Rediscovering cultural tourism: cultural regeneration in seaside towns

British seaside towns have been subject to numerous attempts at regeneration and rebranding since the collapse of traditional seaside tourism began in the late 1970s. This paper reviews contemporary approaches to seaside regeneration and demonstrates that cultural regeneration strategies are becoming increasingly prevalent in this area. The validity of transferring city-based models of cultural development to these smaller urban areas is critiqued. The history of cultural investment in seaside towns is highlighted to show how current approaches to cultural regeneration, while presented as novel, are in fact a resumption of earlier strategies of cultural tourism development. This heritage of cultural development provides a resource for seaside cultural regeneration which may allow development of this type to avoid the negative social impacts often associated with cultural regeneration in cities

Greening Bonnaroo: exploring the rhetoric and reality of a sustainable festival through micro-ethnographic methods

This research revealed that the greening policies of the Bonnaroo Festival are translated into sustainable event practice through: educational activities for volunteers and festival-goers, the creation of spaces of hyper-sustainability within the event and the embedding of green issues into the core values of the event. By using micro-ethnographic methods within a qualitative case study to compare the rhetoric of the festival with the practices occurring within it, the researchers have been able to make a number of recommendations for continuing and deepening the greening policies of this event, including a need to increase the scope and influence of the spaces of hyper-sustainability within the festival so as to broaden their localised impact and increasing direct engagement with festival goers on environmental issues

Social enterprise and employment in the United Kingdom

A review of the social enterprise sector in the united kingdom and a consideration of it's impacts on employment in the context of industrial restructuring and the global economic crisis

People, place, enterprise: proceedings of the first annual conference on Olympic Legacy 8 and 9 May 2008

The Olympic Legacy: People, Place, Enterprise conference took place at the University of Greenwich in May 2008. The first in a series of annual conferences, it brought together leading academics, policy makers and practitioners to debate the lasting legacy of the games. The conference had four themes: social and cultural regeneration; Olympic tourism; enterprise, including social enterprise and skills development, and education, providing a multi-dimensional perspective on the likely impacts of the forthcoming London Olympics

National tourism offices

National Tourism Offices (NTOs) are the agencies responsible for the promotion and, sometimes, the management of the development of the tourism industry within a country. They will have a strong relationship with a government department or office, and will implement and monitor national tourism policy through a variety of means which can include research, influencing the tourism policy making process, destination marketing, tourism product development and the maintenance of national standards for the tourism industry. NTOs are almost always led by the public sector and will be governed within national public sector arrangements. However, NTOs are seeing an increasing level of private sector involvement through avenues such as board membership and partnership agreements. This increasing private sector involvement helps to ensure that the priorities of the government of a country are implemented in ways that supports tourism businesses and makes use of the expertise and resources of a private-sector dominated industry

After the crisis: cultural tourism and urban regeneration in Europe

An overview of the future prospects for cultural regeneration in European cities in the aftermath of the global economic crisis

The role of sustainable events in the management of historic buildings

As the use of historic building as venues for commercial activity grows, events management professionals working in historic buildings are faced with a number of sustainability challenges, including conservation, preservation, social value and financial sustainability, as well as with satisfying their clients. In particular, these professionals are required to maintain the complex balance between the competing priorities of historic value and contemporary relevance. Little research has thus far investigated the role that sustainable events can play in the management of historic buildings, beyond considerations of the trade-off between conservation and income generation. This research analyses the contribution that events can make to the sustainable management of historic buildings, with an emphasis on understanding the perspectives of event managers within these properties, based on qualitative interviews with historic building event managers and stakeholders in London, United Kingdom. A key finding of the research is that event managers within historic buildings have complex views of sustainability that are specific to these properties and which are not captured in the mainstream events management literature. The paper contributes to the emerging literature on sustainable events and also develops earlier research on the role of events and other income-generating activities in historic buildings

Dark cities? Developing a methodology for researching dark tourism in European cities

Despite the recent growth of research into dark tourism (Dale & Robinson, 2011; Lennon & Foley, 2000; Stone, 2013; Tarlow, 2005) and the growth of the dark tourism market (Biran & Hyde, 2013; Stone 2005; Stone & Sharpley, 2008), there has been little interest shown in understanding the relationship between dark tourism and urban tourism (Page & Hall 2002). This paper presents the initial findings of a research project that investigates the dark tourism products offered by European cities. A series of keywords were developed following a review of the dark tourism literature and this was used carry out a content analysis of the Destination Marketing Organisation websites for Europe’s ten most visited cities. The content analysis used Stone’s (2006) Dark Tourism Continuum to evaluate the dark tourism products offered in each destination and to present a descriptive overview of Europe’s city-based dark tourism offer. The paper concludes that there are a wide range of dark tourism products available to urban tourists in Europe, but that these are rarely conceptualised as such. The mixture of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ dark tourism products presents difficulties in categorisation and standardisation of the urban tourism offer, but this is a potential area of new product development for DMOs across Europe

The Economic Impact of the Rural and Coastal Self-Catering Sector in England

This report was commissioned by the English Association of Self Catering Operators (EASCO). EASCO is the trade association that represents the self-catering holiday industry throughout England. The primary aim of this report was to produce a rigorous estimate of the economic impact of the self-catering accommodation sector in the rural and coastal areas of England. A secondary aim was to generate fresh intelligence about the nature of the sector including its characteristics and its patterns of use

Sun, Sea and Shrines: Application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to assess the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in Phuket (Thailand)

In order to make recommendations for the diversification of tourism products on the Thai island of Phuket, this paper applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to rank the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in the island of Phuket to make recommendations for sites that could be incorporated in to cultural tourism development in the region. In addition, it applies a quantitative-qualitative evaluation structure with weighted criteria, based on local expert opinion. The research identified which of the many potential cultural tourism sites would be the most attractive to tourists and shows the utility of the AHP method, combined with quantitative-qualitative evaluation, for decision making in tourism destination development contexts