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IPM Research Seminar: Tourism and Place - 26 May

IPM Seminar: Tourism and Place
26 May 2022, 3-5pm |
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School AND online (Zoom)

Register now

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This latest IPM research seminar explores a range of tourist places and places of tourism. The researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University will take the audience to diverse places such as mobile places (trains), haunted places, temporary places (Christmas markets) and places of accommodation. The seminar pays specific attention to how various tourism places have responded to Covid-19 and what could await in the future.

Organised by Tim Edensor (Professor of Social and Cultural Geography) and Maarja Kaaristo (Lecturer, Department of Marketing, Retail and Tourism)

In person at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School and online via Zoom.

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Agenda

Tourism and Hospitality industry resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from England
Nikos Ntounis, Lecturer in Marketing, MMU

The study reflects on the perceptions of resilience that tourism and hospitality business operators encountered during the first lockdown in the UK. This published research highlights the nuances involved in resilience to disturbances such as Covid-19, revealing the temporal dimensions of resilience. It also presents a Business Resilience Composite Score that identifies how the tourism and hospitality industry’s resilience levels were compared within and between industries at the time of the survey. The study highlights how tourism and hospitality industry resilience was viewed at a given point in time and forewarned the complicated and nuanced spatiotemporal impact of subsequent lockdowns and restrictions until recently.

Tourism, crisis and recovery? A political economy perspective
Raoul Bianchi, Reader, Department of Economics, Policy and International Business, MMU

Drawing on critical theories of development and political economy this presentation reflects on the disruption caused to global tourism mobilities and destination economies alike by the pandemic. It explores the implications of the pandemic-induced downturn for strategies of tourism ‘recovery’ and considers the challenges posed for a radical, transformative break with the growth-led, corporate-managed, resource-intensive models of tourism development that had enjoyed renewed dynamism in the aftermath of the 2008 GFC and prior to the pandemic’s outbreak in 2020.

How can railway tourism attract more practitioners? A mobilities and practice theory perspective
Ilze Mertena, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, MMU

For decades the need to encourage the modal shift from planes and cars to sustainable modes of transport like trains and cycling has been recognised. While there has been some success in these initiatives, to achieve the modal shift, however, the tourism sector must get away from the highest speed transport modes and market other travel properties than the shortest travel time. Examining one of the most scenic railway routes in England, this presentation discusses how to encourage the modal shift by designing an attractive railway tourism product where mobility – the train journey – is a key part of the tourism offering.

“The unearthly shrieks” and “the stealthy tread of invisible feet”: Touring the Haunted Halls of Hampton Court Palace
Alicia Edwards, PhD Researcher, Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, MMU

Ghost tourism is a practice that dominates the tourism and heritage industry. Like many historical sites across the nation, Hampton Court Palace too has embraced and commodified ghosts and openly markets it tales of haunting as part of its tourist itinerary. Since the publication of Ernest Law’s multi-volume tome ’The History of Hampton Court Palace’ in 1885, Hampton Court has been mythologised as a space haunted by its history. This presentation reads Hampton Court as a site of Gothic tourism and explores how the Palace has become a repository that keeps its haunted past in living memory.

Ontological (in)security in servicescapes: Consuming the Christmas market experience
Rebecca Abushena, Senior Lecturer in Retail Management, MMU

This research critically examines the role of ontological (in)security within the touristic servicescape of Manchester’s Christmas market. Our interpretive, qualitative study explores consumers’ experiences of security within this seasonal retail setting. While extant literature on servicescapes investigates ambient conditions for consumption to take place, we instead explore potentially limiting factors. We question those aspects that superficially seem to contribute toward the stabilisation of ontological security and the ambience of the servicescape. Instead, we provide evidence of several paradoxes at work which have the capacity to erode ontological security and consumer reactions within servicescapes spaces.

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IPM Seminar: Tourism and Place
26 May 2022, 3-5pm |
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School AND online (Zoom)

Register now

IPM

About the author

IPM

Formed in 2006, the Institute of Place Management is the international professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better.

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