GAMBLING WITH OUR TOURISM FUTURE: THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN DESTINATION AND ENTERPRISE STRATEGIES TO AVOID STRATEGIC DRIFT

The coming decade and a half should see major shifts in the leisure and tourism environment reflecting economic dynamics, changing consumer values, political forces, environmental changes and the explosive growth of information technology. This paper explores the way in which some key drivers could affect the global tourism industry to the year 2020. An exploration of these trends allows important change agents, on both the supply side and the demand side of tourism, to be highlighted and discussed. In response, strategies can be formulated by destination managers and tourism operators to avoid strategic drift for their organisations and to develop tourism in a sustainable way

Future eDestination Marketing: Perspective of an Australian Tourism Stakeholder Network.

Tourism destinations are difficult to manage because of the complex relationships of their diverse public and private stakeholders. At the same time, strategic marketing efforts are important for destinations to foster positive consequences of tourism, particularly given the range of opportunities and challenges created by the emergence of social media that destinations can use advantageously. This article aims to explore future eDestination marketing from Australian tourism stakeholder network perspectives. Workshops were convened in July 2012 in Melbourne, Australia, for select stakeholders invited to contribute to the futures national tourism technology strategy. They presented a stakeholder network approach to futures strategy development that aims to contribute to that used in recent national tourism plans and strategies for Australia developed by the government. Building on theories of stakeholder networks and futures, the article demonstrates the value of a futures stakeholder network method compared to traditional government approaches by critically analyzing outcomes of both

Visitor at-destination information search: a preliminary study

A pilot study involving 38 qualitative interviews of domestic and international visitors to New South Wales was conducted to gain preliminary, in-depth insights into the way visitors search for information when they are at the destination and the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on their search patterns, including their use of visitor information centres (VICs). The findings suggest that search patterns are very complex, combining many online and offline sources and much of the search indeed happens while at the destination. Visitors bring along a variety of technologies but still rely on printed materials, maps and VICs as they want unique, trustworthy and personalized information from local sources. VICs can play an important role in inspiring travellers and influencing their trip plans if they are conveniently located and provide knowledgeable, friendly staff who actively engages with the visitors

Degrees of sophistication in social media adoption for tourism operators in Australia - a preliminary analysis

Given that SM is one of the mega trends that has significantly impacted the tourism system, this paper aims to provide an initial analysis for tourism operators in Australia in terms of the degrees of sophistication of SM adoption. A survey of 2172 tourism operators in Australia across five industry sectors revealed that two thirds had a Social Media site presence. However, in terms of sophistication measured by number of sites on which they had a presence, their updating frequency of site contents and monitoring the number and level of consumer engagement, the results indicated the level of sophistication could be improved

The political adaptation of second-generation Australians

The study systematically analyses the location of second-generation Australian adults (defined as those born in Australia of an immigrant father) in the economic system, it investigates their educational achievements, and examines the nature of influences on their political behaviour by specifying relations among certain variables and by comparing them to first-generation immigrants and to the native-born of a native-born father. The one per cent person's sample file of the 1981 Australian census on population and housing is used for analyses of income and education; the 1984/1985 National Social Science Survey (urban preliminary sample) is used to investigate partisanship, participation and felt efficacy. The study draws mostly on American literature for its theoretical underpinnings. The conceptual basis of this study involves a three-fold distinction: the socioeconomic system, the cultural, or 'ethnic', dimension and the political system. The socioeconomic system is explored largely in the economic domain in terms of individual income and educational achievement, the ethnic or cultural dimension in terms of the extent of economic and educational integration and in terms of influences on political behaviour. Ethnicity is defined mainly in terms of father's birthplace. The political system is examined through extent and strength of, and influences on, partisanship, through political participation and through felt political efficacy. The model which best describes the political life of second-generation Australians in the early 1980s is partial assimilation. Their pattern of political adaptation is piecemeal, complex and at times puzzling. Political adaptation appears to be a function both of location in some important sociocultural systems and of cultural differentiation. Ethnicity permeates political adaptation, although its effects vary across the major subsystems of society. In short, a dual explanation - economic and cultural - is required. Many features parallel the adaptation of the second generation in the United States half a century ago, perhaps the most general being that adaptation and ethnicity are interwoven in concept and reality. But unlike what appears to be the American experience, most second-generation Australians have been assimilated into the economic system by virtue of their success in gaining incomes which are at least the equivalent of those earned by other native-born Australians

International price competitiveness of Australia's MICE industry

A special-interest tourist market that holds out great promise for continued growth well into the next century is that of MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions). At the same time, changing prices in particular destinations relative to others are regarded as one of the most important economic influences on destination shares of total international tourism flows. The question arises as to the price competitiveness of major competing MICE destinations. Although earlier research has recognised that a destination's price competitiveness differs according to a visitor's country of origin there has been relatively little attention paid to tourism price competitiveness from the perspective of those having different motives for travel. This paper has four major aims: first, to provide a method by which price competitiveness of tourism by journey purpose can be estimated; second, to construct price competitiveness indices that measure, absolutely and relative to major competitors world-wide, the price competitiveness of Australia's MICE tourism industry; third, to compare Australia's price competitiveness as a MICE destination with its price competitiveness for total inbound tourism; fourth, to discuss the implications of the results for travel and tourism decision-makers in both the private and public sectors

Destination and enterprise management for a tourism future

A key element of a successful tourism industry is the ability to recognise and deal with change across a wide range of key factors and the way they interact. Key drivers of global change within the external environment can be classified as Economic, Political, Environmental, Technological, Demographic and Social. Based on a series of workshops comprising a range of Australian tourism stakeholders this paper explores the way in which these key drivers could affect the global tourism industry to the year 2020. An exploration of these trends allows important change agents, on both the supply side and the demand side of tourism, to be highlighted and discussed. In response, innovative strategies can be formulated by destination managers and tourism operators to avoid strategic drift for their organizations and to develop tourism in a sustainable way