Can Loyalty be extended to Airlines? An Inquisition from Air Passengers

Airlines have always sought to engage with passengers by resorting to customer loyalty programmes. The exigency for this is that customers drive businesses and loyalty constitutes a means to sustainable business. The loyalty programmes by airlines has been a driving force behind customer loyalty since the early 1980s. The study uses a narrative inquiry to explore the extent to which passengers have become acquainted with it. It also examines whether passengers can be loyal to airlines and under what conditions this can prevail. Its findings suggest that although air passengers are prepared to forge closer ties with the airlines, they often see the airlines as reneging on their pledge to offer reciprocal terms of this loyal arrangement. Keywords: customer loyalty, airlines, frequent flyer, passengers, reward systems

Gender Equality and Empowerment through Corporate Social Responsibility in Ecotourism at Malealea, Lesotho: A Qualitative Study

Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) has been widely discussed since the end of the first half of the 21st century. In the 1950s, CSR focused on the demand for social responsibility for business in general but towards the end of the century, diverse issues had emerged ranging from concerns about environmental sustainability, human rights abuse and business sustainability. Gender issues were later taken on board. Companies are taking initiatives to improve gender issues at the workplace, community and marketplace. Guidelines and benchmarks have been developed to mainstream gender issues in CSR. However, a limited focus has been given to CSR in ecotourism especially as it relates to equality and empowerment. This exploratory study reports findings on how Malealea lodge through Malealea Development Trust has been dealing with gender issues in its CSR initiatives in Lesotho. Using interviews with the lodge management, employees and the beneficiaries of the CSR initiatives, findings suggested that the lodge did not have a formal gender policy, gender issues were addressed at various levels and the corporate social responsibility initiatives had empowering effects on both women and men. Keywords: CSR, empowerment, ecotourism, gender, Lesotho

Worldmaking in Sri Lankan Heritage Design: The Case of Travel Writers

This article develops an analytical model to examine how heritage tourism mobilities are designed by travel writers. Using Sri Lanka as an example, we thematise professional activity in heritage tourism through a blend of Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity in late modernity and Keith Hollinshead’s ‘worldmaking authority/agency’ to understand the factors driving tourist design. Our model replaces Jensen’s focus on ‘design’ as a fixed creative property with ‘designing’ as creativity in motion, here collaborative and solidary, there conflictual and endorsing creative inequalities. Our theoretical blend informs the organisation of Sri Lankan heritage tourist professionals into three active categories: ‘communicatives’ (with an emphasis on developing closed-communal solidarity), ‘autonomous’ (with an emphasis on virtual reconstitutions of community beyond geographical fixity that may support tourist entrepreneurialism), and ‘meta-reflexives’ (with an emphasis on bringing tourist markets and communities in a dialogue beneficial for the latter) This typology accommodates disparate worldmaking vistas and forms of tourist design agency that then feed back into authorial tourist scripts, promoted by institutions, organisations and even communities. Thus, agency develops both self-reflexively and through negotiations with independently existing authorial forces driving tourist design managed by the nation state and its own biographical records. Keywords: agency, designing mobilities, reflexivity, heritage tourism, worldmaking

The Near Abasement of Uganda Hotels’ Staff Altruistic Behaviour by COVID-19 Pandemic: A Relief Model

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between employee optimism, status competitiveness, interpersonal adaptability and employee altruism during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, it examined the mediating effect of interpersonal adaptability and employee optimism in the stated relationship. A quantitative study was conducted using a sample of 303 respondents that constituted both managers and employees from 70 selected hotels in Uganda shortly after the end of the first lockdown in July, 2020. The associated hypotheses were tested using the Smart-PLS 3.2 software. Once employees are optimistic, undergo free and fair competition for any position, and feel that they freely interact with one another, then they are bound to devote themselves to the welfare of one another at all costs. It examined employee optimism, status competitiveness, and interpersonal adaptability as explanations of employee altruism. This is in addition to the mediation effect of interpersonal adaptability and employee optimism in the stated relationship. In terms of its value, when employees have positive expectations regardless of the current challenges they undergo, there is fair competition for all positions in the organization, and that they interact freely, they can offer help for others’ welfare. Keywords: employee optimism, status competitiveness, interpersonal adaptability, employee altruism, organizational citizenship behavior and COVID-19

Kemetic Yoga Tourism: A Study of Marketing Strategies in Egypt

Yoga tourism has witnessed a consistent development in the recent years. People around the world have become more mindful of health care options which has led to an increase in the quality of wellbeing care as a need in the minds of most age groups today. The worldwide fascination with yoga has inspired many people to travel in order to practise this activity. Kemetic yoga rapidly evolved into the wonder of yoga tourism, which nowadays is a vital and profitable component of the wellness tourism industry. This unique yoga practice draws yoga lovers from across the world, according to an official statement released by the Egyptian tourism minister promoting it internationally. In 2019, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism collaborated with CNN broadcast to produce a short documentary about Kemetic yoga to highlight wellness tourism in the country. Egypt is a unique destination for Kemetic yogis. Although few researchers have studied Kemetic Yoga as an aspect of tourism, this research focused on the examination of marketing strategies that Egypt needs to apply to promote itself as a competitive destination for yoga. Kemetic yoga tourism is a new travel trend in Egypt, promoting a rising touristic attraction and encouraging the potential of further research. This paper focused on the examination of marketing strategies Egypt is currently implementing to promote itself as a viable yoga destination, and to recommend other marketing strategies to promote Kemetic yoga in Egypt. The methodological approach consisted of a constructivist research paradigm, a qualitative methodology and an interview-based data collection method. Intense, semi-formal interviews were conducted with Kemetic yoga practitioners from different experiences and yoga levels who had travelled to Egypt to practice Kemetic yoga. Keywords: tourism, yoga, medical, health care, wellness, marketing, Kemetic, Egypt

Modern Slavery Statements and Leading UK Hotel Companies

Modern slavery is an insidious problem in many sectors of the global economy, and it is widely perceived to be commonplace in the hospitality industry. However modern slavery has received little attention in the academic hospitality literature and this paper looks to explore one of the ways in which leading hotel companies in the UK have publicly addressed the issue by reviewing their modern slavery statements. The paper adopts a simple methodological approach to review, and offer some reflections on, the modern slavery statements of seven of the leading hotel companies within the UK. The findings revealed that six interlinked themes, namely corporate commitment; risk areas; due diligence; awareness and training; audit; and performance measures; illustrated the seven companies’ approach to tackling modern slavery. The authors also suggested that the hotel companies’ approaches to modern slavery were expectational and that there were concerns about the scope of the auditing processes employed by the hotel companies and by the limited public reporting of their attempts to tackle modern slavery as part of their approach to corporate social responsibility. Keywords: modern slavery, modern slavery statements, UK hotel industry, hospitality industry, auditing, corporate social responsibility

Transportation towards Tourism Sustainability: Case Study of Lebanon

Sustainable tourism considers economic, social, and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment, and host communities. Additionally, sustainable tourism development requires the informed participation of all relevant stakeholders and strong political leadership to ensure participation and consensus building. Nevertheless, maintaining sustainable tourism is necessary to encourage a high level of tourist satisfaction and to be able to ensure a new experience for them, while raising their awareness and promoting sustainable tourism practices. This research aims to study the sustainability of transportation in Lebanon in its broadest scope. This will be done by exploring the problems and solutions that can improve the transportation sector. Due to the lack of sustainable transportation, this research could help fill gaps to improve Lebanon's transportation sector. The study relied on qualitative method, through the utilization of Questionnaires for both residents and visitors and an expert in the field targeted through an Interview. The main findings presented in this paper have shown problems and solutions to Lebanon's transportation sector and the relation between transportation and tourism sustainability. Keywords: sustainability, transportation, tourism, Lebanon

Film Tourism in South-Eastern Sicily: In the Footsteps of Inspector Montalbano

This study focuses on film tourism on the island of Sicily, in the context of the popular television series, Montalbano. Since the series began, there have been increases in tourist flows in the towns most directly interested. Although it is impossible to say that the Montalbano series is directly responsible for these phenomena, it has succeeded in bringing visibility to the territories and landscapes of the area. In the tourist sector, there are now abundant possibilities for fans to participate in movie tours. The apparent success of the series and its tourist spin-offs can be problematised, therefore, since it raises questions about authenticity from the perspective of the subjectivity of the tourists. Authenticity, for a tourist on a ‘Montalbano tour’, relates more to the desire to explore a virtual reality than to the traditional attractions of the places. The issue of authenticity has contrasting implications for the areas involved. The location of ‘Vigata’, a fictional creation of author Andrea Camilleri, has become an issue, as towns compete for a share of the rapidly evolving tourist market, engaging in attempts to demonstrate authentic traces of the fictional context. The paper explores these issues from an interdisciplinary, mixed methods perspective that combines insights from the fields of Economics and Linguistics. Data are analysed in terms of the multimodal and discourse-pragmatic dimensions of the interpretation of image-texts. Keywords: Montalbano, film tourism, framing, multimodality, destination branding

The Interplay of Stakeholder Theory and Blind Spot Theory in Rural Tourism Development

This paper explores the emergence of Stakeholder Theory and Blind Spot Theory over time from two distinct points of views in rural tourism development. After World War II, community development in most rural European areas have been challenged by negative demographic situations caused by centripetal economic development. In order to stabilize vital economic development, new or well-established initiatives have adopted different rural tourism development projects. Most of these projects include local stakeholders from both the private and public sectors. Using a longitudinal multiple case study analysis combined with a comparative method, this study reveals two points of views (stakeholder theory and blind spot theory). Three cases have been chosen in sparsely populated areas in Mid Sweden. This longitudinal study describes outcomes, measured by an estimation of their degree of development success or failures regarding their demographic situation over a span of thirty years. Implications are discussed concerning the rural tourism development process with recommendations of a best practice approach. Keywords: community development, rural tourism, stakeholder theory, blind spot theory, Nordic periphery

How to Measure the Touristic Competitiveness: A Mixed Mode Model Proposal

In 2018, according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), the number of arrivals of international tourists worldwide reached 1.4 billion, which represents enormous potential for the sector and global economies. According to WTO, Italy is in the top ten of the countries with the greatest tourism competitiveness thanks above all to its natural and cultural resources. Today, in the globalized world, tourists are pressed by the opinion of travelers, the number of times that a location is mentioned and in which way influencers marketing consider it. The aim of this work is to create a composite indicator that allows us to evaluate the tourist competitiveness of Italian cities by evaluating both the data on the receptivity and the opinions of travelers. To do this, the official data of Istat have been taken together with Big Data, in particular information from the main holiday home platform and the opinions of travelers expressed on Twitter. Subjective and objective indicators have been produced. The results allow us to build a rating list of Italian touristic cities. Keywords: tourism, composite indicator, Big Data, Open Data, ranking