15th Biennial Conference

By David Airey

The 15th Biennial Conference of the Academy, with the subtitle of "Tourism in Turmoil", was hosted from 21-25 May by Sun Yat- sen University and held at their home campus hotel in the city of Guangzhou, PR China. As the President of the Academy said in his opening comments, the theme of "turmoil" not only struck a chord with events in the tourism world at large – with terrorism and political uncertainty taking place during the period of the conference itself – but also strongly resonated with events in academia, including tourism academia, with financial and competitive pressures bringing change to the academy. Many of the sessions at the conference referred back to this theme of turmoil.

The conference was attended by about 80 participants including 30 Fellows who were joined by 28 other scholars mainly from PR China, invitees of the hosts There were eight invited Scholars and two of the three emerging scholars (the third was incapacitated after an injury). Those taking part also included secretariat staff and other guests as well as a number of spouses and partners.

The conference programme incuded 18 papers by Fellows grouped under a number of themes "Changes and Pressure", "Innovations and Development", "Current Change and Turmoil", "Resilience and Quality" and "Changes and Challenges". There were two Fellows Panel Sessions dealing respectively with "Education and Teaching" chaired by Brian King and with "Journal Publications". In the latter Karl Wober explained the work he was carrying out related to a Scientific Publication Platform for Tourism and Chris Ryan explored the role of journals in knowledge transfer. The eight Invited Scholars and the two Emerging Scholars also gave presentations. At the start and end of the conference there were 2 Academy business meetings.

Our Chinese hosts were actively involved in three sessions. In the Introduction and Welcome some senior figures from the Chinese tourism sector spoke about the development of tourism. These included former Academy Fellow DU Jiang who is now Deputy Director General of the China National Tourism Administration. In subsequent sessions, Chinese colleagues set out the extensive work that is being carried out in sustainable tourism in China, and in the final conference session they considered "Where now for Tourism in China?"

A whole day study visit was included in the programme. This was to Kaiping City in the Pearl River Delta. Here the conference participants were able to visit some of the amazing Diaolou (multifunctional houses) dating from the early part of the 20th century and built by expatriate Chinese. This site was included on the World Heritage List in 2007. Conference participants had the opportunity to learn about the site and the ways in which local communities had engaged with tourism to the site.

The Sun Yat-sen University Hotel, located centrally in Guangzhou, alongside the Pearl River, provided an excellent venue with a good level of service for the conference. Our hosts had arranged a full social programme with "Guangdong Night" offering a river trip with Chinese Opera on board as well as a splendid Farewell Dinner. The usual Academy reception provided a wide range of cheeses and wines brought by Fellows from all parts of the world. At this event plaques were presented to newly elected Fellows and the Invited Scholars and Emerging Scholars were introduced.

One additional feature of this conference was the inclusion of an opportunity for Fellows to record a video about their careers in tourism. These will be edited to provide a video record of the contributions made by this generation's tourism scholars to be hosted on the Academy website.

Our thanks go to our hosts for providing us with a splendid chance to experience Chinese hospitality and to learn about tourism in China for this, the second Academy meeting to be held in this amazing country. Sun Yat-sen University is clearly establishing itself as a leading centre for tourism studies in China.