Cyprus' image—a sun and sea destination—as a detrimental factor to seasonal fluctuations. Exploration into motivational factors for holidaying in Cyprus

Cyprus is established as a summer destination. To aid the destination in developing its winter season as well, this research uses a qualitative inductive approach to explore the tourists’ current image of the island and their motivations of visiting it. The research indicates that the current image, which essentially portrays Cyprus as a sun-and-sea destination is thought to dissuade tourists from perceiving the island as a year-round destination. Nonetheless, increasing the pull factors of the destination through the development of unique special interest products can help in extending the tourism season as well as broaden its narrow image

Are tourism impacts low on personal environmental agendas?

This paper examines if tourism is an environmental priority for tourism and hospitality students. It is framed within the context of information and choice overload that may result in the need to prioritize issues and make less effective decisions. A series of open-ended questions identified the most important community and global environmental issues, the single greatest cause of climate change and whether students had changed their behaviour in general, or their travel behaviour in particular, to reduce their environmental impact. A total of 2968 useable surveys were returned from students at 63 institutions in 22 economies. Tourism emerged as a low priority issue, which explains why only a small proportion of students had changed their travel behaviour. Moreover, the study noted high knowledge variability, which in turn was closely associated with the type of actions undertaken. Students with specific knowledge were far more likely to adopt specific change actions than those who had less precise knowledge. They, in turn, were more likely to identify generic and less effective actions. The study concludes that the main challenge involved in changing tourism behaviour rests primarily with raising its status to a higher priority, a difficult task given the environmental issue overload that most people face

The influence of appearance and the number of people viewed on tourists' preferences for seeing other tourists

This study examines tourists' attitudes towards tourist-tourist encounters. The appearance and the number of observed tourists as well as the place of residence of the observing tourists were studied. The variables of tourist appearance and the number of people at the site were manipulated electronically in a set of rainforest photographic images. The data were collected through an on-site self-administered questionnaire. The results from 409 respondents suggested that there were different encounter preferences between Japanese and Western observers with respect to both appearance and the number of people encountered. Japanese have a preference for mixing with Westerners, at least in the rainforest setting studied. Westerners do not have marked appearance-related preferences. For the number of people in the setting, Westerners are inclined to favour few or no people while Japanese prefer some people and are tolerant of larger numbers. These findings, which contradict much of the existing North American recreation based work on people in contact, were examined from a number of theoretical perspectives, including in-group and out-group analyses, and dynamic encounter norms. Some potential management implications were outlined

Harm Reduction From Below

This article focuses on how recreational drug users in the Netherlands and in online communities navigate the risks and reduce the harms they associate with psychoactive drug use. To do so, we examined the protective practices they invent, use, and share with their immediate peers and with larger drug experimenting communities online. The labor involved in protective practices and that which ultimately informs harm reduction from below follows three interrelated trajectories: (1) the handling and sharing of drugs to facilitate hassle-free drug use, (2) creating pleasant and friendly spaces that we highlight under the practices of drug use attunements, and (3) the seeking and sharing of information in practices to spread the good high. We focus not only on users’ concerns but also on how these concerns shape their approach to drugs, what young people do to navigate uncertainties, and how they reach out to and create different sources of knowledge to minimize adversities and to improve highs. Harm reduction from below, we argue, can best be seen in the practices of sharing around drug use and in the caring for the larger community of drug-using peers

The role of liminality in residential activity camps

Residential activity camps have been widely studied for their positive outcomes providing a broad multi-disciplinary analysis of the effects of camps in a range of contexts. However, there has been limited exploration of these camp experiences from the perspective of tourism studies. This article addresses this omission by exploring the potential offered by the concept of ‘liminality’ to explain the ways in which camps produce positive experiences for participants. This article discusses the idea of the camp environment as a liminal zone relating touristic aspects of the experience (such as being away from the familiar and placed into contact situations with a new social group) to the achievement of successful outcomes. The context for the investigation was residential camps organised by the Youth Hostel Association (England and Wales) and funded by a UK government pilot programme, which aimed to overcome issues of community cohesion within urban neighbourhoods in England, thus a form of ‘social tourism’. This article contributes to the understanding of the role played by novel environments in creating a context for liminal tourist experiences and outcomes for positive social interventions.</p

Information and empowerment: The keys to achieving sustainable tourism

Sustainable tourism is a sub-branch of sustainable development that was put on the world agenda with the publication of the Bruntland report. The report focused on environmental issues and the natural environment has remained a central theme. Socio-cultural issues have been overshadowed or marginalised. Community participation, although considered essential in sustainable tourism, is a concept subject to much interpretation. Based on longitudinal action research this case study, from Eastern Indonesia, provides theoretical coverage and practical ideas of how community participation can be moved from the passive, rhetorical end of the participation scale towards empowerment. Tourism has the potential to empower communities and the sustainable tourism agenda needs to focus on how to bring this about. As the case study illustrates, understanding tourists and tourism processes is the first stage to empowering the local community to make informed and appropriate decisions about their tourism development. Considerable investments are required in communication and trust building between the actors in tourism. This paper examines how action research, focus groups and the creation of a tourism forum can be concrete, first steps towards achieving sustainable tourism development in the 21st century. © 2006 S. Cole