Unlocking Tourism Innovation Potential through Academic Research: A Transformational Learning Approach

Stimulating new tourism product ideas and developing an innovative culture within destinations is fundamental to enhance the current and future competitiveness of the tourism industry. Although academic research is generally considered a necessary precursor to innovation, tourism academic research is criticized as inward looking and failing to create new opportunities. This paper describes a case study of tourism academics working with tourism businesses and destination management agencies to unlock business innovation potential and start an innovation conversation in a destination. Drawing upon the principles of transformational learning theory, the academics built long-term research relationships with tourism businesses and challenged them to develop innovative and appealing products for a new market (the Asian international student market). The successful results provide a model for academic research that challenges established views, disrupts routine thinking and finds ways to innovatively adapt products for new markets

Attention, emotion and hedonic service experiences Managing and delivering services in the Asian Century

Purpose - This paper aims to address the central guiding questions: What principles of services management need urgent re-thinking in the Asian Century? What opportunities and challenges lie ahead?Design/methodology/approach - This paper provides a review of relevant literature on hedonic consumption and related issues of emotion, attention, mental time travel and, importantly, how these phenomena may be measured.Findings - The paper addresses this question from a psychological and customer perspective. Services managers are well-positioned and have a great future for two reasons. First, services in general are the growing part of the global economy. Second, services managers provide the experiences required by increasingly affluent consumers. On the other hand, there is in general within the services sector, a lack of knowledge and expertise in understanding the consumer psychology of hedonic consumption. Additionally, and especially in Western countries, there is lack of knowledge about the cultural differences in experiential requirements of Asian consumers.Originality/value - The paper provides directions for future research in the area of tourism experiences and emotion

SARS-CoV-2 lineage dynamics in England from September to November 2021: high diversity of Delta sub-lineages and increased transmissibility of AY.4.2

Abstract Background Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, evolutionary pressure has driven large increases in the transmissibility of the virus. However, with increasing levels of immunity through vaccination and natural infection the evolutionary pressure will switch towards immune escape. Genomic surveillance in regions of high immunity is crucial in detecting emerging variants that can more successfully navigate the immune landscape. Methods We present phylogenetic relationships and lineage dynamics within England (a country with high levels of immunity), as inferred from a random community sample of individuals who provided a self-administered throat and nose swab for rt-PCR testing as part of the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study. During round 14 (9 September–27 September 2021) and 15 (19 October–5 November 2021) lineages were determined for 1322 positive individuals, with 27.1% of those which reported their symptom status reporting no symptoms in the previous month. Results We identified 44 unique lineages, all of which were Delta or Delta sub-lineages, and found a reduction in their mutation rate over the study period. The proportion of the Delta sub-lineage AY.4.2 was increasing, with a reproduction number 15% (95% CI 8–23%) greater than the most prevalent lineage, AY.4. Further, AY.4.2 was less associated with the most predictive COVID-19 symptoms (p = 0.029) and had a reduced mutation rate (p = 0.050). Both AY.4.2 and AY.4 were found to be geographically clustered in September but this was no longer the case by late October/early November, with only the lineage AY.6 exhibiting clustering towards the South of England. Conclusions As SARS-CoV-2 moves towards endemicity and new variants emerge, genomic data obtained from random community samples can augment routine surveillance data without the potential biases introduced due to higher sampling rates of symptomatic individuals. </jats:sec