Member Activities

Kaye Chon

Kaye along with Haiyan Song visited Sichuan Province in China to offer an executive development program for some 200 tourism officials in major cities and counties in the province. Only a few days after their return, a terrible earthquake took place in the province. Kaye and Haiyan are closely liaising with Sichuan Provincial Tourism Administration to assist with relief work in the province, particularly in relation to post-crisis recovery and marketing efforts by the province. In May, he visited Maldives to teach a 6-day executive development program on tourism policy and marketing strategies for high level tourism policy makers from 18 countries in Asia Pacific. The program was organized by UNWTO and funded by Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Lately, he has contributed a chapter on "Giving Exemplary Service to our "Customers": Bringing the Service Aspect of the Hospitality Industry Alive in the School" in Innovations in Professional Education: Practices and Reflections published by Pearson Prentice Hall. In June, he attended the 7th Asia Pacific Forum for Graduate Students Research in Tourism which was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and hosted by University of Technology Mara. The Asia Pacific Forum was founded by Kaye seven years ago in an effort to promote research exchange and networking among postgraduate students in tourism in Asia Pacific. Next year's Forum will be hosted by Sejong University in Korea and will be held in Seoul in July 2009.

Erik Cohen

Erik's new book, "Explorations in Thai tourism" was just published by Emerald (Bingley, UK) in Jafar Jafari's TSSSeries (#11). The book comprises a series of eight case studies on a broad variety of topics, such as Tourism and the tsunami, Medical tourism, Elephant in Thai tourism, and American West in Thailand as a tourist attraction. He is much interested in further exploring these topics in a comparative framework; members or other interested persons are welcome to contact him at mserik@mscc.huji.ac.il

Graham Dann

Following his retirement from the University of Bedfordshire on December 31 2007, with effect from July 1 2008, Graham's main email address changes from <graham.dann@beds.ac.uk> to <dann_graham@yahoo.co.uk> It is also possible to contact him at Finnmark College, Alta, Norway on <grahamd@hifm.no>

Jiang Du

With the permission of the central government, China Tourism Academy (CTA), a national academic institution under the direct control of CNTA, declared its establishment on June 6 in Beijing and the IAST member Jiang was appointed the President. Jiang will still play the roll of the vice President of CNTA at the same time.

David L. Edgell

David and Carolyn E. McCormick present a paper on “Climate Change and Tourism: The Case for the Coastline of the Outer Banks, North Carolina” at The Coastal Society’s 21st Biennial Conference on July 1, 2008 in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, California. The essence of the paper is:

“A most vulnerable area of climate change regarding tourism is along the Atlantic Ocean coastline of the Outer Banks, North Carolina. This fragile change of barrier islands must strategize now in order to mitigate the negative climate change effects and, at the same time, maintain its positive environment and natural beauty, the major reason why over five million visitors from more than 50 countries visit each year.

…The rich complexity of the Outer Banks tourism industry provides a strong platform for an initial survey of potential climate change on the economic, socio-cultural and physical environments”.

Doug Frechtling

Doug made a presentation to the 39th Annual Conference of the Travel and Tourism Research Association in Philadelphia, PA on "Imperfect Survey Research: How You Can Tell and What You Can Do about It".

Kit Jenkins

Kit will have completed his assignment in IMI Institute from 20th June. He will remain in Switzerland until 24th September and then return to Glasgow. Current email address jenkins_kit@hotmail.com will continue. In August he will be in Zambia working on a short World Bank project establishing a One-Stop Tourism Licensing bureau.

Philip Pearce

Philip reports that he would like to recommend three books to Academy members. They are not brand new but might be of interest to those seeking to connect tourism to other topic areas, specifically health, the environment and change.

Roberts, Jason (2006) A sense of the world. How a blind man became the world's greatest traveller. London: Simon and Schuster.

Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse. How societies choose to Fail of Survive. London. Penguin.

Ball, P. (2005). Critical Mass. How One Thing Leads to Another. London. Arrow Books.

Philip also reports that he will be going to APTA in Bangkok in July and is likely to be travelling in Europe and Thailand in November -December 2008 meeting and working with colleagues.

Chris Ryan

In April Chris was in Taiwan where he gave presentations at various universities and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Taiwan Leisure and Recreation Association. In June he returned to Taiwan to be a keynote speaker at Chinese Culture University for their Tourism Conference, at which Professor David Airey from Surrey University was also a speaker.

Chris has also been appointed to the Social Science Scientific Committee of the Australian and New Zealand Food Standards Authority which monitors the quality of research in this area.

Chris also continues to be editor of Tourism Management. He notes that things have changed considerably over the years - today 75 percent of subscribers do not take hard copy, instead using on-line services only. In 2007 there were 597,000 articles from the journal actually down loaded. In 2008 it is anticipated that the journal will receive over 550 submissions. However, one positive sign is that there are more SSCI journals today in both tourism and hospitality, and that too is to be welcomed. As Kaye Chon notes, there is a wave of Asian research, and this has certainly benefited the publishers! More seriously, it benefits us all - and this is not a plug for Chris's next book on Tourism in China: Destinations, Culture and Communities, co-edited with Professor Gu Huimin, and which will be published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis), New York! However, that did sound like a promotion! Best wishes to all my friends and colleagues in the Academy.

Stephen Smith

Steve is working with an industry and community network in the Niagara Region of Canada to develop and implement a strategic plan to improve product development, service quality, and marketing. His particular efforts are focused on guiding data collection and analysis looking at both the US and domestic market's perceptions of Niagara. He is also working on a new research methods text, tentatively entitled “Practical Tourism Research" for CABI.

Haiyan Song

2007/8 academic year has been a hectic yet productive year for Haiyan. He has just completed two book projects. The first was to up-date and write his acclaimed text on tourism demand modeling and forecasting modern econometric approaches originally published by Elservier in 2000. The new edition of this book will be published by Routledge in September 2008. The second book was written for the Chinese market and it is a Tourism Economics textbook for students on the tourism and hospitality programs within mainland China. This book will be published by Remin University Press in August 2008. Having just completed these two books, Haiyan already started working on another two books- an edited book on tourism forecasting for Edward Elgar Publishing Inc. and an co-authored book on tourism supply chain management. Haiyan is looking for a suitable publisher for this book. Currently two publishers expressed an interested in publishing this book, but Haiyan is looking at which publisher will offer a better deal. Tourism supply chain management is a new research topic that Haiyan is pursuing with a few new journal publications in this area to his credit.

Apart from his busy writing schedule, Haiyan is also currently organizing two international conferences. The first conference is the 5th China Tourism Forum to be held in December this year in Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), China, and the second is the 29th International Symposium on Forecasting to be held in Hong Kong in June 2009. This symposium is an annual event for International Institute of Forecasters including tourism forecasters and this is the first time that this symposium is held in Asia.

Geoffrey Wall

Geoff has been awarded a three-year grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research on "Global-local relationships in Chinese heritage sites". In May 2008 he spent two weeks at the University of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, as Visiting Professor. He made two trips to Seoul, Korea, in June to make presentations at a meeting concerning waterfront development in south Seoul and to participate in Seoul Tourism Awards 2008.