Member Activities

Dimitrios Buhalis

Dimitrios’s new book Accessible Tourism: Concepts and Issues, co-authored with Simon Darcy, was recently published by Channel View Publications. Inclusion disability, an ageing population and tourism are increasingly important areas of study due to their implications for both tourism demand and supply. This book therefore sets out to explore and document the current theoretical approaches, foundations and issues in the study of accessible tourism. In drawing together the contributions to this volume the editors have applied broader social constructionist approaches to understanding the accessible tourism phenomena. Accessible tourism, as with any area of academic study is an evolving field of academic research and industry practice. As with other areas of tourism, the field is multidisciplinary, and is influenced by various disciplines including geography, disability studies, economics, public policy, psychology and marketing. The book is available from http://amzn.to/i42RpS

Dimitrios Buhalis is also assisting Professors Adam Blake and John Fletcher for the organisation of The International Association for Tourism Economics (IATE) biennial conference, which will be hosted by Bournemouth University from 4 to 7 July 2011. More information on http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/tourism/news-and-events/news/2010/oct/ne016-calls-for-papers-for-global-tourism-conference.html

Geoffrey Crouch

During the second half of 2010, Geoffrey spent 6 months on sabbatical leave located at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. While there, he continued research on projects concerning tourism consumer psychology and behaviour, and destination marketing, management and competitiveness. Geoffrey was also invited to visit and to conduct a number of research seminars and guest lecturing at the University of Salzburg, University of Applied Sciences – Chur, University of Lugano, University of Sassari (Italy), University of Eichstatt (Germany).

Don Getz

Don delivered a speech on the "Bottom-up approach to tourism development and planning" to the annual Leader's Forum for the tourism industry in Sweden, in early February. The presentation emphasized actions that a national strategy and government agencies should take to liberate innovation and foster a culture of networking and collaboration at the local and regional levels.

Don has started a Visiting position at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Research there will focus on festivals and events, and event tourism.

Philip Pearce

Philip reports that he plans to travel to Taiwan for the conference in June and that he has an interest in putting together a travel itinerary in October –November 2011 across Europe and North America. He hopes that the 4 books he has worked on in 2010 will all be published by September 2011 and that associated articles expressing his interests in tourism and psychology, humour, scams, poverty and traveller learning can be the basis for presentations as he travels later in the year.

Norbert Vanhove

Beginning of 2011, Vanhove’s book The Economics of Tourism Destinations (the second edition, 336 pages) was published by Elsevier Insights. 

The second edition differs from the first one in several respects. Firstly data have changed. We are living in a rapidly changing world. But there is more. The second edition gives more examples and cases from outside Europe. Indeed America, Australia and Asia are more present. Thirdly, we added a new chapter dealing with pricing and taxation in tourism. Lastly, a number of new topics were added to existing chapters. The most important are (a) Monitoring source markets for destinations; (b) Key factors of competitiveness; (c) Computable General Equilibrium models in tourism and (d) the impact of the financial crisis. The publication is available online http://www.elsevierdirect.com/9780080969961 and in a printed version.

Myriam Jansen -Verbeke

Myriam has been awarded a Visiting Professorship by the Chinese Academy of Sciences for 2011 which will allow for a closer collaboration with the Academy of Science in Beijing, with the Institute of Geographic sciences in particular. She is currently involved in a mayor project on agricultural heritage systems and the planning of sustainable tourism in various sites in China. The mission implies introducing to researchers - Ph.D. & post docs - key issues in the current debate about tourism development at, and around heritage sites... and trying to get beyond the knowledge on case studies. The agenda also implies the organization of a workshop/ seminar in collaboration with the Chinese Tourism Academy and initiatives to communicate internationally about the results of field studies.

Perhaps it would make sense to bundle the activities of IAST members being involved in China in a similar or compatible way, let's exchange our experiences. Please contact: Prof. em. Dr .Myriam Jansen-Verbeke at Jansen.verbeke@skynet.be.

Geoffrey Wall

Geoffrey retired officially on 1 January 2011. Of course, he is not really retired and will retain an Adjunct Position at the University of Waterloo. He will continue to work with graduate students but will not give formal courses or have administrative duties. His contact information is unchanged.

To date, Geoff has supervised 97 graduate students to completion (including a small amount of double counting in cases where both Master’s and doctoral thesis have been supervised). He expects to reach 100 before the summer!

Geoff was recently awarded a second Visiting Professorship by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As before, this will be held at the Xinjiang Institute for Ecology and Geography, a branch of the Academy in Urumqi. This will enable him to continue activities related to tourism and World Heritage in that province. He also holds Visiting Professorships at Yunnan Agricultural University (Kunming), Renmin University (Beijing) and Sun-yat Sen University (Guangzhou) which will facilitate the provision of occasional inputs into their programmes.

Allan Williams

Allan is moving from London Metropolitan University to the School of Management in the University of Surrey. His new email address is allan.williams@surrey.ac.uk.

Arch Woodside

Arch recently co-authored an article: Martin, D. R., & Woodside, A. G. (2011), Storytelling research on international visitors: Interpreting own experiences in Tokyo. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 14(1), 27-54. He is happy to send a reprint via email to the Fellows who request a copy. For a perusal of the abstract on

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1902908&show=html