación en espacios laborales del sector, en particular las agencias de viajes, como requisito al entendimiento más allá de las fronteras culturales. En particular, la consideración de identificar los aspectos de la empatía en los distintos contextos del turismo conforma un prerrequisito emocional para establecer un diálogo positivo y un entendimiento intercultural (Tucker, 2016). ...
... El prejuicio: es un juicio prematuro o una actitud negativa hacia una persona o grupo de personas que no se basa en hechos objetivos, sino más bien en estereotipos simplificados en exceso y sobre puntos de vista generalizados de grupos o tipos de personas (Tucker, 2016;Tucker-Ladd, Clayton, 2000). Es también el resultado de experiencias emocionales previas con personas similares. ...
El presente artículo tiene como propósito analizar la incidencia de la empatía intercultural en hombres y mujeres en las agencias de viajes en Nuevo Léon, mediante análisis factorial y con la utilización del programa SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Se expone un acercamiento teórico al tema de empatía, en particular a la empatía intercultural, así como su relación con el turismo. Se aplica un instrumento con vialidad aceptable, validado mediante coeficiente de confiabilidad de Alfa Cronbach, aplicado a una muestra de 52 personas: 37 mujeres y 15 hombres, con actividades de servicio al turismo internacional en agencias de viajes. Se utilizó el análisis factorial con pruebas de esfericidad de Bartlett y KMO cubriendo el límite de aceptación requerida, prueba t de Student que relaciona una variable cuantitativa y una cualitativa. Mediante los diferentes métodos estadísticos utilizados se concluyó que no hay asociación entre hombres y mujeres en el nivel de empatía intercultural en el personal de las agencias de viajes.
... The role of empathy, with a greater focus on understanding or stepping into the shoes of another, signifies potential to shift the focus away from the tourist to the host destination residents. Tucker (2016) explores the links between tourism and empathy from a critical tourism perspective but contends that whilst empathy can generate 'intersubjective understanding' between tourists and communities, tourist empathy for the 'other' is also linked with neoliberal discourse and a market-oriented logic. The imperative for tourists 'to care' effectively transfers responsibility away from the tourism company to address inequalities as a result of tourism, and puts the onus on the tourist as consumer (2016, p. 35). ...
... Tourists could also be encouraged to take community-run tours whereby people represent themselves and their situation on their own terms, in line with a more inclusive approach to development (Scheyvens & Biddulph, 2018). Such approaches to decommodifying 'doing good' could offer the potential to foster meaningful global solidarity (McLennan, 2019) and a more reflective sense of empathy (Tucker, 2016) among tourists. ...
Hotels create opportunities for tourists to 'do good' whilst on holiday, for example through participation in hotel-led programmes involving environmental clean-ups or donations to schools, the purchase of community-made products, or taking community and school tours. These initiatives foster in tourists a sense of compassion for communities in tourist destinations, but at the same time, effectively commodify the desire to 'do good'. Critically, initiatives centre predominantly on the gifting of tangible donations whilst precluding any engagement with either the structural causes of inequalities or the broader priorities of destination communities. Case studies are used to explore community perspectives of initiatives led by luxury hotels to support schools in Fiji. Findings highlight the tension between the commodifica-tion of tourist desire to give back to destination communities and their limitations in addressing community development priorities. We consider whether tourist compassion can be harnessed to work for communities through tourism partnerships, and reflect upon the kinds of tourism partnerships that might be effective mechanisms for realising the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, highlighting the need to delink addressing community needs from the feel-good tourist experience.
... Building on Ashworth and Isaac's (2015) propositions, we view dark tourism as emotional experiences (positive, negative, and mixed) triggered at disaster sites that subsequently have some consequences on the visitor's life. Some describe the recent focus on emotions in tourism studies as the "emotional turn"-a shift in focus from viewing tourism as a mere economic activity toward tourism as a social space embodied with issues of self and other which are lived experiences and performed through emotions (Buda 2015;Tucker 2016). Studies of resident emotions have lagged somewhat behind those of tourist emotions, and the range of residents' emotional experiences at local dark tourism sites remain an area that needs further attention (Prayag 2016;Prayag, Buda, and Jordan 2020). ...
... As suggested by the findings, cognitive appraisals of experiences led residents to utilize more mixed, and emotion-focused coping strategies rather than problem-focused strategies (McCrae 1984;Schuettler and Boals 2011). This supports the emotion turn in tourism studies described by Buda (2015) and Tucker (2016), where disaster-related dark tourism sites become a social space to reflect on self in relation to the dead, survivors, and the postquake community. ...
While tourist emotions elicited at dark tourism sites are well understood, little is known about residents’ experiences at local dark tourism sites. This study explores residents’ emotional experiences at dark tourism sites, the cognitive appraisals of their experiences and emotions, and the coping strategies they deploy to address them. In-depth interviews with 37 residents of Christchurch, New Zealand (site of the Canterbury earthquakes), reveal that residents cognitively appraised their experience at local dark tourism sites on important facets such as centrality and controllability. Visits to local dark tourism sites embodied memories of the disaster that elicit more negative (e.g., sadness) than positive emotions (e.g., gratefulness). Residents coped through seeking comfort from others or positive reappraisal of the experience. Furthermore, visits to dark tourism sites are in and of themselves a coping strategy for residents postdisaster. Implications for the development of dark tourism attractions and support for resident well-being are offered.
... They argue that such experience promotes respect, trust, sympathy, tolerance and empathy towards others and are essential for peacemaking. To help achieve SDG 16, the future tourism industry can focus on the effects of empathy through peace tourism, as suggested by Tucker (2016). There is also conflict over the years with tourism decisions taken away by organizations and governments from host communities at the expense of the environment and local people (Wang, 2021). ...
... Bondi et al., 2007;Hopkins, 2009;Sharp, 2009). These 'emotional geographies' have contributed to opening new interpretations in the study of gender and emotions in tourism (see Cohen & Cohen, 2019;d'Hauteserre, 2015;Frazer & Waitt, 2016;Hall, 2018;Moyle et al., 2019;Picard, 2012;Tucker, 2009Tucker, , 2016Wilson & Little, 2008). For example, drawing from Ahmed's work on emotions, Buda et al. (2014) examined the notion of embodied emotionality or how emotions play a crucial role in the ways in which touring bodies interact with other subjects (i.e. ...
Understandings of emotions and their role in ordering social life
has been a fruitful feminist contribution to cultural and social
studies. Under this theoretical perspective, affective or emotional
responses illustrate women’s strategies to cope with or resist productive
and spatial limitations produced by traditional gender
roles and stereotypes. Since the 2000s, tourism and gender
researchers have turned their attention to emotions, although
their intersection of gender stereotypes in rural tourism has been
limited. We rely on Ahmed’s framework on emotions and other
theoretical contributions on socio-cultural spaces, embodied emotions,
affective practices and gendered work to investigate gender
roles, stereotypes and tourism productive and spatial relations in
Mexican rural contexts. This context shed light on roles and gender
stereotypes and their connections with the affective spatial
practices experienced by women. A total of 49 Mexican women
were interviewed from 2015 to 2018. Qualitative content analysis
is employed to examine interview data, using inductive and
deductive approaches. In addition, non-participant observation,
document review, and field notes enrich and complement the
interview data. Emotions are shown to mediate women’s lived
experiences of gendered rural tourism work and the potential of
emotional responses to contest social norms in opening new
paths to surpass women’s relatively weaker positions in rural societies and to negotiate inequalities. Women continue to experience contradictory messages and tensions generated in both the family and the community, even with the growth in gender mainstreaming strategies; we propose a framework to contest traditional gender roles and to improve women’s affective spatial practices in rural contexts.
... Travel has long been lauded as tool for increased understanding of cultural differences and developing empathy for the destinations visited (Soldatenko and Backer, 2019;Tucker, 2016). Based on this understanding, one would assume that the more travel experience one has, the more open that would be to pro-travel policies. ...
... Empathy is the ability to perceive and understand the emotions of others with behavioral responses (Decety and Svetlova, 2012). Tucker (2016) explained empathy as an emotional ability to place the self in the situation of others. Some researchers argued the value of empathy marketing through emotional interaction, empathic interaction, and affinity interaction (Chen and Guo, 2021;Lin et al., 2021). ...
As philanthropic sales via live-streaming shopping have played an important role in alleviating the huge backlog of agricultural products during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper aims to study how online interaction in philanthropic marketing exerts influence on consumer impulse buying behaviors. We empirically explore four major dimensions of online interactions in philanthropic live-streaming sales, i.e., the live streamers’ image, the herd effect of consumers, the responsiveness of sellers, and the mutual trust between consumers. The results reveal that the herd effect of consumers and the responsiveness of sellers could promote consumers’ empathy ability toward the growers of the products sold lively, whereas the live streamers’ image and the mutual trust between consumers have little effect on empathy promotions. Meanwhile, both the consumers’ empathy ability and the live streamers’ image positively affect consumers’ impulse buying behavior, which suggests a partial moderating role of consumers’ empathy ability. Lastly, by taking both social and business perspectives, we provide managerial implications for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of philanthropic live-streaming sales to alleviate social and economic pressure in emergencies.
... A countering force to this narrow-minded dualism may be achieved through tourism by enhancing "intercultural learning" and other related feelings/actions (Tucker, 2016, p. 35) through immersive "solidarity tours and exchanges" (Higgins-Desbiolles & Russell-Mundine, 2008, p.188). Solidarity tours/exchanges can "foster social and environmental transformations" (Higgins-Desbiolles & Russell-Mundine, 2008, p.188;Tucker, 2016). Tourism scholars have explored solidarity (in/for) tourism to both residents and tourists, mainly through the theory of emotion(nal) solidarity (Dogan, 2019;Woosnam, Norman, & Ying, 2009), leading solidarity to a "humanistic vision of tourism" (Dogan, 2019, p. 540). ...
Possibilities of virtual tours as solidarity tourism products.
... The emotional expression of the film's textual content and presentation of scenic spots' images on the screen determine the identity conversion from "audiences" to "tourists" to a large extent. Through visual technology and emotional arousal, relevant information about the destinations in the film is presented and reproduced at a high level, and the positive shaping of tourist destinations can strongly strike an emotional chord with viewers (Tucker, 2016). This can change the perceptual, emotional, and intentional characteristics of the existing destination image in the minds of tourists, and create a brand-new tourist destination image (Xu et al., 2021), thereby generating tourism motivation (Hosany et al., 2020). ...
With the advent of the information age and advancement of digital technology, film and television tourism is developing rapidly under the joint action of the film industry and tourism industry, and has become a crucial form of cultural and entertainment consumption for individuals to pursue a better life in the new age. This study designs three experiments from the perspectives of identity conversion, motivation transfer, and demand change to conduct an empirical study on the mediating role of empathy for further exploring the internal mechanism of film-induced tourism in film and television tourism. The findings suggest that the three mediation hypotheses are all valid, indicating that film-induced tourism involves identity conversion from audiences to visitors, motivation transfer from watching to traveling, and demand change from interest to expectation through emotional media.
... Empathy. Empathy is the ability of an individual to perceive the feelings and emotions of others, specifically in terms of understanding their views, needs, and concerns [43]. Interviewees emphasized two parts when describing their expectations of chatbot behavior: one is the cognition of the human speaker's emotional state, and the other is the ability to express emotions according to the context of the conversation. ...
Social robots such as chatbots are regarded as a practical approach to alleviate loneliness. Few studies in the tourism field have focused on loneliness and its impact on the acceptance of chatbots used by the tourism industry. This paper explores the factors influencing tourists’ willingness to use chatbots from the perspective of loneliness by combining theories related to anthropomorphism and the uncanny valley effect. This paper adopts a qualitative research method by taking a semi-structured interview with 15 tourists who have used travel chatbots before. The results show that in addition to perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, there are three factors (tourist loneliness, perceived anthropomorphism, and user anxiety) that directly influence tourists’ acceptance of travel chatbots. Moreover, tourist loneliness positively influences user anxiety through perceived anthropomorphism. User anxiety has a negative effect on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. This research then proposed an extended TAM model from the perspective of tourist loneliness. This paper enriches the research on loneliness as well as chatbots in the tourism field. The results provide suggestions for the practical application of travel chatbots.
... Contrary to the main findings of earlier conceptual studies (Foley & Lennon, 1996;Seaton, 1996), which indicated death as a primary motive for visiting the dark sites, Iliev (2020) pointed out that numerous contemporary 'dark' tourists are motivated by their interest in cultural heritage, learning and education opportunities for understanding what actually happened within so-called 'dark' destinations. Authors, such as Ashworth and Isaac (2015), Buda (2015), Nawijn and Fricke (2015) and Tucker (2016) even perceived the concept of dark tourism as an emotional experience that might be characterized as negative but also positive, to some extent (considering an increase of emotions, such as hope, love, pride, fascination, interest, gratitude), or mixed, with accompanying consequences for the life of dark tourism participants. In respect to that, the concept of dark tourism is often considered as an entire process of searching for a personal deeper experience (Iliev, 2020). ...
Previous research on dark tourism in vulnerable post-conflict areas, such as South-Eastern Europe, has overlooked the nature of visitor personalities. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to determine which personality traits (dark triad, sadistic impulse, and six personality traits) are related to preference for dark tourism sites. The sample consisted of 227 respondents from Serbia who completed an online questionnaire. Using a multivariate general linear model, it was found that respondents high in Machiavellianism tended to prefer dark exhibitions, while respondents high in psychopathy tended to prefer visiting conflict/battle sites. Visitors to fun factories as an additional type of dark tourism sites showed low levels of sadism, while narcissism showed no effect on preference for dark tourism sites. Hence, only agreeableness and honesty-humility showed a significant effect on preference for dark tourism sites (dark exhibitions and conflict/battle sites). These results show interesting differences in dark sites visitors’ personalities.
... The positive emotion is worth equal attention as, in general, emotional engagement may facilitate visitors' meaning-generation, cognitive evaluations and behavioural responses (Sigala & Steriopoulos, 2021;Volo, 2021). A wide range of emotions identified in the current study could be leveraged for cultivating positive experience outcomes, such as using empathy to precipitate positive actions (Tucker, 2016), and evoking surprise and amazement to foster memorable tourism experience (Hosany, Prayag, Deesilatham, Cauševic, & Odeh, 2015), which paves the way for future investigations. Moreover, this research, encompassing multiple cases that are distinguished from each other at geographical, cultural and temporal levels, makes a first attempt in scrutinising nuanced differences of the experiences at dark tourism sites. ...
Visiting post-natural disaster sites has been burgeoning in recent years. Dark tourism at those settings has been utilised as part of relief and recovery strategies after natural disasters. This research, undertaken at four post-natural disaster sites, explores the onsite experience of 196 participants using semi-structured interviews and participant-generated photos. Findings indicate that experiencing a disaster context could be cognitive, emotional, introspective, sensory, relational and hedonic. Some experience dimensions, such as introspective and relational experiences, might help illuminate the value of promoting dark tourism at natural disasters. Experience discrepancy across multiple cases indicates the heterogeneity and malleability of visitors' experiences in the context. By depicting lived experiences of tourists, this study contributes to the understanding of the ways through which dark tourism sites at natural disasters are experienced and constructed as well as provides practical insights into tourist experience creation.
... Clearly, an encounter in and of itself is insufficient to disrupt race-based structural violence. In their work, both Gibson (2010) and Tucker (2009Tucker ( , 2016 advocate a "reflexive interrogation" (Tucker, 2009, p. 444) of potentially productive, but often embodied as 'negative,' emotions of shame, guilt, fear, or pity that often arise over the course of the tourism encounter. This perspective is further drawn upon below, through the voice of two participants in this research who advocate for greater interrogation of power and subjective positionalities in the tourism encounter. ...
Drawing on the theme of gender equality in tourism, this book aims to identify the main obstacles to women's advancement in the tourism industry, and to discover and share successful strategies to overcome them, drawing on case studies from all over the world. Interlaced between the 12 chapters of the book are stories from women who work in tourism. The chapters and stories that make up this book explore women's stories of empowerment beyond the neoliberal conceptualizations of economic improvement, to highlight the structural inequalities that prevent true gender equality. The collection points to the slow and small changes that women are making and how women are using the transformations tourism brings to their advantage. The book has a subject index.
... Within the context of tourism, up to now, the concept of empathy has mostly been applied to stimulate an understanding between tourists and residents (Tucker, 2016;Zamanillo Tamborrel & Cheer, 2019). In other contexts, though, methods and tools are being developed that could also further the development of tourism visitor flows and experiences in a more empathic way. ...
This booklet accompanies my (Ko Koens) inaugural lecture. In it, I take a systemic perspective to examine the current state of urban tourism and argue that a reframing of tourism is necessary in order to understand and prevent tourism excesses.
I also discuss ways to reframe tourism, the principles of designing tourism that add value to cities, and a strategy for tourism design. In doing so, I seek to provide at least some initial guidelines on how we can rebuild urban tourism in a way that is more sustainable and resilient and that contributes to a better-quality environment for all city users.
Finally, I turn to ‘New Urban Tourism’, which can loosely be described as ‘tourism of the everyday urban life’ in neighbourhoods or areas that are not (yet) on the mainstream tourism trail. I argue that New Urban Tourism’s unique focus and characteristics make it useful as a place of analysis and experimentation with regard to the place-based, co-production of tourism that can foster ideas in response to the question of ‘how’ to reinvent tourism.
... These initiatives are carried out under the supervision and guidance from the UNWTO secretariat. (Stone, 2012;Tucker, 2015). UNWTO developed guidelines coined "Roadmap for Recovery", and these have been established to direct the tourism sector and governments to respond to the economic crisis (UNWTO, 2015). ...
Good weather and favourable climate are vital resources for tourism, particularly nature-based tourism (NBT). Weather plays a pivotal role in selecting tourist activities and the overall experience of the trip, while climate influences the timing of the trip, the range of activities offered, and the natural environment experiences which attract tourists. This influence is amplified in countries located in the global South, which have little to no adaptative capacity to ameliorate unfavourable climatic conditions and extreme weather experiences. This study presents the first comprehensive tourism and climate change analysis in Zimbabwe, and used a mixed-methods approach to: (1) assess tourists’ perceptions of climate change; (2) explore tourism stakeholders’ perceptions of climate change and their adaptation strategies; and (3) investigate the climatic suitability of Zimbabwe for tourism at various selected locations across the country. This comprehensive assessment is the first of its kind in Southern African tourism and climate change research which triangulates three different sets of empirical findings in evaluating Zimbabwean climate suitability and climate change perceptions, which enhanced the credibility of the research findings. For the tourists’ perceptions, closed and open-ended questionnaires were used, while semi-structured interviews were conducted with tourism stakeholders to investigate their climate change perceptions and the adaptation strategies they employ. For climate suitability, the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) was calculated. The results from the TCI highlight that the mean annual TCI scores for Zimbabwe range between 75.5-83 (100 being the maximum score), classifying the country as having “very good” to “excellent” climatic conditions for tourism, while the mean monthly TCI scores range from 53.8 “good” to 86 also “excellent” climatic conditions for tourism for the period under study 1989-2014. These results were then triangulated with questionnaire results from tourists and semi-structured interviews with various tourism stakeholders at the selected locations around Zimbabwe. These three sets of results largely complemented each other where thermal comfort is the most important climatic variable considered for tourism climate suitability by the TCI, the tourists and the tourism stakeholders, and hence addressed the knowledge gap in Southern African climate change and tourism.
... While saying this, we recognize that this paper is the outcome of our partial perspectives and positionalities, and that the call for cultural sensitivity does not come without risks. Postcolonial critiques underline that the wish to recognize and listen to the Other can appear as romanticization, paternalism, and other forms of 'othering' and silencing (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015;Higgins-Desbiolles & Whyte, 2013;Tucker, 2016). As alluded to in our introduction, by taking up cultural sensitivity we run the risk of furthering such epistemic violences. ...
Cultural sensitivity is highly relevant but inadequately conceptualized in tourism contexts. This article explores and advances understanding of cultural sensitivity in relation to Arctic tourism where local and Indigenous livelihoods and environments are tethered to dynamics of recent tourism growth and decline, climate change, and colonial power relations. Framing cultural sensitivity as a subjective orientation towards otherness, the article illuminates differences between ethnocentric and ethnorelative orientations and discusses the importance of relational tourism processes. By advancing the conceptualization of cultural sensitivity, the article offers a framework for developing tourism services and products, and approaching tourism encounters , in ways that can enhance recognition, respect and reciprocity towards otherness in Arctic tourism and beyond.
... Cutting the statues "down to size" in the various approaches under consideration here, takes away or diminishes or manages the potentially strong emotions surrounding memories (Wulff, 2007) such as anger, grief, admiration and fear. The taming or erasing of both political and personal threat is clearly important for sustaining peace in the political present and also for making tourist attractions and spaces comfortable for visitors, even as the emotional life of other cultures and past political regimes sparks interest, curiosity and potentially empathy in tourists (Heelas, 2007;Tucker, 2016). ...
In times of liquid modernity, when human lifespan often exceeds that of grand political structures, monumental statues continue to be built and celebrated as symbols of enduring ideological triumphs. In their apparent permanence, these statues often outlive the political systems they were designed to glorify, creating a dilemma of how to exhibit their ambiguous or disgraced presence. In this article, we argue that the heritagization of political figures and pasts is central to the reframing of such narratives and that tourists have a key, if sometimes unwitting, role to play in the shaping of the emerging political imaginaries. Focusing on statue parks in Central and Eastern Europe showcasing communist-era sculptures, we examine strategies of exhibition and tourist responses to the multivalent presence of the monuments of past regimes. We identify four approaches of destruction, delegitimization, decontextualization, and depoliticization, each tied to a particular political moment and rhetorical goal. Examining these shifting modes of preservation, presentation and interpretation, we query the tourists’ role as participants in the processes of stabilization and peace-building, proposing that in times of global re-evaluation of the symbolism of past monuments, these sites can serve to guide much needed analysis and reflection.
This paper focuses on cross-cultural encounters between the members of a community and the diaspora from a potential host destination who live among them. It provides insights into cultural sustainability outside the typical travel milieus and underscores the diaspora's intuitive role as cultural ambassadors outside their countries of origin.
The emotional experience of a visit to a concentration camp memorial is high in intensity and wide in diversity. Clustering of this emotional experience has led to a better understanding of the valence of emotions. It is not known how these emotion clusters affect the meaning derived from the experience and how this affects visit intention. This study addressed this gap in research and explored the potential relations between emotion clusters and meaning in the context of an expected visit to a concentration camp memorial. This study finds that the emotion cluster Sympathy is the only cluster to have a significant and large positive direct effect on Meaning and a significant, but small, positive indirect effect on Visit Intention. The Misery cluster is the only cluster that has a significant but small negative direct effect on Visit Intention. The Positivity cluster has no effects on Meaning and Visit Intention. In the discussion, we address the role of empathy, and theoretical implications are framed in Terror Management Theory. Managerial implications include a discussion on the use of promotion to trigger empathy.
The World Health Organization has estimated that globally, over 2.2 billion people live with some form of visual impairment. However, research into the tourism experiences of this large group of people remains limited. This paper employs embodiment theory and sensory compensation theory to examine aspects of the tourism experience from the perspective of visually impaired tourists. The analysis was based on travel notes written by Chinese visually impaired tourists. Seven unique types of tourism experience were identified including “Sensory Compensation” and “Barrier-free experiences”. The findings highlight opportunities to build a more comprehensive understanding of the tourism experiences of visually impaired tourists.
Since the development of film-induced tourism, scholars have increasingly shifted their attention to examining film-induced tourism from different perspectives. However, little research has been devoted to the underlying mechanisms by which audiences empathize with movie scenes. Current research believes that the lens language of movies is helpful for the communication between the movie and the audience. It not only helps the audience to shape the imagination of the movie scene, but also contributes to the construction of a virtual language landscape, and promotes the audience’s cognition of the movie scene. Bringing their emotions and self-expression into the story ultimately enhances the audience’s perception of where it was filmed. In exploring the framework of the transformation of empathy in lens language to landscape language, cultural differences are also proposed as the boundary conditions for the relationship between lens language and empathy. Structural equation modeling with PLS-SEM was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings suggest that lens language positively predicts language landscape and empathy positively mediates the aforementioned relationship. Furthermore, the interaction term of cultural differences amplifies the relationship between lens language and empathy. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications.
In this paper, we reflect on the challenges of ethnographic fieldwork in tourism research. Specifically, we discuss the intense, messy and complex dynamics of doing (tourism) ethnographic fieldwork, highlighting how key challenges have affected us as researchers, our practises, relationships and experiences in the field. Our reflections are illustrated considering respectively our research experiences of mountaineering in the Himalayas, walking tourism in China, horse-riding tourism in the UK and volunteer tourism in Peru. Although these fields have very different social and geopolitical contexts, we experienced similar issues. Our most commonly experienced challenges include time limitations, having ‘enough data’, accessibility to the informants and rapport building. Through the discussion of these challenges, we unpack the often conflicting emotional contours of fieldwork which are commonly experienced but rarely spoken of. With this paper, we seek to open critical debates on the emotional aspects of tourism research which may be particularly useful for novice ethnographers and scholars constrained by the institutionalized pressures of academia.
Traditional craft villages are becoming more popular as cultural tourism destinations since they preserve and represent indigenous people’s culture and lifestyles while also contributing significantly to the economy. Along with the current surge in visitors, traditional villages must improve service quality components to strengthen their attractiveness and competitiveness. To analyze the quality of tourism services given by the places, the study was done in Da Nang, a city in Vietnam’s central region with various unique traditional craft villages. In this study, the research paradigm “Importance—Performance Analysis” (IPA) was used and converted with “SERVQUAL.” A total of 120 tourists who had previously visited Da Nang’s traditional craft villages were surveyed. The findings suggest that tourists place a high value on indices showing the importance of tourism service quality, but they undervalue performance. Overall, the article advises and proposes four group solutions based on priority levels in order to improve and further expand the quality of services in traditional craft villages in Da Nang city.
In previous research on consumer network usage behavior, the focus was mainly on how to collect information. Few studies have delved into consumers’ psychological responses to information and whether they are also affected by emotional contagion. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, uncertainties and risks for travel have increased. Both the positive and negative emotional performance of travel information sharers often affect receivers’ feelings. This study explores whether the sharing of travel information on social network sites will have an emotional impact. It also explores how that might influence site members’ attitudes and behavioral intentions related to travel. According to the study, people have recently been infected with negative emotions. They hope those emotions will be transformed into positive ones by sharing travel information during the pandemic. This study shows that emotional contagion can occur in both physical and virtual spaces, and it will further affect the recipient’s attitudes toward certain tourist destinations and travel willingness.
Protest tourism is visiting a destination with the major aim of viewing or participating in protests. This qualitative study examined the motivations of Hong Kong protest tourists as a starting point for future exploration of distinctions between this emerging type of tourism and other existing categories. Five primary motivations were revealed. Two push motivations were the desire to (1) have special, new experiences that few others have experienced; and (2) experience tourist offerings first-hand. Three pull motivations were created by sites providing tourists the opportunity to (i) see a one-time historical event; (ii) share the moment with local citizens, even if indirectly; and (iii) experience real-time events with a local guide. The findings point to unique temporal and geographic aspects of the interplay between protest tourist motivations and the unique merging of the subject and object of tourism, shedding light on how different tourism experiences can be framed.
Yemek kültürü; bir toplumun kültürünü oluşturan önemli unsurlardan biri olarak kabul edilmektedir. Toplum arasında sosyalleşme ve iletişim aracı olan törenler, özel ve dini günler; aynı toplumda yaşayan insanların ortak duyguları paylaşmasını, ortak hareket etmelerini sağlayan, toplumu birleştiren olguların başında gelmektedir. Bu törenlerde ve özel günlerde hazırlanıp sunulan yemekler de yemek kültürünün bir parçasıdır. Araştırmanın amacı, höşmerim tatlısının yapılışını ve Ankara Çamlıdere’de törensel yemek olarak kullanımını incelemektir. Bu amaçla höşmerim tatlısının kökeni, yapılış yerleri, bölgelere göre yapılış şekilleri, farklılıkları aktarılmış, höşmerim tatlısının Ankara’da geleneksel yapım aşamaları, yörelere göre farklılıkları ortaya konmuştur. Araştırma nitel desende yürütülmüş olup doküman analizi yöntemi kullanılarak ikincil veriler, kaynak kişi görüşmeleri ile de birincil veriler elde edilmiştir. Höşmerim tatlısının diğer bölgelerde törensel yemek olarak geleneksel kullanımından farklı şekilde Ankara’da ve Çamlıdere’de Güvey Görme Geleneğinde de ikram edilen bir tatlı olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu gelenek aynı zamanda Somut Olmayan Kültürel Miras Türkiye Ulusal Envanter Listesi'nde yer alan kültürel unsurlarımızdan birisidir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Törensel Yemek, Ankara Yemek Kültürü, Güvey Görme Geleneği,
Höşmerim
Considerable research has demonstrated the positive effects of handwritten font styles on product attachment and word-of-mouth behavior. However, few studies examined whether these positive effects can be mitigated or even reversed. The purpose of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by identifying several boundary conditions (communal orientation, message type, and hotel type) for the positive effects of handwritten font styles. We conducted two quasi-experimental studies. In Study 1 ( n = 125), the positive effect of handwritten font styles on attitude toward a hotel was not observed among individuals with a low communal orientation. In Study 2 ( n = 245), the handwritten (vs. machine-written) font styles in the sustainability messages of a luxury hotel reduce warmth of the hotel. Hospitality managers should use handwritten font styles carefully depending on hotel type, message type, and customer characteristics.
Purpose
Considerable research has examined the negative consequences of customer incivility on employees (e.g. turnover intention and sabotage behavior toward the customer). However, there is scant research investigating how other customers, as observers, may react to incivility. This knowledge gap should be filled because hospitality services are often consumed in the public setting where customers can observe and be influenced by each other. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by examining observing customers’ willingness to revisit the company following customer incivility.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants are American consumers recruited from a crowdsourced online panel. Two scenario-based experimental studies in the restaurant setting are conducted. Customer incivility and relationship norms (communal versus exchange) are manipulated, while relationship closeness is measured.
Findings
Study 1 shows that following fellow customer incivility (vs civility), observing customers’ intention to revisit the company was lower when they perceive a distant relationship with the employee. This intention did not differ regardless of incivility and civility when they perceive a close relationship with the employee. Study 2 shows that when observing customers perceive a communal relationship with the employee, their revisit intention was even higher following customer incivility (vs civility).
Practical implications
Hospitality managers need to train employees to identify signs of customer incivility and assume appropriate actions to reduce the negative consequences on observers. Hospitality managers should also communicate their expectations for respectful customer behaviors through an organization-wide campaign. Finally, hospitality businesses should foster a close relationship with their customers, particularly a communal relationship to offset the negative consequences of customer incivility on observers.
Originality/value
This study adds to previous research by challenging the universally negative view of customer incivility. The authors do so by examining the moderating effects of relationship closeness and norms in observer reactions to customer incivility. This study contributes to previous research drawing on script theory and deontic justice theory.
Destinations increasingly use chatbots in the management and communication with tourists. This study analyzes the mediating effect of chatbot usage satisfaction on forming the destination’s image. As a case study, we use the Chabot “Victoria la Malagueña,” Spain. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations were necessary to identify the relationships between the constructs. The results show that informativeness and empathy are the main attributes that influence user satisfaction and mediate forming a destination image. The study has managerial implications and provides destination management organizations with practical information for creating chatbots.
Lucerne has been a much sought-after tourist place for over two hundred years. Over time, the tourism industry has not only shaped the physical appearance of the cityscape, but it has also influenced selfawareness, capabilities, knowledge, and know-how of its residents, as well as the overall identity, quality, and ability of the place, which hence formed its “touristic capital” (Stock et al. 2014:13). Due to the ongoing globalisation, tourism has become increasingly diverse, with many Asian tourists visiting the city in central Switzerland. This change in visitor segments has gone along with a constant growth in visitor numbers, fostering a debate over what kind of tourism Lucerne wants, how many visitors are enough, and where the tourism industry generally intends to develop. Under the umbrella of the catch phrase overtourism, an all-encompassing, vivid, and engaged controversy about how to deal adequately with tourism has dominated the public discourse in recent years. As a tourist place, Lucerne is thus contested: many different actors are inhabiting the city through many different practices, which are sometimes mutually enhancing, sometimes conflicting. The present PhD thesis aims to improve understanding of Lucerne’s touristic situation and therefore opts for a qualitative
examination of the field of research. It wants to comprehend the origins of the problem of overtourism, where conflicts, misunderstandings but also friendly encounters are rooted, and finally what lessons can be learned from this analysis so as to deal with the current situation more satisfactorily and adapt future developments. The present body of research approaches this endeavour in three different ways.
First, it investigates the people dwelling in Lucerne (Ingold 2011; Lussault and Stock 2010; Sheller and Urry 2004). By enlarging the focus on the different actors inhabiting the city on a temporary, periodic, or even longterm basis, the thesis overcomes the outdated duality of the traditional host/guest relationship.
Second, it is argued that it is not only the number of visitors that is decisive in assessing Lucerne’s tourism situation. In contrast, the study postulates that it is rather about social, cultural, and material practices (Schatzki 2019; Reckwitz 2016; Stock 2014), that is, about how actors inhabit a place, instead of merely the amount of people who do so. Tensions over tourism arise out of different background knowledge, cultural norms, learned understandings, and personal motivations when dwelling in a place.
Third, the thesis shows how a place unfolds out of the practices of the people associated with it (Bærenholdt 2004; Sheller and Urry 2004; Stock 2019). A tourist city such as Lucerne is not a fixed and determined container filled with definite purpose and meaning, but a fluid, dynamic and ever-changing place which is constantly negotiated, shaped, and produced by those living in it.
The work presented here draws heavily on the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), which proposes that tourist places are co-produced and actively shaped by different actors and mobilities. Following this theoretical conceptualization, its consequences for the methodical approach must be drawn. Urban tourism situations cannot be observed satisfactorily in closed laboratories, but only in a vivid, open, dynamic living space such as a city is. This research therefore opts for mobile research methods (Büscher et al. 2009; Fincham et al. 2010; Urry 2007) which are succeeding information and informants on the move. A grounded theory approach brought out the insights and findings of 38 walking interviews (with more than 80 interview partners) and extensive participant observation. The empirical findings unfold in the form of an urban ethnography that sheds light on ‘living with tourism’ in Lucerne by finding new reasons for conflicts over tourism and fresh perspectives on potential future developments.
This study aims to explore the composition of virtual guided tour experience on Airbnb and to develop a formation process of virtual guided tour experience. A case study based on the qualitative analysis was conducted with a dataset of online reviews towards an Online Experience in Beijing, China. A three-stage process of virtual guided tour experience was concluded, including experience encounter, experience evaluation, and behavioral intention. Experience encounter describes the experience composition from four dimensions: interpretation quality, host credibility, tourist-host social contact, and peer interaction; Experience evaluation is involved with benefits mainly gained from the enhanced understanding of local culture and the satisfaction attributed by the sense of telepresence; Further, behavioral intention covers both online and offline willingness to recommend or repurchase the virtual tour, or visit the destination in person after the pandemic. Theoretical and practical implications in navigating tourism recovery were discussed.
We applied four machine learning models, linear regression, the k-nearest neighbors (KNN), random forest, and support vector machine, to predict consumer demand for bike sharing in Seoul. We aimed to advance previous research on bike sharing demand by incorporating features other than weather - such as air pollution, traffic information, Covid-19 cases, and social economic factors- to increase prediction accuracy. The data were retrieved from Seoul Public Data Park website, which records the counts of public bike rentals in Seoul of Korea from January 1 to December 31, 2020. We found that the two best models are the random forest and the support vector machine models. Among the 29 features in six categories the features in the weather, pollution, and Covid-19 outbreak categories are the most important in model prediction. While almost all social economic features are the least important, we found that they help enhance the performance of the models.
This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022.
The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research.
Nowadays, hotels are adopting high technologies to improve the quality of their facilities and services to build competitive advantages. Although smart hotels are an emerging trend, no known studies have investigated hotel employees’ and guests’ perceptions of this kind of hotel. This research will investigate how hotel employees and guests perceive the benefits and drawbacks of smart hotels using Q methodology.
As global travel emerges from the pandemic, pent up interest in travel will lead to consumers making their choice between global destinations. Instagram is a key source of destination inspiration. DMO marketing success on this channel relies on projecting a destination image that resonates with this target group. However, usual text-based marketing intelligence on this channel does not work as content is consumed first and foremost as a visual projection. The author has built a deep learning based visual classifier for destination image measurement from photos. In this paper, we compare projected and perceived destination images in Instagram photography for four of the most Instagrammed destinations worldwide. We find that whereas the projected destination image aligns well to the perceived image, there are specific aspects of the destinations that are of more interest to Instagrammers than reflected in the current destination marketing.
This paper shows a first analysis of the experiences and challenges of studying tourism during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. 14 tourism students from two higher education institutions in Europe participated in three focus group discussions. One generation of these students started their education in presence and had to shift online with the start of the pandemic, while the other generation started their education knowing that lessons would be mainly online. Authors used qualitative content analysis to analyze the participants’ statements. As a result of the analysis, several themes emerged, and students contextualized eLearning as an education method for a future without COVID-19.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is proving to be one of the most promising business strategies. However, in the field of destination marketing literature, a problem exists as to how data-supported CRM can be established. While customer data management has already been well exploited in other industries, DMOs lack customer proximity and data sovereignty. The aim of this paper is to fill this research gap and show how a data-based CRM can be deployed by DMOs based on the principles of social exchange theory. In 13 expert interviews, these aspects were examined from the DMO’s point of view. The results show that the exchange relationship must be established taking into account the DMO’s extraordinary conditions and critical success factors. In order to stimulate guests’ desire for dialogue or the willingness to disclose personal data, DMOs should offer high-quality customer benefits. A combination of hedonic and utilitarian benefits are found to be the most effective stimuli. In return, only the most necessary customer information should be requested and subsequently built passively. Only if the cost and benefit ratio of the exchange relationship is positive for both parties, a database for the CRM can be built in order to foster long-lasting relationships with potential and returning guests.
This article reconsiders Chinese tourist gaze studies, examining the extent to which extant studies and theoretical models relating to the Chinese tourist gaze have overcome the Eurocentric limits of John Urry’s concept of the tourist gaze and elaborated the complexity of Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices.
Content analysis is carried out, examining research articles, books, book chapters and PhD and MSc theses collected from multiple English and Chinese databases.
The research results manifest that, overall, the previous studies, mobilise cultural essentialism, with an overestimation of the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese tourists’ behavioural patterns, which are widely believed to be framed by, but also constituting of, unique Chinese culture. Overdependence on Chinese cultural values and traditional philosophies as sources for rationale has resulted in a handful of theoretical frameworks, which appear to be of insufficient magnitude in terms both of their contribution to the original tourist gaze model, and in their manifesting of the complexity of Chinese tourists’ visual behaviour. Indeed the divide that once deliberately set apart West and East, or more precisely Western and Chinese tourist gazes, seems to become accentuated in most attempts to study and write about Chinese tourist gaze(s). The previous studies thus largely serve to mirror the Eurocentrism of Urry’s gaze, rather than challenging it.
Despite not aiming to reconceptualise the Chinese tourist gaze, this review article contributes to the field of tourist gaze studies by engaging critically with the bias and theoretical insufficiencies that have emerged, while this concept is appropriated and re-formulated to explain Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices. On this basis, we suggest a critical redirection of the extant Chinese tourist gaze studies, which would be rather significant to those researchers in future with an interest to research what the Chinese tourists prefer to see in travel and how they engage with the gazee.
This study has a few limitations, especially, as we only review and analyse the studies of the Chinese tourist gaze. It means that our conclusion might not well be generalised to either the investigation of the tourist gaze in another culture or the Chinese tourist studies, at large, which might exhibit a different pattern deserving more academic attention in future. Moreover, we recommend the future researchers, who are eager to probe Chinese tourists’ behavioural pattern, to seek for new pathways and alternative paradigms, which would be useful in overcoming the limits of cultural representations, and in reducing the problematic Sino-Western divide.
This paper describes the potential that tourism encounters have in disrupting structural violence (conceptualized as silencing and invisibilization) in South Africa. Based on PhotoVoice research undertaken with a small number of residents of three Cape Town-area townships, we consider how residents’ descriptions of their encounters with the tourists can be seen as helping to “polish the wounds of the past” as they shared a sense of being seen and heard. We apply the African philosophical lens of Ubuntu, described by one participant as “I am because we are,” to consider the role of tourism in promoting peace simultaneously at the individual as well as the collective level. While far from unproblematic, this research finds hope in the ways township tourism is disrupting structural violence, thereby supporting the emancipatory aims of post-apartheid South Africa.
As one of the world's fastest growing industries, heritage tourism is surrounded by political and ethical issues. This research explores the social and political effects and implications of heritage tourism through several pertinent topics. It examines the hegemonic power of heritage tourism and its consequences, the spectre of nationalism and colonialism in heritage-making, particularly for minorities and indigenous peoples, and the paradox of heritage tourism's role in combating these issues. Drawing from global cases, the study addresses a range of approaches and challenges of empowerment within the context of heritage tourism, including cultural landscapes, intangible heritage and eco-museums. The research argues that heritage tourism has the potential to develop as a form of co-production. It can be used to create a mechanism for community-centred governance that integrates recognition and interpretation and promotes dialogue, equity and diversity.
Managing tourists' uncivilized behavior is an important issue for both scholars and practitioners. The intervention of others provides a real-time self-management measure for reducing destructive behavior. However, many deviant tourists react angrily to such intervention, making the management measure ineffective. Exploring the reasons behind deviant tourists' anger reactions is highly important for reducing tourists' uncivilized behavior. Based on cognitive dissonance theory, this study provides a theoretical explanation of deviant tourists' anger reactions to the intervention of others. Conducting a guided recall survey, the study finds that the intervention of others positively influences deviant tourists' shame, guilt, and anger. Tourists' shame positively influences their anger, but their guilt negatively influences their anger. Moreover, the relationships are moderated by tourists' internalization of moral identity. For tourists with a low internalization of moral identity, the relationships are stronger. This study extends uncivilized behavior research by explaining deviant tourists' reactions to management measures. It also provides suggestions for practitioners to make the best use of third-party intervention in reducing tourists’ uncivilized behavior.
During the thirty-year period (1968–1998) known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 3500 people died and thousands more suffered physical disabilities and psychological trauma. Belfast, among other conflict cities, helped inspire the term ‘dark tourism’ in 1989. The country continues to be in conflict but is officially in a period of peace. Northern Ireland has been the theme for much peace and reconciliation research, but literature to date concentrates on polarised discourses rather than rural representation. Toward meeting and expanding the UN SDG16 peace goals, this research explores how what we term emotive peace tourism can be used as a methodology to affect emotional reconciliation registers in a unique rural Northern Ireland visitor experience. Bringing domestic tourists from Catholic and Protestant communities into face-to-face contact through a liminal participative ‘out-of-place’ visitor experience, we choreographed and performed a series of “Troubles” events: a guided night walk through a checkpoint, an IRA Wake, a UDA Funeral, and a Mixed-Marriage. Contributing to the debate as to whether tourism is more of a ‘peacekeeper’ than a ‘peacemaker’, our research demonstrates that an in situ liminal, emotive peace tourism experience, can generate sustainable tolerance, respect, trust, sympathy, and empathy towards others in post-conflict Northern Ireland and likely elsewhere.
The paper examines the concept of empathy and its role in the fields of tourism and the leisure industry. Based on a literature review, the definitions, the aspects and the role of empathy in the tourism and recreation professions are discussed. Researchers see empathy as a component of quality services. It is also concluded that empathy can be identified and staff can be trained in this ability in order to achieve team spirit, enjoyment at work and satisfied customers.
Affective self-transformation premised on empathy has been understood within feminist and anti-racist literatures as central to achieving social justice. Through juxtaposing debates about empathy within feminist and anti-racist theory with rhetorics of empathy in international development, and particularly writing about ‘immersions’, this article explores how the workings of empathy might be reconceptualised when relations of postcoloniality and neoliberalism are placed in the foreground. I argue that in the neoliberal economy in which the international aid apparatus operates, empathetic self-transformation can become commodified in ways that fix unequal affective subjects. Empathy may function here less to produce more intersubjective relations and ways of knowing than it does to augment the moral and affective capacities of development professionals. Yet, I suggest, it is in the ambivalences, tensions and contradictions of both emotion and neoliberalism that spaces for thinking and feeling transnational encounters differently might be cultivated.
This paper asks how we might theorise the politics of empathy in a context in which visions of social justice premised on empathetic engagement need to be situated within prevailing neoliberal frameworks. Through reading the ambivalent grammar of President Obama’s emotional rhetoric, I examine how it resonates in different ways both with feminist and antiracist debates about empathy and social justice and with the neoliberal discourse of the ‘empathy economy’ expressed within popular business literatures. I argue that, in framing empathy as a competency to be developed by individuals alongside imperatives to become more risk-taking and self-enterprising, Obama’s rhetoric reveals its centrist neoliberal underpinnings and risks (re)producing social and geopolitical exclusions and hierarchies. Yet, I suggest that seeing the phenomenon of ‘Obama-mania’ as produced not only within discourses of neoliberal governmentality but also through more radical intersections of empathy, hope, and imagination illustrates how empathy might be conceptualised as an affective portal to different spaces and times of social justice
Criticized for ignoring or misrepresenting slavery, some docents at plantation house museums have responded by including more references to slavery, but rarely move beyond mere factual references of the enslaved. This contrasts with the emotionally evocative accounts tourists hear about the planter-class family. We refer to this disparity as affective inequality. At plantation house museums, affective inequality is created and reproduced through specific spatial and narrative practices by tour guides. By retracing docent-led tours at Destrehan Plantation, Louisiana, this article engages, conceptually and empirically, with the concept of affective inequality — how it contributes to the marginalization of the history of the enslaved community, and how it becomes reproduced within the practices of tour guides at plantation house museums in the Southern US.
Empathy is widely embraced as a means of educating the social imagination; from John Dewey to Martha Nussbaum, Cornel West to bell hooks, we find empathy advocated as the foundation for democracy and social change. In this article I examine how students' readings of Art Spiegelman's MAUS, a comicbook genre depiction of his father's survival of Nazi Germany, produces the Aristotelian version of empathy advocated by Nussbaum. This ‘passive empathy’, I argue, falls far short of assuring any basis for social change, and reinscribes a ‘consumptive’ mode of identification with the other. I invoke a ‘semiotics of empathy’, which emphasizes the power and social hierarchies which complicate the relationship between reader/listener and text/speaker. I argue that educators need to encourage what I shall define as ‘testimonial reading’ which requires the reader's responsibility.
This article provides a preliminary examination of the capacity of Aboriginal tourism experiences to contribute to the achievement of reconciliation in Australia. This analysis situates reconciliation tourism as a special type of volunteer tourism and places both of these under the umbrella of tourism as a force for peace. It begins by exploring the foundations for the concept of tourism as a force for peace and understanding as seen in international documents, institutions, case studies, and tourism research. The focus then moves to Aboriginal tourism in Australia and the current status of the reconciliation movement. The experience of the Ngarrindjeri community of South Australia through their tourism and educational facility, Camp Coorong Race Relations and Cultural Education Centre, is then utilized for a case study of reconciliation tourism. This analysis is then followed by a look at the future of reconciliation tourism in Australia and an outline of possible future research agendas in reconciliation tourism.
We present our initial experience of allogeneic stem cell transplant procedure performed between April 2004 and August 2011 for various haematological disorders. All patients with non-malignant and malignant haematological disorders with HLA matched donors were selected after pre-transplant workup. Ninety seven patients underwent the procedure. Most common indications for transplant were aplastic anaemia in n = 34 (35%), followed by β-Thalassemia major in n = 21 (21.6%) and chronic myeloid leukemia in n = 11 patients (11.3%). Primary graft failure present was present in 2.06%. Incidence of graft versus host disease (GvHD) in our patients was 34%. After median follow-up of five years the overall survival was 71.3% with a mean survival time of 51.2 ± 3.3 months.
Deaths, disasters and atrocities in touristic form are becoming an increasingly pervasive feature within the contemporary tourism landscape, and as such, are ever more providing potential spiritual journeys for the tourist who wishes to gaze upon real and recreated death. As a result, the rather emotive label of 'dark tourism' has entered academic discourse and media parlance, and consequently has generated a significant amount of research interest. However, despite this increasing attention the dark tourism literature remains both eclectic and theoretically fragile. That is, a number of fundamental issues remain, not least whether it is actually possible or justifiable to collectively categorise a diverse range of sites, attractions and exhibitions that are associated with death and the macabre as 'dark tourism', or whether identifiable degrees or 'shades' of darkness can be attributed to a particular type of dark tourism supplier. This paper argues that certain suppliers may indeed, conceptually at least, share particular product features, perceptions and characteristics, which can then be loosely translated into various 'shades of darkness'. As a result, dark tourism products may lie along a rather 'fluid and dynamic spectrum of intensity', whereby particular sites may be conceivably 'darker' than others, dependant upon various defining characteristics, perceptions and product traits. It is proposed that construction of a firm and comprehensive typological foundation will lead not only to a better understanding of dark tourism supply, but also, and perhaps more importantly, lead to a better understanding of where to locate and explore consumer demand, motivations and experiences.
Over the last decades, in response to feminist, postmodern and postcolonial critiques of the modern museum, objects, collections and processes of museaIization have been radically re-signified and re-posited in the cultural arena. The new museums emerging from this shift have redefined their functions in and for communities not simply by changing their narratives but by renegotiating the processes of narration and the museal codes of communication with the public. They define themselves now not as disciplinary spaces of academic history but as places of memory, exemplifying the postmodern shift from authoritative master discourses to the horizontal, practice-related notions of memory, place, and community. The key feature of these new museums is that they deploy strategies of applied theatrics to invite emotional responses from visitors: to make them empathize and identify with individual sufferers and victims, or with their own contemporaries inhabiting alternative modernities in distant places. This dossier seeks to probe these new museographic and curatorial discourses, focusing in particular on the memory museum as an emergent global form of (counter)monumentality. Drawing on different geographical and historical contexts, it argues that the new museums’ apparently global aesthetics implies a danger of surrendering the very specificity of historical experiences the memorial ‘site’ offers its visitors.
This article addresses the fragile and potentially problematic nature of the meeting of tourists and local ‘hosts’ by shifting the discussion away from the authentic/fake binary and focusing instead on emotion in the worldmaking tourism encounter. This is done through interrogation of one particular encounter which took place in Göreme, central Turkey, between a local woman, a German couple and me. The problematic nature of the encounter exposed the point that tourism encounters are not reducible to questions of discourse alone and that, if we are to understand tourism encounters more fully, it is necessary to examine closely their emotional and bodily dimensions. Moreover, it is argued that recognizing and acknowledging emotion, and particularly shame, presents the postcolonial potentialities of tourism and Tourism Studies in that the discomfort of shame can produce a positive disruption of the otherwise inherently colonial relationship between tourist and other. In turn, reflexive interrogation of my own discomfort prompts discussion of researchers' ability to know what is going on in the production of local worlds and, indeed, to be aware of their own often-powerful role in the worldmaking function of Tourism Studies.
In this report I focus on encounter, and the manner in which tourism catalyses entanglements of people, places and identities. Antecedent were earlier theories of the tourist gaze, and critiques of tourism as neocolonialism. One response was the emergence of an ethical tourism industry — branded as such because of commitments to pay decent wages, respect local cultures and tread lightly on nature. While the ethical tourism industry has made strides on these issues, I critique its reliance on binary thinking, and failure to accommodate contradictions and variable ethical conduct in the moments of encounter. By contrast, recent work in geography has sought to explore the multisensory and affective dimensions of tourism encounters without recourse to ethical essentialism. In research on embodiment, emotions and sensory encounters, risks of diluting critique are weighed against opportunities to sharpen ethical concepts. A focus on encounter enables closer dissection of the moments and spaces in which power is exercised, and relations of care extended.
Cultural critics often view the sympathy that white audiences may feel when encountering African-American culture as a process of co-optation that does little to upset racial hierarchies. To complicate the predominant critical view that cross-racial sympathy is inevitably imperialistic, this article offers a reception study of Oprah Winfrey’s televised Book Club programs, focusing on white female fans discussing black women’s fiction. While some white readers displayed a problematic ‘color-blindness’ with imperialist overtones, others experienced transformative identifications with black subjects and a reflective alienation from white privilege. Although cross-racial sympathy can often devolve into a colonizing appropriation, my reception analysis underscores the important role that empathetic crossings within cultural space can play in the development of anti-racist coalitions. In examining the relationship of fiction reading to political change, I argue that the public and private spheres are intertwined rather than diametrically opposed.
This article examines Hackney Museum's exhibition Abolition '07 and asks how the multicultural nature of this London borough affected attempts to memorialise the abolition of the slave trade – a trade which has had a direct impact on so many of the local residents. Analysing the exhibition materials and referring to the creative writing produced by young visitors, Hackney Council encouraged an ‘ethics of empathy’ to enable a collective response to tragedy and horror, pride in the borough's abolitionist history and a shared ownership of the past. Such an approach is not unproblematic. Drawing on the work of historians, identification theorists and postcolonial critics, I suggest that imagining the pain of enslaved people falls within wider discursive frameworks which may encourage voyeuristic reading practices and an appropriative approach to alterity. However, despite significant limitations, I ultimately maintain that Abolition '07's encouragement of identifications across time, space and race is an effective strategy for reinserting the human into these stories of the past.
The concept of empathic listening has become a powerful force in interpersonal literature. However, the axiomatic commonness of the empathie premise has generated little critical examination of its presuppositions. This essay offers a critique of some basic empathie assumptions and suggests a direction for further inquiry. This work also provides the foundation for a companion article, “Interpretive Listening: An Alternative to Empathy,”; by John Stewart.
At the Annual Meeting in May 1974, the American Academy awarded its first Social Science Prize to Clifford Geertz for his significant contributions to social anthropology. Mr. Geertz has taught at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago; in 1970 he became the first Professor of the Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Mr. Geertz' research has centered on the changing religious attitudes and habits of life of the Islamic peoples of Morocco and Indonesia; he is the author of Peddlers and Princes: Social Changes and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (1963), The Social History of an Indonesian Town (1965), Islam Observed: Religious Developments in Morocco and Indonesia (1968), and a recent collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). In nominating Mr. Geertz for the award, the Academy's Social Science Prize Committee observed, "each of these volumes is an important contribution in its own right; together they form an unrivaled corpus in modern social anthropology and social sciences." Following the presentation ceremony, Mr. Geertz delivered the following communication before Academy Fellows and their guests.
Abstract The empathic work of understanding is often written about as if it depended solely on the emotional, imaginative, or mind reading capabilities of the empathizer. But if it is embedded in an intersubjective encounter that necessitates ongoing dialog for its accuracy, then it implicates the imaginative and emotional capacities of the person to be understood as well. I argue that we should be investigating more actively the ways in which people in different times and places promote or discourage understanding of themselves. [empathy, anthropology, imagination, Toraja, work of empathy]
This paper argues that in the current neo-liberal era, the discourse of tourism as an “industry” has overshadowed other conceptualisations of the tourism phenomenon. An argument is developed that this discourse serves the needs and agendas of leaders in the tourism business sector. However, the author desires to revive an earlier understanding of tourism that predates the neoliberal era. Tourism is in fact a powerful social force that can achieve many important ends when its capacities are unfettered from the market fundamentalism of neoliberalism and instead are harnessed to meet human development imperatives and the wider public good. Examining the human rights aspects of tourism, investigating phenomena such as “social tourism”, exploring a few “non-western” perspectives of tourism and outlining some of the tantalising promise that tourism holds, this paper attempts to revive and reinforce a wider vision of tourism's role in societies and the global community. It is argued that it is critical for tourism academics, planners and leaders to support such a vision if tourism is to avoid facing increasing opposition and criticism in a likely future of insecurity and scarcity.