The complexities of religious tourism motivations: sacred places, vows and visions

The aim of this paper is to understand the complexity of travel motivations to sacred places. Using ethnographic techniques within the Greek Orthodox context, we argue that while motivations are institutionally constructed, they are fragile, dynamic and progressive; being embedded within everyday performances of religion. This calls into question the fixed centeredness and predetermined sacredness of religious sites. Travel motivations become directly influenced by believers’ intimate and emergent performances not only of places but also of religion itself; the meaning of places being based on lived experiences of doing religion and interacting with the sacred, as exemplified in vows and visions. Such understandings are crucial in predicting the effects of failing pilgrimages and the processes of authentication of places, which can help explain visitation patterns

Religiousness as tourist performances: a case study of Greek Orthodox pilgrimage

The aim of this paper is to decipher ways of experiencing religiousness through tourist performances, intersecting textual approaches with the essential embodiment and materiality of the tourist world. Exploring the diversity of religious tourists’ practices within the Greek Orthodox context, two dimensions underpinning religious tourist experience are highlighted: institutional performances and unconventional performances. Focussing on the embodied experience and drawing upon theories of performance, the paper critiques the interplays of body and place to re-conceptualise current understanding of the pilgrimage/tourism relationship. In doing so, the paper proposes that tourism and religion are not separate entities but linked through embodied notions of godliness sensed through touristic performances

Last chance for wildlife: making tourism count for conservation

Nature-based tourism offers the opportunity for tourists to see first-hand both wildlife and the conservation efforts of organisations and individuals to protect habitats and species. Whilst recent studies hint that tourism can prompt visitors to provide philanthropic support for conservation, studies to-date have focused on behavioural intentions within specific case studies rather than actual behaviour, thereby limiting generalisability and explanatory scope. Consequently, little is known if and why individuals donate more after nature-based tourism. An online questionnaire, which included both quantitative and qualitive measures, explored key predictors of what triggers tourists to engage in philanthropic behaviour. Through a collaboration with two leading UK adventure travel companies, 924 participants’ travel patterns and donation histories were examined to assess the role tourism plays in prompting new donations. Findings confirm, first, that travel to last chance destinations prompts higher instances of new philanthropy compared to other international and domestic trips; second, that other key factors, including the importance of stronger identity with nature and/or first-time visitation, influence new philanthropic support. Alongside the scholarly contributions, this study provides actionable guidance on how to encourage philanthropic behaviour working with both tour-operators and non-profit organisations

The Cornwall a-book: An Augmented Travel Guide Using Next Generation Paper

Electronic publishing usually presents readers with book or e-book options for reading on paper or screen. In this paper, we introduce a third method of reading on paper-and-screen through the use of an augmented book (‘a-book’) with printed hotlinks than can be viewed on a nearby smartphone or other device. Two experimental versions of an augmented guide to Cornwall are shown using either optically recognised pages or embedded electronics making the book sensitive to light and touch. We refer to these as second generation (2G) and third generation (3G) paper respectively. A common architectural framework, authoring workflow and interaction model is used for both technologies, enabling the creation of two future generations of augmented books with interactive features and content. In the travel domain we use these features creatively to illustrate the printed book with local multimedia and updatable web media, to point to the printed pages from the digital content, and to record personal and web media into the book

Corporate philanthropy through the lens of ethical subjectivity

The dynamic organisational processes in businesses dilute the boundaries between the individual, organisational, and societal drivers of corporate philanthropy. This creates a complex framework in which charitable project selection occurs. Using the example of European tour operators, this study investigates the mechanisms through which companies invest in charitable projects in overseas destinations. Inextricably linked to this is the increasing contestation by local communities as to how they are able to engage effectively with tourism in order to realise the benefits tourism development can bring. This research furthers such debates by exploring the processes through which tour operators facilitate community development through charitable giving. Findings show, with no formal frameworks in existence, project selection depends upon emergent strategies that connect the professional with the personal, with trust being positioned as a central driver of these informal processes. Discretionary responsibilities are reworked through business leaders’ commitment to responsible business practises and the ethical subjectivity guiding these processes

Becoming tourist: renegotiating the visual in the tourist experience

This paper seeks to renegotiate the role of visuals and visual practice within the tourist experience. Embracing recent developments in tourist studies, I seek to move from understanding tourism as a series of predetermined, linear, and static stages through which we pass to be a tourist. In doing so, I explore the ways in which visuals, in particular photography and subsequent visualities, enliven tourists' becoming through a multiplicity of fluid and dynamic performances, practices, and processes. I suggest photography is not merely an empty practice, but, rather, lights up the tourist experience. The emerging dynamics of visual practice renegotiate new understandings between tourists and place to establish a series of conceptual moments that outline photography as: political artefacts, reflexive performances, the imagination of space, embodied visualities, and ethical prompts. Such conceptualisations and practices of tourist photography are by no means arbitrary, but are situated in a framework of visuality that highlights key moments of anticipation, rewriting, and remembrance and reliving. Thus, I move beyond notions of the hermeneutic cycle of travel, and present photographs and photography as complex performative spaces that extend beyond divisible boundaries of the before, during, and after travel experiences and infiltrate the entire tourist experience