Search results for " leisure"
showing 10 items of 738 documents
Politics of Dark Tourism: The Case of Cromañón and ESMA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2018
Tourism has been recently catalogued as a key global industry (Shaw et al. 1990; Buckley and Witt, 1990; Lee and Chang, 2008). The influx of visitors not only potentially revitalises cultural resources but also generates economic resources of specific destinations. Recently, even spaces of mass-death or disasters such as Ground Zero in New York (9/11 terrorist attack), the Tsunami on Sri Lanka, or Katrina Hurricane hitting New Orleans, USA, can be ‘recycled’ by adopting tourism policies that take death as a main attraction (Klein, 2007). Although this type of tourism has attracted criticism of post-Marxist sociologists, as the sign of sadist spectacle (Bloom 2000; Baudrillard 1996, 2006; Ko…
Tourism and terrorism: conflicts and commonalities
2012
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore why tourists continue to visit troubled and often violent nations, even when there is perceived risk. Tourism and terrorism reflect very different philosophies, but there are also some disturbing commonalities. Both need modern technology to be effective, both rely heavily on media management and both require the manipulation of perceptions and attitudes.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses historical evidence to examine the rise and fall in world travel and tourism demand related to acts of terrorism.Findings – The paper observes that the Caribbean experienced a 13.5 percent decline in US visitors after the 9/11 terrorist attack in …
Virtual Dark Tourism
2018
This study looks at some primary points in the discourse of virtual dark tourism (VDT) formation. Derived from the spectrum of sound branding (SB), virtual reality (VR), coupled with augmented reality (AR), the case is used as a tool to support the claims of VDT. Findings suggest viewpoints for making death sites exclusive, and offer valuable clues to the design of VDT formation as an option to include death sites as market offerings of dark tourism. Guided by social constructionist research philosophy, coupled with semiology and compositional interpretation, the analysis offers valuable clues to position sites built around the narratives of death. Not only does it verify elements of unique…
Tourism in the European economic crisis: Mediatised worldmaking and new tourist imaginaries in Greece
2016
The article interrogates the rationale and origins of changing imaginaries of tourism in Greece in the context of the current economic crisis. We detect a radical change in the ‘picture’ of the country that circulates in global media conduits (YouTube, Facebook, official press websites and personal blogs). We enact a journey into past media representations of Greece as an idyllic peasant and working-class site, but proceed to highlight that such representations are being recycled today by Greeks (especially but not exclusively) living and studying abroad. This stereotype, which focuses on embodied understandings of happiness and well-being, is being challenged by the current economic crisi…
SUP R DSS: A sustainability-based decision support & system for road pavements
2019
Road pavement community members are increasingly becoming aware of the need to incorporating the principles of sustainable development into the sector. Policies are also going in this direction and as a consequence in the recent years researchers and practitioners are coming up with new materials, technologies and practices designed to reduce the negative impacts of their activities in the surroundings. Within this framework the road pavements sector is witnessing a paradigm shift towards the development of pavement technologies incorporating high-content of recycled materials, as well as best practices to decrease the overall carbon footprint. These are all promising solutions that to the …
Evaluating the structure and use of hiking trails in recreational areas using a mixed GPS tracking and graph theory approach
2014
Abstract Recreational trails encourage numerous outdoor leisure activities in a variety of urban, rural, and natural environments. Understanding the way trails function is crucial for the designers and managers of recreational sites to balance the needs of visitors and site capacities. This paper presents a new approach to evaluate the structure and use of hiking trails by combining GPS tracking and analytical methods based on graph theory. The study is based upon empirical data (N = 482 GPS tracks) collected in the Lobau, which is part of the Danube Floodplains National Park in Austria. The physical structure of trails (structural network; undirected graph) and their usage (functional netw…
Development of a Decision Support System Framework for Cultural Heritage Management
2021
Decision support systems (DSSs) have been traditionally identified as useful information technology tools in a variety of fields, including the context of cultural heritage. However, to the best of our knowledge, no prior study has developed a DSS framework that incorporates all the main decision areas simultaneously in the context of cultural heritage. We fill this gap by focusing on design-science research and specifically by developing a DSS framework whose features support all the main decision areas for the sustainable management of cultural assets in a comprehensive manner. The main decision-making areas considered in our study encompass demand management, segmentation and communicati…
Nitrous oxide emission in a University of Cape Town membrane bioreactor: The effect of carbon to nitrogen ratio
2017
Abstract The effect of the carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratio in the influent on the nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emission from a University of Cape Town Membrane BioReactor pilot plant was investigated. The membrane was located in a separate tank to single out the production of N 2 O due to the biological processes from N 2 O stripping as a result of the extra aeration needed for the mitigation of membrane fouling. The experimental campaign was divided into two phases, each characterized by a different C/N ratio (namely, 10 and 5 mgCOD/mgTN, Phase I and Phase II, respectively). The decrease of the C/N ratio promoted the increase of N 2 O emissions in both gaseous and dissolved phases, mainly due to a…
The effect of the solids and hydraulic retention time on moving bed membrane bioreactor performance
2018
Abstract The aim of the present paper was to investigate the effect of solids (SRT) and hydraulic (HRT) retention time on Integrated Fixed Film Activated Sludge (IFAS) University of Cape Town (UCT) membrane Bioreactor (MBR). In particular, three different pairs of SRT and HRT values were analysed, namely, Phase I 56 d/30 h, Phase II 31 d/15 h and Phase III 7 d/13 h. The short-term effect of these three SRT/HRT conditions was assessed by analysing several system performance indicators: organic carbon and biological nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) removal, biomass respiratory activity, activated sludge filtration properties and membrane fouling. The results showed that the decrease of SRT/…
Information sources used for vacation tourists in tourist destinations
2012
En esta investigación se analiza el uso de las fuentes de información y su incidencia en distintas etapas del proceso de decisión, incidiendo en la búsqueda de información realizada por los turistas en destino. Los resultados muestran que tanto el número y tipo de fuentes de información utilizadas, así como la intensidad de la búsqueda y las decisiones tomadas en destino, es muy diferente del que realizan los turistas antes de llegar a su destino vacacional. Basados en los resultados, como parte de las conclusiones, se exponen ciertas directrices de interés para la gestión empresarial, en relación a la utilización de fuentes de información en los destinos turísticos. This research examines …