Index
ATLAS Special Interest Group
|
Index
IntroductionNotes of the Inaugural Meeting of the ATLAS Mass Tourism SIG Held during the ATLAS Conference, Lodz, September 2006
John Beech, as Chair, welcomed everyone and thanked them from attending. He reiterated the two basic points that he had made through rhetorical questions in advertising the meeting:
The feeling of the meeting that there was indeed a need to have an ATLAS SIG in the area of Mass Tourism. It was agreed that the scope of the SIG should be wider than just the main industry sectors - tour operators, travel agents and airlines - and should offer a research network equally relevant to tourism geographers, tourism sociologists and tourism anthropologists.
There then followed a brainstorming session to elicit possible research topics that might fall within the remit of the new SIG. These were, in the order they happened to be put forward:There then followed a brainstorming session to elicit possible research topics that might fall within the remit of the new SIG. These were, in the order they happened to be put forward:
There was a clear consensus that the SIG had a future and that research in mass tourism had, in general, been neglected. It was pointed out that the current decline phase might result in funds becoming available to research the decline.
To communicate with members of this SIG, please send e-mails to the "mass-tourism" discussion list: mass-tourism@atlas-euro.org. Only SIG members will receive a copy of the message and will be able to send a message.
up
Annual review of activities 2007John Beech
Coventry University
J.Beech@coventry.ac.uk
Mass Tourism - Whatever happened to 'Sunlust Tourism'?
Futures Institute, Coventry University
United Kingdom
Monday 14th May 2007
Report on 1st Meeting of ATLAS Mass tourism SIG
It was back in 1970 that H Peter Gray proposed the terms 'sunlust tourism' and 'wanderlust tourism'. Since then, academia has made great strides in researching the latter, arguably at the expense of researching the former. Package tourism still makes up nearly half the tourism business transacted and yet we know relatively little, compared to niche areas of the market, about it. The ATLAS Mass Tourism Special Interest Group (SIG) was founded to help redress this balance by encouraging research into tour operators, travel agents, airlines, the mass tourist and the impacts of mass tourism.
Members of the SIG Mass Tourism were welcomed by Professor Gillingham, Co-Dean of Coventry University Business School (CUBS). The Chair then presented a brief update on what was happening with the SIG, and reported that there were now 67 individual members based in 19 countries.
John Swarbrooke then gave a keynote address. He emphasised that not only was 'mass tourism' due a revisit in terms of what the term meant, but also that, by any sensible definition, it was in fact growing, notwithstanding the decline in the traditional mass tour operators market. He felt that the timing of the meeting was particularly appropriate as a new research agenda was needed.
The rest of the day fell in to two groups of presentations, the first of which was a series of presentations on members' current research in the various fields of mass tourism. Their presentations are available at the ATLAS website at www.atlas-euro.org.
The concluding phase of the meeting turned to specific proposals for joint research, followed by a plenary session chaired by Professor David Noon, the second Co-Dean of CUBS. During this session the meeting was joined by Dr Laura Everall, Business Development Manager at CUBS, to give some helpful input on funding possibilities.
The first proposal by was by John Beech, and considered the establishment of an annual airline passenger survey with the emphasis on assessing perceptions of airline service quality. The feeling of the meeting was that more pre-research was needed to determine the potential demand, and John was asked to take soundings from his airline industry contacts.
The second proposal was by Dimitris Koutoulas. He proposed a joint effort on hotel benchmarking, culminating in a book [There is an implication that ATLAS would publish this]. Given the level of interest expressed, it was proposed that Dimitris go ahead, and SIG members were invited to make contact with Dimitris directly (d.koutoulas@ba.aegean.gr).
During the plenary discussion a third proposal was mooted - the formation of a virtual Travel Industry Observatory. [Exemplars of the Observatory concept can be found in the area of Planning at http://www.idoxplc.com/iii/managedservices/ukplanning/index.htm and in the Automotive field at http://corporate.coventry.ac.uk/cms/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1793&a=12822] John Beech agreed to investigate this further and report back to the SIG.
There was a brief discussion on future meetings of the SIG. It was agreed that the next would be held at the ATLAS Conference in Portugal in September. This would be followed by a meeting similar to the present one to be held in May 2008. All SIG members are invited to offer to host the latter (the Chair indicated that he would, other things being equal, prefer that a non-UK host might come forward in order to avoid the SIG becoming in any way UK-centric).
up
Report on 1st Meeting of ATLAS Mass tourism SIG, Coventry, 14 May 2007The members present were:
|
 Dimitris Koutoulas, Caroline Garvey, Marcella Daye and Hannah Logan |
Members were welcomed by Professor Gillingham, Co-Dean of Coventry University Business School (CUBS). The Chair then presented a brief update on what was happening with the SIG, and reported that there were now 67 individual members based in 19 countries.
John Swarbrooke then gave a keynote address. He emphasised that not only was mass tourism due a revisit in terms of what the term meant, but also that, by any sensible definition, it was in fact growing, notwithstanding the decline in the traditional mass tour operators market. He felt that the timing of the meeting was particularly appropriate as a new research agenda was needed.
The rest of the day fell in to two groups of presentations, the first of which was a series of presentations on members current research in the various fields of mass tourism. Their presentations are available through the clickable links below:
 Swarbrooke John |
 Garvey Caroline |
 Bamber Paul |
 Martinez Esther |
 Logan Hannah |
 Daye Marcella |
 Schwarz Karen |
 Amer Joan |
 Beech John |
 Koutoulas Demitris |
The concluding phase of the meeting turned to specific proposals for joint research, followed by a plenary session chaired by Professor David Noon, the second Co-Dean of CUBS. During this session the meeting was joined by Dr Laura Everall, Business Development Manager at CUBS, to give some helpful input on funding possibilities.
The first proposal by was by John Beech, and considered the establishment of an annual airline passenger survey with the emphasis on assessing perceptions of airline service quality. The feeling of the meeting was that more pre-research was needed to determine the potential demand, and John was asked to take soundings from his airline industry contacts.
The second proposal was by Dimitris Koutoulas. He proposed a joint effort on hotel benchmarking, culminating in a book [There is an implication that ATLAS would publish this]. Given the level of interest expressed, it was proposed that Dimitris go ahead, and SIG members were invited to make contact with Dimitris directly (d.koutoulas@ba.aegean.gr).
During the plenary discussion a third proposal was mooted the formation of a virtual Travel Industry Observatory. [Exemplars of the Observatory concept can be found in the area of Planning at http://www.idoxplc.com/iii/managedservices/ukplanning/index.htm and in the Automotive field at http://corporate.coventry.ac.uk/cms/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1793&a=12822] John Beech agreed to investigate this further and report back to the SIG.
There was a brief discussion on future meetings of the SIG. It was agreed that the next would be held at the ATLAS Conference in Portugal in September. This would be followed by a meeting similar to the present one to be held in May 2008. All SIG members are invited to offer to host the latter (the Chair indicated that he would, other things being equal, prefer that a non-UK host might come forward in order to avoid the SIG becoming in any way UK-centric).
 |
 |
up