Deep in the desert: merging the desert and the spiritual through 4WD tourism

Our paper positions four-wheel drive (4WD) travel into the Australian desert by veteran or dedicated travellers as a spiritual experience in three ways: by considering the desert itself as a sacred space; the experience of such a journey as a form of ‘nature religion’; and by viewing the actual journey itself as pilgrimage. Our argument is informed by interviews with expert 4WDers to the desert. Our study might be useful in designing sustainable strategies for 4WD desert tourism, as well as for scholars from a variety of disciplines such as sustainability and environment studies, religious studies and tourism studies, to name a few.

Crossing frontiers between tourism and demography. An empirical analysis based on European travellers’ behaviour

This paper aims to establish possible tourism demand scenarios of European travellers to Portugal based on the relationship with changing population structures. A combination of the EUROBAROMETER report 370 (“Attitudes of Europeans towards Tourism in 2013”) and the cohort-component method for population projections will allow the development of different possible tourism demand scenarios. Following the European report, individuals who travelled in 2013 were most likely to live in a household with two or more individuals. Thus, if elderly couples are together till later in their life and in better physiological shape, it is possible that the number of elderly individuals travelling for tourism purposes will increase in the near future. If we can expect tourists from developing countries to be younger due to their demographic dynamics than those from developed countries, where the ageing population is growing fast, we can expect that the percentage of the elderly among tourists will increase. Furthermore, the 2013 European report found that the combination of socio-demographic variables, such as, age, population, gender, household dimension, country of residence and trip purpose explained tourism demand scenarios for Portugal, confirming that seniors and families evidence a paramount sense of importance for the destination. In the literature there is a lack of discussion about the effects of demography in the future and the role of an ageing population in tourism demand choice patterns. We aim to contribute to filling this gap. Consequently, we strongly believe that this paper contributes to the literature by introducing a new field of discussion about the importance of demographic changes in shaping travel trends.

Never-Never Land : affective landscapes, the touristic gaze and heterotopic space in Australia

This article explores how the imaginative use of the landscape in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008) intersects with the fantasy of Australianness that the film constructs. We argue the fictional Never-Never Land through which the film’s characters travel is an, albeit problematic, ‘indigenizing’ space that can be entered imaginatively through cultural texts including poetry, literature and film, or through cultural practices including touristic pilgrimages to landmarks such as Uluru and Kakadu National Park. These actual and virtual journeys to the Never-Never have broader implications in terms of fostering a sense of belonging and legitimating white presence in the land through affect, nostalgia and the invocation of an imagined sense of solidarity and community. The heterotopic concept of the Never-Never functions to create an ahistorical, inclusive space that grounds diverse conceptions of Australianness in a shared sense of belonging and home that is as mythical, contradictory and wondrous as the idea of the Never-Never itself. The representations of this landscape and the story of the characters that traverse it self-consciously construct a relationship to past events and to film history, as well as constructing a comfortable subject position for contemporary Australians to occupy in relation to the land, the colonial past, and the present.

Book review: "Kozak, M., & Kozak, N. (Eds). 2008. Destination Marketing: An International Perspective. Wallingford, Oxon: Routledge"

This edited volume contains 18 chapters by 40 contributors from many parts the world, and is divided into four thematic sections. The focus of Part 1 is Destination image, and contains five chapters. This has arguably been the most popular topic in the destination marketing literature, underpinned by the knowledge that the image an individual holds of a destination is as important as any tangible features. Yin Chew and Siti Johari attempt to model the relationship between destination image and country image using structural equation modelling. While this does address an important gap in the literature, the measures used to operationalise the constructs are not reported and little of the data analysis is discussed to support the finding that country image is a predictor of destination image. Ana Rodriquez, Antonia Correia and Metin Kozak report the findings of an exploratory study about lakedestination image. They used a neural network content analysis of 40 lake descriptions featuring on an online directory for lake enthusiasts to derive a set of cognitive attribute themes. Yang Zhang and Yi-Wei Xiao explore the relations between literary works and tourism through the Asian voice. Whereas most literary tourism studies have been around Western culture, this is a rare perspective from Chinese culture...

Prison Experiences and Socialist Sculptures

I will discuss five sites of Soviet period dark heritage: three occupation museums in the capital cities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a Soviet sculpture park in Lithuanian countryside and a cultural park in a former prison in Tallinn, Estonia. All but the last one have an important role in the local tourist scene. My purpose is to find out how the traumatic Soviet past is presented at the sites and what kind of different modes of display are used. I will also discuss the ways the sites have been interpreted by the visitors.