Russian Artistic Gymnastics as a Sports Tourism Product: Some Observations and a Research Agenda

Tourism and its importance to the Russian Federation are very much in the headlines at present. Considering the huge investment made in facilities for the Winter Olympics, the building of new sports facilities for such mega events as the Football World Cup, and the status of St Petersburg as a candidate city for the 2028 Olympics, it is clear that Russia has long term plans to attract visitors to their sporting events. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research agenda to explore the potential of artistic gymnastics, a sport in which the Russian Federation has excelled for many years, as an agent of tourism development. The paper will take a case study approach, considering the nature of fandom and identifying features of artistic gymnastics as cultural heritage and sports tourism product. The national and international environment within which it is set are examined, prior to the development of a research agenda. A detailed review of literature on the historic, current and emerging trends in Russian artistic gymnastics; the place of artistic gymnastics in tourism development and sports tourism in Russia will be carried out. The paper’s findings will include considerations of: • The nature of gymnastics fandom, both in Russia and internationally • The nature of sports tourism development in the Russian Federation • The nature of gymnastics as a sport and its competition cycle • Artistic gymnastics as cultural heritage, and its potential as an autonomous means of promoting Russian national identity • The relationship between Russia’s sometimes fading gymnastics competition results, and its potential to leverage the sport for tourism interest • The potential for tourism product development linked to artistic gymnastics in the Russian Federation. The paper contributes to the literature on the nature of sports tourism as it relates to artistic gymnastics in the Russian Federation in particular

Entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism : a case study of the houseboats of Kerala

Within developing countries it has been identified that one means of achieving sustainable tourism is through the effective engagement of local communities. In particular, this involves the encouragement of indigenous entrepreneurship, often in the forms of self-employment and small-scale enterprises. The aim is to maximise potential economic and social benefits of tourism development within the host destinations. This paper provides a conceptual framework and descriptive case study within which to analyse an example of indigenous entrepreneurship as evidence in the operators of a houseboat tourism product in the State of Kerala, India. Conclusions are drawn relative to the sustainability of both the product and indigenous entrepreneurial activit

Editorial

Editoria

Hospitality and tourism management: adopting Lean Six Sigma, achieving service excellence

The hospitality and tourism industry is very much people-driven, despite the incipient advances and adoption of technology. Given the increased integration of the latter into the service sector, there must be ways to measure or calibrate the quality of service in the industry. Because tourism is a business like any other and compounded by mobility, a business management system approach to performance analysis and process adjustment can be adopted. One such management system is the Lean Six Sigma, which is a process method to improve the efficiency of business operations, in order to achieve high customer satisfaction (Farrington et al. 2018). This method allows experts in the tourism and hospitality business to identify product and operations deficiencies, and thereby enhance service quality and standards, thus leading to service excellence in the industry. Much research has been conducted on the application of Lean Six Sigma in industries such as logistics and sales (Gutierrez- Gutierrez et al. 2016; Zhang et al. 2016), financial, healthcare, and retail. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the possibility of the tourism and hospitality sector adopting a management system such as Lean Six Sigma as a continuous improvement method to achieve service excellence (Ivasciuc and Epuran 2015; Basu 2011; Farrington et al. 2018). The basic rationale of Lean Management is to reduce non-value-adding components of processes, and maintain only processes which add direct value to the company’s customers (Kaufmann 2012)