Becoming a part of the destination: a model for teaching tourism landscape

This paper seeks to explore the role of the experiential learning method in teaching tourism landscape. A model has been developed to teach tourism landscape through analysis on the basis of Kolb's experiential learning theory. The sample group consists of sixty-five high school students aged 14-18 years. The proposed model was designed in three parts using a mixed research design; fieldwork, qualitative analysis, and thematic mapping as the components of experiential learning. The results show that the experiential learning method is effective in teaching tourism landscape. Students understood the concept of the landscape. It has been proven that the teaching model developed to interpret the landscape and its three-dimensional components on maps are suitable. This study is important as it suggests a new approach that can be used in tourism education

Lessons learned from pilot testing an experimental communication intervention: Generation Y and park benefits

This paper reports a series of lessons learned from pilot testing an experimental intervention that aimed to shift Gen Y\u27s perceptions of the cultural and heritage benefits of parks. Designed in collaboration with the Office of Environment and Heritage in NSW and delivered via the OEH website, the intervention took respondents on a controlled virtual tour of two national parks, Ku-ring-gai Chase in the Sydney metropolitan area and Mutawintji in outback NSW, both rich in Australian culture and heritage. Overall, the intervention was viewed as successful in impacting respondents\u27 perceptions of the benefits of parks, and will be used in a subsequent on-line study on a broader sample of NSW respondents. The series of methodological decisions and associated consequences for the interpretation of findings presented in this paper are designed to help foster best practice experimental design in fieldbased tourism research

Interpersonal communication skills in organisations

\u27Include chapters from the following texts: De Janasz-Dowd-Schneider / Interpersonal skills in organizations [&] Lesikar-Flatley / Basic business communication\u27 - t.p. Cover - \u27Prepared by Mieke Witsel for Southern Cross University\u27

Concerns and constraints of teaching tourism and hospitality in a multicultural context

As an outcome of the author’s ongoing PhD research, this paper describes how a phenomenological research method was employed to gather meaningful, essential understanding of the lived experiences of tourism and hospitality academics in the multicultural classroom. Twenty-seven lecturers, across seven campuses of two Australian schools teaching tourism and hospitality, were interviewed to ascertain what experiences the lecturers thought were of importance in the teaching of tourism and hospitality, in a multicultural context. Three main areas outline the scope: the experiences surrounding the self, surrounding the multicultural other, and surrounding the environment. In this paper the form and value of this type of interpretive phenomenological method is explained, as it explores the darker side of lecturers’ experiences: the constraints (those influences which restrict the lecturer in carrying out teaching in an optimal manner), and their concerns (the emotional cares which are experienced as negative). The concerns and constraints experienced by these lecturers show that these lecturers experience an essential sense of ‘lostness’ in each of the three areas as they can feel professionally and personally lost, and at a loss, in each of these areas