Tourism & Hospitality books

Tourism and travel have been with us since time immemorial. However, with the onset of the industrial age and the use of railways, ships, motorcars, and aeroplanes, travelling possibilities—for both business and pleasure, domestic and international—were transformed. The annals of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) provide us with unmatched insights into this fascinating story, yet these archives have never been exhaustively exploited.  The History of the World Tourism Organization takes us on a unique journey to explain how tourism has burgeoned between the early twentieth century and now. Drawing on the UNWTO’s regularly published tourism statistics, this book provides comprehensive discussions of the consequences of an unhindered flow of tourists; the consequent protection of natural assets; the safeguarding of tourism resources; how frontier formalities affect this sector; how tourism impacts on world trade; and the promotion of tourism to countries in economic decline. Collectively, these investigations offer an impartial understanding of modern tourism and its effects.  This definitive overview of this major intergovernmental organization is a must-read for students and scholars of tourism and hospitality, and it is of interest to anyone concerned with the past, present, and future of this ever-evolving and fundamentally human practice.

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure delivers refreshing insights from a host of scientific studies in the domains of hospitality, leisure and tourism. It provides a platform to galvanize thoughts on contemporary issues and merging trends essential to theory advancement as well as professional practices from a global perspective. The focus is to transcend the innovative methods of inquiry so as to inspire new research topics that are vital and have been in large neglected. All volumes are keen to address the needs of the populace having interests in disseminating ideas, concepts and theories derived from scholarly investigations. Potential readers may retrieve useful texts to outline new research agendas, suggest viable topics for a dissertation work, and augment the knowledge of the subjects of interest.

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure (AHL), a peer-reviewed research journal, has been published annually since 2004. AHL is indexed in Scopus and included in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journal quality list. Its editors, editorial board members, ad-hoc reviewers entail scholars from North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. AHL with international in focus attempts to divulge the innovative methods of inquiry so as to inspire new research topics that are vital and have been in large neglected in the context of hospitality, tourism, and leisure. It strives to address the needs of the populace willing to disseminate seminal ideas, concepts, and theories derived from scholarly inquiries. AHL covers full papers and research notes in the matter of conceptual models and empirical investigations using inductive and deductive methods.  The authors of this publication come from America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia, and Pacific. Potential readers may retrieve useful articles to outline new research agendas, suggest viable topics for a dissertation work, and augment the knowledge of the new subjects of learning.

Combining ideas of sustainable development, product development and branding with notions from the fields of design, space shaping and architecture, this volume of Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research offers contemporary perspectives on the strategic development, evaluation and impact of 'atmospheric quality' in tourism and hospitality service situations.  Contributors explore the way atmospheric qualities in tourism and hospitality strongly influence customer behaviour and how their emotional responses to sensory pleasures translate into authentic experiences, excitement, happiness or enjoyment. Examples discussed include:  participatory shaping of destination atmospheres  urban atmospheres  'silent' airports  atmosphere of religious buildings residents as elements of atmosphere emotional contagion building culture and architecture  eAtmospherics   light and colour effects in hospitality encounters  the co-created atmosphere of concerts and events.  Incorporating theoretical perspectives on atmosphere in culture, inter-cultural communication and marketing and numerous practical examples to promote a deeper understanding of atmospheric qualities in sustainable tourism and hospitality, this book furthers academic knowledge and gives guidance to tourism and hospitality practitioners interested in improving the atmospheric quality of their offers for the benefit of their guests.

Debates around the concept of authenticity date to the earliest theories of tourism, as scholars attempted to understand motivations for traveling away from 'home' and touristic experiences of places far 'away'. Over time, theories of authenticity have burgeoned from epistemological to ontological notions drawing a broad range of philosophers into tourism research.  This edited volume features chapters that engage with key debates about authenticity – its materiality, how it is perceived, and how it is experienced. The book is comprised of four sections thematically organized around popular trends in authenticity research in tourism, making this volume appropriate as both a comprehensive text and as individual investigations. Authenticity & Tourism: Materialities, Perceptions, Experiences includes chapters that engage with the pragmatic and the theoretical, including conversations on marketing and the production of tourism attractions, examinations of the constructive nature of authenticity, and the politics of authentication processes. Also included are contributions that revisit technological trends in tourism and advance debates of authenticity in souvenirs, photographs, and simulated experiences, as well as those more firmly anchored in the theoretical, pushing boundaries and establishing paths for future research.  Across these chapters, the authors employ a range of methodologies, from autoethnography to photo and food-elicitation combinations to discourse and content analyses. Set against a backdrop of truly global case studies, this collection exemplifies the multiple facets of authenticity research in tourism.

This portrait of contemporary tourists proposes that these travelers create consumption audio-portraits and self-explanations (identity constructions) through their purchases and use of travel-related services. Their configurations of destinations, accommodations, travel modes, in-route and destination activities, meal choices, sites/attractions visited, and their travel companions inform others and themselves about who they are. These understandings of self through travel are statements of being—where I’ve been and what I’ve done tells me and others who I am. Also, one’s definition of self (being) affects tourists’ future configurations of travel-related buying and consumption. Thus, tourism-related behavior and being represent virtuous and sometimes vicious consumption systems. Consequently, most tourists are identifiable by who they are and what they know about where they have been and what they have done via their summaries of their trips. The chapters in this volume provide tools and evidence useful for deep understanding of tourists’ buying, consumption, and being through examinations of consumers’ self-descriptions of personal markers of their trip configurations. This volume’s core tenet is that thick descriptions and case-based models are essential steps for highly useful research and deep understanding of tourism behavior.

This volume presents twenty updated and new theories of travelers’ decisions and behaviors. It describes the advances in theory construction and practical applications of theory in the disciplines of tourism, hospitality, leisure, and entertainment (THLE) research. The chapters all build on the grand models appearing in these four literature streams during 1965-2015. This approach is comprehensive in both coverage and depth with regard to constructing, testing, and applying theories of travelers’ decisions and behaviors, which includes original work in updating grand theories and micro (algorithm-conscious and non-conscious based) theories of travelers’ decisions and behavior. This volume is the first to fully recognize and construct theories across the THLE discipline. This volume describes the synergies, symbioses, and serendipity occurring in THLE behavior. It tears down researchers' parochial fences of what is and is not tourism, hospitality, leisure, and entertainment. The time has arrived tor tourism to embrace hospitality, hospitality to embrace tourism, and all to embrace leisure and entertainment, and this volume serves as a catalyst to accomplish this embrace.

There have been a number of sporadic and disconnected initiatives to improve knowledge transfer between the tourism academia, government and industry. This volume presents and analyses 17 examples of knowledge transfer from countries around the world to identify future directions for business and government managers and academic researchers. Many of the chapters were presented at the first t-Forum global conference. The chapters emphasise the value from academic leadership in developing cohesion and links amongst small business and government, and the importance of a shared innovative vision beyond individual private and public organization objectives. Successful initiatives rely on the personal characteristics of key stakeholders as well as institutional arrangements, emphasising action learning and challenging traditional academic research processes. Best practice knowledge transfer requires government, industry and academia in partnership engaged in open dialogue and debate for project success. Knowledge transfer provides an opportunity to address unprecedented societal, environmental and technological change and disruption.

This volume presents the latest perspectives and practices on quality services and experiences in hospitality and tourism. It offers conceptual discourse, empirical evidence, application of existing and emerging theories, and considers the implications of practical findings to extend beyond the academic realm of service quality, and examine the quality issues of both services provided and experiences encountered across a wide spectrum of tourism sectors. As such, it provides new intelligence and contributes to the study of new consumers, as well as organizations and destinations that serve and host them.   The book continues the series’ tradition of connecting scholarly works and real-world cases, with a unique mix of geographic representations. The majority of its chapters are drawn from the proceedings of the 2016 conference on Service Quality in Hospitality and Tourism: Experiencing Persian Heritage held in Isfahan, Iran. The regional focus of the conference is augmented in this book with contributions from elsewhere, resulting in a more diverse and global context for the treatment of quality services and experiences in hospitality and tourism.   The volume will appeal to academic scholars and industry professionals interested in exploring new frontiers of knowledge on the subject. Organized in three parts with distinctive themes, the chapters are appropriate course readings, either collectively or selectively, for undergraduate and graduate students in educational programs focusing on global curricula.

This book is a practical handbook for entrepreneurship in tourism related industries. The book will provide students and prospective entrepreneurs with the knowledge, know-how and best practices in order to assist them in planning, implementing and managing business ventures in the field of tourism. It constitutes a valuable contribution to developing the necessary knowledge, competencies and skills of entrepreneurial decision-making and ventures. It would serve as a guide for those studying entrepreneurship and preparing for entrepreneurial careers as well as a reference for the practical use of entrepreneurs at the planning, implementation, operation and evaluation stages of building a tourism business.    Examples from the industry/business world are provided to illustrate real-life practice and give readers a better understanding of entrepreneurship in tourism.