COVID-19 and reflections on the summer of 2021 from the field

Ambis and ATLAS invite you to join us for an on-line webinar that will reflect tourism experiences of summer 2021 from different countries in Europe. Four speakers from DMO’s in Europe (Netherlands, Germany and the UK) will talk about their region’s experiences of tourism over the summer months and consider the future for their regions and organisations. The invited industry professionals will provide wide-ranging insights into how different regions have coped during the COVID-19 crisis and provide diverse perspectives on how different European DMOs have tackled the challenges they have faced.

Panelists

Anya Niewierra

Anya Niewierra (1964, Kerkrade, NL) is General Director of Visit South Limburg (Stichting VVV Zuid-Limburg) since 1993. Visit South Limburg was founded in 1885 and is -until today- the oldest tourist board in the Netherlands. Visit South Limburg is a foundation with only 35% governmental participation on a turnover of € 5.000.000. The organization is responsible for the marketing, product development, route management, market research, event organization and of course information supply over web and 30 information locations for South-Limburg, the most southern region in the Netherlands, and located within the 3-coutnry region Meuse-Rhine. Furthermore she held and holds various supervisory board roles with organizations related to tourism, culture or landscape development. She was in the supervisory board of the Dutch national tourist boards organization Destination Netherlands (Stichting VVV Nederland) until spring 2021. Between 2010 and 2012 Anya was the first president of the EDEN Association. Since 2014 she is member of the board of Necstour. Anya Niewierra is also the owner of The White Lily (www.witte-lelie.com), a small tourism company. In her free time Anya Niewierra writes awarded novels, see www.niewierra.com. More details on Anya Niewierra you will find on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anyaniewierra
 

Eli Keegan

An important part of my professional route is related to destination management. I have been the Director of the Lloret Convention Bureau from 2011 to 2015 and since then and until today I am the Managing Director of Lloret de Mar Tourist Board. My main motivation and satisfaction is to contribute to the transformation and repositioning of Lloret de Mar and its outstanding cultural heritage. We do it by innovating, structuring, analyzing and communicating! Graduated in Audiovisual Communication and Master in Management of Communication Companies and Multimedia Groups at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), I also worked as a professor in the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Girona and in ESIC Business School, sharing all my know-how in meeting tourism and events. Previously I was professionally linked to the management of events and cultural projects. First as the Exhibition Coordinator and Head of the Operational Unit at the Zaragoza International Expo 2008, just after as Head of the Projects Department in Lunatus and, lastly, as Project Manager at Event Solutions (Servis Group). At the beginning of my career, I dedicated myself to audiovisual production in film, television and advertising, working for production companies such as Albiñana Films, Mamma Team Production House or GDA Pro (Grupo Godó).

Malcolm Bell

Malcolm Bell led the creation of the new private sector led Visit Cornwall CIC and managed the transition from the public sector to an industry led body in 2014, with the new organisation coming into existence in April 2015. Prior to the transition, Malcolm had been appointed Head of Tourism for Cornwall on the 1st January 2010. Previous appointments included CEO South West Tourism the Regional Tourist Board for eh South West of England (1999 to 2009), Director of Economic Development Devon and Cornwall Training & Enterprise Council (1994 to 1999) where he  progressed  strategic activities on economic development, tourism, inward investment, and rural and urban initiatives. Before this time, he had 15 years in the employment and vocational training arena. Malcolm is a Cornishman, married with two daughters, and a keen dinghy and yacht sailor.  He is a Fellow of the Tourism Society, Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce, Fellow of the Tourism Management Service and a Fellow of the Academy of Food and Wine Service. He was an  expert advisor to the European Commission and a member of the EC’s Tourism Sustainability Group and is leading a working group to establish a core set of indicators to measure sustainable tourism, from 2004 to 2015. Other appointments include membership of Advisory committees for the Tate St Ives, National Trust Regional Advisory Board, a Trustee South West Lakes Trust. 

Dirk Schmücker

Dirk Schmücker has been working as a consumer researcher for the last 25 years. His focus is on studying the demand side of tourism, and here specifically on information behaviour, decision making and choosing sustainable alternatives. He is a professor of tourism at FH Westküste Univ. of Applied Sciences and, as head of research at NIT, he is part if the team carrying out the annual Reiseanalyse. Since 1971, this study has been describing the holiday travel behaviour in the German market, the biggest holiday travel market in Europe. The contribution will outline consumer reactions under COVID-19 based on long times series data and current surveys during the pandemic.
https://www.nit-kiel.de/en/institute/team/dirk-schmuecker/
https://www.fh-westkueste.de/dirk-schmuecker/

Moderators


René van der Duim

René van der Duim is Emeritus Professor at the Cultural Geography Chair Group, Department of Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the relation between tourism, conservation and development and he has executed research projects in countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania Costa Rica, Portugal and the Netherlands.


Alžbeta Kiráľová

Alžbeta Kiráľová is an Associate professor and Vice-Rector for International Affairs at the AMBIS in Prague. She represents AMBIS in international organizations and networks such as UNWTO, ATLAS, NECSTouR (Network of European Regions for Competitive and Sustainable Tourism). Alžbeta works as an expert for the EASME COSME and Erasmus + EACEA, EAPAA, and VEGA (Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic and Slovak Academy of Sciences). At the same time, she is actively involved in research projects in the Czech Republic and abroad, focusing on tourism destination marketing and management, food tourism, and regional development. She is the author of the books Marketing Hotel Services (Ekopress), Marketing Tourism Destination (Ekopress), Globalization Impact on Tourism Destination Marketing (Ekopress), and editor of the book Driving Tourism through Creative Destinations and Activities (IGI Global)..

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Special track 1

Scenario planning workshop on “Tourism as a driver of regional development and collaboration”

Track convenor
Albert Postma – Stenden University, Netherlands  (albert.postma@nhlstenden.com)
Martin Groters – Stenden University, Netherlands

During a special track at the annual ATLAS conference in Prague the European Tourism Futures Institute @ NHL Stenden University (www.etfi.eu) will provide a scenario planning workshop on the theme of the conference. The aim of the session will be to bring together the expertise of various delegates on “tourism as a driver for regional development and collaboration”, to get acquainted with scenario planning and to jointly develop four different scenarios of how tourism could impact upon regional development in 2030. Such scenarios could guide authorities to establish policy frameworks.

The session will start with a short introduction to strategic foresight & scenario planning and its relevance for policy and planning in tourism. Next, together we will map the force field for the next decade, identify driving forces of change and their range of plausible outcomes, highlight the key uncertainties, and develop a scenario framework, and finally flesh out the key features of the four scenarios. Based on the outcomes of the session this will be done afterwards by ETFI. Hopefully, this could lead to a joint publication with all participants.

The workshop will take about three hours. The number of participants is limited to 16. Ideally, the group of participants is composed of representatives from knowledge institutions and the industry, with relevant expertise to contribute, and with an open mind.

Because the conference will be hosted online, the workshop will be conducted with MURAL a platform that perfectly suits the job. See this video for a short or extended introduction. Mural is quite engaging and allows participants from different locations to collaborate as in a real class room or meeting room. We have been applying it in many university courses and project over the past year.

This track is different than the other tracks. We do not expect you to present your research. The purpose is to work together and develop a scenario framework. Since we are looking for a motivated group of max 16 delegates we would like you to use THE ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM to provide a short motivation for your participation in this workshop, NOT to submit an abstract.

Participation is only possible for delegates of the ATLAS annual conference. If we have accepted you to participate, you will receive a pro forma a few weeks before the conference to practice a bit.

Looking forward to your submission!

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

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Special track 2

Engaging in meaningful research and action for climate change and tourism: the role of scholars
ATLAS SIG Climate Change and Tourism

Track convenors
Ioanna Farsari, Dalarna University, Sweden (ifa@du.se)
Liliana Carvalho, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Martine Bakker, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

Climate change is increasingly becoming a topic of attention within tourism industry and tourism scholar community. Although an increasingly proliferating research topic, research has focused on industry’s and entrepreneurs’ perceptions; impacts and adaptation measures in destinations; or tourists perceptions and travel behaviour. Although the need for transformative changes in the system has drawn research interest, little research has addressed the transformative nature of tourism research and education for climate change. Transformative approaches enable self-reflexivity, researchers’ identities, acknowledgement of diverse interests and tensions and often take whole systems approaches enabling conventional as well as disruptive methodologies.

With this special track we would like to draw attention to these aspects and invite for discussions around research on climate change and tourism and reflectivity over the role of the scholars in climate change and tourism: What is relevant research for us?  How can we contribute with relevant results? How can we communicate the results of our research? What is relevant research for the industry and destinations?  How can we engage into it? How can we minimise the gap with the industry? What about our role as educators on the topic?

This special track wants to become a forum to advance our understanding of divergent perspectives, and explore creative and innovative ways in researching, implementing and communicating on the intersection between climate change and tourism. The aim is to stimulate innovation, map research interests, and stimulate collaborations for future research projects and publications. Rather than only communicating research results, it aims at forwarding and creating opportunities for young and senior researchers to meet and collaborate.

We particularly invite contributions around, but not limited to:

• New themes or topics research which advance our understanding of climate change and tourism
• New methodologies in researching climate change and tourism
• The controversies and tensions in advancing climate neutral travel and tourism
• The role of covid in transforming us (tourists, scholars, industry, stakeholders) in terms of our understanding and/or behaviour towards climate change
• Discuss innovations in research around tourism and climate change in the new normal

The track is looking for the following submissions:

• Non-traditional abstract
• Statement/question (that will serve also as a title for the presentation/abstract)

The non-traditional abstract could be the description of an ongoing or recently accomplished research or a positioning discussion followed by a statement/question which would be discussed further in the workshop. The statement/question should come as a result of the abstract and something that you would like to explore further. Therefore one research project can invite for more than one participants based on what they would like to focus and explore further.

We aim for a non-conventional special track where presentations will be kept short and pointing to the statement/questions to be discussed on a workshop.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

You can submit your contribution in the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM
 

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Special track 3

New frontiers in volunteer tourism research
ATLAS SIG Volunteer Tourism

Track convenors
Elisa Burrai, Leeds Beckett University, UK (e.burrai@leedsbeckett.ac.uk)
Davide Sterchele, Leeds Beckett University, UK (d.sterchele@leedsbeckett.ac.uk)

Volunteer tourism has become a well-established field of academic enquiry. Several studies have analysed the role of volunteer tourism as a driver of personal development of volunteers, cross-cultural collaboration and understanding between hosts and guests, improved living conditions for local people and increased involvement of tourists in social movements and activism. On the other hand, in the past decade a more critical scholarship has also considered volunteer tourism as a form of neo-colonialism, since the interests and motivations of western tourists tend to outweigh the needs and desires of local residents. To date, the majority of studies have focused on the impacts of volunteer tourism, motivations of tourists, perceptions of residents, and characteristics of organisations. However, emerging areas and topics offer new opportunities to investigate volunteer tourism in relation to timely issues such as the role of social media, social and environmental sustainability, power relations, segmentation of the industry, contradictions and paradoxes.

Moreover, like many other realms of social life and academic research, volunteer tourism is now dealing with the challenges and opportunities presented by the Covid-19 crisis. On the one hand, the pandemic may further expose the well-known dependency of many development programmes and organisations on volunteer tourists, further questioning their (economic and social) sustainability and underpinning power relations. On the other hand, the current challenges could accelerate the critical rethinking of previous volunteer tourism practices, encouraging creative solutions to both (new) practical and (old) ethical problems.

Although much theoretical progress within the literature on volunteer tourism has been made, we advocate for additional innovative, critical, multi- and inter-disciplinary theoretical and methodological contributions to the field (Wearing and McGehee, 2013). We also acknowledge the importance of ‘going beyond’ the current volunteer tourism scholarship to create a wider-ranging and more inclusive research agenda (Smith and Holmes, 2009, p. 403). This involves exploring less obvious combinations between tourism and volunteering (Brennan, 2014; Holmes et al 2018; Jaeger & Olsen 2017; Stainton 2018), whose investigation enables the critical rethinking of volunteer tourism conceptualisations that have become mainstream and are currently taken for granted (Uriely et al 2003).

Therefore, in this session we aim to bring together a range of abstracts that examine volunteer tourism from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.  

Hence, we invite submissions that may address, but are not be limited to, the following areas:

• Challenges and opportunities for volunteer tourism during and after the Covid-19 pandemic;
• Tourist encounters bounded in volunteer tourism experiences;
• The political ethics of volunteer tourism;
• Stakeholders’ perceptions of volunteer tourism;
• Links between volunteer tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals;
• Leisure-work boundaries within volunteer tourism;
• Links between event volunteering and tourism volunteering;
• Ethics and morality in volunteer tourism;
• Link between responsibility and volunteering in events and tourism;
• The role and practices of the third sector in destinations;
• Ambiguities and paradoxes of volunteer tourism;
• New conceptual frameworks and methodologies for the study of volunteer tourism;
• Reflexivity and positionality in volunteer tourism research.

Abstracts of between 350-500 words (with title no longer than 12 words) should be submitted to ATLAS. All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Authors should indicate that they are submitting to the Volunteer Tourism Special Track on the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM. Accepted abstracts will be allocated a slot within the conference track, and presenters must register for the ATLAS conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

References

Brennan, C. (2014). Reexamining a" working holiday": An autoethnography, Turizam: međunarodni znanstveno-stručni časopis, 62(3), pp.277-292.

Holmes, K., Nichols, G. and Ralston, R. (2018). It's a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience and Opportunity—Deal with it! Volunteer Perceptions of the Management of the Volunteer Experience at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Event Management, 22(3), pp.389-403.

Jæger, K. and Olsen, K. (2017). On commodification: volunteer experiences in festivals, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 15(5), pp.407-421.

Stainton, H. (2018). TEFL tourism: The tourist who teaches, Tourism Geographies, 20(1), pp.127-143.

Uriely, N., Reichel, A. and Ron, A. (2003). Volunteering in tourism: Additional thinking. Tourism Recreation Research, 28(3), pp.57-62.

Wearing, S. and McGehee, N.G. (2013). Volunteer tourism: A review. Tourism management, 38, pp.120-130.e.

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Special track 4

Legitimising visual research in tourism; building a critical mass, ethical framework and quality criteria
ATLAS SIG Visual Tourism

Track Convenors
Nika Balomenou - University of Hertfordshire, UK (n.balomenou@herts.ac.uk)
Brian Garrod – Swansea University, UK (brian.garrod@swansea.ac.uk)

There is a strong pull in tourism studies towards the familiar, trusted, long-established, textocentric tradition, in which it is apparently considered that numerical and textual methods are sufficient. Visual methods in tourism research are, therefore, markedly under-represented in comparison with other fields where they have been more readily accepted. There is still a mistrust towards the visual, and this three major problems for researchers and for the field of tourism in general:

Visual researchers are asked to ‘triple justify’ their choice of method. First they are asked to explain why they are using a particular method and to outline the steps they have taken to implement it. This is only right and proper.

Secondly, however, they are also frequently required to justify the use of visual methods in general, particularly in terms of establishing their credibility. More often than not, this is led by concerns about their validity, generalisability, replicability and objectivity – concepts  that belong to the positivistic/quantitative tradition but not necessarily to the methodological context in which those visual methods are being applied.

Third, visual researcher are often asked to justify their choice of method on the basis of ethical propriety. In view of the many different visual methods in existence, the fact that some of them include taking images of people, and the opportunities created in big-data research to scrape websites such a Instagram for images, very little discussion has been focused on the ethics of visual research in tourism. The sparsity of this kind of research can, at times, lead to a reluctance for institutional committees to grant ethics approval for conducting visual research.  Professional bodies such as the International Visual Sociology Association and the Visual Sociology strand of the British Sociological Association have, however, published ethical guidelines for the use of visual methods. The tourism academy needs to consider these under the light of technological advancements and new research trends, and to mould any guidelines towards the peculiarities of the tourism field.
 
Researchers are invited to submit papers for the Visual Methods in Tourism Research Track of the ATLAS Conference on the following themes:

• Advances in visual tourism research
• Establishing the academic credibility of visual methods in tourism
• Ethical issues in visual tourism research
• Implementing and publishing visual research in tourism

Abstracts of between 350-500 words (with title no longer than 12 words) should be submitted to ATLAS. All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Authors should indicate that they are submitting to the Volunteer Tourism Special Track at the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM. Accepted abstracts will be allocated a slot within the conference track, and presenters must register for the ATLAS conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

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Special track 5

Re-marketing or De-marketing in the Post-COVID City?
ATLAS SIG Urban Tourism

Track convenor
Ko Koens – Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands (ko.koens@inholland.nl)
Melanie Smith – Budapest Metropolitan University, Hungary (msmith@metropolitan.hu)

Pre-COVID, many cities were addressing the challenges of so-called ’overtourism’ using various approaches, such as restricting tourist numbers, regulating tourist behaviour, managing tourist flows or re-directing tourists to alternative destinations. UNWTO (2018) suggested several steps to reduce the negative impacts of tourism and to avoid overtourism. These include reviewing and adapting regulation; setting monitoring and response measures; improving city infrastructure and facilities; communicating with and engaging stakeholders (including residents and visitors); and creating new experiences and attractions.

With vaccination well under way, at least in the Global North, the question of dealing with urban tourism post-COVID has become opportune again. On a basic level, a continuum of responses can be observed here. On one hand, there are stakeholders who emphasise the need for quick tourism recovery to support businesses and workers as well as the expected spike in tourism demand. This is especially important for preventing permanent redundancies. On the other hand, there are stakeholders who argue that COVID offers the opportunity to develop tourism in a different way, which does not take growth as its underlying premise.

The Urban Tourism SIG Conference Stream seeks to engage with this debate from both sides to further our understanding of the possible ways in which urban tourism will start up in the coming months and years. As such, we want to move beyond a simplistic dualism of re-marketing versus de-marketing, to also learn about ways in which processes and strategies of de-marketing and re-marketing can be used in urban tourism development. The concept of de-marketing, an element of the broader degrowth movement (Hall & Wood, 2021),  was first used by Kotler and Levy (1971) to describe the process of actively discouraging customers or a certain segment of customers on a temporary or permanent basis. However, this does not necessarily mean the reverse of marketing. It has been argued that the two are not always mutually exclusive (Medway & Warnaby, 2008). Beeton and Benfield (2002), among others, see de-marketing as an inherent working component of marketing which provides a set of tools that should be used by marketers to achieve optimal demand. Kotler and Levy (1971) differentiated between general de-marketing when a company wishes to reduce level of total demand and selective de-marketing where demand from certain market segments is discouraged. For example, some of the overtourism literature suggests that the night-time economy was one of the main culprits in creating resident discontent in cities. In such cases, a destination could potentially be de-marketed to party tourists and re-marketed to cultural or other niche tourists, for example. Overall, a form of selective de-marketing coupled with selective re-marketing could represent a positive way forward for post-COVID cities, but only when supported by the appropriate monitoring and regulation of visitor arrivals, flows and behaviour.

Medway and Warnaby (2008) also suggest developing strategies that re-direct tourists to alternative places. In the absence of international tourists, domestic tourists or residents could be encouraged to (re)discover their sometimes little-known city and urban heritage through ’off the beaten track’ experiences (Lim and Bouchon, 2017). Łukasz and Pawłowska (2018) categorise ‘off the beaten track’ experiences as: exploring urban space beyond traditional tourism centres; seeking less visited cultural and heritage sites; thematic sightseeing; experiencing the ‘authentic’ side of the city; and visiting places where the everyday life of inhabitants takes place. The role of technology (e.g. Apps) in this process is becoming increasingly important (Lim and Bouchon, 2017; Łukasz and Pawłowska, 2018).

Re-positioning cities (or re-branding) may be another useful approach in the post-COVID period. Kotler (2000) emphasised that positions are determined by a combination of the image that a service supplier would like to convey as well the way in which that image is perceived by the relevant stakeholders. This can include what Crompton (2009, p.93) describes as ‘real repositioning’ where an agency makes changes in the services that it offers as well as some ‘psychological repositioning’, which means changing peoples’ perceptions. Communication and marketing are an important part of this process, especially social media and digital marketing (Kaczynski, Havitz and McCarville, 2005).

It is likely that smart solutions will be found for the management of visitor flows and contact points in the post-COVID period and individual digital experiences will most likely replace group and guided tours for a while. This includes the creation of meaningful and memorable experiences via personal technologies (Gretzel et al., 2015). In a way, technology allows for a de-marketing of certain visitor behaviors, whilst re-marketing other visitor behaviors. However, as emphasized by Koens, Postma and Papp (2018) sustainable management of tourism must be the ultimate aim of smart developments.

This stream welcomes (among others) presentations and papers on the following themes:

• De-marketing or re-marketing strategies for cities post-COVID
• Re-positioning and re-branding of cities post-COVID
• The need for economic tourism recovery in certain spaces and/or locations
• The role of social media marketing in re-positioning cities
• Other strategies for addressing overtourism in the post-COVID period
• Re-marketing or de-marketing for regenerative tourism
• Designing sustainable re-marketing strategies for the post-COVID city
• Managing host-guest relations in the post-COVID city
• Re-marketing strategies for sustainable regrowth
• The role of digital technologies in marketing city tourism.
• Changing tourist demands for tourism in the post-COVID city 
• Managing visitor flows and contact in the post-COVID city
• Creating alternative and ‘off-the-beaten’ track experiences for tourists and/or locals
• The role of technology and digitalisation in the creation of urban experiences
• Sustainable planning and management of post-COVID cities

All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by the track convenors and members of the scientific committee of the ATLAS annual conference. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness; relevance to the theme of the conference and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Abstracts should be submitted via the ATLAS website using the abstract submission form

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

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Special track 6

Challenges and new solutions in tourism and leisure education

Track Convenors
Goretti Silva - Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Portugal goretti@estg.ipvc.pt
Sheena Carlisle - Cardiff Metropolitan University , United Kingdom scarlisle@cardiffmet.ac.uk
Monika Birkle - Haaga Helia - University of Applied Sciences, Finland Monika.Birkle@haaga-helia.fi

During a special track at the annual ATLAS conference in Prague the SIG Business Tourism in cooperation with the INCOME Tourism, Next Tourism Generation (NTG) and Project CultSense projects, will provide a panel discussion and a workshop on the theme “Challenges and new solutions in tourism and leisure education”.

 
This special track is meant for teachers in tourism, hospitality, event and leisure management and researchers with an interest in pedagogy and curriculum design, as well as for practitioners from the industry with an interest in developing education. In the special track delegates discuss what to consider when designing education in a post-pandemic situation. Key themes include sustainability, employability, resilience, innovation and digital adoption.

The session will start with a panel discussion, followed by an overview of recent insights by the above mentioned projects. The session is collaborative and includes a workshop that requires active participation. The purpose is to work together and identify the future skillset needed in a changing operational tourism and leisure environment.

This special track is different from the other tracks. We do not expect you to present your research, rather we invite you to submit and share your best practices from curriculum design and from teaching in tourism and leisure degree programs.

You can submit your best practice by using the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM.

You can still submit your best practice! (For Special Tracks 6 only.)

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Special track 7

Gastronomy tourism as tool for sustainable development
ATLAS SIG Gastronomy and Tourism

Track convenors
Carlos Fernandes – Instituto Politécnico do Viana do Castelo, Portugal (cfernandes@estg.ipvc.pt)
Silvia Aulet – University of Girona, Spain (silvia.aulet@udg.edu)

In line with one of the main topics of the ATLAS Annual Conference, as well as the challenges and trends that tourism is facing, we propose to reflect on the importance of applying the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in Gastronomy Tourism or, how gastronomy tourism can help in the achievement of SDG.

Therefore, in this session we aim to bring together a range of abstracts that examine gastronomy tourism under the lens of SDG from both, theoretical and methodological perspectives.  The main SDG that are related to food production are SDG number 2 (hunger), number 3 (health and well-being) and number 12 (responsible consumption and production).

We invite submissions that may address the following areas:

• The role food tourism can have in promoting a healthy, nutritious and sufficient diet throughout the year to all, including vulnerable people
• How food tourism is connected (or can be) to small-scale food producers and to resilient agricultural practices
• Food tourism as a tool for helping agricultural markets, preventing trade restrictions for example.
• The role food tourism can have in the access to food for local communities, or the role it can have in the definition of food prices
• Tourism as a promoter of a suitable, healthy, balanced and local cuisine.
• Food tourism and circular economy
• Food tourism and waste generation, or food waist. How to avoid food waste through appropriate management systems

Abstracts of between 350-500 words (with title no longer than 12 words) should be submitted to ATLAS. All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Authors should indicate that they are submitting to the Volunteer Tourism Special Track on the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM. Accepted abstracts will be allocated a slot within the conference track, and presenters must register for the ATLAS conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only
 

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Special track 8

Event Communities: Trends and Futures
ATLAS SIG Events

Track convenors
Greg Richards – Tilburg University, the Netherlands (G.W.Richards@tilburguniversity.edu)

In 2021, just as in 2020, the ATLAS Events Group will be staging its events online. Like communities around the world, our group will need to adjust to the new reality of online and hybrid events. What effects will these developments have for events in the future, and what impact will these have on the communities that shape and are shaped by events?

In previous research programmes ATLAS has considered the development of event networks, and the role of events in society. That role changed radically with the pandemic, as live events were cancelled and social contacts increasingly had to be made online. How will the shift to digital events and the absence of ‘normal’ social gatherings affect communities in future? Will new models of events emerge, or will people be eager to get back to ‘normal events’?

We will be considering a wide range of topics on the future of events and communities for this track, including for example:

• The future of community events
• Events as community networks
• Social cohesion, social capital and events
• Online communities and virtual events
• Hybrid events (online/offline mixing and new developments)
• The future development of traditional events
• New event spaces
• Events and the future of cities and regions

Abstracts of between 350-500 words (with title no longer than 12 words) should be submitted to ATLAS. All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Authors should indicate that they are submitting to the Volunteer Tourism Special Track on the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM. Accepted abstracts will be allocated a slot within the conference track, and presenters must register for the ATLAS conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only
 

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Special track 9

Cultural tourism re-visited
ATLAS SIG Cultural Tourism

Track convenors
Greg Richards – Tilburg University, the Netherlands (G.W.Richards@tilburguniversity.edu)

On the 30th anniversary of the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Project we will be re-visiting some of the central themes of the ATLAS research over the years. When the project was launched, cultural tourism was a relatively new segment of global tourism, but it rapidly developed from a niche market into a mass tourism product, driven by low cost flights and collaborative economy accommodation.

In 2021 we will be looking at how the cultural tourism market has changed, and reviewing some key trends from recent editions of the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Research Project, for which surveys were undertaken in Prague and other locations in 2020 and 2021. Those involved in past and present editions of the ATLAS research project are welcome to present their thoughts on the development of cultural tourism, and other presenters are also invited to give their views.

The themes covered in this track will include:

• Cultural tourism development trends
• Cultural tourism and regional development
• Collaboration and networks in cultural tourism
• New forms of cultural tourism
• New cultural tourism spaces
• Cultural tourism and the community
• Evolving cultures of tourism

Abstracts of between 350-500 words (with title no longer than 12 words) should be submitted to ATLAS. All abstracts will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical and empirical significance; methodological soundness and logical clarity. The official language of the conference is English. Authors should indicate that they are submitting to the Volunteer Tourism Special Track on the ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM. Accepted abstracts will be allocated a slot within the conference track, and presenters must register for the ATLAS conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 25 June 2021, for the Special Tracks only

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ATLAS Research Café 

ATLAS is organising a new form of meeting for the ATLAS Annual Conference in Prague in 2021. Alongside the usual paper presentations, we will be focussing on key research questions and research processes in the event field through a virtual ‘research café’.

The research café will include a number of ‘tables’ at which experts from different fields will lead discussions on hot topics in tourism, leisure and events research. These will generate ideas that can lead to research projects, publications, perhaps a new Special Interest Group.

The Research Café will be based on the principles embedded in the World Café process, including:

1. Creating a Hospitable Space
Just like the ATLAS Conference itself, the Research Café will provide a welcoming and comfortable space for interaction. No formalities, no titles, no prizes – just open conversation and mutual respect.

2. Asking Compelling Questions
Each group will engage with powerful questions about research that will generate collective energy, insight, and action.

3. Encouraging Everyone to Contribute
Everyone will be encouraged to contribute their ideas and perspectives, but if you just want to listen to the conversation, that is also fine.

4. Connecting Diverse Perspectives
You can move between tables, meet new people, and link your own thoughts to those of others, increasing the potential for surprising new insights.

5. Sharing Collective Discoveries
The conversations from each table will be connected to  “harvest” the emerging wholeness of the debate about the role of tourism, leisure and events in contemporary society.

The Research Café will not replace traditional paper presentations at the conference, but it will complement the traditional format by opening up discussions in a much broader and more creative way.

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ATLAS Meet the Seniors 

ATLAS conference are known for the informal, friendly and comfortable atmosphere where you have the chance to speak to other scholars very easily. Especially young academics have a chance to talk to senior academics who they might know from their books and other work.

During this ONLINE event we would like to accomplish this as well. We invite young academics to meet the seniors. We decorated a special room for this!

In the LIVETO platform you can approach the academics in the list below. You can also reach them by e-mail prior to the conference and make an appointment for meeting each other.

Of course you can approach all participants for a conversation. The following people have indicated that they are at least open to a conversation:

Antonio Paolo Russo – University Rovira i Virgili, Spain antonio.russo@urv.cat
Greg Richards – Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands G.W.Richards@tilburguniversity.edu
Melanie Smith – Budapest Metropolitan University, Hungary msmith@metropolitan.hu
Carlos Fernandes – Instituto Politécnico do Viana do Castelo, Portugal  cfernandes@estg.ipvc.pt
Ilja Simons – Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands Simons.I@buas.nl
Tara Duncan – Dalarna University, Sweden tdu@du.se

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Meet the publishers

We give publishers the opportunity to join the conference and meet the delegates and vise versa!

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Student event

More information soon.

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