Wildlife Watching and Tourism: Effect of Two-Way Radio Communication on Wildlife in Kenya

The two- way a radio has been used by safari guides as a communication tool between themselves and the office incase of emergencies while in the wilderness. Initially only a few large tour wholesalers were licensed to own some frequencies. This has now changed and most of the tour operators use the radio to differentiate their transport product. The use of these radios is no longer limited to emergencies but used as a tool to communicate with drivers on the location wildlife in the park, bringing about overcrowding and noise pollution among others. The study sought to evaluate the drivers’ awareness and perception on how the use of the two-way radio affects wildlife and the customers. The study adopted an exploratory design with a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings indicated that the driver guides are not aware of the effects of the two-way radio on the wildlife and customer experience. The study recommends that driver guides should be trained on the impacts of the two-way radio on wildlife and the environment and the policy on the two-way radio acquisition and usage should be put in place to guide the driver guides. Keywords: Two-way radio, safari guide, perception, awareness, game drive

Wildlife Watching and Tourism: Effect of Two-Way Radio Communication on Wildlife in Kenya

The two- way a radio has been used by safari guides as a communication tool between themselves and the office incase of emergencies while in the wilderness. Initially only a few large tour wholesalers were licensed to own some frequencies. This has now changed and most of the tour operators use the radio to differentiate their transport product. The use of these radios is no longer limited to emergencies but used as a tool to communicate with drivers on the location wildlife in the park, bringing about overcrowding and noise pollution among others. The study sought to evaluate the drivers’ awareness and perception on how the use of the two-way radio affects wildlife and the customers. The study adopted an exploratory design with a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings indicated that the driver guides are not aware of the effects of the two-way radio on the wildlife and customer experience. The study recommends that driver guides should be trained on the impacts of the two-way radio on wildlife and the environment and the policy on the two-way radio acquisition and usage should be put in place to guide the driver guides. Keywords: Two-way radio, safari guide, perception, awareness, game drive

Mobile Technology, Everyday Experience and Travel

Connected mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have evolved into extremely effective tools that support travelers. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between everyday use of connected mobile devices and the travel experience, this study explores the mechanisms shaping the changes of travel experience through a two-stage model. The first stage describes the factors in people’s daily lives influencing the use of connected mobile devices. The second stage describes the impact of use of mobile devices on different dimensions of the travel experience. The results of this study confirm that the use of mobile devices in daily life is significantly correlated with use of mobile devices in the travel context. However, the results point to a need for a stronger theoretical foundation identifying the processes shaping the transition from the daily context to travel

A Rasch Analysis on Tourism Business in Covid-19 Era: The Attactiveness of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) Jakarta

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic impacts health, the economy, and the environment (also known as COVID19). It's no secret that tourism has been hit particularly hard during the Covid-19 era. Nevertheless, many people continue to search for a tourist destination despite the covid-19 health protocol. Individuals tend to stay home during an outbreak, and large families with young children travel shorter distances than other tourist groups. Local visitors continue to be interested in TMII as a domestic tourism destination as 74 percent of visitors want to visit TMII. Analysis of TMII's amenities and ancillary services using the Rasch Model revealed the most attractive destination attributes. However, when it comes to transportation options, they are by far the least appealing

Teaching case: Leading the change - ERP implementation at Keda

Recently, several disasters have affected the tourism industry. In order to mitigate the effects of disasters, increasing the level of preparedness is essential. However, despite the devastating effect disasters can have on tourism, few tourism organizations have properly developed disaster strategies as an integral part of their business plans. Emergency management systems that utilize mobile communication infrastructures can provide prompt information delivery to save human lives. Several supra-national initiatives and research projects are working on possibilities to facilitate mobile communication networks for emergency management systems. However, the success of such systems depends on users being familiar with the service, which is difficult to achieve, if the system is solely used for emergency management. Therefore, we propose a system design that allows the integration of mobile value-adding services. We also present exemplary services, which offer value to tourists and create business opportunities for the tourism industry. The central component of our proposed system design is a service platform, which communicates with mobile network operators and provides basic services for service providers from the tourism industry and the emergency manager via service interfaces

Destination image analytics through traveller-generated content

The explosion of content generated by users, in parallel with the spectacular growth of social media and the proliferation of mobile devices, is causing a paradigm shift in research. Surveys or interviews are no longer necessary to obtain users' opinions, because researchers can get this information freely on social media. In the field of tourism, online travel reviews (OTRs) hosted on travel-related websites stand out. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the usefulness of OTRs to analyse the image of a tourist destination. For this, a theoretical and methodological framework is defined, as well as metrics that allow for measuring different aspects (designative, appraisive and prescriptive) of the tourist image. The model is applied to the region of Attica (Greece) through a random sample of 300,000 TripAdvisor OTRs about attractions, activities, restaurants and hotels written in English between 2013 and 2018. The results show trends, preferences, assessments, and opinions from the demand side, which can be useful for destination managers in optimising the distribution of available resources and promoting sustainability

Humour and scams in guided tours; synthesising issues from embodied international experiences

Electronic guiding tools challenge the future of tourist guides in some settings. In an attempt to generate new insights into the human qualities of interpersonal interaction in "live" guided tours, ten cases were systematically drawn from a larger listing of documented, personally familiar tours featuring humour and tourist scams. Using a repertory grid style sorting task and the researchers' judgements, it was suggested that humour and incidents involving tourist scams were perceived by well defined constructs. For humour, specific humour and generic overall amusing qualities of the tour were important; for scams the dominant construct was the scam's seriousness

Distant local-guided tour perceptions and experiences of online travellers

This paper investigated travellers’ perceptions and experiences of using distant local guided tours during the COVID-19 pandemic utilising a qualitative methodology. The reviews’ content of online travellers regarding distant local-guided tours offered by a sharing economy platform – Withlocals – in different destinations was analysed. The results demonstrated that travellers’ distant local-guided tour experiences include celebration, togetherness and socialising, escape and relaxation, memorable, educational, and hedonic components. Additionally, travellers perceived distant local-guided tours as an alternative travel type, preparation for an actual visit, and inspiration for face-to-face experiences. Therefore, distant local-guided tours can be defined as engaging alternative travel types that provide multidimensional experiences and help explore a destination before the in-person visit. Apart from playing a guidance role for scholars and practitioners, this research fills the gap of research on distant local-guided tours in the literature. However, future attempts could shed more light on the subject

Proceedings of the BEST EN Think Tank XVII: innovation and progress in sustainable tourism

BEST EN is an international consortium of educators committed to the development and dissemination of knowledge in the field of sustainable tourism. The organization's annual Think Tank brings together academics and industry representatives from around the world to discuss a particular theme related to sustainable tourism in order to move research and education in this specific field forward. We are pleased to present the proceedings of the BEST Education Network (BESTEN) Think Tank XVII entitled Innovation and Progress in Sustainable Tourism. The event was held in Mauritius, June 14-17, 2017, in conjunction with the International Center for Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality, University of Mauritius. The term 'sustainable tourism' emerged in the early 1980s building on earlier concerns about the negative impacts of tourism and linking tourism to the wider sustainability movement. Despite 30 years of discussion of tourism and sustainability in academic and government documents, recent reviews suggest that there is considerable room for improvement in the practice of sustainable tourism. The proceedings present work by academics and practitioners worldwide, conducted on various aspects of innovation and progress in sustainable tourism. They include abstracts and papers accepted by the scientific committee following a double blind peer review process. Twenty-eight research papers were presented at the conference. Presentations were held within the following themed sessions: • Assessing Progress, Contributions & Teaching and Learning • Innovation – Sustainable, Experiential, Product and Marketing • Tourism Impacts, Sustainable Tourism Education, Interpretation • Theoretical and Methodological Approaches for Researching Sustainable Tourism The contributions were thematically selected for each group and are arranged in order of presentation in the proceedings. The full proceedings as well as the PowerPoint presentations are available on the BEST EN website www.besteducationnetwork.org/ The Editor and the BEST EN Executive Committee anticipate that readers of this volume will find the papers informative, thought provoking and of value to their research

Digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce context: A focus on entrepreneurial digital competencies

Purpose – Thepurpose of this paper is to criticallyexplorehow context asan antecedent to entrepreneurial digital competencies (EDCs) influences digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce environment. Design/methodology/approach – The data comprises semi-structured interviews with 16 digital entrepreneurs, as owner-managers of small digital businesses in Cameroon. Findings – The results reveal the ways in which EDCs shape the entry (or start-up) choices and post-entry strategic decisions of digital entrepreneurs in response to context-specific opportunities and challenges associated with digital entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications – The data comes from one African country and 16 digital businesses thus the research setting limits the generalisability of the results. Practical implications – This paper highlights important implications for encouraging digital entrepreneurship by focussing on institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes policy interventions to develop the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, transport and local distribution infrastructure, and training opportunities to develop the EDCs of digital entrepreneurs. Originality/value – Whereas the capabilities to adopt and use ICTs and the internet by small businesses have been examined, this is among the first theoretically sensitised study linking context, EDCs and digital entrepreneurship