Adventure tourism innovation: Benefitting or hampering operations?

Despite its recognised importance to tourism, very little is known about innovation and innovative practices within the sub-sectors of tourism, such as adventure tourism. Further, despite the known benefits of innovation, not all innovations are adopted and the ones that are do not always have a successful outcome. Through a qualitative case study of the US aerial adventure industry, this paper highlights the advantages and disadvantages innovation may have on operational risk management as well as understanding why seemingly critical innovations are not adopted. Unlike tourism in general, the industry is relying heavily on radical innovations as it continues to grow. Numerous benefits are highlighted, yet also indicate a resistance to adopt innovations. The study demonstrates how adventure tourism, in its adaption and managerial processes, seeks balance by using well-tested safety technologies and measures against the incentive to enhance such thrill effects that will appeal to customer. Management implications: • This paper documents the advantages and disadvantages of innovation within adventure tourism, in particular the US aerial adventure industry, and it demonstrates the managerial ambiguities. • The paper finds that whilst innovations have had positive implications upon the industry, they have also led to further challenges in terms of changes in competitions. • The adventure tourism industry seeks to balance its cycles of innovation, and safety is a contributing factor that stimulates innovative activity, alongside the concern for customer thrill experiences

Ceding to their appetites: A taxonomy of international tourists to South Africa

Tourism is a key source of income to South Africa. Food and beverages is a key part of tourism and the literature reveals that tourists spend up to a quarter of their budget on cuisine. South Africa has, however, been rated as the least-prepared culinary travel destination and the travel destination with the greatest potential for growth. Therefore, a segmentation taxonomy based on culinary preferences of international tourists to South Africa is put forth which can be used to prepare South Africa as a culinary travel destination. The 627 international tourists surveyed were divided into five segments with the use of factor analyses, t-tests, Spearman rank correlations and analysis of variance. The segments were named conservationists, experience seekers, devotees, explorers and socialisers (CEDES taxonomy). Multiple results and implications are discussed in the paper

Knowledge dynamics in the tourism-social entrepreneurship nexus

Tourism is often employed as a vehicle for facilitating social-economic development, however its usefulness has been somewhat limited in relation to addressing social issues, and in particular, those issues relating to poverty. This is partly due to the lack of cross-sectoral interactions and knowledge exchange between private, public and third sectors that are needed to create effective and appropriate initiatives to leverage tourism for social benefits. Such traditional sectoral boundaries can be broken down through social entrepreneurship approaches which concomitantly, facilitate the creation and synergizing of social innovation that addresses persistent social issues. Yet to date, the utility of cross-sectoral knowledge dynamics still remains largely under-researched in both the social entrepreneurship and tourism literature. This chapter introduces readers to the concept of knowledge dynamics and discusses knowledge dynamics in the tourism and social entrepreneurship nexus via a case study of community-based tourism in Mai Hich, Vietnam. We argue that by gaining an enhanced understanding of cross-sectoral knowledge dynamics, we can strengthen the overall praxis of tourism and social entrepreneurship, and in particular, assist policymakers in fostering conditions that generate increased innovation.Griffith Business School, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel ManagementNo Full Tex

Tourism and Economic Globalization: An Emerging Research Agenda

Globalization characterizes the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres of the modern world. Tourism has long been claimed as a crucial force shaping globalization, while in turn the developments of the tourism sector are under the influences of growing interdependence across the world. As globalization proceeds, destination countries have become more and more susceptible to local and global events. By linking the existing literature coherently, this study explores a number of themes on economic globalization in tourism. It attempts to identify the forces underpinning globalization and assess the implications on both the supply side and the demand side of the tourism sector. In view of a lack of quantitative evidence, future directions for empirical research have been suggested to investigate the interdependence of tourism demand, the convergence of tourism productivity, and the impact of global events