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Business, Enterprise & Management

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/5

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Start date: 2010Subject: search.filters.subject.Tourism

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    Cultural festivals and the city
    (Wiley, 2020-03-23) Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise
    Cities have always been hubs for celebration and festivity, bringing people together to escape temporarily from the mundane nature of everyday routines. Festivals have often been bridges between people and places, linking personal geography with collective experiences and therefore increasingly of interest to cultural geographers. However, festivals also have social, economic and political aspects that are constructed by societal influences of the time and place. This article presents some of the key debates ongoing in academic literature across disciplines to demonstrate the contested role that cultural festivals play in urban settings and suggests that urban geography is critical to developing these debates. It is simply no longer possible to say that festivity is a simple rupture in the mundanity of everyday life of urban citizens; rather, contemporary cultural festivals now often exhibit complex and uneasy tensions between the socio‐economic strategies of commercialized neoliberal cities and the cultural needs of diverse communities to gather and celebrate. By reviewing the development of festivals as part of the urban cultural economy utilising a geographic lens, this article sets out how cultural festivals are now more often employed by cities for marketing, tourism and other socio‐economic benefits. We demonstrate that cultural festivals and cities have an ongoing relationship, which is now mainly commercialized and politicized, and this has diverse impacts on communities, urban spaces and cultural identities.
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    Business internet use in small, family owned and managed hotels in Scotland
    (Inderscience, 2020-02-05) Fyfe, Jo; Seaman, Claire; Bent, Richard
    Tourism and thus hospitality is a key strategic priority for the Scottish Government which in many communities is still highly dependent on small, family owned and managed hotels. This exploratory study is designed to initiate dialogue and to explore the complexity of the operating environment and perceived business support needs in the ever-more complex and dynamic e-environment. The development of the internet has altered the manner in which the hospitality industry operates; offering global marketing opportunities, open-source review sites and perhaps crucially the opportunity to interact with and sell directly to the consumer. Results indicate that the positive aspects of the internet were perceived to outweigh the disadvantages; however, the learning challenges identified were primarily around the effective management of on-line resources and global reputation. The vital role of small family owned and managed hotels in the development of a coherent tourism offering for Scotland is acknowledged here and can be additionally allied to geography. There are areas in Scotland, and indeed much of the world, that draw tourists yet are not sufficiently populous to host hotel chains or even specialist boutique hotels. In part, the reason tourists are drawn to those areas is precisely their relatively undeveloped nature, yet this creates a challenge for business learning within small independent hotels.
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    Checking Out: Hotels as Places for the End of Life
    (2014-02-10) Hay, Brian
    This paper explores through an indirect approach why some people chose to die in a hotel rather than at home, in a hospice or a hospital. Through in-depth interviews with hotel managers and junior staff at four luxury city hotels, this issue was explored from the perspective of ordinary people, all of whom had some kind of long-term relationship with the hotel where they died. The hotel staff suggested that the reasons why some people choose to die in a hotel include loneliness, fear and to minimise emotional distress for their friends and relatives. The impact of managing such guests is investigated and shows that, although managers do care about the impact on the reputation of the hotel, they, along with their staff, are very much affected emotionally by these types of deaths. The suggestion emerged from the interviews that, with an ageing population, perhaps in the not-too-distant future the 'hospice hotel' could re-emerge as a tourism product.
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    Breaking Up is Hard to Do! The Future of Tourism in Scotland Under Different Possible Political Options
    (European Tourism Futures Institute, 2013-12) Hay, Brian; European Regional Development Fund, Northern Netherlands Provinces Union,
    No matter how the people of Scotland vote in the independence referendum, the management of tourism in Scotland will change and the implications of this vote will be felt throughout Europe. As the demand for devolved political powers grow, there is likely to be a concurrent move to devolve the management and marketing of tourism from national tourism organisations, to more regional based tourism organisations. The emergence of such regional based tourism organisations is likely to result in them forming more powerful political groupings to lobby against European Union wide rules that may restrict them from developing stronger regional products. The free movement of people and goods within the Europe Union may become more difficult, as more regional policies are developed. The future of two key European policies, the Euro and a passport free common travel area, may also be questioned. The private sector may welcome the development of more regional tourism organisations, as they may be more responsive to their priorities.