This research concerning the experience and future of zoos was carried out from 2011-2012 and takes regional ideas concerning Zoo Emmen as well as global visions into account. The research focuses partly on Zoo Emmen, its present attractions and visitors while also comparing and contrasting visions on the future in relationship to other international zoos in the world. In this way, remarkable experiences and ideas will be identified and in the light of them, it can serve as inspiration for stakeholders of zoos at large. The main research subject is a look at the future zoos in view of: The Zoo Experience – an international experience benchmark; The Zoo of the Future – a Scenario Planning approach towards the future; The virtual zoo - zoo’s in the internet domain.
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This article explores the use of design thinking as a method to develop scenario for the future of hotels. Using a Dutch case study, this article shows how a new concept for hotels – the Lifestyle Hub – was created using design thinking as methodology. The Lifestyle Hub concept provides ingredients to hotel owners as well as public policymakers to help understand how future guests may expect to make use of individually tailored hospitable facilities in destinations around the world. Moreover, design thinking allows researchers and businesses to generate highly differentiated customer-centred, experience-based business concepts, thus adding to the toolkit of futures researchers. We conclude that design thinking provides new insights for hospitality and tourism and presents a valuable alternative to current future scenarios approaches.
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By use of a literature review and an environmental scan four plausible future scenarios will be created, based on the research question: How could the future of backpack tourism look like in 2030, and how could tourism businesses anticipate on the changing demand. The scenarios, which allow one to ‘think out of the box’, will eventually be translated into recommendations towards the tourism sector and therefore can create a future proof company strategy.
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This article describes a method for promoting sustainable business practices in the hospitality sector and focusses on energy usage in hotels. It raises questions about the actual impact of eco-labels on actual environmental performance.
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The hospitality industry contributes significantly to global climate change through its high resource consumption and emissions due to travel. As public pressure for hotels to develop sustainability initiatives to mitigate their footprint grows, a lack of understanding of green behavior and consumption of hotel guests hinders the adoption of effective programs. Most tourism research thus far has focused on the ecotourism segment, rather than the general population of travelers, and while research in consumer behavior shows that locus of control (LOC) and guilt can influence guests’ environmental behavior, those factors have not been tested with consideration of the subjective norm to measure their interaction and effect on recycling behavior. This study first examines the importance of internal and external LOC on factors for selecting hotel accommodation and the extent of agreement about hotel practices and, second, examines the differences in recycling behavior among guests with internal versus external LOC under levels of positive versus negative subjective norms and feelings of low versus high guilt.
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Het Our Common Future (OCF) 2.0 project probeert de maatschappij een spiegel voor te houden en te wijzen op bedreigingen, maar ook op de grote kansen die er liggen om een duurzame maatschappij te ontwikkelen. In negentien deelonderwerpen zijn specialisten uit het hele land een maand of vier aan de slag geweest om dit duurzame toekomstbeeld te schetsen en een stappenplan te ontwikkelen om er ook daadwerkelijk te komen. Onderstaand stuk beschrijft één van deze deelonderwerpen. Het is geschreven door dertien specialisten op het gebied van toerisme. Het beschrijft de huidige ontwikkelingen in het toerisme, de bedreigingen, maar vooral de kansen die de Nederlandse toeristische sector heeft om in 2035 te komen tot 100% duurzaam toerisme vanuit en naar Nederland.
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This report investigates prior experiences and impacts of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) with the aim of informing preparation plans for Leeuwarden and Fryslân to organize the event in 2018. The longterm benefits that the ECoC tend to be both tangible through improvements in facilities, and intangible as self-confidence and pride increase as the result of celebrating the destination, its culture and history.
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Due to the increase in the number of elderly and people seeking medical care, the hotel market with a blend of care and leisure experiences is expected to grow in the future (Han, 2013; Karuppan & Karuppan, 2010; Laesser, 2011). The role of care hotels as an intersection between the care and the tourism sectors makes a vacation in a care hotel an interesting social practice to study. In this contribution a social practices approach (Spaargaren, 1997) is applied to investigate how demand and supply interact during a care hotel vacation. Semi-structured interviews are used to identify successful and less successful interactions or practices between senior guests and personnel in five Dutch care hotels. These interactions are related to materials (care and leisure facilities), competences (skills and empathy of the personnel) and meanings (motivations and aspirations of guests) in the care hotel practice (see Shove et al., 2012). The results show that a social practice approach combined with a qualitative research method may be more suited to analysing the complex encounters between guests and personnel during care hotel vacations than more traditional theories from service or experience quality studies. Simultaneously, this study makes clear that we need to develop alternative qualitative (and/or quantitative) research methods to study more privacy-related or intimate practices or rituals as in the case of care hotels.
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Purpose – The hospitality industry creates a distinctive context in which learning takes place. The industry’s international perspective and large globalisation play an important role in learning, as well as the operational and structural features that give meaning to learning and development in the hospitality industry. This explorative research therefore studies the relation between workplace learning and organisational performance in the Dutch hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative research is done through 15 in-depth interviews with general managers and HR managers of Dutch hotels with three or more stars and at least ten employees. Findings – It can be concluded that there is a relation between workplace learning and organisational performance in the hospitality industry, as the participants in this research and the literature both mention workplace learning enhances organisational performance. Originality/value – Little research has been done on learning and organisational performance specifically, in the (Western) hospitality industry. This research therefore focusses on HRD and studies the influence of workplace learning on organisational performance in the Dutch hospitality industry.
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