Cross-border Shopping: Tourism in the Canada-United States Borderlands

This research note examines the phenomenon of cross-border shopping between the United States and Canada as a form of borderlands tourism. This activity has always existed in the region and has traditionally been characterized by high but consistent numbers of Canada-to-US flows and lower but consistent numbers of US-to-Canada flows. However, in 1997, owing to an increase in value of the Canadian dollar and other economic variables, the number of Canadian shopping trips to the United States increased dramatically until 1992, when the value of the Canadian dollar began to fall. This in tum has led to the rapid increase in levels of American travel to Canada, including shopping trips, in the mid- and late-1990s. Characteristics of cross-border shopping are examined together with some of the economic and social impacts of the rise and. decline of this phenomenon in American and Canadian border communities

Tourism and International Borders: Themes and Issues

Political boundaries are invisible, vertical planes that transect land and airspace, and they mark the limits up to which a political entity may exercise its sovereign authority. Most international boundaries have been marked on the ground in various ways as tangible lines separating societies and political systems from their neighbors. International borders have traditionally been viewed as barriers to various forms of human interaction. In fact, one of their primary purposes typically has been to hinder the flow of goods, people, and ideas between nations for ideological and economic reasons (2, 13). Geographers have a long tradition of interest in the formation process of political boundaries and their functions in social, political, and economic terms. Likewise, interest in tourism as a topic of research is increasing at an extraordinary rate among social scientists, and to a lesser extent among physical scientists, from many disciplines. Most researchers seek to understand the sociocultural, economic, political, and physical environmental impacts of tourism, as well as patterns of international tourist flows. Tourism by definition entails crossing borders in one form or another, yet with few exceptions (7, 21, 22, 23), researchers have all but overlooked the relationships between political frontiers and tourism. The purpose of this special issue of Visions in Leisure and Business, therefore, is to address this dearth in the academic literature by examining the relationships between tourism and international boundaries. This theme issue brings together the expertise of prominent scholars in the area of political borders. All of the contributors have conducted extensive research in various parts of the world on a diverse range of border-related subjects. Here they merge their political, cultural, and economic interests with the study of tourism

Cross-border Shopping in Hungary: Causes and Effects

Shopping tourism in Eastern Europe has grown enormously since the 1970s, and the geopolitical changes that occurred in the late 1980s and early 90s had a major bearing on its development. Within the context of shopping tourism, this paper examines cross-border shopping trends in Hungary, which is one of the most prominent shopping destinations in the former communist bloc. After a description. of the phenomenon and its magnitude in Hungary, spatial patterns in the borderlands are considered and the probable impacts of Hungary\u27s future admission into the European Union are explained

Finnish Settlements in Rural Thunder Bay: Changes in an Ethnic Community

Finnish Settlements in Rural Thunder Ba

Understanding Japanese tourists' shopping preferences using the Decision Tree Analysis Method

This study was designed to assess the factors affecting Japanese tourists’ shopping preference and intention to revisit Korea. The analytical method applied in this study was Decision Tree Analysis, which is under-utilized in tourism studies. A total of 300 questionnaires were collected on the basis of on-site survey method and used for data analysis. Among interesting findings, three groups including ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and spent US$50-300 on shopping’, ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$300-1000’ and ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$1000-5000,’ showed a high level of intention to return to Korea for the purpose of shopping. In addition, two groups ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of below high school’ and ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of a college graduate or above’ showed a higher level interest in merchandise than in shopping venue attractiveness

Emerging issues and directions of cultural heritage tourism in the Asia pacific region

[Extract] The chapters in this book have made abundantly clear how important cultural heritage is in the Asia Pacific as a resource upon which much of the region's tourism is based. Parts of the region are among the world's fastest growing tourist destinations, thanks in large part to cultural heritage. This collection of essays spans a wide spectrum of countries and brings to the fore many empirical examples of living and built culture that draw visitors from around the globe in both the developing and developed areas of the Asia Pacific. The book highlights many issues that are of considerable interest to heritage and tourism scholars and which directly affect the management of heritage resources and heritage tourism. Several conceptual foundations underlie the chapters in this book: the vast array of heritage resources, the idea of impact and unacceptable change, heritage branding and demand, and power/politics. Each of these is examined below in greater depth and ideas are formulated regarding future trends and research needs

Issues in heritage and culture in the Asia Pacific region

This paper examines a range of issues that are affecting the use of heritage and cultural resources in the Asia Pacific region as tourism resources. The temptation for communities to commercialize their heritage and culture as a means of tapping into the growing demand by the tourism industry for new attractions is strong. However, short-term gains must be assessed against long-term consequences. Issues canvassed include authenticity, interpretation, heritage contestation, social exclusion, contested space, personal heritage, control and preservation. This paper offers a simple framework that can be used to compare sites, places and events within nations and between nations