Unbearable pressures on paradise? : Tourism and heritage management in Luang Prabang, a world heritage site

This article critically appraises and evaluates tourism strategies and heritage management in Luang Prabang, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, a Unesco-designated ‘world heritage’ city. Luang Prabang is widely regarded as one of the most significant heritage cities in Southeast Asia. The city is renowned for its Buddhist and royal culture and also its historic vernacular Lao, French, and Lao-French architecture. The city earned world heritage status in 1995, but since that time the boom in in-bound Asian tourism has put pressures on Luang Prabang’s authenticity and, for some, called into question the validity of its world heritage status. This article examines these substantial and wide-ranging pressures and argues that the growth in tourism and the treatment of Luang Prabang’s heritage are symptoms of broader regional processes of political and economic change, including the expansion of Chinese and Korean investments and the growth of intra-regional tourism. The authors argue that it is unreasonable to expect traditional heritage management mechanisims, including the world heritage listing, to be able to cope with the pressures on sites like Luang Prabang. The very least that is required, the authors contend, is an expanded understanding of the context in which heritage places sit, and the authors make a case that the cultural landscapes approach, combined with explicit concerns for intangible heritage and poverty alleviation, must be at the core of any strategy for long-term protection of the city’s cultural values.

Consumer motivation in a tourism context : continuing the work of Maslow, Rokeach, Vroom, Deci, Haley and others

This paper examines the literature on understanding and measuring consumer motivation and the application of these theories and procedures to understanding and researching tourist motivation. The application of consumer motivation theory to tourism is considered especially relevant, because motivation is considered a critical variable in the tourist decision-making process.

When understanding and predicting consumer and tourist behaviour, some measures are considered superior to others and this will be examined in this paper. Also many measures of motivation are often used as one of the segmentation bases for tourist and other consumer markets, thereby indicating a strong relationship between motivation and market segmentation, also to be discussed in this paper.

The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to investigate what standards or consensus for determining consumer motivation have emerged in the academic marketing literature, (2) to review the theoretical knowledge about approaches and procedures for determining and measuring consumer motivation in general and their application to understanding tourist motivation (3) to suggest implications for future research of consumer motivation in a tourism context.

Tourist benefits research : old and new issues and uses in a cultural tourism context

Benefits sought and gained by tourists are relevant to developing tourist markets for cultural attractions and experiences as this paper will demonstrate. The main objectives of this paper are to identify benefit variables commonly used in tourism marketing, their purpose of use, and associated issues by reviewing existing empirical research of tourism benefits and specifically examining the applications to date in cultural tourism contexts. For the benefits most commonly found in tourist benefit research and of relevance to tourists’ cultural experiences, a benefits typology from the allied area of leisure (Driver & Bruns, 1999) is applied to categorise these benefits and develop a conceptual typology for consideration. Research propositions for future research of tourists’ cultural experiences are also proposed including new uses for benefit variable dimensions.

Aligning anti-money laundering, combating of financing of terror and financial inclusion : Questions to consider when FATF standards are clarified

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify key questions that should be addressed to enable the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to provide guidance regarding the alignment of anti-money laundering, combating of financing of terror and financial inclusion objectives.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on relevant research and documents of the FATF to identify questions that are relevant to consider when it formulates guidance regarding the alignment between financial integrity and financial inclusion objectives.
Findings – The FATF advises that its risk-based approach enables countries and institutions to further financial inclusion. It is, however, not clear what the FATF means when its uses the terms “risk” and “low risk”. It is also unclear whether current proposals for financial inclusion regulatory models will necessarily limit money laundering (ML) aswell as terror financing risks to levels that can be described as “low”. The FATF will need to clarify its own thinking regarding low money laundering and low terror financing risk before it will be able to provide clear guidance to national regulators and financial institutions.
Originality/value – This paper was drafted to inform current FATF discussions regarding guidance on financial inclusion. The questions are relevant to all stakeholders in financial regulation.

Battlefield tourism - Anzac day commemorations at Gallipoli : an empirical analysis

This thesis used theoretical constructs of personal values, emotions, motives, event components of ceremony, transport and amenities to develop an empirical model that provided an understanding of the experiential components of the event and the antecedents associated with attendance, satisfaction and recommending behaviour of the Anzac Day Ceremonies at Gallipoli.

Evoked emotions : textual analysis within the context of pilgrimage tourism to Gallipoli

This chapter focuses on tourism from Australia to Gallipoli to attend Anzac Day commemorations. The research examines diary excerpts of tourists to Gallipoli using theory on emotions to gain insights into the consumption experience. We describe this tourist experience as a pilgrimage, as it is purposeful and is aimed at reaching a specific destination that has spiritual meaning for the consumer. We found that this tourist experience elicits both positively and negatively valanced emotions. The findings highlight that not all tourism experiences elicit hedonically related emotions; however, the outcome of the experience can be positive. Further research on emotions that explores this paradox between emotions in consumption and emotions in post-consumption will assist to understand the ways in which consumers process their emotions within this context.