Hollinshead, K. (2021) - Thinking Imaginatively Via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies (After Deleuze) - Journal of Tourismology, 7 (2), 149-170

Journal of Tourismology
Volume: 7 • Number: 2 • December 2021

e-ISSN: 2459-1939 • DOI: 10.26650/jot
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Journal of Tourismology
Volume: 7 • Number: 2 • December 2021
e-ISSN: 2459-1939 • DOI: 10.26650/jot
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Table of Contents
ARTICLES
Research article
Thinking Imaginatively via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies (After Deleuze)............. 149
Keith Hollinshead
Research article
Other Tourists as Part of Tourism Product............................................................................... 171
Begüm Dilara Emiroğlu
Research article
Thermal Environments and Visitor Attendance in Zoological Parks:
Observations in A Humid Continental Climate....................................................................... 195
David R. Perkins
Research article
Analyses of the Tourism Potentials of Dala Hill, Kano Metropolis: Protecting
Heritage Properties and Promoting Sustainable Tourism ....................................................... 227
Hafeez Idowu Agbabiaka, Aliyu Salisu Barau, Omotayo Ben Olugbamila, Said Shehu Ibrahim
Research article
The Need for Greater Diversification of Tourism Products in the Samarkand
Region of Uzbekistan................................................................................................................. 241
Shukhrat Rakhmonov, Ian Patterson
Research article
Gamification Practices in Museums......................................................................................... 265
Özgül Çetin, Fethiye Erbay
Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 149-170
DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.943900
http://jt.istanbul.edu.en/
Submitted: 27.05.2021
Journal of Tourismology Revision Requested: 17.10.2021
Last Revision Received: 18.10.2021
Accepted: 16.11.2021
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Thinking Imaginatively via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies

(After Deleuze)
Keith Hollinshead1
Abstract
This manuscript covers the commonplace restrictions of institutional thought within ‘tourism’ and ‘the field of Tourism
Studies’. It critiques Deleuzian ideas concerning the contretemps between emergent and open forms of nomadic
conceptuality and established (or dogmatic) images of dominant understanding. In providing a synthesis of the Deleuzian
conceptualities of rhizomatic thought, it offers three important and refreshing planes of thought on (i) the limitations
of institutional ‘knowledge’; (ii) the constancy of life as ‘becoming’; and (iii) the brooding juxtaposition between the
actual and the virtual. Thereafter, it builds up to six open ‘Deleuzian paths’ for reflexive action for those who work in
travel, tourism, and related-mobilities. These personal considerations address the conceivable need in Tourism Studies
for critical cartographies that suit the posthuman and interversal imperatives of today which demand an understanding
which is often ‘otherwise’ and ‘spiral’ in its conceptual trajectory. Together, the six reflexivities constitute a Deleuzian call
for researchers/practitioners in Tourism Studies to resist the hegemonic forces of mere ‘knowledge-production’ that tend
all-too-easily to deny creative and unfettered ‘thinking’. The manuscript thus seeks to widen the affirmative possibilities
of thinking about the world and its different peoples, its different places, its different pasts, and its different presents.
Keywords
Tourism judgments, Deleuzian ontology, becoming, thinking otherwise, relationality, palpation
1 Correspondence to: Keith Hollinshead (Prof.), Independent Scholar, England. E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-4219-9113
To cite this article: Hollinshead, K. (2021). Thinking Imaginatively via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies (After Deleuze). Journal of
Tourismology, 7(2), 149-170. https://doi.org/10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.943900
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
JOURNAL of TOURISMOLOGY
Nomadic Logic for Studies of Travel, Tourism, and Related Mobilities, and for
Fields ‘Beyond’
The French philosopher (and in many ways, anti-philosopher) Gilles Deleuze
was a broad-minded conceptualist whose thoughtlines — often issued in tandem
with his co-national, the psychoanalyst Felix Guattari — oxygenated thinking and
practice in science, literature, and the arts (amongst many other things) during the
1970s/1980s/1990s. This manuscript seeks to examine the manner in which the
writings and the political activism of Deleuze pungently brought new insights and
fresh-to-different awareness into the disciplinary domains and institutional fields
he inspected and which he sought to liberate from the crippling hegemony of over-
fast domesticated perspectives and under-thought ‘knowledges’. This manuscript
here in the Journal of Tourismology thereby seeks to translate the thoughtlines of
Deleuze to the dogmatic images of thought (his own term, there) that conceivably
overcode or restrictively-authorise visions of the world in contemporary practices
of tourism and travel. It is offered as a vital reflexive tribute towards more open and
more fertile (or generative) imagination about the peoples, places, pasts, and presents
which are encountered through the industrialised nomadicisms of global travel,
and of the multiple (but so often under-recognised) ontological relationships which
exist between them. The paper therefore queries the open-ness of the thinking (and,
likewise, the constipated understandings) that regulates what gets seen and ‘known’
through tourism.
In this light, this paper provides an introduction to Deleuzian (or rather, to

Deleuzoguattarian) conceptuality on both institutional thought and germinal life —
notably with regard to the worldmaking agency and authority of tourism and Tourism
Studies. It seeks to illustrate such dynamic Deleuzian thoughtlines by providing three
planes of thought which colour in palpative Deleuxian conceptuality on rhizomatic
 matters of becoming.
[Note:  = a rhizome is that unpredictable mix of connections between what might at first appear
to unrelated or dissimilar objects, people, ideas and the unusual, unexpected, irregular chains
that link such things together, however ephemeral that association may be (Young, Genesko,
and Watson 2013). See Colman on how Deleuze and Guattari — in their philosophical praxis
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987:12) — deploy the concept to follow such process of “networked,
relational, and transversal thought without ‘tracing’ the construction of that map as a fixed
entity” (Colman in Parr: 2013:232-3). For Bogue (1990:107), rhizomes are non-hierarchical
random multiplicities “which cannot be subsumed within a unified structure” in contrast to
arborescent (tree-like) totalities which tend to be hierarchical and stratified with limited and
regulated connections.]
In providing this illumination into the strong Deleuzian view of the limitations
of contemporary social theory and disciplinary knowledge, this paper here in the
Journal of Tourismology [hereafter: JT] culminates in the provision of six reflexive
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Hollinshead / Thinking Imaginatively via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies (After Deleuze)
points by and through which those who research or work in travel and tourism, and
related fields (and by extension, those who work in a or any domain or discipline in
the social sciences cum humanities) can identify the axes of domination that constrain
their imagination about the world, and through that learning and unlearning can help
them fruitfully towards more creative visions of life in human and nonhuman realms,
on towards a more fluid and discerning understanding of ‘multiple realities’ and
of ‘multiple possibilities’, something that Britton (1991) critically demanded three
decades ago, and which Behassen and Caton (2009) and Robinson and Jamal (2009)
called for one decade or so ago.
It is important that those who work as researchers in Tourism Studies or as

practitioners in tourism management and tourism development think about these
Deleuzian matters of ‘becoming’ because they relate to projections of ‘being’ and
‘difference’ that are articulated every day in a banal and mundane fashion through
tourism and travel, here, there, and everywhere (Bauman 2003; Adey, Bissell, and
Urry 2010). Indeed, tourism could be said to be the business of difference-declaration,
difference-making, difference-concretisation par excellence as it defines places and
spaces and as it declares how particular peoples, places, pasts, and presents ought to be
seen, or can be seen (Buck 1993; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1994; Rothman 1994; McKay
2009). Thus, in probing these nuanced Deleuzian matters, this manuscript seeks to
reflexively question the quality, the tenacity, and the artfulness (or otherwise) of
the foundational knowledges that those who work in quotidian fashion in Tourism
Studies monger and peddle each day, each week, each month, in the academy, across
the field, within the journals, and at the conferences. The paper thereby stands as
an important warning about unthought essentialism — i.e., about the unthinking
naturalisation of ‘things’ and the unthinking normalisation of populations, territories,
inheritances, events, whatever, through tourism and Tourism Studies (refer here
to Richter 1995; Clifford 1997). Tourism is conceivably the world’s most virulent
declarative agency for labelling subjects-in-the-world (Horne 1992; Mavrič and Urry
2009). It is critical that all who work in senior positions in the industry or in the
field’s research scholarship inspect how places and spaces are not so much ordered by
foundational understandings but pre-ordered by it (Franklin 2009; Hollinshead and
Ivanova 2013) by the authoritative signifying primacy of ‘tourism’. It is cardinal that
those senior incumbents in the field take on board reflexive Deleuxian considerations
on the worldmaking power they routinely exercise (Hollinshead and Caton 2017;
Hollinshead and Suleman 2018) as — let us be clear about it — they work as ‘tourism
judges’ about the world’s visitable histories, cultures, natures, and spiritualities
(Thomas 1994; Hollinshead and Kuon 2013). This need for reflexive vigilance is
no small imperative. Every senior player in the field must learn to regularly think
about what Deleuze would term the constrained or enabled ‘generative vitality’ of
the people-making orientations, the place-making narratives, and the past-making
151
assumptions they industrially or scholastically deal in (Saxena 2015 [on the need to
cultivate Deleuzian approaches in Tourism Studies]).
Introduction — Thinking Creatively / Thinking Spirally / Thinking Otherwise:
Three Illustrative Deleuzian ‘Planes of Thought’

The three planes of relatability cum connectivity will now be illustrated in order
in terms of the intercessive imagination-opening and animating (and often counter-
actualizing) potential of travel and tourism, as provoked by Deleuzian philosophy:
Plane-Of-Thought 1:
There Is Always More To Know

To repeat the point, Deleuze is not a philosopher that hunts for conceptual
stability in and of things, for (paradoxically) to him the function of philosophy is
not to settle things but to disturb them (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 2). In his view,
philosophy cannot uncover everything and put all things firmly in place in any setting
or scenario, for there is always more going on than one can ever see or roundly
contemplate in every locale and in every context: there are always other things going
on outside of or beyond our own codification of and about the world, whomever we
are. “There is always something more, more than we can know, more than we can
perceive” (May, 2008:171, on Deleuzian outlooks on the world). Accordingly, the
ontology of Deleuze is never complete, and like Foucault (his fellow French thinker
on knowledge, power, and discursivity), he recognizes that what so often appears
to be natural and irrevocable is — contrary to such expectations — historical and
contingent. Hence to Deleuze, the objective of philosophy is not to closely capture
and scrupulously delineate ‘difference’, but (again) to palpate it conceptually (refer
to May, 2008:20, here, on the necessity to ‘palpate’ things, ideas, and/or events that
cannot readily be comprehended). Thus Deleuze searches for fresh concepts which
usefully and contextually feel for suspected ‘difference’, and touch upon it or sense
its presence and its possible shape(s) (plural) and its imaginable linkages (plural). To
Deleuze, assessments of things that are seemingly comprehensive are dangerous and
perhaps (probably?) overdetermined. Once more, to Deleuze, it is not ‘knowledge’
that should be regarded and esteemed but ‘thinking’, viz., continuous, and vigilant
thinking about the world and its multiple spheres, its multiple layers, its multiple
happenings: “there is always more to think” (May 2008: 21, on Deleuzian infinite-
multiplicities and infinite-connectivities) in each and every milieu, at each and every
‘event’, at each and every junction.
152
Plane of Thought 2:
All Life Is Constant ‘Becoming’

In Deleuze’s judgment, the major misapprehension of Western thought is that it
starts from entities which are presumed to exist as concrete things and which are
located or ‘known’ at a point of reality where they ‘transcend’. In contrast to such
intact and consummate ‘things’, Deleuze critiques the forces that first produce those
held realities or hailed terrains be they cultural, political, whatever (or rather be they
rhizomatic interactions of culture with politics, or with whatever else) (Buchanan,
2000). Thus, for Deleuze, life is an ongoing process of interaction and connection as
such forces constantly mutate and intersect here, there, and everywhere. In his view,
the relationship of people, of things, of ideas, with the world is always dynamic — i.e.,
it is one of ceaseless change and abiding flux where any such interaction or connection
can generate a lines-of-flight through which (for instance) people can be recreated or
otherwise recreate themselves. Indeed, to Deleuze, human life is inherently creative,
influenced by rhizomes and lines-of-flight which are incidental and propagative,
but which i-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t-l-y are not foundational (Colebrook, 2002:52). These
rhizomata (and the influences and the changes they help occasion via particular lines
of flight) exist on a plane of immanence which (to him) is always multiform, open,
and protean. Yet, to repeat a point, this immanence (these immanences) — these
complex and dynamic acts of becoming — are not generative of some fixed ‘being’
or solid ‘entity’, for they tend to lack uniformity and homogeneity, and (significantly)
they do not work towards any particular end-point or culminatory goal.
What always intrigues Deleuze — for living things — are the ways in which
such beings are able to develop ‘experience’ from these influences of flux and these
acts of ‘becoming’, and this he terms ‘contraction’ (Colebrook, 2002:35). But this
contraction does not produce ‘essences’, per se, for to Deleuze it is the multiplicity
of relations and the latent possibilities of becoming that ought to be deemed to be
‘essential’ and not ‘the thing’ or ‘anything’ itself. To Deleuze, then, life is a matter
of interacting codes and influences, and all life is thereby potentially productive. Such
irruptive encounters and such incursive experiences through ‘becoming’ force people
to think, and thought itself can be creative as the given people connect and reconnect
with other things and/or with other forms of life and/or with other ideas or images
on these multiform planes of immanence or along these empowering or inaugerative
lines-of-flight. Thus, while humans can thereby transform themselves through these
acts of happenstance becoming, it is thought itself which can roam and ‘slip’ beyond
established strata to become nomadic and proliferating. Hence, to Deleuze, ‘life’ is
always opportunistically fertile and potentially productive, and ‘thought’ is thereby
always fecund and potentially generative. And to him, life is always a mix of active
multiplicities — relating to intensive forces of change (Roffe, in Parr 2013: 181/2).
153
Plane of Thought 3:
There Is No Distinction Between The Actual And The Virtual

To Deleuze, there is no merit in suggesting there is a real world out-there which
we simply perceive and then axiomatically represent. He salutes not the image of
something for the observer, but the act of seeing (viz., the seeing sensation itself
(Colebrook 2006: 102)). To him — following Bergson (see Bergson 1988, [first
published 1908]) — the actual (world) and the virtual (world) in fact constitute a
co-presence and are tightly imbricated presences within and amongst each other.
Thus, to Deleuze, both the actual AND the virtual are ‘real’, and images and
representations are no mere copy of a or the actual world but are themselves actual-
virtual matter, for (to him) there is no difference between an image and a thing.
To clarify this important matter, under Deleuzian understandings, the virtual is

thereby real without being present, and ideal without being abstract (Bogue 1990:
42). Said another way, the virtual is ‘real’ in that it subsists rather than exists, and
it has extra-being rather than mere being (Bogue 1990: 59). In this Bergsonian
light (to Deleuze), the virtual is thereby real but not actual (De Landa 2012: 227).
While an envisioned possibility is merely “a pale and imagined version of the actual
world, virtual difference [i.e. the virtual] and becoming is [rather] the very power of
the world” (Colebrook 2003: 97). Consequently, to Deleuze, life is best seen as or
mostly-richly-understood as a virtual multiplicity of not so much things or definite
objects but of contemplations about the world and of imagined ‘contractions’ of
events in the world and of responses to the world. It is these contemplations that
subsequently create, produce, make distinct but-always-changing human beings and
distinct but-always-changing objects. Hence, under Deleuzian thoughtlines, “there is
not a world (actual) that is then represented in images (virtual) by the privileged mind
of man (the subject). Life is just this actual-virtual interaction of imaging … [and]
anticipation goes beyond what is actual [and thereafter] also produces a new actual.
The image is neither actual nor virtual, but the interval that brings actuality out of the
virtual” (Colebrook 2003: 87-88; emphasis added).
Hence, to Deleuze the real is not an actual substance which is then captured or
regulated through virtuality, it is more properly seen (in each and every place) to
be a something that is assumed to be ‘different’ from the teeming virtual realm
around us. For Deleuze, the mind is thereby just a kind of camera that has prehended
(not ‘comprehended’ here!) the world at a single juncture of time, and the images
which the mind ‘arrests’ or ‘produces’ then act upon the world and upon each other,
consequently generating and/or consuming further ‘represented’ (or rather further
‘real’) actual or virtual entities.
Through these views, Deleuze suggests that there is no distinct and concrete
domain which is then perceived and represented via the virtual domain as if
154
there is always and everywhere an actual, distinctive, and rigid divergence

between ‘the actual’ and ‘the virtual’. Hence (to him) actual subjects do not
precede a or any virtual perception: the virtual realm of sense exists alongside and is
indeed dovetailed with the actual realm of so called ‘being’: thus, this virtual realm
indeed constantly acts upon and influences what other philosophers (or other ordinary
individuals) might consider to be the realm of actuality. To Deleuze, virtuality is
thus no pale version of the real (Colebrook, 2002:172), and it exists as an open and
positive domain of inhuman power itself — an important point for Deleuze (1990) —
which then acts upon people via art, via fantasy, via whatever, amongst a plenitude of
other influential ‘signs’, ‘codes’, ‘systems’, and ‘series’ which are embedded in (for
instance) biology, genetics, history, politics (Colebrook, 2002:xliii).
To Deleuze, the virtual is a province of unfulfilled potentiality which is

constantly syncopated with the actual to produce a dynamic rather than a
static world, where each active perception (and each unrealized or not-yet-realized
perception) is only a ‘fold’ (or a creative possibility (Deleuze, 1993)). In this light,
the whole world may best be seen as a virtual expanse. And this ‘virtual expanse’
may be both a range of where (institutionally) illusions of thought dominate (i.e., a
plane of transcendence (Deleuze and Guattari 1994)) and a reach of virtuality where
new possibilities of becoming and new fluxes of experience lie latent (i.e., a plane of
immanence). In this regard, sense is not something that deduces what is already
actually ‘there’ in the world, it is something that appraises possibilities of
‘becoming’ as it opens out towards the virtual. To Deleuze, the virtual has primacy
in its juxtaposition with the actual, for the actual is but a contraction of all of these
multiple virtual possibilities (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). And the proper sense of
freedom is that understanding of and engagement with virtual potentialities which
currently reside beyond current dominant outlooks over the world.
Under this embrace of the virtual, meaningful interpretations of ‘difference’, ipso

facto, ought not then to be seen as those distinct characteristics which patently exist
between already-recognized concrete-entities but rather as intensified possibilities
which potentially exist between the sum total of palpable becomings. The problem
for Deleuze (and for Deleuze and Guattari under joint Deleuzoguattarian valuations)
is not only that so much of ‘the virtual’ is not recognized or is unperceived, but that
virtuality itself is so commonly demeaned and not considered important under so
many existing dogmatic institutional cum disciplinary cum en groupe knowledges.
Even the past is seen by almost everyone — notably under Western dogmatic
interpretations — as something that actually happened (i.e., as thereby something
that is factually knowable rather than as a particular interpretation wrought from
the infinite gamut of possible interpretations of ‘becoming’). Significantly, the
Bergsonian and Nietzschean influences that reside within Deleuze clearly posit the
155
past as nothing other than ‘something perceptive’ and thereby not as an actuality
that can be decidedly ‘known’. Accordingly, to Deleuze, the past is a virtuality that
can indeed be roundly or specifically thought about and which can therefore be
potentially ‘retrieved’ and activated in the imagined present, and for the imagined
future, or indeed amongst other imagined versions of the past (Colebrook, 2002:170).
Recap: Tourism and difference: Deleuze and the need to constantly palpate both
actuality and (especially) virtuality
In his richest paradoxical vein, Deleuze maintains that substance is no constant
entity nor fixed quality, it is a ‘thing’ (or amalgam of forces) that folds, unfolds, and
refolds in ongoing fashion (O’Sullivan, in Parr 2013: 107-108). Thus, to Deleuze,
substance is not a constant identity there to be regularly perpetually affirmed: ‘it’ is not
a or any being, ‘it’ is becoming (Stagoll, in Parr 2013: 25-27). In this regard, Deleuze
(1990) rejects the Platonic view — i.e., the outlook that there are original beings
which may subsequently become or be stimulated — that has driven so much received
philosophy (Stagoll, in Parr 2013:27). To Deleuze, there is no such fundamental
being anywhere or anytime, but a constant immanence of becoming, where
‘becoming’ (without a or any concrete grounding or a or any absolute foundational to
things) is all there is (May 2008:61). Constantly, Deleuze does not value becoming
over being, he significantly abolishes the opposition between them.
In this light, ‘becoming’ is thereby ‘difference’ which is yet to be actualised into

specific identities (May 2008:60). Thus the future — or aspirational or adventitious
potential — is not a limited or relatively empty void regulated by the unity of a fixed
identity, it is full-to-overflowing possibility (Colebrook 2003: 46-49). Accordingly,
what matters to Deleuze is not the actuality of an essential identity (and what ought
to be known and labelled about ‘it’) but rather the substantive virtuality that lies
behind and within that identity, or rather, those possible identities, plural (May
2008:61). Thereby, the multiplicity of the future is always with ‘us’ each, here and
now. In like vein, to Deleuze, the past is part of every present. And to him, the future
is part of every present. Ergo, there is always more to know about the force of the
past (which contested pasts?) upon the present … and there is always more to know
about the force of the future (which political futures?) upon the present. Consonantly,
under his Bergsonian influences, time is always a subjective matter: hence it is non-
chronological (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 33). And all of this need for the palpation of
force — or rather, the palpation of difference and the palpation of time — lies here,
there, and everywhere in and through tourism (as it does everywhere else, of course).
And tourism conceivably plays (or can conceivably play) a significant role in helping
all sorts of individuals ‘become’ in accordance with their own aspirations (i.e., their
own vital, changing, dynamic aspirations). To restate the matter, like the realm of the
156
arts, tourism provides so many potential opportunities for the experiencing of life as
‘becoming’, i.e., of being in the making (Garoian 2015:491) in the Deleuzian sense.
The Reflexity On Nomadic Logic:
Thinking Creatively / Thinking Spirally / Thinking Otherwise

As stated above, practitioners and researchers who might struggle with the
often enigmatic and sometimes paradoxical character of Deleuzian conceptuality
on the nomadic logic of possible opportunity and vibrant life might find solace
in the work of Parr (2013). In this glossarial work, an attempt is made to explain
the meaning of a litany of Deleuzian terms, which Deleuze (and / or Deleuze and
Guatarri) used to advance his (and / or their) diagnostic accounts of the making of
institutional, disciplinary, en groupe knowledge and the nature of ‘recognized’ or
‘authorized’ difference. To some extent, the Parr collation comprises something of a
lexicon on anti-philosophy, for Deleuze-the-philosopher so regularly railed against
the intellectual abstractions of philosophy, ipso facto, as a uniform or totalized
‘disciplinary’ knowledge, just as he did against the illusions of the unity of any
received discipline, any heralded field, any sure science, or any received institutional
thoughtdom (May 2008:12). Like Foucault, Deleuze was a thinker who argued for
those opportunities and those understandings which are positive and multiple, where
difference should interpretively rank over concretized ‘uniformity’, where flows
interpretively count more than hailed ‘unities’ and where mobile, temporary, flexible
arrangements interpretively score over held ‘definitive systems’ (see Maiolo 2012;
and Tonkonoff 2017, here).
Hopefully, an inspection of the ‘concepts’ (as defined in Parr) can help those who
work in Tourism Studies learn to think otherwise — or learn to think even further
and beyond into ‘otherwise’, that is beyond their own possibly-institutionalized and
possibly-overcoded dogmatic interpretations of and about other peoples and places.
See May (2008: 114-121) therefore, on the openness of the future and on thinking
within and for a vital world.
Yet, we must not run away with the pixies here: we must not over-determine
or overcode Deleuze as he (himself) remonstrates against the sheer prevalence of
institutional, disciplinary, en groupe overcoding. “The [Deleuzian] aim is not to
rediscover the eternal or the universal, but [for each of us contextually in our own
travelled-to and local settings] to find the conditions under which something new is
[or can be] produced” (refer, here, to Deleuze and Parnet 2007: vii, in particular).
This is can see, can think, and hopefully can do Deleuzian creativeness: it is the call
for ubiquitous reflective and reflexive ‘palpation’.
So, under Deleuzian thoughtlines, we must not expect to ever be able to interpret
the world comprehensively and exhaustively. Like Foucault, he believes that as
157
soon as one has reached or made an interpretation (i.e., a decided explication on

this or that), there danger lurks: see Hollinshead (1999/A), here, on Foucauldian
governmentality and the diagnosis of ‘things’. There is thus much inherent sense in
the Deleuzian posthuman humility in and for all these conceptual understandings,
even regarding the value in remaining open and fluid in one’s interpretations not of
distinct objects (i.e., the object singular), per se, but of ‘the object multiple’. As May
(2008: 172) puts it:
Deleuze’s ontology [and his enabling vitalism] is not a resting place; it is not a
zone of comfort; it is not an answer that allows us to abandon our seeking. It is the
opposite. [The Deleuzian] ontology of difference is a challenge[:] … there is always
more to know.”
And it is thereby a form of creative practical thought (a form of affirmative

consciousness) that requires one to dream actively and critically — that is, “to
dream with one’s eyes open” (Deleuze 1988: 20) and see and think openly, fluidly,
dynamically vis-à-vis the productive event of becoming rather than the fixed and
static thing — or in other words, the lively happenstance-occurrence rather than the
rigid agreed-entity.
Prospect — Thinking With And Via Nomadic Logic:
Applied Deleuzian ‘Generative Vitality’ To Travel, Tourism, And Related

Mobilities
This manuscript here in JT has covered the influential and provocative alternative
ways of thinking of Deleuze in contrast to many of the received and traditional
thoughtlines of institutions and disciplines. As an illustrative paper, it has sought to
provide a brief conceptual primer for newcomers to Deleuzian philosophy. Hopefully,
this manuscript has produced a clear-headed introduction to his metaphysical work
and its political and ethical significances. Hopefully, this paper here in JT has
reasonably situated his nomadic thinking vis-à-vis both the accelerating nobilities of
our time and the liberating aesthetics of sensation that is conceivably being fertilised
during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. And now, at the close of this
manuscript on Deleuzian thought (and Deleuzoguattarian influence) it is useful to
translate this compass of and about Deleuzian palpative scholarship to the particular
arena of nomadic thought per travel, tourism, and related mobilities. And this will be
carried out with reference to what I (an intentionally palpative author) deem to be six
[6] cardinal points of deliberation for such conceptual nomadicisms:
158
• Reflection Point 1 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:
The Need For More Critical Cartographics

Collectively, the insights given so far in this manuscript attest to the strong view
of Deleuze that there is a distinct paucity of intellectual-academic reflection in most
(almost all? / all?) fields of scholarship these days. His own thoughtlines seek to draw
us beyond the centre of gravity of established disciplines and domains (and their
oh-so-often over-concentrated / overcoded subject making — that is, beyond what
Braidotti (2019: 136) (plainly a card-carrying member of the Deleuzian philosophical
household) terms “the narrow and flat empiricism” and big data reductionism of
social studies fields today.
As Deleuze recognised, progress in both ‘social science’ and ‘science’ fields

advances through reductionism, but he maintains that that very dependency gives rise
to weakness when it solidifies as the default framework for thinking there. To him,
too many individuals and interest groups within dogmatic and established domains
and discourses fixate themselves upon tried and tested angles and deny themselves
decent thought about a or the larger order of things, regularly curtailing (i.e., reducing)
involved phenomena to single-factor forms of analysis. Deleuze was adamant that
those in specific fields should regularly question how the field (and they themselves
within it) have identified populations and have classified the world about them,
and accordingly whether the field (and themselves) have appropriately, fittingly, or
tolerably attempted to reach out to the extended meaning of ‘things’ and have therefore
thought roundly and connectively about the matter in hand (Mazzei 2013: 107). To
Braidotti (2019:135) — in her Deleuzian take on the production of knowledge and
the practice of the academic humanities — it is all too common for social science and
humanities fields to deal in murky objects (of repeatable but limited vision) year after
year — that is, all-too-frequently operating from dualist inspection points with their
facile binary classifications and their universalist assumptions: see also Braidotti
(2011:129 and 183/4) here. To Mazzei (2013:105), too much data gathering (even
in the advanced qualitative inquiry realms of the social sciences) is ‘unthought’,
hence her own salutation of Lather’s (2007) clamour for ‘getting lost’ / ‘becoming
undone’ post-methodology work these days. To Braidotti (2019:136), such Deleuzian
condemnations of the stranglehold of transcendental empiricism (with its hackneyed
universalisms) demands a more liberated understanding of what can reasonably
constitute evidence-based thinking. And to her, this begets the resultant necessity
for more critical and creative cartography work in social science / humanities fields
where the studied figurations are painstakingly “located, situated, perspectival and
hence immanent to specific conditions” (Braidotti 2019:136). In this palpative light,
a critical cartography is a reasoned inquiry that “illuminates the complexity of on-
going process of subject-formation [thereby enabling the generation of] subtler and
159
more complex [scrutiny of the embedded / involved] power of discourses” (Braidotti,

2019:85).
• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism /

Related Mobilities:
How fixated (subject-wise) is, your own work? Would your own studies
of regions, nations, the world benefit from palpative engagement with
a more expansive and connective critical cartography? How clean and
connected (or otherwise ‘murky’ and ‘only superficially examined’?) are
the destinations, the events, and the objects you currently work with or
upon as you examine the particular pasts, presents, futures of ‘tourised’
places and spaces?
The Obligation To Work Commonly With ‘Virtuality’

In his cultivation of posthuman grounds of thinking Deleuze (with Guattari)
conceived of a parallelism between philosophy, the arts, and science where each of
them have much to offer in illustrating the virtual possibilities of flourishing life
(Braidotti 2019:143). But can studies of travel and tourism join such a parallel
structure, and free understandings in the field from an undue dependency upon fixed
identitics and upon fixed classifications of the world where subjects and objects only
have value or meaning in the realm of [representational] appearance: see Baggini
(2018:197), here? Can studies of travel and tourism play a leading role in not just
representing the world descriptively, but in helping travelers (and host communities)
creatively develop conceptual understandings about place and space (Coleman and
Ringrose 2013:7)? In these respects, see the deployment of Deleuzian ‘ontologies
of becoming’ in these respects by Massumi (2002) in his informed Parables for
the Virtual publication. Perhaps those who work in tourism / Tourism Studies in
China will inherently have a large advantage in these matters of virtuality and its
communication; however:
The very word for ‘things’ in Chinese (wu) does not mean ‘entities in isolation’… . ‘Wu’ are
better seen as ‘phenomena, events and even histories’ which are always becoming.
(Bagini 2018:237, emphasis added [in italics])
Those studying travel, tourism, and related mobilities who may want to harness
Deleuzian nomadic thoughtlines must learn how to think not so much in terms of
taken-for-granted categories but rather in terms of the experiences which travelers
(and locals) may have rhizomatically with (after Braidotti 2011:96) “unfamiliar forces,
drives, yearnings, or sensations [and thereby via] a sort of spiritual and sensorial
160
stretching of the boundaries of what [it is possible to see or be]”. Can those who
work on such nomadic subjects therefore readily and easily place a stronger accent
upon the felt immanence of rare ideas and / or unexpected experiences and upon the
transformative force of ‘the constant flows’ that the travel or tourist ‘event’ (or the
hosting opportunity) can give? Is it just too much of a ready and easy matter for those
who work in tourism / Tourism Studies to deal in understandings predicated upon
the view that “the other can never be fully known” (Caton 2018:199, in questioning
‘projects of knowing’ in tourism from an explicit Levinassian stance — after Levinas
1996 — as well as from an implicit Deleuzian one)? Are there many practitioners out-
there in tourism operations who are skilled at communicating objects as being ‘more
than one’ (after Manning 2013), and hence not projecting multiple objects, per se,
but projecting the object multiple (after Mol 2003) and thereby the objects multiple?
Where attention is drawn to ‘the object multiple’, communicators are engaging in the
kinds of Deleuzian illumination of the inherent multiplicity of ‘things’ which those
who work in philosophy, or in the arts (viz., Manning and ‘dance’ metaphorically),
or in the sciences (viz., Mol and ‘the medical sciences’, literally) often work to,
these days. And ... are there many managers or developers in tourism out-there
who are experienced at communicating neo-vitalist Deleuzian possibilities for
living which pointedly embrace the virtual and which, for instance, inform travelers
(and reinforce host understandings) about biocentered resonances and/or cosmic
rhythms “somewhere between the no longer and the not yet” (refer here to Braidotti
2011:203, for instance, on post-secular paradoxes vis-à-vis the spiritual and secular
transpositions)?
• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism

/ Related Mobilities
Where in tourism programming and packaging are the leading sites of

place or space where the intelligence conveyed does not depend upon a
or any accuracy of representation (i.e., upon the correspondence theories
of truth which bolster communicated statements via ‘observable factual
realities’: see Braidotti 2013, here on ‘Posthuman Life Beyond Theory’)?
Are there any (many?) operations already in existence in tourism across
the continents which are competent at revealing how the hailed virtualities
of populations translate (or have translated) into concrete actualities?
The Invocation To Think Spirally And Otherwise

Many of the glossarial terms defined in Parr (and in other collations on Deleuzian
terminology) address the Deleuzoguattarian caution that it is conceptually unhealthy
to only ever deploy angles of rationality and intentionality to understand Deleuzian
161
matters of (for example) ‘nomadicism’, ‘affect’, ‘becoming’, whatever; refer

here, for instance, to Mazzei (2013: 101 on the reasoning of Deleuze concerning
the encompassing power of ‘desire’’). In order to interrupt or rupture dogmatic
(institutionalised) images of thought, it is so often critically necessary — as many
of the glossarial terms in Parr infer — for the researcher or practitioner in the given
social science cum soft science field to self-helpfully become undone when inspecting
Deleuzian ‘events’, ‘encounters’, ‘experiences’ (Mazzei 2013:96), for — to repeat a
statement from earlier in this paper — “thinking is not something ‘we’ do, thinking
happens to us, from without” (Colebrook 2002:38). The Deleuzian call for reflective
and reflexive palpation is therefore for the researcher or practitioner to take time and
space to think about the examined contexts in nonlinear or spiral ways, something
that (for instance) Mignolo and Walsh (2018:10) demand when researchers who are
normally caught up in ‘the prison house of coloniality’ have to learn whenever they
have to uncover and interpret neo-colonial, decolonial, after-colonial impulses in
untried or distant locales. For them (Mignolo and Walsh), the required imaginary
for many observers in ‘the conceptual West’ (or from ‘the conceptual North’) is
inherently Deleuzian and demands forms of engagement where one has “to learn to
unlearn in order [to cothink with the decolonising population or to perhaps] relearn
[local or lost narratives]” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018:254).

Related Mobilities
Tourism is very much about the projection of difference and the quest for
‘the other’ (Urry 1990). But are there many researchers on travel / tourism
who are proficient at becoming undone when they have to map or monitor
‘other ways of knowing’ without sailing into those other settings with
an already totalised vision of the neoliberal system with its imperatives
of advanced capitalism and entrenched globalisation? Perhaps many
outreach researchers on travel, tourism, and related mobilities would
gain from a reading of Stewart’s Deleuze-inspired work Ordinary Affects
and learn how to unlearn the destination and hosting settings as a live
surface in order to grasp what are the “intensive, immanent, palpable,
moving” potentials there (Stewart 2007:3-4)? Such palpated trajectories of
inspection might indeed enable more researchers (and woke practitioners)
to not only generally understand the world as a generative flux that
produces realities (Law 2004:6), but specifically get to grasp the role of
tourism (itself) as the productive (reality-making) generative flux. Such
would be — such is — the intrinsic Deleuzian call for nomadic analysis
translated to studies of travel and tourism when and where the researcher
must learn to unlearn by ‘thoroughly interrogating’ the connections which
162
he/she can make there and the shifting relationship he/she will no doubt
have to engage in: see Cole (2013:226-227), here. Such are the demands
of thinking otherwise if the multiplicities of travel and tourism are to be
accommodatingly gauged (May 2008:120).
The Plea To Monitor The Geography Of Reason

It is the judgement of Deleuze that Western conceptualities are predominantly
based on traditions of objectivity that rise over (i.e., seek to govern) all places and all
times. The philosopher Flanagan (2010) — in striking a Deleuzian note — maintains
that Western metaphysics is transcendentally pretentious in its assumptive goal of
identifying what is really right or good, independent of culture and history. As Deleuze
and Guattari often suggest, the almost totalitarian ontological profile of Western
conceptuality can be exceedingly violent for other populations (and internally for
Westerners themselves!) in many veins, viz., those of culture, spiritually, civilisation,
cosmology, epistemics, et cetera. In colonial and neo-colonial settings, these forms
of governing Western objectivity can indeed be ‘belligerent’ (Braidotti 2011:2006,
taking a Deleuzian line in her own call for corrective neovitalist feminist thought
to overcome such eurocentric transcendental presumptions) which Gilroy (2010;
cited in Braidotti 2013:28) maintains involves ‘the bellicose dismissiveness’ of other
cultures, other civilisations, and other ‘generated lived possibilities’.

Thus, is the study of travel and tourism around the world regulated
(still regulated?) by a single and crippling North Atlantic or eurocentric
model of universalised objectivity, or as Telfer (2009:150) has phrased
it for the field, has much progress indeed been made in “the repudiation
of Westernization in favour of an endogenous model of change”? Has
the recent turn of the century seen any substantive advances ‘beyond the
impasse’ in the decent and faithful search for a new (non-Western) non-
exploitative paradigm of development that (for instance) pays meaningful
respect to Indigenous knowledge (Telfer 2009:153)? Is effective progress
being made to undo the destabilising ontologies of tourism (across the
continents) that have for countries ‘interiorised difference as otherness’
and which have been operational on the back of essentialising European
prescriptions (Wearing, McDonald, and Ponting 2005; Grimwood, Caton,
and Cooke 2018; refer also to Hollinshead [on Horne] 1999/B, here)? Is
global tourism still built upon the sorts of abstract and universal North
163
Atlantic fictions which underpin the colonial narratives of tourism? Please

see Richter (1995), here, on the over-influential role of the Western media in
the fictional temporalities of global travel projection, and Huggan (2001)
on the power differentials involved in the recognition and projection of (for
example) India / Indians in and through tourism?
The Summons — Under The Denormalisation of Things — To Genunely Recog-

nise The Hybrid And The Interversal
Much of what Deleuze and Guattari write about concerns the possibility of (and
the necessity of) denormalizing taken-for-granted-institutional-or-interest-group-
views-of-the-world. Once the force of the rational and intentional (and the too-often-
unquestioned!) making of ‘the subject’ is recognized, it is then possible — under
Deleuzoguuattarian thought concerning the palpative effort to denormalize ‘things’,
‘objects’, and ‘ideas’ — to conceive of a multiplicity of new or emergent collective
arrangements of things (i.e., of people, of concepts, of other things / et cetera) against
‘power’ (Mazzei 2013; Jackson and Mazzei 2018). For Braidotti (2019:148) such
acts of denormalization and denaturalization are particularly required where neo-
liberal momentum has captured or appropriated the academic humanities, and she
draws upon the work of Noys (2014) who has plotted the malignant and insufficiently
questioned velocities of advanced capitalism. For Walsh and Mignolo (in Mignolo
and Walsh 2018:1-2), the required effort in understanding the integral relationships
of humans (and other living organisms) to land, to territory, to the cosmos —
within scholarship circles — is to unsettle (i.e., to denormalize or to denaturalize)
“the singular authoritativeness of academic thought” about distinct people and
over-stabilized North Atlantic abstract universal fictions, and instead recognize
the world’s pluriversality and thereby illuminate the under-recognized interversal
paths and the under-appreciated interversal relationships between humans and non-
humans organisms. Such is the Deleuzian summons to think away from flat fixities
of meaning (Mazzei 2013). Stated another way, this Deleuzian call to denormalise
is an appeal to open up “to emergent, inter-active heterogeneities, to the emergent
spaces in between” (Wyatt, Gale, Gannon, and Davies 2011).

Related Mobilities
In disciplinary terms, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) label such overcoded
and supposedly self-evident or ‘undeniably true’ normalizations (i.e., the
targets for denormalization) within fields and domains as the micro-
fascisms of our age or the micro-fascisms of our institutions. In studies
164
of travel and tourism, such acts of illumination and correction (or rather,
of identificatory cleansing) — where eurocentric influences have been
notably pungent in that micro-fascist representation of places and micro-
fascist essentialization of peoples — might constitute what Walsh and
Mignolo (in Mignolo and Walsh 2018:2) would call either ‘pluriversal
decoloniality’ or otherwise ‘decolonial pluriversality’. In this regard,
Braidotti (2013) reminds us that such multiple worlds are not things or
ideas of the future, for they are already here and around us. Ergo, in studies
of travel and tourism, which are the representations of place and space that
address such demanded matters of pluriversal decoloniality: where are the
interpretations of site or territory sincerely and decently pluriversal?
Reflection Point 6 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:
The Cue For Relationality --- Posthuman Connectivity

The work of Deleuze and Guattari calls for the need for (and benefits of!) humans
relating to not just the broad human world of people, societies, and nations, but
to the wider non-human world. Their writings foreground the need of humans to
enter into communication with and engender understandings that generally reach
across geopolitical territories and colonial divisions, and which particularly contend
with the universalizing claims and the epistemic vehemence of Western cum North
Atlantic forms of modernity. In practical terms, the thoughtlines of Deleuze and
Guattari augur the critical necessity and creative enhancements to life that can be
fertilized when humans acknowledge not just the contextuality of the events and
encounters they come across or become engaged in, but the multiplicity of the difficult
cultural, spiritual, cosmological worlds they live within, and thereby the gains of
being sincerely and responsibly relational within them. For Walsh (in Mignolo and
Walsh 2018:254) — writing on the praxis of decoloniality inherently in parallel to
Deleuzoguttarian notions of relationality — such conceptions about ‘decoloniality’
must not remain merely platitudinous: they must not be “a new abstract universal,
but a [committed and attainable] way of being, thinking, serving and doing, a
[whole] conscious way of existence”. The shift of eurocentric institutions and interest
groups towards relationality must thus be an acknowledged and decided movement
“away from Western ontological totalitarianism” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018:239)
to faithfully recognize, address, and buttress new (i.e., previously suppressed or
silenced) ‘horizons of knowledge’ — although, importantly, Deleuze would no doubt
prefer that to be stated as horizons of thinking.
165

For Grimwood, Caton, and Cooke (2018), those who work in Tourism
Studies — especially on an international front — have a tall moral duty to
think and work by relational values. For (Bertella 2018), the cultivation
of the relational gaze in and across tourism is a pressing matter for the
field: for instance, to her, if tourism projects, packages, and programmes
are to introduce travelers cum visitors to populations like Yolngu in
Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia, i.e., to peoples who
have traditionally already lived to relational ways of living, then it would
be ironic and debilitating if those eternal project managers, package
developers, and programme researchers do not listen to and communicate
about such populations ‘relationally’ themselves. Where tourism
practitioners and researchers are engaged in worldmaking activity (i.e.,
everywhere and all of the time, unavoidably (Hollinshead and Suleman
2017)), it should beneficially be realized that it will never be just one single
world that is being inscribed or projected. Those who worldmake through
tourism (i.e., each practitioner and each researcher in every facet of their
work (Hollinshead and Caton 2017: Hollinshead and Suleman 2018) can
advance understanding by thinking relationally along pluriversal lines
(see Mignolo and Walsh 2018:147) and acknowledge that the experienced
world is actually constituted of a multiverse of ways of living, being, and
becoming: see Maturana in Maturana and Varela (1991), here, on the
multiverse.
Overview — The Call For Self-Reflexive Questioning:
Towards ‘Generative Vitality’ Through Tourism / Tourism Studies

Let us finish with some overall ruminative Deleuzian queries for researchers and
practitioners in Tourism Studies on the conceptual craft of reflective and reflexive
‘palpation’.
Do you (the researcher or practitioner) over-trust the foundational narratives and

the peddled perspectives that the chain of distribution within and across the tourism
industry or the channel of projection within and across Tourism Studies gives you?
How institutionalized are you in your juridical place and space making? How open
are your interpretations of matters of difference? How static is your own held or hailed
knowledge about tourism and the peoples, the places, the pasts, and the presents which
it judges? How open, fluid, and vital are your own projections of place and space,
166
generatively? Would it help your servicing of the cultures, the spiritualities, and the
longstanding-traditions and the emergent-hybrid-transitions which ‘live’ there if you
can learn more frequently, more regularly, and even axiomatically to think otherwise
about the receiving populations and the resident cosmologies which you authorize
and transmit? To what degree do you rely commonly, routinely, systematically upon
heavily-institutionalized and overcoded in-terpretations of local being at the expense
of more open out-terpretations of becoming?
In Deleuzian terms, how striated is the institutional imagination you are forced
to work with (see Colebrook 2006 and Bonta and Protevi 2012 on the rigidities
of ‘striated’ organizations versus relatively-open and smooth organizations); or
otherwise, how accommodating are the historical accounts, the cultural narratives,
and the interpretations of nature, the cognitions of spirituality that you embrace in
quotidian fashion? Thus ... how effective is your own generative vitality? Are you
generatively vital and notably refreshing in the worldmaking projections you deal
in through your authorial role in Tourism Studies? How ‘smooth’ are the governing
conceptualities of the bodies and organizations you work for and under; how spiral
are the visions and the groupthink thoughtlines you have wittingly and unwittingly
adopted yourself?
Peer-review: Externally peer-reviewed.

Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Grant Support: The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.
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DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.955253
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Other Tourists as Part of Tourism Product
Begüm Dilara Emiroğlu1
Abstract
In the tourism services context, tourists receive services simultaneously with other tourists who consume services and
share the same service environment with them. Therefore, other tourists in the service environment may have a positive
and negative impact on the tourist’s service experience due to some of their appropriate or inappropriate behaviours.
This may also affect the tourist’s subsequent purchasing behaviour. Hence, understanding the nature of tourist-tourist
interactions (T2T) is important for the tourism industry. However, there are very limited studies on this issue in the
literature. Therefore, this study was performed to explore incidents that cause satisfaction and disturbance of tourists
during interactions, how these interactions occur, what levels, and in which places. Therefore, semi-structured interviews
were conducted with 33 foreign tourists visiting Istanbul. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the research,
the data triangulation technique was used, and a focus group interview was employed with seven tourist guides. The
findings revealed that the T2T interactions occurred directly and indirectly. Direct interactions consisted of spontaneous,
superficial, and close interactions. Interactions occurred in service and public areas. Friendly, considerate, hostile,
inconsiderate and rude, illegal and prohibited, offensive, and disgusting behaviours of other tourists caused the tourists’
satisfaction and disturbance.
Keywords
other customers, customer to customer (c2c) interaction, other tourists, tourist to tourist (t2t) interaction
1 Correspondence to: Begüm Dilara Emiroğlu (Asst. Prof. Dr.), Şırnak University, School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Department of
Gastronomy And Culinary Arts, Şırnak, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected] ORCİD: 0000-0002-3668-1632
To cite this article: Emiroglu, B. D. (2021). Other Tourists as Part of Tourism Product. Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 171-194.
https://doi.org/10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.955253
Introduction
In the service marketing literature, the interaction between customers, who are not
acquainted with each other, is called customer-customer interaction (CCI) (Huang
& Hsu, 2010: 79). Most service encounters occur in the presence of other customers
(Parker & Ward, 2000: 342). Especially, in tourism and hospitality services, other
customers are inseparable parts of the consumption experience (Huang & Hsu, 2010:
79; Miao et al., 2011: 933). In the tourism service context, customers receive services
simultaneously with other customers consuming services and share the same service
environment with them (Miao et al., 2011: 933; Wu, 2007: 1519; Wu, 2008: 1504; Ye
& Hui, 2011: 54).
Cross-cultural contacts in tourism generally involve interactions between tourists

from different cultures and nationalities (Albu, 2015: 11). T2T interactions constitute
an important social dimension of the tourist experience (Yagi, 2001: 22). Especially,
C2C interactions require the integration of customers from different cultural
backgrounds (Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306). In this context, interactions between
tourists can be considered basically as interactions between customers, which has
become a common phenomenon in many service areas (Huang & Hsu, 2009: 548).
Therefore, managing CCI is very important in the tourism and hospitality industry
(Nicholls, 2011: 210). However, there are a very limited number of studies in the
literature on interactions between tourists (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79; Yagi, 2001: 22).
Researchers have not paid much attention to the relations between tourists and how
tourists see other tourists (Yagi, 2003:1). Generally, there are not many empirical
studies examining the positive and negative effects of interactions between tourists
on service encounters (Chang, 2017: 2).
Because of all these reasons, understanding T2T interactions that can be seen as
interactions between customers becomes a priority in the tourism sector. However,
as previously stated, studies on the interactions between tourists in the literature
are very limited. Therefore, this study aims to fill the lack in the literature about
the interactions between tourists by understanding how and in which areas the
interactions occur, what the interaction levels are, and the situations that caused the
tourists’ satisfaction and disturbance.
Literature Review
Customer to Customer Interactions

The service encounter is defined by Shostack (1985: 243) as “a period of time
during which a consumer directly interacts with a service”. Bitner (1990: 70) stated
that a service encounter encompasses all aspects so that the customer can interact with
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Dilara Emiroğlu / Other Tourists as Part of Tourism Product
the company, including physical facilities, personnel, and other tangible elements.
One of these elements also is the other customers in the service environment (Grove
& Fisk, 1997: 64).
Both the service system model and the 7P of the marketing mix have identified
other customers as part of the service process (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79). The
“Service System Model” proposed by Eiglier and Langeard (1977) presents service
organization to customers as visible and invisible parts. Visible parts impact the
customer’s perception of service experience and include communication personnel,
the physical environment, and Customer B, who refers to other customers (Amorim
& Marques, 2012: 3; Fakharyan et al., 2014: 612; Nicholls 2011: 211). CCI refers
to interactions between customers, who are during service encounters or just around
the service. The notion of CCI is based on interactions between Customer A and
Customer B. In C2C interactions, there are Customer A’s perception and Customer
B’s behaviour. In such interaction, Customer A perceives Customer B’s behaviour
from his / her own perspective. Customer B’s behaviour can be verbal, non-verbal,
intentional, or unintentional. Customer B may even not be aware of his / her own
behaviour and its effects (Nicholls, 2008: 98).
Booms and Bitner (1981) added three new elements to the traditional marketing
mix and proposed an extended marketing mix, including physical evidence (e.g., the
physical environment and all tangible clues), participants (e.g., all human actors in
service encounters including service personnel and other customers), and processes
(e.g., procedures, mechanisms, and flow of activities) (Bitner, 1990: 70). In the
expanded marketing mix (7P), all human factors involved in service delivery (both
service personnel and customers) are named as participants (Bojanic, 2008: 80; Goi,
2009: 10; Grove & Fisk, 1992: 96; Grove & Fisk, 1997: 64; Rafiq & Ahmed, 1995:
6).
In the service marketing literature, “the interactions between customers, who are
unacquainted with each other and are in the service facility simultaneously with,
are called C2C interactions” (Brocato et al., 2012: 385; Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79).
Service encounters often occur in the presence of many customers who consume
services simultaneously and share the same service area (Andersson & Mossberg,
2004: 173; Grove & Fisk, 1997: 63, Ye & Hui, 2011: 54). Many customers receive
services simultaneously with other customers, and so direct and indirect interactions
between customers occur (Ye & Hui, 2011: 54). Consequently, other customers are
those who are present in the service environment, and they may influence the nature
of service outcome or process (Wu, 2007: 1519-1520).
In general, C2C interactions occur during and after the service encounter (Lee,
2016: 14). Many authors have noted that C2C interactions can occur inside and
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outside of service settings (Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306; Jue, 2008: 65-66; Lee, 2016:
14; Nicholls, 2008: 98; Nicholls, 2010: 88). While C2C interactions occurred within
the service setting are called on-site or on-stage C2C interactions, C2C interactions
occurred by word of mouth are called off-site or off-stage C2C interactions (Jue,
2008: 65-66; Lee, 2016: 14; Nicholls, 2008: 98; Nicholls, 2010: 88).
In general, customer experiences can be framed as a function of social interactions

(e.g., employees and other customers) and physical environment (Cetin & Dincer,
2014:184-185). C2C interactions occur directly through specific interpersonal
encounters, and also indirectly as customers are part of the same environment
(Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306). Consequently, customers can influence each other
directly and indirectly (Choo & Petrick, 2014: 373; Huang, 2008: 522; Jung & Yoo,
2017: 123; Libai et al., 2010: 268; Martin & Pranter, 1989: 6; Verhoef, 2009: 34; Wu,
2007: 1519-1520, Wu, 2008: 1504). Therefore, in many service environments, other
customers can often affect a customer’s service experience positively and negatively
(Grove & Fisk, 1997: 63; Fakharyan et al., 2014: 611). Customers in the service
environment may find themselves compatible with some customers, but also may
find incompatible with others. Customers may be affected by certain behaviours,
appearances and attitudes, first impressions, physical proximity, and verbal speech of
other customers directly or indirectly (Martin & Pranter, 1989: 6). For example, other
customers can destroy the customer’s service experience through their behaviour,
such as cutting into the line, talking loudly, smoking (Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306).
The noisy children running and screaming around a restaurant can lead to discomfort
for many customers (Lin & Liang, 2011: 354). However, in some cases, positive
encounters with other customers can contribute positively to the customer’s service
experience and increase the customer’s service quality perception (Martin & Pranter,
1989: 13). Therefore, CCI is an important aspect of service experience, and also
managing CCI is often considered an important aspect of managing a service (Baron
et al., 2007: 212; Fakharyan et al., 2014: 611).
Some studies have been carried out on customer-customer interactions (Bitner

et al., 1994; Grove &Fisk, 1997; Martin, 1996). For example, Martin (1996: 146-
159) investigated the effect of 32 behaviours exhibited by other consumers in public
business environments on consumer satisfaction. As a result of the research, it was
found that customers were satisfied with the gregarious behaviours of other customers
(e.g., shaking the hand, asking about the well-being of the family, beginning a
conversation even though never met, etc.), while they were unsatisfied with the
violent behaviours (e.g., hitting the table in anger, kicking a chair deliberately, etc.)
and the grungy behaviours (e.g., not wearing a shirt or shoes, propping their feet on a
table, wearing dirty clothes, smelling like not having a shower for several days, etc.).
Likewise, Bitner et al. (1994: 98-100) found that problematic behaviours exhibited by
174
other clients (e.g., drunkenness, noncompliance with company rules and regulations,
verbal and physical harassment, etc.) constitute 22% of the incidents that customers
were dissatisfied with. Grove and Fisk (1997: 78) found that other customers’ helpful
behaviours (e.g., returning lost wallets and items, helping people with strollers
and wheelchairs, taking pictures, and calling lost children, etc.) lead to customer
satisfaction. Additionally, other customers can increase the customer’s service
experience positively by providing information and social support or undertaking a
consulting role with their advice (Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306; Verhoef et al., 2009:
35). For example, customers sometimes wait for service in a retail store. During this
time, they share the same area with other customers and are in physical proximity
with them. In such an environment, other customers can add value to customers’
service experiences by providing honest opinions, sharing product knowledge, and
providing assurance on purchasing decisions that employees cannot provide (Kim &
Choi, 2016: 384-386).
Tourist to Tourist Interaction

There is a limited number of studies in the literature on interactions between
tourists (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79; Yagi, 2001: 22). Generally, researchers have ignored
interactions between tourists and how tourists see other tourists. (Yagi, 2003:1).
Therefore, there are not numerous empirical studies that examine the positive and
negative effects of interactions between tourists on service encounters (Chang, 2017:
2).
In general, social contact in tourism occurs between tourist-residents, tourists-other

tourists, tourists-service providers, tourists- foreign workers, and tourists-investors
(Reisinger & Turner, 2003: 37; Reisinger, 2009: 205). The tourist experience includes
the interaction between tourists (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79). Tourism allows contact
between travellers (Cordeiro, 2014: 105). Tourist encounters involve relationships
between foreigners from different cultures, and this allows people to have intercultural
contacts (Burns, 1999: 94; Jack & Phipps, 2005: 6). Hence, interpersonal encounters
in international tourism can also be seen as intercultural encounters (Yagi, 2003:
1). Cross-cultural contacts in tourism generally involve interactions between tourists
from different cultures and nationalities (Albu, 2015: 11). Therefore, T2T interactions
constitute another stage of the social dimension in tourism (Yagi, 2001: 22).
Tourism generally takes place accompanied by other tourists either with travel
companions travelling with travellers (for example, friends and families travelling
together ) or other travellers met et route (Jue, 2008: 44). Many authors indicated that
customer or tourist interactions generally occur in two different ways as intragroup
and intergroup (Huang & Hsu, 2009: 79; Jue, 2008: 66-67). Jue (2008: 66-67)
indicated that intragroup interactions represent interactions with family members and
175
friends who jointly participated in the service process, while intergroup interactions
express interactions between customers who meet each other accidentally in the
servicescape. Likewise, Huang and Hsu (2010: 79) stated that interactions between
tourists can be divided into two categories as intragroup and intergroup interactions.
The first is the interaction between travelling companions (e.g., friends and families
who travel together), while the latter refers to the interactions between unacquainted
tourists who met each other on the route.
In the service marketing literature, the interaction between unacquainted customers

is called C2C interaction (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79). Other customers are inseparable
parts of the customer’s consumption experience (Huang & Hsu, 2010: 79; Miao et
al., 2011: 933). The consumption of services in the tourism sector typically involves
sharing the same service environment with other consumers. Numerous consumption
experiences in the tourism and hospitality sector, such as a cruise trip or dinner in a
restaurant, involve the presence of other consumers in the service setting (Miao et al.,
2011: 933). Moreover, C2C interactions require the integration of customers from
different cultural backgrounds (Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306). Customer satisfaction
or dissatisfaction are often affected by the characteristics and behaviours of other
customers who are part of the tourism service experience, and thus other customers
are part of the service itself (Wu, 2007: 1519). In this context, the interactions between
tourists can be seen as interactions between the customers, which have become a
common phenomenon in many servicescapes (Huang & Hsu, 2009: 548).
Cetin & Walls (2016:400) stated that other customers are important element in travel
experience. Other customers may affect a customer’s service experience positively or
negatively (e.g., friendly or helpful behaviour, crying children, profanity, rudeness,
etc.) (Brocato et al., 2012: 387; Grove & Fisk, 1997: 63). Especially, in the context
of tourism, the presence or behaviours of other tourists may not be an obstacle to
the goals of tourists, but the behaviours of other tourists ,such as making noise in
a museum, and throwing rubbish in a national park can cause them an unpleasant
feeling (Chang, 2017: 3). Therefore, managing C2C interactions in tourism services
becomes very important (Nicholls, 2011: 210).
Tourists are not homogeneous, and each group has different backgrounds,
preferences, patterns, and patterns of behaviour (Yagi, 2001: 22). Different attitudes
and behaviour patterns will likely emerge between tourists in tourism in which
cultural diversity is intense (Saatci & Avcikurt, 2016: 2542). Different behaviour and
value systems of people from different cultures may cause conflicts between cultures.
An appropriate behaviour or value system in a person’s culture may not be considered
appropriate in other cultures (Yagi, 2003: 4). For example, Kwortnik (2008: 289-307)
conducted a study on cruise passengers and revealed that some characteristics of
176
other customers (e.g., age, actions, and appearance) affect the cruisers’ perceptions
of the ship’s atmosphere. In addition, cruisers have given negative reactions to other
customers using cigarettes, making noise, causing crowding and wearing extremely
casual clothes because they disrupt their holiday experience (e.g., escape and
intellectuality, etc.).
As another example, some British tourists who came to Eastern Europe to organize
a Stag Party created great tension for other tourists. There was a lot of news in the press
about that issue, and it was stated that the tensions were seen as important enough by
the British Foreign Office and that the British were given special recommendations
for planning stag parties abroad. Likewise, it is not an unusual thing to see topless
tourists on the coast of southern France; however, such an image is rarely seen in
the Baltic region of Poland and may not be appropriate. Furthermore, the influx of
Russian tourists who like heavy parties to holiday destinations in Europe caused
negative reactions among some tourists (Nicholls, 2011: 214). German tourists inquire
in their online reservations whether hotels accept Russian tourists, and they prefer
hotels that do not accept Russians (Patronlardunyasi, 2007). In a study conducted on
8,100 German holidaymakers by Urlaubstours, which is the German travel operator,
it was revealed that the Germans saw Russians and British as both noisy and very
drunk tourists. After the Russians and the British, the Polish ranked third for the
same reasons. In addition, it was revealed that the Germans were displeased with the
Chinese because of their table manners and with the French because of their rough
and hostile approach (Gadd, 2014).
Methodology
Purpose of the research

This study was conducted to explore situations that caused the tourist’s satisfaction
and disturbance during interactions with other tourists. The study also explores how
these interactions occur, at what levels, and in which places.
Research Method
In this study, the qualitative research method was chosen. Qualitative research
enables the interpretation of people’s experiences (Vanderstoep & Johnston, 2009:
166). Moreover, the phenomenological method was chosen in order to determine
the tourists’ experiences with other tourists. Phenomenology aims to understand an
experience from the perspective of the participants. Investigation of the underlying
meaning of experience is at the core of the phenomenological study (Williams, 2007:
69).
177
Data collection tool

In this study, a semi-structured interview technique was used. A question form
was prepared to be asked to tourists by using the available literature. The question
form consists of two parts, namely questions about demographic information and
interactions between tourists. In general, tourists were asked open-ended questions
related to the following situations:
• Who do they usually travel with? (alone, with friends, family, etc.)
• What do they think about interaction with other tourists?
• How do they interact with other tourists?
• Which areas do they interact with other tourists?
• Which behaviours of other tourists constitute disturbance and satisfaction

for themselves?
Based on the semi-structured interview technique, interviews lasting for an

average of 45 minutes or more were conducted with 33 foreign tourists from different
nationalities who came to Istanbul between January 2018 and March 2018.
Sampling Selection
In a qualitative study, the main purpose of using purposive sampling is to obtain
cases that are considered rich for information purposes (Sandelowski, 2000: 338).
In purposive sampling, researchers determine participants according to the most
appropriate characteristics for the study, and participants are selected because of
their previous experiences and knowledge about the subject being studied (Baskale,
2016: 26). Therefore, considering that it would be appropriate to benefit from the
experiences and opinions of people who are currently tourists in Turkey, have been
in at least two different countries except for Turkey and have interacted with other
tourists both in Turkey and other countries, the purposive sampling method was
preferred, and foreign tourists with these characteristics were selected.
Creswell (2014: 239) stated that the sample size included typically ranges from
three to ten individuals in phenomenology. As well as the number of observations or
interviews, the duration of the interview can be taken as an example in qualitative
research (Baskale, 2016: 27). In this context, 33 foreign tourists visiting Istanbul
were selected, and interviews were conducted with an average of at least 45 minutes
each.
Data saturation is achieved when enough information is available to duplicate

the study, when the ability to obtain additional new information has been attained,
178
and when further coding is no longer feasible (Fusch & Ness, 2015: 1408). After 33
interviews, it was decided that the feedback collected from the participants was self-
repetitive, and the data reached saturation. Interviews were recorded on the electronic
media on the same day and transcribed verbatim. The data were subjected to content
analysis, and the common themes were categorized. While collecting and analyzing
the data, codes such as P1, P2, P3 were given to each participant. In general, the
data analysis of the computer system coding and hand-coding is available (Creswell,
2014: 245). In the study, a manual coding system was used to analyze the data.
Validity and Reliability

Triangulation used in quantitative research to test reliability and validity can be
used to test or maximize the validity and reliability of a qualitative study (Golafshani,
2003: 597). In this context, the triangulation technique was used to ensure the validity
and reliability of this study. In the study, the opinions of academicians working in
the field of tourism were consulted for the preparation of questions on interactions
between tourists. In addition, a long time was spent in the field. It was consulted on
expert opinions on the results. The results obtained from the participant interviews
were shown to tourism academicians working in the field of tourism and the tourist
guides working in the field of tourism application.
A focus group interview was conducted with a total of 7 tourist guides. Before the
interview, a question form was prepared to ask the guides about T2T interactions.
The meeting was carried out on the 8th of May 2018 at a cafe in Taksim. Concerning
the number of people in the focus group interview, Creswell (2014: 239) stated that
the interviews could be conducted between 6 and 8 people. Moreover, Cokluk et al.
(2011: 101) stated that the ideal duration of an interview in the focus group was 1-2
hours. In this context, the interview lasted 90 minutes in total with 7 tourist guides.
During the interview, the guides were asked similar questions with the tourists. In
the data collection and analysis, similar operations and processes which applied
to tourists were applied. In the results of the analysis, some themes obtained from
tourists were approved, new sample cases related to interactions were obtained and
placed under certain themes, and the analysis findings were reevaluated. The findings
obtained from the study are explained in detail.
Findings of Tourist Participants

The nationalities and demographic information of the tourist participants are
shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
179
Table 1
Demographic Information of Tourist Participants
Age (f) Education (f) Income (f)
18-25 10 High school 2 No income 5

26-35 15 Graduate 22 1-500 € 4
36-45 5 Master 7 501-999 € 0
46-55 1 PhD 2 1,000-1,999 € 15
56-65 2 2,000-2,999 € 4
3,000-3,999 € 4
4,000 € and over 1
Religion (f) Gender (f) Marital status (f)
Muslim 14 Female 19 Married 5

Christian 7 Male 14 Single 28
1
Jewish
No religion
11
As can be seen in Table 1 and Table 2, the majority of participants (25) were
between 18-35 ages. In terms of education, 22 participants have graduate degrees.
In terms of income, the majority of them (15) had an income of around 1,000-1,999
€, the majority of participants (14) were Muslim, 19 participants were female, and
the majority of them (28) were single. The nationalities of the participants are shown
in Table 2. Most of the tourists participating in the study come from countries such
as Russia, Iran, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Turkmenistan,
and Pakistan.
Table 2
Nationalities of The Tourists Participants
Nationality F Nationality F Nationality F
Russia 4 Argentina 1 Switzerland 1
Iranian 3 Australia 1 Kazakhstan 1
Bosnia and Herzegovina 2 Bahamas 1 Colombia 1
China 2 France 1 Egypt 1
Indonesia 2 India 1 Poland 1
Netherlands 2 England 1 Taiwan 1
Turkmenistan 2 Israel 1
Pakistan 2 Spain 1
As a result of the analyzes, it was found that the interactions between the tourists
occurred indirectly because they are part of the same physical environment, and
directly through interpersonal encounters.
In the study, direct interactions occurred as a result of direct face-to-face encounters

of tourists with each other through interpersonal encounters and verbal and non-
verbal actions that happen between them during these encounters.
It was found that spontaneous and superficial interactions occurred through both
verbal and nonverbal interactions, while close interactions occurred through only
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verbal interactions that were realized by activities such as tourists being friends with
each other and participating in common activities.
It has been revealed that spontaneous interactions generally occurred through

mutual exchange of information of tourists [e.g., personal talkings arising from
curiosity, and getting or giving advice (e.g., places to visit in the city, meals to eat,
restaurants to eat food, addresses that cannot be found, etc.)], and through verbal-non-
verbal-physical abuse. Superficial interactions occurred through instant situations
such as pushing or bumping each other, making small requests and demands from
each other (e.g., asking for a chair or charger, taking photos and videos, sitting on a
bank, etc.) and greeting each other (e.g., verbal and non-verbal greeting like hello,
good morning, smiling and hand waving, etc.).
Figure 1. Tourist-Tourist Interactions and Levels
The difference between the close interactions and the spontaneous interactions is
that the conversation is not daily and that the tourist develops a friendship with other
tourists and participates in joint activities. Close interactions consist of long-term
interactions between tourists. There is also a friendship link developed among people.
The biggest difference that separates superficial interactions from spontaneous
and close interactions is the duration of the interaction. In superficial interactions,
interaction takes place in a very short period of time.
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Table 3
Participants’ Statements in The Direct Interactions
Spontaneous Interaction
P18: “I ask them because I don’t know the city. I get information from others about nice places for eating
and addresses which I can’t find… They give me information about these issues.”
Close Interaction
P10: “When I was in India I met with two people from England. They were students, and they invited me to
visit beautiful places. We visited everywhere together. We made a good friendship.”
Superficial Interaction
P6: “Generally, I met friendly, gentlemen and polite people. We didn’t know each other, but we were
greeting each other every time. Other tourists said “hello”, “good morning”, “good night to me every day .”
In the study, it was found that indirect interactions occurred because tourists are
in the same physical environment with other tourists (in other words, tourists share
the same physical environment or setting with other tourists). Indirect interactions
refer to actions that are not directed at tourists by other tourists, who are part of the
physical environment. There is no mutual interaction of a tourist with other tourists
in the indirect interactions. Indirect interactions mean that tourists, who share the
same physical environment (settings ) with other tourists, observe the appearances
and behaviours of other tourists and that they are unilaterally and indirectly affected
by these behaviours and appearances. According to this, a tourist may be affected
as auditory (making noise, etc.), visual (not dressing suitable for culture and
environment, etc.), olfactory (smelling bad, etc.), both auditory and visual (fighting,
etc.), both visual and olfactory (smoking indoors, etc.), and auditory-visual-olfactory
(getting drunk, etc.) by other tourists’ behaviours.
Tourist-Tourist Interaction Areas

According to the results of the analysis, it was concluded that T2T interactions
occurred in service areas (e.g., hotels, hostels, restaurants, cafes, bars, airplanes, boat
tours, etc.) and in public places (e.g., worships, airports, bazaars, shopping centers,
streets, parks, museums, touristic places, etc.)
P31: “It is starting from the hotel, lobby, restaurant, any cafe, in the street or the
museum. You might just start chatting with someone and become nice friendships
anywhere”. Likewise P6: “For example, it may be in a restaurant and in the praying
places, attraction places. Like this… It may be during boarding time in the airport or
on the plane.”
Satisfying and Disturbing Incidents in The Direct Interactions

Satisfying and disturbing incidents in the direct interactions refer to other tourists’
direct verbal and non-verbal behaviour towards a tourist during interpersonal
encounters between tourists and the tourist’s satisfaction or disturbance from these
182
behaviours. These incidents originated from the considerate, friendly, inconsiderate

and rude, and hostile behaviour of other tourists.
Table 4
Satisfying and Disturbing Behaviours of Other Tourists in The Direct Interactions
Behaviours Meaning Examples
such as being polite (e.g., offering
treats and using polite forms of address
such as thank you, sorry, excuse me),
The behaviours that are without neglecting
being respectful (e.g., respecting
the rights and feelings of the tourist,
Considerate personality, ideas, beliefs, and personal
considering and respecting the tourist.
behaviours space of the tourist, etc.), and being
Namely, other tourists’ behaviours arising
helpful (e.g., recommendations about
from their own thoughts and kindness.
food, restaurant, address, visiting
places and other personal helpings,
etc.).
such as being fun, being interested,
The behaviours that tend to meet being without prejudice against
Friendly behaviours tourists, establish friendship and improve tourists, starting a conversation with
relationships. tourists, and contacting easily with
tourists.
such as being uninterested, being late
In contrast to considerate behaviours,
for appointments, making racial and
Inconsiderate and conscious and unconscious behaviours are
ethnic jokes, cursing, abusing, pushing
rude behaviour made by neglecting the rights and emotions
and bumping, constantly requesting to
of the tourist.
take photos and videos.
Unlike friendly behaviours, the behaviours such as being prejudiced and
Hostile behaviours
that are made with hostility discriminating towards tourist
Table 5
Participants’ Statements on Satisfying and Disturbing Behaviours of Other Tourists in The Direct
Interactions
P15: “When I was in Barcelona, we met a French couple. We were staying in
the same hostel together. We over-talked about where we would want to go.
Considerate behaviours
The lady said, “Oh, we can help you guys because we are new here as well,
and maybe you want to come with us. She was very helpful.”
P18: “Sometimes, their looking at me is like touching me. It is because when
Inconsiderate and
I was in Morocco, three men from Portugal looked at me and then wanted to
rude behaviours
touch me. It disturbed me so much.”
P8: “Spanish people, I think that they are very nice. They like to have fun.
Most of the time they are not aggressive, they are very welcoming. On the
Friendly behaviours other hand, Turkish and American people are the best for me. In general, if
you want to meet with them or ask to go anywhere tomorrow, they say okay.
They behave by the book.”
P3: “Other cultures and other nations don’t want to connect with Iranians.
We have a bad image in their eyes. They say Iranians are terrorists because
Hostile behaviours
we are Muslims. Sometimes I meet these kinds of tourists. They didn’t want
to talk with me after learning my nationality. It was sad.”
Satisfying and Disturbing Incidents in The Indirect Interactions

Satisfying and disturbing incidents in indirect interactions refer to tourists who
share the same physical environment with other tourists, observe the appearances
of other tourists and their behaviour in the environment (settings), and they are
183
unilaterally and indirectly affected by these behaviours and appearances. These

incidents in the indirect interactions originated from the considerate, inconsiderate
and rude, illegal and prohibited, offensive and disgusting behaviours of other tourists.
Table 6
Satisfying and Disturbing Behaviours of Other Tourists in The Indirect Interactions
Behaviours Meaning Examples
Other tourists behaviours arising from
such as being respectful (e.g., respecting
their own thoughts and courtesy, without
Considerate other people, wearing proper clothes for
neglecting the rights and feelings of
behaviours the country’s culture, etc.) and being
the tourist, and that considering and
helpful (e.g., helping other people, etc.)
respecting the tourist.
such as making noise, smoking next
to the person, cutting into the line,
littering, not controlling children,
Consciously and unconsciously
cursing, being drunk, constantly taking
Inconsiderate and rude behaviours of other tourists that
photos and videos in the environment,
behaviours performed by ignoring the rights and
being commanding, being arrogant,
feelings of other people around them.
being angry, complaining, and not
wearing clothes suitable to culture and
environment.
The behaviours arising a person’s lack
of control and that being towards the
such as fighting with other people and
Offensive behaviour physical action (violence) due to this lack
mistreatment of animals.
of control and that may cause discomfort
to everyone around.
Illegal and prohibited such as taking photos in public places,
Non-compliance with rules that are
touching objects in public places,
behaviours written and visually present in society.
smoking in closed areas and using drugs.
The situations that are disgusting and such as different eating habits and
Disgusting behaviours nauseating in appearance and smell. smelling bad.
Table 7
Participants’ Statements on Satisfying and Disturbing Behaviours of Other Tourists in The Indirect
Interactions
P26: “I am satisfied when another tourist respects the culture… For
example, if an American tourist came to Turkey and I came to Turkey,
and if both of us respect Turkey, and if we try to make our behaviours
Considerate Behaviours
good, it will be good. Turkey is a Muslim country and tourists visit many
attractive places. One of them is a mosque. I like tourists who dress
appropriately in such places.”
P5: “Noisy situations happened one or two times in the hotel. Some
Inconsiderate and Rude tourists were really loud and they listened to loud music late at night. This
disturbed me because you can’t sleep around two or three in the morning
Behaviours due to loud music. Only sometimes they were talking very loudly,
shouting and making a lot of voices in the hotel.”
P21: “It is very important that tourists treat animals like cats, dogs. They
Offensive Behaviours should treat them nicely. Animals shouldn’t fear people. They should
sleep everywhere. But some tourists treat them very badly. They kick
them. It is painful to see.”
Illegal and Prohibit Behaviours P8: “For example, when I was in Italy, Arabic people were constantly
taking photos and videos in museums. Normally, it is forbidden to take
photos and videos inside. But they weren’t following these rules.”
P23: “For instance, people who come from Africa eat with their hands.
They don’t use spoons, forks or knives. For them, it is normal and not
Disgusting Behaviours disgusting but for us it is disgusting. So, as I said it is their culture and for
their culture eating with hands is normal maybe. But, for other cultures, it
is really disgusting, it makes you annoyed because of such behaviours.”
184
Findings from The Guide Participants

Demographic data of the participants were shown in Table 11
Table 8
Demographic Information of Tourist Guides
Professional
Age (f) (f) Income (f)
experience
18-25 0 1-3 year 0 No income 0

26-35 1 4-6 year 0 1-500 ₺ 0
36-45 3 7-9 year 1 501-999 ₺ 0
46-55 3 10-12 year 2 1,000-1,999 ₺ 0
56-65 2,000-2,999 ₺
0
65 and over 3,000-3,999 ₺
0 13-15 year 0 0
4,000-4,999 ₺
0 16 years and over 4 7
5,000 € and
0
over ₺
Education (f) Gender (f) Tour groups (f)
High school 0 Female 5 Cultural 7

Graduate 7
Master 0 Male 2 Other 0
PhD 0
₺: New Turkish Lira
As can be seen in Table 8, 5 of the guides participating in the study were females
and 2 males. The majority of the guides (6 participants) were around the ages of
36-55. In terms of education, all of the guides had bachelor’s degrees. In terms of
professional experience, the majority of them (4 participants) had over 16 years of
experience. In terms of income status, all of the guides had an income of around
4,000-4,999 ₺ , and in terms of the tour groups they attended, all of the guides were
officials working in cultural tours.
As a result of the interview, the guides stated that the T2T interactions occurred by
the sharing of information such as taking and giving advice. The guides stated that
the interactions occurred in the service areas such as restaurants and hotels. So, the
forms of interactions and areas of interaction were supported by the guides’ opinions.
Table 9
Participants’ Statements on The Forms of Interaction and Interaction Areas
P6: “I have witnessed many conversations such as “I’m Colombian”,
Sharing information (taking and
“I’m from Cappadocia”, “where are you going?” I hear lots of sentences
giving advice)
for example “If you go to Cappadocia, you must get on the balloon”. “If
you go to Ephesus, you should definitely make this.”
P4: “I think hotels are the best places to interact. There were also great
Interaction areas
restaurants such as Gar Casino or Kervansaray….Namely, these are
restaurants with belly dancers or folklore shows…”
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The guides supported that helpful behaviours lead to tourist satisfaction. Likewise,
they confirmed that other incidents disturbed tourists (e.g., such as being late, not
wearing clothes suitable to the environment and culture, pushing and bumping, cutting
into the line, constantly taking photos, making noise, taking photos in public areas,
smelling bad, littering, complaining, discriminating, not controlling the children,
cursing, etc.). Moreover, it was revealed that not wearing shoes caused disturbance
to tourists.
Table 10
Participants’ Statements on Satisfying and Disturbing Behaviours of Other Tourists
P3: “Giving them a place when they are accompanied by the elderly and children
and helping each other on tours… These examples can go as far as giving a place in
the toilet. They usually help elderly, disabled or pregnant people in their groups or
another group. They are helping move the strollers up the stairs. In such cases, there
are hot moments. For example, we were on the Bosphorus tour and there was a very
Helping
sweet family from Iran beside us. I had a white tourist from New Zealand. When
I went to the bathroom, they were fused. They probably gave each other space. He
asked me where they came from and he was surprised when he answered that they
came from Iran. Because Iran is a terrible country for them, very closed and with
many bigot people. When they see a cute family, they are surprised and happy.”
P6: “Sometimes they find the French complain a lot.... They see the French as a
Continuous
nation that will bark at everything and that examine everything in detail and say this
complaining
is bad. Because the French are always complaining. “
Discrimination P5: “I know their situation because I work with Middle Easterners. They generally
feel they are excluded. They think that they are not loved by other tourists.”
Cursing P5: “The French are immediately barking ... Like “Oh, how does this happen!”. They
sometimes talk abusively. This is not welcomed by other tourists.”
P3: “The places where I have the worst interaction are museums. These are the
places that are not taken photos of. We say that no photo is taken at Dolmabahce
Taking photos in
Palace before entering…. But we are going two steps, another group is doing the
public areas
same thing. For example, a Malaysian tourist takes photos, then an Indonesian takes,
then an Arab, a Turkish takes... This can disturb others.”
P6: “In my group, the most disturbing thing is that the line is not obeyed. In other
Cutting into the line
words, people cutting into the line. They are disturbed by them.”
P3: “It happened to me once. Many girls in shorts in the garden of Sulaymaniyah
Not wear clothes lay on the grass… Because for her there is grass and she thinks the rate is a place
suitable for the to lie down and have a conversation. She is not aware that he has a mosque garden
environment and and should not do it. There is nothing to be angry about. On the other hand, shocked
culture glances look at them. For example, I warned, ‘’hey girls, you sleep here like that,
very nice, but you can react, consequently, this is a place of worship.”
P4: “ Of course, we have problems in crowded places. We have no problems with
anyone on the grass in the meadow. There are problems in places where Dolmabahce
Palace, Topkapi Palace, and holy relics exist. Let’s say I accompany an Argentine
group, and there was turmoil at the time, people were cutting in line, the kids were
Not control the
jumping on the grass and they were stepping on their feet. They are also looking at
children
us. They were cowardly, timid because they were tourists here. They cannot shout
right away, as in their own country. Is it correct to shout in this country, or is the
police intervening? They look at us, the guides, in such situations. As if they say
that they do something. Normally they will react harder in their own country.”
P2: “Sometimes, taking photos can cause trouble. At the same point when eighty
selfies are taken too long, it is a problem for other people. This is also true for
Continuous taking
Turkish groups. When they start taking pictures, they start to pretend that there is no
photo
one else in the world. One of those selfie bars sometimes disturbs other people. So,
those photos can sometimes disturb both sides.”
186
P6: “In my groups, they were complaining about talking loudly. The Spanish groups
Making noise are especially talking very loudly as if they are fighting. I guess this also exists
against our group. They talk loudly too, and we absolutely disturb others. “
P2: “I think this is more for Arab tourists. It is like throwing trash, wrapping the
Littering
diaper and throwing it to the edges, leaving it in the car...”
P1: “The biggest problem is being late. Today, for example, someone was fighting
with someone else because of this issue. Being late, there is a lot of trouble between
the groups. For example, the same situation happened to me today. I had a Moroccan
couple and the group was very mixed. Even though I warned them several times,
Being late they continued, and an Indian British in the group said: “Let’s leave them”. And
after all, they did not continue with me. I said we will meet at 18.00 there. They
came there. In other words, the fact of being late causes discomfort. Especially if we
are doing a daily tour, there can be very important bad events like this from time to
time.”
P2: “I hear about pushing and bumping. So, there is a lot of complaints about the
pushing by Asian groups. They don’t want to lose their guides because they always
Pushing and bumping
travel with large groups. But really Asian groups have such a problem. Such as
pushing, touching, preventing other groups...”
P2: “There is also a situation of smell. Although it is not desired to be expressed
too, sometimes it is possible when some people from some nationalities consume
Bad smelling
too many spices, if the weather is hot. It is also a cultural thing, probably because of
eating too much turmeric...”
P2: “Something happened to me in a restaurant in Sultanahmet. When we entered
there in the summer heat last year, I do not know which nationality anymore, but
Not wearing shoes
they were Muslims. They took off their shoes, stretched out on chairs waiting for
their order at the restaurant.”
Discussion and Results

This study focuses on exploring situations that cause satisfaction and disturbance
of tourists during interactions with other tourists and how these interactions occur, at
what levels and in which places.
In this context, it was revealed that T2T interactions occurred directly, through
specific interpersonal encounters, and also indirectly as they are part of the same
environment. In previous studies, it has been stated that C2C interactions occurred
directly through interpersonal encounters and indirectly as they are part of the physical
environment and that customers can influence each other directly and indirectly.
(Choo & Petrick, 2014: 373; Johnson & Grier, 2013: 306; Jung & Yoo, 2017: 123;
Huang, 2008: 522; Wu, 2007: 1519; Wu, 2008: 1504).
In the study, the levels of direct interactions are divided into three groups:
spontaneous interactions, close interactions, and superficial interactions. The guides
supported that T2T interactions mostly occurred by sharing information such as giving
and receiving advice from each other. Moreover, previous studies on interaction levels
have revealed that interactions between customers are superficial, spontaneous, and
close interactions (Huang & Hsu, 2009: 556-562; Jue, 2008: 138-148).
It was revealed that T2T interactions occurred in service areas and public spaces.
In general, interactions occur in service areas such as hotels, hostels, restaurants,
187
cafes, bars, airplanes, and boat tours and in public areas such as worships, airports,
bazaars, shopping centers, streets, parks, museums, and tourist attractions. The guides
supported that T2T interactions occurred in service areas and public areas. Likewise,
Huang (2008: 527) stated that C2C interactions generally occur in service areas such
as restaurants, shops, theaters, transportation, hotels, banks, and post offices.
It was found that some situations created by other tourists caused the satisfaction
and disturbance of tourists. The satisfying incidents within the direct interactions and
indirect interactions originated from the considerate and friendly behaviours of other
tourists.
In the study, it was revealed that helpful behaviour, which is one of the considerate
behaviours of other tourists in both direct and indirect interactions, is a situation that
leads to tourist satisfaction. This was consistent with previous studies. For example,
Grove and Fisk (1997: 73-74) found that helpful behaviours (e.g., enabling children
to see an attraction clearly or facilitating efforts to maneuver a stroller or wheelchair,
etc.), benevolent acts (e.g., helping with children’s attention, finding lost bags,
returning abandoned wallets and pens, helping with wheelchairs or strollers, taking
photos, etc.), and friendly incidents (e.g., being hospitable or amiable, etc.) lead to
customer satisfaction. Likewise, other authors stated that gregarious behaviours, and
protocol and sociable behaviours (e.g., handshakes, personal introduction, begin a
conversation, asking about the wellbeing of family, congratulating on making a good
selection, being more interested in socializing, keeping the door open, etc.) lead
to customer satisfaction (Martin, 1996: 153-166; Wu, 2007: 1518-1522; Wu, 2008:
1507-1510).
It was revealed that disturbing incidents within the direct interactions originated
from inconsiderate and rude behaviours and hostile behaviours of other tourists. In
previous studies, it was found that other customers’ hostile attitudes such as being
distant, impersonal and arrogant (Grove & Fisk, 1997: 74), dirty and ethnic jokes
(Martin, 1996: 153-166; Wu, 2007: 1522; Wu, 2008: 1507), verbal and physical
abuse (Bitner, 1994: 97-100; Huang, 2008: 527), cursing (Grove & Fisk, 1997:
73; Huang, 2008: 527), the pushing and shoving (Grove & Fisk, 1997: 72) lead to
customer dissatisfaction. Likewise, the guides have also confirmed that behaviours of
other tourists such as being late, discriminating, pushing/bumping and cursing lead to
tourist dissatisfaction or disturbance.
It has been revealed that satisfying or disturbing incidents within the indirect
interactions originated from the other tourists’ behaviours and appearances. The
satisfying incidents within the indirect interactions are caused by considerate
behaviours of other tourists (e.g., respecting people, wearing suitable clothes to
the county culture, helping people, etc.). It has been found that disturbing incidents
188
within the indirect interactions are caused by other tourists’ inconsiderate and rude
behaviours, offensive behaviours, illegal and prohibited behaviours and disgusting
behaviours. Similarly, in previous studies, it has been found that disturbing the
order, making noise, drunkenness, unsupervised children, cursing, angry actions like
kicking and hitting, smoking, quarrelling, complaining, smelling bad, and wearing
dirty clothes caused the customer’ dissatisfaction (Grove & Fisk, 1997: 71-78; Huang,
2008: 527; Martin, 1996: 153-166; Wu, 2007: 1522-1527; Wu, 2008:1507-1511).
In the findings obtained from the guides, it has been approved that making noise,
cutting the line, not controlling children, taking photos in public places, constantly
taking photos in the environment, littering, cursing, complaining, not wearing
clothes suitable to culture and environment and smelling bad lead to customer’s
dissatisfaction. In addition, it was revealed that not wearing shoes caused tourists’
disturbance, and it was concluded that it was one of the incidents that would take
place among the disgusting behaviours.
Indirect interactions that occurred as a result of the observation of other tourists

and tourists’ satisfaction and disturbance that occurred due to these interactions can
be explained by social influence theory and social facilitation theories. According
to social influence theory, other people affect an individual behaviorally and
emotionally. This social impact can happen through many “social forces”: (1) the
number of other people (others), (2) temporal and spatial distance with others, and
(3) the importance of other people (Kwon et al., 2016: 305). Social facilitation theory
states that physical and cognitive performance is improved or impaired when an
individual is being observed (Ahmad, 2016: 81). Social facilitation theory suggests
that the presence of others will affect human behaviour (Kim & Choi, 2016: 387).
From this perspective, tourists have an interaction with other tourists who share
the same physical environment (surroundings) with them due to spatial proximity,
and they feel satisfaction or disturbance by observing other tourists’ behaviour and
appearance. The presence of other tourists in the environment can cause tourists’
satisfaction and disturbance and leads to positive and negative effects on their
experiences.
Recommendations
Interactions between tourists can in general affect the service experience of tourists
and their subsequent behavioural intentions. This situation is very important in terms
of both the companies and the destination of delivering service. Uncomfortable
behaviour of other tourists can cause negative behavioural intentions such as
decreased tourists loyalty to the company, and negative word of mouth as they are
dissatisfied with the service. However, if tourists are satisfied with the behaviour
of other tourists, the opposite may be the case. Therefore, tourism researchers and
189
practitioners need to understand the nature of interactions by focusing more on T2T

interactions and develop practices in this direction.
Considerate, friendly, hostile, inconsiderate and rude, illegal and prohibited,

offensive, and disgusting behaviours have a great impact on the satisfaction or
dissatisfaction of tourists in T2T interactions. Therefore, compatibility between
tourists plays an important role in tourist interactions.
Tourists in the service area may find themselves compatible with some tourists
or find incompatible with others and may be adversely affected by the behaviours
of incompatible tourists. Therefore, tourism managers should act as police officers
about other tourists’ issues and warn customers about the rules of the settings.
In addition, the groups of tourists that are compatible with each other should be
brought together and that are incompatible with each other should be prevented from
coming together. (e.g., families with children-families without children, smokers-
non-smokers, etc.). The physical environment can be used to encourage compatible
groups of tourists to interact with each other. For example, smokers and non-smokers
in the service environment can be kept in separate spaces. Similarly, families with
children and children can be placed in separate places so that families without children
cannot be disturbed by children’s voices. Therefore, the physical environment should
be organized in such a way that it allows positive interaction between tourists.
In the direct interactions between tourists, disturbances caused by situations such

as prejudice and discrimination are especially important. Tourists should be warned
of cultural differences and sensitivities in order to avoid situations, such as prejudice
and discrimination and to prevent conflicts.
In interactions between tourists, the dressing of other tourists in accordance with the
environment and country culture, their general appearance and their behaviour in the
environment have a great effect on the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the tourist.
Therefore, in order to eliminate the problems arising from such situations, tourists
should be informed about the culture, norms, customs and traditions of the countries
where they go to or the general rules of the environment. In addition, some codes
of behaviour specific to the environment should be identified and communicated to
them (e.g., dress code, smoking, alcohol consumption and noise level, etc.).
Personnel working in the tourism industry should be trained and motivated to

prevent conflicts between tourists. Service personnel should be encouraged to
establish positive encounters between tourists. Personnel should be informed of
interactions taking place between tourists and educated about when to interfere with
interactions between tourists. Problematic tourist types should be identified, and
tourists should be intervened during the service.
190
Limitations and future research

In future studies, the types of interactions that occur between tourists can be
measured, and a scale can be developed regarding the interactions between tourists.
For future studies, by using the findings of this study, the proposed interaction
elements and typologies can be measured quantitatively and contribute to areas
such as market segmentation, product quality, and physical environment design. For
example, destination management organizations can design their destination and
brand images according to their target audience, taking into account the findings of
this study.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank firstly my advisor Assoc. Prof. Gurel Cetin, and also Prof. Dr. Fusun Istanbullu
Dincer, Prof. Dr. Orhan Akova, Prof. Dr. Derman Kucukaltan Prof. Dr. Oguz Turkay for their valuable contribution to this
publication.
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DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.967896
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Thermal Environments and Visitor Attendance in Zoological Parks:

Observations in A Humid Continental Climate
David R. Perkins1
Abstract
This paper reviews associations between weather and visitor attendance at two climatically similar zoological parks. This
is achieved by examining weather, climate, and attendance data at the Indianapolis and St. Louis zoological parks over
a period of approximately one decade. The methodological approach utilizes tourism climatology as the foundation for
information gathering, display, and analysis of results. Peak days of attendance at both zoos coincide with ‘warm’ and
‘slightly’ warm days. Regarding the lowest attendances, visitors at both locations appear to display more aversion to cold
thermal stress conditions than hot thermal stress conditions, however visitors at St. Louis Zoo appear to be more averse
to cold conditions. Discussions regarding how social calendars and admission pricing may interact with this relationship
are introduced.
Keywords
Weather, Physiologically Equivalent Temperature, Zoological Park, Tourism, Pricing, Climate
1 Correspondence to: David R. Perkins (Asst. Prof.), Missouri State University, Geography Faculty, Department of Geography, Geology and
Planning, Springfield, USA. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID:0000-0001-9380-0565
To cite this article: Perkins, D. (2021). Thermal Environments and Visitor Attendance in Zoological Parks: Observations in A Humid
Continental Climate. Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 195-225. https://doi.org/10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.967896
Introduction
Many authors have indicated that in order to better understand how future climate
change scenarios may broadly impact human behavior, society must first better
understand how people access and interpret weather and climate conditions in the
present. A better understanding of how tourism-sector participants currently behave
during specific weather conditions and events can establish a stronger foundation by
which research can forecast future behavior patterns (Rutty and Andrey, 2014; Kent
and Sheridan, 2011; Nicholls et al., 2008; Scott and Jones, 2006; Scott et al., 2012;
Hewer et. al., 2015).
Focusing on the short-term foundation of weather and tourism, this paper

reviews how varied weather conditions may impact tourist behavior by considering
the largely outdoor-oriented economic sector of Tourism, Recreation, and Leisure
(TRL). Specifically, the focus of this paper is on a segment of the tourism sector
that encompasses zoological parks and aquariums. This sector contributed over $22.5
billion to the United States economy in 2016, supporting 208,000 jobs and attracting
195 million visitors, a total number of visitors in excess of all major U.S. sporting
events combined for the same time period (AZA, 2018). Mason (2000) has remarked
that zoos as tourist attractions remain under-researched, and Davey (2007) has stated
that zoo attendance patterns are in need of additional research. In recent years, this
type of research is beginning to take form as zoological parks are being examined
in detail regarding how present-day weather conditions and future climate change
scenarios might affect zoo visitor attendances over time (Rasilla Álvarez, & Crespo
Barquín, 2021; Aylen et al., 2014; Perkins, 2016; Perkins and Debbage, 2016; Hewer
and Gough, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c).
This paper reviews how the ambient thermal environment—assessed with Höppe’s
Physiologically Equivalent Temperature, (PET)—(Höppe, 1999), interfaces with
daily zoo visitor attendance by comparing two American Zoological Association
(AZA) accredited zoological parks in similar climate regimes: the Indianapolis and
St. Louis zoos. Analysis at these two zoological parks builds on the research findings
of Perkins and Debbage (2016) who examined the Phoenix and Atlanta zoos to better
understand how visitor attendances in differing geographic settings are impacted by
the ambient thermal environment as described by the Physiologically Equivalent
Temperature (PET).
In particular, reviewing Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos provides two new
important developments in the weather-attendance relationship observed by Perkins
and Debbage (2016). First, it provides using PET, an analysis of two zoos located
in colder climates than previously researched but using established and repeatable
methodologies. Second, because the Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos are located in
196
Perkins / Thermal Environments and Visitor Attendance in Zoological Parks: Observations in A Humid Continental Climate
similar climate regimes and are less than 250 miles apart, this paper assesses whether
zoos experiencing the same general climate have consistent weather-attendance
relationships.
Theoretical Background and Context
Thermal preferences in tourism

A key factor influencing tourist behavior is a tourist’s personal physical comfort
they experience when engaging in their chosen activity. In the event of climate
change, warmer conditions, among many other variants, (Melillo et al., 2014;
Pachauri et al., 2014) will likely change comfort levels which may, in turn, cause
tourists and recreationists to alter their activities, perform the same activities but in
different locations, or adapt to the conditions (Caldeira, 2018; Gomez-Martin, 2005).
For a better understanding of the thresholds and preferences tourists have regarding
the outdoor environment and the activities they engage in during their discretionary
leisure time, extensive research in the TRL sector has been performed that aimed to
determine the thermal conditions which are most preferred by tourists in outdoor
settings. Due to the wide range of activities engaged in by TRL participants, no single
universal thermal preference has been agreed upon; however, several activity-specific
ranges have been outlined in the literature which assist in better determining an
envelope of tourist/recreationist preference (Scott et al., 2012; Gössling et al., 2012).
As mentioned by de Freitas (1990), there are several weather-related parameters
that are important when examining the atmosphere a tourist will experience when
outdoors including rainfall, wind speed, and sunshine.
Table 1 is an update to the work of Scott et al. (2012) and outlines several studies
within the TRL sector which define ‘optimum’ weather conditions for tourism.
Excerpted from each study is the optimal temperature or temperature range for
tourism. To provide comparison, the ‘optimal temperatures’ cited in the literature
have been converted to the closest corresponding thermal category as specified by
Matzarakis and Mayer (1996). These thermal categories are displayed in the leftmost
procedural item of Figure 1 as nine categories defined by the American Society of
Heating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE, 2001 and 2004) with thresholds
refined by Matzarakis and Mayer (1996); the thresholds are specified with respect to
the derived Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) (Höppe, 1999).
The research surveyed in Table 1 used one of three distinct methods: ‘expert-based’
which defines its optimal temperatures based upon the author’s best determination,
‘observational’ which defines optimal weather and temperatures based on tourist travel
departure and/or attendance data, and ‘survey’ which makes its determinations using
both on-site and off-site climate preference surveys of tourists and recreationists. In
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Table 1
A summary review of the preferred thermal conditions of varying visitors within the tourism sector
Method Study Year Optimal Temperature C
ͦ Closest ASHRAE Category Tourism Segment Culture
Bsanceot 1978 25-33 Slighly Warm Warm General Global
Expert-Based
Mieczkowski 1985 20-27 Neutral Slightly Warm General Global
Maddison 2001 30,7 Warm General English
Lise and Tol 2002 21,8 Neutral Slightly Warm General French
Lise and Tol 2002 24,4 Slighly Warm General Italian
Observational Hamilton and Lau 2005 24 Slighly Warm General Germal

Hamilton et al. 2005 14 Slightly Cool General Global
Bigano et al. 2006 16,2 Slightly Cool General Glow
- Slightly Warm Warm Zoological Park SE USA
Perkins and Debbage 2016
- Slightly Warm Warm Zoological Park SW USA
Gomez-Martin 2006 22-28 Neutral Slightly Warm General Spanish
De Freitas et al. 2008 - Slightly Warm Warm Beach Canadian
23 Slightly Warm Urban Multicultural
21 Neutral Mountain Multicultural
Scott et al 2008 25 Slightly Warm Beach New Zealand
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27 Slightly Warm Beach Canadian
29 Warm Beach Swedish
27-32 Slightly Warm Warm Beach Multicultural
Rutty and Scott 2010
20-26 Neutral Slightly Warm Beach Multicultural
Survey
Wirth 2010 20-26 Neutral Slightly Warm Urban German
Moreno 2010 28 Slightly Warm Beach Western European
Lin 2010 21-23 Neutral Urban Taiwanese
<33 summer Warm
Hewer et al 2016 Nature park Canadian
<29 shoulder Slightly Warm
Hewer et al 2015 24-31 Slightly Warm Warm Nature park Canadian
Andrade et al. 2011 32-28 Slightly Warm Urban Portuguese
Rutty and Scott 2015 32-39 Warm Hot Beach Multicultural
Scott et al. 2016 23-25 Slightly Warm Urban Multicultural
Table 1, ‘tourism segment’ refers to the target tourist activity of those questioned.
‘General Tourism’ can largely be defined as sightseeing tourism or “slow steady
walking” (Mieczkowski, 1985). ‘Culture’ describes the origin of the people who were
either observed or surveyed to obtain the results.
While there is a large array of differing results, some key points emerge from an
overall survey of the findings in the literature (Table 1). First, those studies assessing
either a ‘global’ culture or a ‘general’ tourism segment indicate a wide range of
possibilities for ‘optimal’ thermal preferences. For example, Hamilton and Lau
(2005) and Bigano et al. (2006) utilized international tourist arrival data to determine
the thermal preferences of tourists; both resulted in the optimal thermal temperature
coinciding with the ‘slightly cool’ ASHRAE category. Conversely, Maddison (2001),
in a review of general tourism demand for travelers from the United Kingdom, found
an optimal temperature coinciding with the ‘warm’ ASHRAE category. Second,
the intent and likely activity of the vacationer appeared to modify the thermal
preferences (Gomez-Martin, 2005). Generally speaking, beach tourism appears to
have the warmest thermal preference and mountain tourism the coldest, with urban
tourism falling between these anchor points. Zoological park tourism (Perkins
and Debbage, 2016) most resembled results seen in ‘urban’ tourism; this finding
is expected given the metropolitan location of zoos in this research. Third, visitor
origin also influenced the optimal thermal assessment, and, in general, tourists had
a personal preference for conditions that were in higher contrast to the prevailing
climate of their home locations. Among beach vacationers, Scott et al. (2008) found
that Swedish respondents had a stated thermal preference (29°C) which was warmer
than both New Zealand (25°C) and Canadian (27°C) respondents. The role of culture
and thermal preference is discussed in detail by Lam et al., (2016) who emphasize
that there are fundamentally different preferences and sensations depending on the
nationality and culture of the visitor.
Weather and attendance at zoological parks

With these thermal comfort preferences in mind, a growing body of literature
assessing the impact of weather on attendance has emerged in recent years, however,
there is little consensus regarding the appropriate combination of weather variables
used in this type of analysis (Perkins and Debbage, 2016). De Freitas et al. (2008)
suggested the use of biometeorological variables such as the Physiologically
Equivalent Temperature (PET) to more accurately capture the physiological
conditions a person may experience. They concluded that this type of personalized
weather variable may provide a more concrete link to how tourists might react to the
outdoor thermal environment.
Following this suggestion, Perkins and Debbage (2016) focused on the relationship
between visitor attendance and coinciding ambient thermal conditions as measured
199
by PET-based thermal categories at the Phoenix and Atlanta zoos. In this research, it
was concluded, generally speaking, there could be a ‘universal thermal preference’
in the PET-based thermal categories of ‘slightly warm’ and ‘warm’ in both Phoenix
and Atlanta. The lowest attendances on record appeared to coincide with the most
common thermal extreme condition for each location where low attendance days in
Phoenix coincided with ‘very hot’ thermal conditions, while in Atlanta, the lowest
attendance days coincided with ‘very cold’ thermal conditions. Perkins and Debbage
(2016) concluded that overall attendance-weather relationships may be partially a
product of the climatology of the “extreme thermal” conditions (p. 13). For example,
visitor attendance at Phoenix Zoo appeared to indicate a greater amount of ‘heat
aversion’ than visitors in Atlanta. It was hypothesized that this occurred because
residents of Phoenix might be reacting to a possible “saturation point” (p. 10) where
they chose not to adapt to or tolerate the prevailing thermal extreme, particularly
regarding their discretionary leisure time; instead, they may have been employing
“short-term coping measures” (Hayden et al., 2011 p. 278).
Other studies assessing how weather impacts attendances at zoos have integrated a
different set of assessment variables to connect the ambient atmospheric environment
to zoo attendance. Aylen et al., (2014) assessed this impact at Chester Zoo in North
West England over a period of thirty three years, January 1978 to December 2010.
The weather variables assessed in this research were daily rainfall and temperature
and were controlled by taking into consideration other elements such as seasons,
holidays, response lags, special events, and social factors such as fuel shortages.
Overall, it was found that the relationship between temperature and visitation is non-
linear where 21°C served as the peak attendance threshold, with falling attendances
regarding both cooler and warmer temperatures. Rainfall impacted attendance by
discouraging attendance, but also by redistributing attendance as visitors tended to
arrive a day after weather improved. Overall, however, social factors and seasonal
trends were the overriding non-weather variable in these models.
Hewer and Gough (2016a) analyzed temperature, wind, and precipitation data
coupled with daily attendance data at Toronto Zoo and found a variety of nuances
in the relationship. For example, while temperature was the most influential variable
in their analysis, it varied based on the season indicating that the interpretation of
or response to temperature might be contextual rather than absolute. During the
shoulder season 26°C appeared to be a temperature threshold, however, in the peak
season this changed to 28°C. Among precipitation, they found that there was also a
nonlinear relationship as small amounts of precipitation less than 2mm would result
in a 50% reduction in attendance, while additional amounts of precipitation would
generally have little impact on further attendance decreases. Research by Hewer and
Gough (2016a, 2016b, 2016c) has also incorporated non-weather factors in predictive
200
models to better account for influential social aspects that likely modify a visitor’s
interpretation of the weather, or even overrides their consideration of the weather
such as holidays, day of week, off/peak/shoulder seasons and special events.
Methods
Climate data are displayed at each zoo within the context of the visitor/tourist
where the visitor is consuming an experience in the ambient environment and
therefore can be considered as ‘part’ and ‘subject to’ their environment. Therefore,
the weather conditions should have a direct impact on their behaviors. As a result,
a physiological atmospheric variable assessing the well-being of the tourist likely
contributes to whether they decide to spend time and money at a zoological park.
To assess the thermal physiological conditions the tourist was most likely
experiencing during their visit, the Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET)
was used. This variable choice was made following the suggestions of de Freitas
et al. (2008) and the methods of Ploner and Brandenburg (2003), Brandenburg and
Ploner (2002) and Perkins and Debbage (2016) because the PET represented a more
specified measure of ambient thermal conditions that a visitor may ‘feel’ during their
visit to the zoo. The thermal condition, though not entirely encapsulating the whole
of the weather condition, is seen as an important variable in tourism (Scott et al.,
2008) research and provides additional specificity frequently used in outdoor tourism
studies (Lin et al., 2009, 2009; Matzarakis and Mayer, 1996).
In this research, PET was used to ensure comparability with the Perkins and Debbage
(2016) findings at Phoenix and Atlanta zoos. Pantavou et al., (2018) however, explain
key differences between the PET and the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI)
(Blazejczyk, 2012), another commonly used thermal index in research. Applied
today, PET and UTCI are both used in outdoor thermal comfort research, (Rozbicka
and Rozbicki, 2020; Klock et al., 2019; Manavvi and Rajasekar, 2021; Baruti et al.,
2019) among others such as the Weather Suitability Index (WSI) (Anna et al., 2020)
and the Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) (Sharmin and Steemers, 2020). Notably, none
of these indices is agreed upon in exclusivity (Lenzholzer and Nikolopoulou, 2020)
and in some instances such indices may be further adapted (Wang et al., 2021; Talhi
et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2020) for application.
Weather data:
To calculate the PET, weather data at both zoos were obtained from the nearest
hourly-data National Weather Service (NWS) Automated Surface Observing
Systems (ASOS) station. The ASOS station used for Indianapolis Zoo is located
at Indianapolis International Airport 7.0 miles SW of the zoo; the weather station
201
used for St. Louis Zoo is located at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport 8.7 miles
NNW of the zoo. Ideally the weather data would be obtained on-site at each zoo as
there will inevitably be differences across space. Generally, while spatial variation
in the thermal component is slight over distances less than 10 miles (which have
limited topographic changes), the same assumptions cannot be made for precipitation
and wind data. Given the design elements of each zoo, it is likely that zoo visitors
experience increased shading at each location compared with the ASOS location.
Elnabawi and colleagues (2016) highlight in a park setting the shading benefits
during hot summer months but also emphasize decreased wind flow and evaporative
cooling from a dense canopy leading to some degree mixed results. Additionally, in
the winter, depending on the tree type (evergreen versus deciduous) shading may
occur to the discomfort of the visitor. With these limitations in mind, the authors of
this research surmise that although the weather stations are not located inside each
zoological park, they are close enough to assume that weather conditions occurring at
the weather stations represented a reasonable proxy for weather experienced at each
zoo, particularly for a study focused on the thermal condition.
Adapted from Perkins and Debbage (2016), Figure 1 describes the methodological
process where hourly weather data were converted to the derived PET values and
then assigned to a nine-point thermal sensation scale. This scale uses the European
standard established by Matzarakis and Mayer (1996). Overall, PET was calculated
every hour from 7am to 7pm using temperature, wind speed, sky cover, and relative
humidity, yielding thirteen data points per day. Of these thirteen data points, the
warmest and coldest thermal categories were selected to represent the daily high and
low PET-based thermal category values.
Figure 1: Methodological process of converting hourly weather data to a PET-based thermal category from
Perkins and Debbage (2016)
In previous research, Perkins (2012) determined that when compared with daily
average and daily low PET values, daily high PET value predicted visitor attendances
best. This is because the daily high PET represented thermal conditions when most
visitors were likely to be at the zoo. While not part of the PET calculation, this
research also utilizes several key climate variables in Indianapolis and St. Louis. To
capture the general climates, thirty-year climate normals from 1981 to 2010 were
used in the comparison (NOAA, 2014), additionally, using hourly ASOS station
202
rainfall measures, rainfall occurring during the open hours of each zoo is included in
a separate analysis.
Visitor data
Visitor attendance was calculated using daily attendance data collected from
September, 2001, to June, 2011, at each zoo. This time period was selected because
it represented a period where at each zoo there was no significant change in the array
of attractions or in the admission pricing structure. Both zoos are located in major
metropolitan areas and each zoo is positioned within the urban downtown area. The
visitor length-of-stay is comparable as the average visitor spends approximately three
to four hours per trip (Personal communication, 2015a, 2015b). Because visitors plan
to spend several hours outdoors when visiting, they most likely consider the daily
weather in their planning decisions. The Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos largely
attract day-trippers within the metropolitan areas of Indianapolis and St. Louis. For
example, at Indianapolis Zoo, 85% of the guests are from the state of Indiana (Personal
Communication, 2015c); at St. Louis Zoo 65% of guests are classified as ‘area residents’
from the local ten-county metropolitan area (Personal Communication, 2015d). Due
to the large percentage of visitors who are local and have less fixed schedules, it is
likely that visitor decisions may be more aligned with weather conditions than they
would in other outdoor tourist venues with larger shares of non-local visitors. This
logic is supported by findings from Nicholls et al. (2008) and Hewer et al. (2017,
2018) who observed that tourists who traveled longer distances were more sensitive
to weather conditions than those tourists who were more proximate to the tourism
location. These relationships can be complicated however because it should also be
noted that there is a possibility that visitors from outside the immediate areas (15%
Indianapolis; 45% St. Louis) could, instead, be less sensitive to the weather due to
fixed vacation schedules. Such tourists who are non-local can contribute to lower
correlations between expected attendances and the weather. In fact, Rasilla Alvarez
and Crespo Barquin (2021) found in a zoo in Northern Spain that the “sensitivity of
zoo visitation to weather variability was seasonally dependent” and less sensitivity
was seen in summer months, indicating that varying socio-economic factors interact
with the impact of the weather. Regarding populations, both zoos are located in large
metropolitan areas with similar populations. The Indianapolis Combined Statistical
Area (CSA) contained approximately 2.1 million residents; the St. Louis CSA had
2.9 million residents in 2012 (U.S. Census, 2012).
Data analysis:
The seasons as defined in this study consist of a ‘high season’ (May, June, July),
a ‘shoulder season’ (March, April, August, September, October), and a ‘low season’
(November, December, January, February) of attendance. ‘Seasonal’ divisions were
made with respect to both zoological parks and their attendance records.
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Seasonal analysis does not capture the entire social calendar of availability.
Because of this, within each of these seasons, days were subsequently divided into
weekends and weekdays. Weekends consisted of Saturdays and Sundays, weekdays
consisted of Mondays through Fridays. This distinction was based on the belief that
potential attendees would have more time availability on weekends and therefore
this time availability might have an influencing factor on their attendance despite the
weather conditions.
Pursuant to Perkins and Debbage (2016), attendances were subsequently grouped

within each season and for weekend/weekday, and grouped accordingly into four
statistically-based attendance categories called Attendance Day Typologies (ADTs):
· Poor attendance days: daily visitor attendance less than one standard
deviation below the mean daily attendance
· Average attendance days: within one standard deviation of the mean daily
attendance
· Good attendance days: between one and two standard deviations above the
overall daily attendance mean
· Excellent attendance days: attendance more than two standard deviations

above the daily attendance mean
The imbalanced nature of these groupings is purposeful. Two ADT categories

exist above the ‘average’ category with only one ADT category below the ‘average’
category. This is because high attendance days’ have a “disproportionate impact
on overall attendance” (Perkins and Debbage, 2016 p.5). For example, though
attendances at the Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos fell within the ‘good’ and ‘excellent’
categories an average of only one day out of every seven (14.3%), the total visitor
attendance for these two ADTs accounted for an average of 43.5% of the total yearly
visitor attendance. Additionally, attendance groupings were made in their respective
isolated groups to account for predicable social constructs (day of week and month)
where a ‘poor’ attendance on a high season weekend might actually be higher than an
‘excellent’ attendance on a low season weekday. This was done in order to determine
if certain weather fluctuations in the context of the social calendar might have an
impact on attendance. Without these distinctions, the impact of weather has the
potential to be conflated with differences in the day of the week or month, decreasing
the reliability of results.
Dividing good and excellent attendances within small categories such as ‘weekends’
unfortunately decreased the number of observations to where the statistical reliability
of any meaningful results was compromised. As a result, a ‘top attendances’ category
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was created that encompassed the top two standard deviations of attendances (‘good
and ‘excellent’) for a given season and weekend/weekday. Doing so yielded more
observations while still capturing the research intent of a ‘top attendances’ variable.
Results
Overview of attendances
From September 2001 to June 2011 Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos attracted a total
combined attendance of over 39 million visitors. During this period, Indianapolis Zoo
averaged approximately one million visitors per year while St. Louis Zoo attracted
over 2.9 million visitors on an annual basis. An Independent t-test was conducted,
and overall, there is a significant difference between attendance at the IND and STL
zoos (t(22) = 3.77, p = .001); MSTL = 254.58; MIND = 86.67), with STL having
significantly greater attendance than IND.
To provide further context for the attendance differences between Indianapolis and
St. Louis zoos, Figure 2 illustrates the average monthly attendances at both zoos. What
is clear from this comparison is that while there are significant absolute differences
in attendance volumes, with respect to the seasonal pattern in visitation, these two
zoos are very similar. Particularly, the peak months of attendance at both zoos occur
from May through July with lower levels of attendance in the adjacent ‘shoulder
seasons’. The lowest attendance occurs during the winter months from November to
February in spite of various holidays, suggesting that the ambient thermal conditions
may contribute to these attendance patterns at both zoos.
To verify this, a Pearson correlation was conducted assessing the relationship

between IND and STL attendance by month. A significant positive relationship was
observed (r2 = .92, p < .001), indicating that the rank order of attendance was the
same for both zoos. To assess the curvilinear relationship between attendance and
months, two separate curve estimations were conducted, one for each of the zoos. For
both IND and STL zoos a significant quadratic function/correlation was observed;
for the STL zoo (r2 = .88; F(2,9) = 31.53, p < .001), for the IND zoo (r2 = .70; F(2,9)
= 10.51, p = .004). As can be seen there is a stronger curvilinear relationship in
attendance for STL vs that of IND. Additionally, the magnitude of increase from
January to June was greater for STL vs IND (b = 150 vs b = 59) and the magnitude
of decrease in attendance from June to December was greater for STL vs IND (b =
-12.12 vs b = -4.2).
Figure 2 also illustrates the average daily attendance by Attendance Day Typology
(ADT) of all days in the period of record and provides ratios indicating what
percentage of the attendance in St. Louis is matched by Indianapolis. For example,
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within the ‘poor’ ADT, average daily Indianapolis Zoo attendance only matches 7%
of the attendance at St. Louis Zoo; for the highest days of attendance in the ‘excellent’
ADT, the daily attendance in Indianapolis comprises only 39% of the attendance
in St. Louis. Most significant though, is the trend across ADT categories in the
Indianapolis to St. Louis ratios where a large drop is observed between the ‘average’
and ‘poor’ ADT categories. It is hypothesized that this sudden change in ratios may
be tied to the difference in admission fees between the two zoos. If admission pricing
is the reason behind this sudden change in ratio, it would indicate that for ‘poor’
days of attendance, the ‘free-admission’ policy of St. Louis Zoo could encourage
more people to attend because there is no substantial financial loss in the event poor
weather conditions shorten a visit. Conversely, this would also indicate that on ‘poor’
days of attendance, the $14 admission price at the Indianapolis Zoo may be higher
than most visitors are willing to pay, given the environmental conditions. Though not
conclusive here, understanding differences in weather conditions between ‘average’
and ‘poor’ days of attendance could better illustrate how visitors may value weather
conditions.
Figure 2: Attendance comparisons at Indianapolis and St. Louis Zoos 2001-2011
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Looking deeper at the results, Table 2 displays the attendance ‘seasons’ used in this
research and the relative differences across categories. These groupings are likely due
to both meteorological factors and the increased availability of school-aged children
during the traditional ‘summer vacation’ within the United States. The number of
days analyzed is not equal across seasons because months have been selected due to
their overall attendance patterns throughout the study. The shoulder seasons comprise
a period of falling attendance in the months of August, September, and October and a
period of increasing attendance in the months of March and April. While the moving
average trends are different within these two aspects of the shoulder season, the
average daily attendances within the increasing and decreasing portions of the shoulder
seasons were similar and did not necessitate a different seasonal analysis. Within all
seasons, the St. Louis Zoo has significantly higher attendances. Comparing weekend
and weekday average attendances within the high season, daily weekday attendances
comprise between 68% (STL) and 75% (IND) of weekend days. Differences in the
weekday to weekend ratios are observed more in the low and shoulder seasons where
weekday attendances are approximately half (between 45% and 52%) the magnitude
of weekend daily attendances. This is, again a likely product of the social calendar
and time availability during these months.
Table 2
Attendances at the St. Louis and Indianapolis Zoos
Season High Low Shoulder
MAR; APR; AUG; SEPT;
Months Represented MAY; JUN; JUL NOV; DEC; JAN; FEB
OCT
STL IND STL IND STL IND
Average Daily
14,272.89 5,255.14 2,923.03 999.30 8,646.57 2,805.19
Attendance
Total Attendance 12,688,597 4,671,822 3,452,098 1,045,272 12,961,206 4,202,171
Number of days 889 889 1,181 1,046 1,499 1,498
Average weekend 18,554.04 6,375.44 4,508.42 1,490.65 13,898.19 4,623.82
Average weekday 12,561.63 4,807.02 2,287.37 768.81 6,547.88 2,077.73
Weekday attendance
68% 75% 51% 52% 47% 45%
% of wknd
More detail is provided in Table 2 where attendances at the St. Louis Zoo are
significantly higher than those at the Indianapolis Zoo on a consistent basis. Table
2 shows the average daily attendances and the percentage of days occurring within
each thermal category within all six divisions of the tourism climatology representing
weekends and weekdays within the high, low, and shoulder seasons. The ratio
between the Indianapolis Zoo and St. Louis Zoo attendances is displayed for the
categories and varies between 38% and 32% indicating the fraction of visitors at the
Indianapolis Zoo as compared with the St. Louis Zoo during the same periods of
time. What is apparent from these representations is that there exists no meaningful
trend or impactful difference within these individual groupings indicating roughly the
same attendance patterns over the social calendar. Increases/decreases of attendances
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on weekends/weekdays or in the high/low season appear to be mimicked across zoos

at this level of analysis.
Overview of tourism climatology

Outlined in Table 3 are several key general climate variables in Indianapolis and
St. Louis. To capture the general climates, thirty-year climate normals from 1981 to
2010 were used in the comparison (NOAA, 2014). What is apparent from Figure 3,
is that both locations have similar climates; however, St. Louis, in general, is warmer
in both the warmest and coldest months. Further, St. Louis has more hot days above
32°C and fewer cold days when low temperatures drop below freezing. Precipitation
regimes between the locations are very similar both in their temporal distributions of
the wettest and driest months and in annual precipitation totals.
Table 3
Climate comparisons of Indianapolis and St. Louis
30 Year Climate Normals 1981-2010 Indianapolis St. Louis

July July
Warmest Conditions
24.1 C 31.7 C
January January
Coldest Conditions
-2.2 C 4.4 C
February January
Driest Conditions
58.9mm 61.0mm
May May
Wettest Conditions
128.3mm 119.9mm
Annual Precipitation 1,078mm 1,040mm
Days above 32 C 18 43
Days below 0 C 103 84
Koppen-Geiger Classification Dfa Dfa/Cfa
Figure 3 displays the percent share of daily PET-based thermal categories at

each zoo from September 2001 to June 2011. The categories in Figure 3 represent
the proportion of the number of days falling within a particular PET-based thermal
category where the day in question was represented by the warmest PET-based
thermal category occurring between 7am and 7pm. Table 3 and Figure 3 indicate
that Indianapolis and St. Louis have similar thermal profiles. In both locations, the
most frequently occurring thermal category was ‘very cold’ which occurred 30%
of the time in Indianapolis and 24% of the time in St. Louis. The two zoos are also
comparable regarding the more moderate thermal conditions. The proportion of days
falling within ‘warm’ through ‘cool’ thermal categories was 49% in Indianapolis and
48% in St. Louis. The difference is greatest between zoos in the thermal categories
representing the warmest conditions where ‘hot’ and ‘very hot’ thermal categories
combined represented only 13% of all the days in Indianapolis but 21% of the days
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in St. Louis. How these thermal regimes shape and influence daily visitor attendance
at each zoo during the study period is less clear.
Figure 3: Proportion of PET categories experienced by zoo
The tourism climatology derived for visitors for the St. Louis and Indianapolis
Zoos is displayed in Table 4. What is apparent in this table is there is little difference
between the zoological parks regardless of season or day-of-week. The largest
differences between the zoos emerge in the proportions of ‘very hot’ days in both the
weekend and weekdays of the high season where St. Louis Zoo visitors experience
13% and 14% greater incidences of this event than do the visitors at Indianapolis
Zoo. This corroborates climate normal data, highlighting that St. Louis is generally
a slightly warmer location than Indianapolis. The same phenomenon is observed in
low season weekends and weekdays where Indianapolis Zoo visitors experience 17%
and 8% more ‘very cold’ days than those in St. Louis. All other observations exhibit
differences of 8% or less in terms of the thermal category representation. Although
not analyzed in this research, precipitation was recorded for comparative purposes
to establish knowledge regarding the similar climates between zoos. As determined,
precipitation days (defined as greater than ‘trace’: .01in) are similar across zoos as
the maximum difference between the number of precipitation days is 6% occurrence
in the high season weekends and the low season weekdays.
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Table 4
Time Weekend Weekday Weekend Weekday Weekend Weekday
Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ-
Zoo
polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence
Very Cold 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 74% 58% 17% 72% 64% 8% 14% 10% 4% 12% 8% 4%
Cold 2% 1% 1% 1% 0% 1% 10% 18% -8% 14% 12% 1% 9% 7% 3% 8% 6% 2%
Cool 5% 4% 1% 3% 2% 1% 10% 10% 0% 9% 11% -3% 12% 11% 0% 12% 12% 1%
Slightly Cool 7% 5% 2% 7% 4% 3% 3% 8% -5% 4% 6% -2% 10% 11% 0% 13% 12% 1%
Neutral 12% 8% 4% 11% 9% 3% 1% 4% -2% 2% 4% -3% 12% 7% 4% 10% 12% -2%
Slightly Warm 19% 13% 7% 19% 14% 5% 1% 2% -1% 1% 2% -1% 14% 16% -1% 15% 14% 2%
Warm 26% 25% 0% 31% 24% 8% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 17% 17% 0% 16% 16% 1%
Hot 23% 25% -2% 24% 29% -6% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 9% 13% -4% 9% 14% -5%
Very Hot 6% 20% -13% 5% 19% -14% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 4% 8% -4% 3% 7% -4%
Precipitation Days 27% 21% 6% 28% 28% 0% 22% 18% 4% 24% 18% 6% 19% 18% 1% 23% 22% 1%
Average Daily
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6.375 18.551 4.807 12.562 1.491 4.508 769 2.287 4.624 13.898 2.078 6.548
Attendance
IND:STL Attendance
34% 38% 33% 34% 33% 32%
Ratio
Overview of attendances with respect to varying meteorological parameters

As a general overview, distribution of PET-based thermal categories based on
the percentage share of each Attendance Day Typology (ADT) for both zoos is also
illustrated in Figure 4. ADT categories in Figure 4 are based on the entirety of the
dataset and not sectioned by season or day-of-week in this overview. In Indianapolis
and St. Louis, respectively, 85% and 87% of the ‘poor’ ADT was comprised of days
that experienced ‘very cold’ thermal conditions. This finding indicates the possibility
of the ‘thermal aversion effect’ (Perkins and Debbage, 2016) where, specifically,
‘cold aversion’ may have influenced visitor attendance choices. For example, though
residents of Indianapolis and St. Louis are exposed to ’very cold’ thermal conditions
more than any other thermal category, this does not mean that zoo visitors have
adapted to these conditions or have developed elevated thermal tolerance levels. In
fact, because of the high shares of ‘very cold’ thermal conditions observed in the ‘poor’
days of attendance, quite the opposite trend appears to be happening. This suggests
that residents of both Indianapolis and St. Louis may have reacted to a possible
‘saturation point’ where zoo visitors displayed ‘extreme temperature aversion’
(Perkins and Debbage, 2016) and chose not to tolerate the prevailing cold extremes
with respect to their discretionary leisure time. This concept of a ‘saturation point’
or thermal threshold is further underlined with findings regarding the nonlinearity of
temperature-tourism relationships (Rossello and Santana-Gallego, 2014; Hewer et al,
2015; Hewer et al., 2016a; Aylen et al., 2014; Falk, 2014).
Peak representations of the highest days of attendance on record at the Indianapolis

Zoo are within the ‘slightly warm’ and ‘warm’ thermal categories, both of which
represented 27% of all the days within the ‘excellent’ ADT. By contrast, a clear
bias toward the ‘warm’ thermal regime was observed in St. Louis with respect to
the ‘excellent’ ADT where ‘warm’ days accounted for 33% of this ADT and their
percentage shares dropped to 19% within the ‘slightly warm’ thermal category. What
is apparent in the findings from the ‘excellent’ ADT is both zoos are very comparable
in terms of the thermal category generating the highest visitor attendances.
Regarding the ‘good’ ADT category, St. Louis Zoo showed a much higher
representation of ‘hot’ days and a slightly lower representation of ‘warm’ and
‘slightly warm’ days when compared with Indianapolis Zoo indicating that St. Louis
visitors, in general, may have preferred slightly warmer thermal regimes. Again, in
the ‘excellent’ ADT category, St. Louis Zoo visitors appeared to prefer warmer
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Figure 4: Overview of PET-based thermal categories and attendance
thermal regimes as Figure 3 indicates a higher representation of ‘hot’ and ‘warm’

days and a lower representation of ‘slightly warm’ and ‘neutral’ days than observed
at Indianapolis Zoo. Data seem to suggest that on peak attendance days St. Louis
Zoo visitors may have acclimatized to become more ‘heat tolerant’ than visitors to
Indianapolis Zoo.
Although physiological acclimatization may be occurring, what also could be

driving the warmer temperature preferences in St. Louis is free-admission pricing
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and schedule availability. For example, visitors to the St. Louis Zoo may visit
despite ‘hot’ thermal conditions, because, if it becomes too uncomfortable, they can
leave with limited financial repercussions. Conversely, at Indianapolis, while ‘hot’
thermal regimes do not severely decrease attendance, to some visitors, the ‘strong
heat stress’ in ‘hot’ thermal conditions may be too uncomfortable to justify paying a
non-refundable $14 admission, and, therefore, they do not attend, particularly in the
summer months which tend to have more ‘available’ days for typical zoo visitors.
Figure 5 shows the variance of the thermal PET categories with attendance within
each of the three established attendance ‘seasons’. Similar results were found within
each weekend/weekday grouping but are not included in Figure 5. Because this is a
PET thermal analysis, days with precipitation were purposefully excluded to remove
additional confounding variables. Table 5 does show however, the importance of
precipitation on attendance in that top attendance days had lower representations
of precipitation days than the climatology of the record. What is apparent overall in
Figure 5 is that there is a preference for slightly warm and warm conditions at both
zoos across all seasons. In the shoulder and high seasons, when conditions hotter than
‘warm’ occur, attendances begin to decrease at both zoos. Additionally, attendances
begin to decrease in the shoulder seasons when the thermal condition is cooler than
‘neutral’. This decrease is seen more gradually in Indianapolis where neutral thermal
conditions are peak conditions for attendance and more drastically in St. Louis
where neutral thermal conditions are detrimental. Conditions cooler than ‘neutral’
see declines in attendance at both zoos. In the low season where conditions hotter
than ‘slightly warm’ are rare, at both zoos the trend is positive where the warmer the
thermal condition is, generally the higher the attendances. The presence of outliers,
while not explained in this research do indicate that there are many other unaccounted
variables influencing attendances at the zoological parks that trump the influence of
the thermal conditions on attendance patterns. Overall, however, slightly warm and
warm days do tend to produce the highest levels of attendance in both averages and
outlier attendance increases.
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Figure 5: Thermal category and attendance thresholds by season
When comparing Table 4 and Table 5, the differences between the tourism
climatology for all days and that for the top attendances are subtle in both high and
shoulder seasons. In these seasons, though, there are increasing proportions of ‘warm’
and ‘slightly warm’ categories indicating their positive influence on attendance.
Within the high season, differences between climatology and top attendances in
the thermal category representations vary from 0% upwards to 18%, where the
maximum difference is on weekdays for the ‘hot’ thermal category. This difference
can be partially explained with the differences in climates between locations (St.
Louis slightly hotter) but also points to St. Louis potentially having a hotter thermal
preference than Indianapolis. Additionally, within shoulder seasons, when comparing
all attendances to top attendance days, differences vary from 0% to 13% where the
maximum difference is the increased incidence of ‘slightly warm’ days on shoulder
season weekends at Indianapolis Zoo. This result indicates a potential for visitor
preferences in the ‘slightly warm’ category. Overall, within the shoulder season,
the presence of days warmer than an ‘ideal’ thermal condition tends to have less of a
negative impact on top attendance days than presence of days cooler than an ‘ideal’
thermal category (Figure 6).
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Table 5
Time Weekend Weekday Weekend Weekday Weekend Weekday
Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ- Indiana- St. Differ-
Zoo
polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence polis Louis ence
Very Cold 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 64% 2% 62% 67% 20% 47% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Cold 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 6% 7% -2% 18% 15% 3% 0% 1% -1% 4% 0% 4%
Cool 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% -1% 15% 28% -13% 4% 21% -16% 9% 7% 1% 11% 4% 6%
Slightly Cool 0% 3% -3% 4% 2% 2% 8% 31% -24% 4% 16% -12% 3% 13% -10% 16% 11% 5%
Neutral 15% 15% 0% 16% 12% 4% 4% 19% -15% 5% 20% -15% 16% 10% 6% 16% 14% 2%
Slightly Warm 28% 18% 10% 24% 18% 6% 4% 11% -7% 2% 7% -6% 29% 16% 13% 21% 23% -2%
Warm 35% 43% -8% 40% 29% 11% 0% 2% -2% 0% 1% -1% 24% 26% -3% 11% 19% -8%
Hot 20% 23% -3% 16% 34% -18% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 12% 15% -3% 13% 25% -12%
Very Hot 3% 0% 3% 1% 5% -4% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7% 10% -3% 9% 4% 5%
Average Daily
10.547 26.726 39% 7.991 19.627 41% 4.952 12.378 40% 3.130 6.365 49% 9.634 25.129 38% 5.617 14.501 39%
Attendance
Precipitation
215
5% 13% 10% 8% 8% 4% 8% 8% 6% 0% 7% 9%
Days
Figure 6: Comparison of shoulder-season top attendance relationships
Comparing differences across zoological parks in Table 5, the highest contrast in

top attendance days occurs within the low season where a difference between zoos
occurs in nearly every represented PET thermal category. This change is anomalous
to other seasons and is displayed in Table 5. Within low season weekdays at the St.
Louis Zoo, climatology indicates 64% of days represented as ‘very cold’ however,
within top attendances, only 20% of days are ‘very cold’ (Figure 6). This result is
perpetuated at this location as while ‘neutral’ days represent only 4% of all days,
they represent 20% of top attendance days. Although this trend is present at the
Indianapolis Zoo as well, within low-season weekend days, the differences are much
less stark as very cold days represent 72% of climatology and 67% of top attendance
days, and neutral days represent 2% of climatology and 5% of top attendance days.
The same results are apparent for weekends with equivalent and drastic differences.
Very cold days represent 58% of low-season weekends at the St. Louis Zoo but only
2% of the top attendance days in the same period; neutral days represent only 4% of
days but 19% of top attendance days. Again, at Indianapolis Zoo, while the trends
are similar, the vast differences are not present. This result indicates a sensitivity
visitors in St. Louis may have with respect to cold days. Although it might make
sense to be explained conversely that visitors in St. Louis may possess affinity for
warmer days within the low season, this conclusion is not verified by Figure 5 and
the representation of attendances across thermal categories.
216
Figure 7: Comparison of low-season top attendance relationships
Conclusions and Future Direction

This paper has outlined research which addressed both long-term climate
implications on tourism and the short-term impact weather has on tourism participants.
This research largely began as a response to the suggestions of Nicholls et al. (2008),
Scott and Jones (2006), Scott et al. (2012), and Perkins and Debbage (2016), all of
whom suggested that before undertaking significant research on the implications of
climate change in the tourism industry, we must first better understand how different
weather and climate factors impact tourists.
Specific findings of this research provide a broader geographic context to

the original work of Perkins and Debbage (2016) and help provide foundational
information regarding human thermal preferences and how those preferences may
vary across diverse climates within the broader tourism sector. For example, although
Indianapolis and St. Louis zoological parks are within different climate zones than
Phoenix and Atlanta zoos (Perkins and Debbage, 2016), it was found that top
attendances at both the Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos corroborated results across
climate zones and within the humid continental climate. Thermal categories ‘slightly
warm’ and ‘warm’ seem to be universally preferred with only small differences
between the zoos. This is a consistent finding with other literature as evidenced
in Table 1. The thermal preference for ‘warm’ and ‘slightly warm’ conditions was
consistent across all seasons and days of the week.
Among those thermal conditions most associated with ‘poor’ levels of attendance,
this research also confirmed findings from the original Perkins and Debbage (2016)
217
research which concluded that the most common thermal extreme condition at a
location tends to be associated with the lowest visitor attendances on record, resulting
in an ‘extreme temperature aversion’. This phenomenon is underscored in broader
literature which discusses thermal aversion (Gomez-Martin, 2005; Olya and Alipour,
2015). Additionally, Caldeira and Kastenholz (2018) establish that tourists enjoy
visiting places which provide the “highest level of comfort and well-being” and
“tourist activities…are significantly influenced by the weather.” (P.1533). Given the
humid continental climates, both Indianapolis and St. Louis zoos experienced ‘very
cold’ conditions in greater frequency than ‘very hot’ days and appeared to experience
‘cold aversion’ on the lowest days of attendance. In addition, it was found at the St.
Louis Zoo during the ‘low’ season with corresponding ‘very cold’ thermal conditions,
attendances appeared to suffer more than in Indianapolis. Both zoological parks had
holiday events and promotions during this time period; however, the attendances
still were proportionally lower at the St. Louis Zoo. The author believes this may
indicate a higher degree of cold thermal aversion at St. Louis. Given the similar
climates of each zoo such aversion may be generated less by acclimatization and
more by the different pricing structures between the zoos. In short, the free admission
of the St. Louis Zoo might decrease personal investment in a visit and therefore
depress turnouts on days of ‘poor’ thermal conditions. This finding should be further
developed and analyzed in future research, particularly if it can be better explained
by the pricing structure of admission.
Future research incorporating metropolitan zoos in more diverse climates would be

excellent tests to determine if local climates continue to influence ‘poor’ attendance
days and whether a ‘universal optimal thermal condition’ continues to persist
regarding the highest days of attendance. Knowledge of ‘thresholds’ would also be
beneficial for understanding ‘trigger points’ in the ambient thermal environment that
may significantly influence attendances in a non-linear manner. Such methods as
utilized by Aylen (2014) and Hewer et al. (2016) help determine climate preferences.
A limitation to this research in this area is that the climates of Indianapolis and St.
Louis, while similar, are not identical and patrons experience differing thermal
conditions throughout the year. Though the comparison is more direct than Phoenix
and Atlanta (Perkins and Debbage, 2016), this lack of complete comparability
decreases the ability for assumptions to be made about ‘general’ zoo visitors and
their like interpretations of the weather conditions. Without direct surveys of those
visitors, only inferences can be made based on attendance flow patterns.
When creating a fine-tuned analysis of weather-based decision-making, future

research in this field should account for the possibility that weather conditions have
differing levels of impact based on demographic variables (Hewer et. al., 2018) and
timing of visitor arrivals based on weekends and holidays (Aylen et al., 2014; Falk,
218
2015; Hewer & Gough, 2018). While the Western European standard was used to
craft the thermal bands in this study, (a reasonable proxy for the typical zoo visitors
of Indianapolis and St. Louis) in order to properly utilize thermal categories the
categories should be calibrated using survey-based data to encompass the actual on-
site culture and acclimatization preferences of the ‘typical’ zoo visitor. Furthermore,
weather conditions that occur anomalously such as a ‘warm winter day’ or a ‘cool
summer day’ are undoubtedly important to better understand tourist attendance
decisions. As such, a synoptic-level weather variable such as the Spatial Synoptic
Classification (SSC) (Kalkstein et al., 1996; Sheridan, 2002) might be of note for
the future development of weather-attendance indices. The SSC serves as a broader
weather-type classification that captures the character of a particular synoptic regime
(Sheridan, 2002) and has been used in diverse research areas such as weather climate
and health (Hondula, 2014) and zoological park attendances (Perkins, 2016).
Notably, inclusion of precipitation and the subsequent length and nature of such
events is an important factor in analyzing tourist behavior. Precipitation can serve
as an ‘overriding’ factor because once a certain amount of rainfall does occur,
attendance levels tend to drop. Though not analyzed in-depth it was apparent in this
study that top attendance days tended to experience fewer days of precipitation as
a percentage. Scott et al. (2008) has incorporated this idea among others such as
atmospheric aesthetics into the Climate Index for Tourism (CIT), which still serves
as a baseline for a more comprehensive overview of the ambient weather condition
at a tourist site (de Freitas et al., 2008). Within tourism, along with aesthetic factors,
integrating elements that consider perception in thermal experience (Lenzholzer and
de Vries, 2020; Cortesao and Raaphorst, 2020) have also become more prevalent in
recent years.
Beyond the inclusion of additional weather variables, understanding how

weather forecasts may shape attendance decisions (regardless of the actual weather
conditions) is of importance. Katz and Murphy (1997) write in-depth regarding how
weather and climate forecasts can shape decisions and subsequently local economies.
Furthermore, additional research within the tourism sector (Wilson, 2011; Zirulia,
2015; Rutty and Andrey, 2014) shows that tourists and recreationists do utilize
weather forecasts in their decision-making and are influenced by those forecasts in
their participation decisions.
Upgrades to the technical methodologies of this research are necessary to fully

realize the relationships between weather and attendance. Specifically, the use of
sophisticated statistical modeling such as time series analysis can help with the
interpretation of datasets with comparable decade-long temporality. Such advanced
regression techniques have been utilized in previous research in tourism (Brida and
219
Pulina, 2010) such as those accounting for annual volatility using ARCH-GARCH
(Jere et al., 2019; Coşkun and Özer, 2014) or others reviewing decision lags using
ARDL methods (Falk and Lin, 2018). Furthermore, Paudyal et al., (2019) created a
time-series model to analyze how varying aspects of weather such as temperature,
humidity and rainfall impact recreationist use in the context of a humid subtropical
climate by analyzing the Florida National Scenic Trail. Expanding such a study to the
humid continental climate observed in Indianapolis and St. Louis would prove added
context to understanding potential differences across climate zones.
Moreover, this paper suggested that admission pricing may have an impact on
how people interpret and/or value the weather. It should be noted that the timing of
extreme weather events, holidays (Hewer & Gough, 2016a), special zoo attractions
and new exhibits (Hewer & Gough 2016c) may also influence visitor interpretation,
thereby changing possible price elasticities and the relationship with admission
pricing (Falk & Hagsten, 2016; Falk & Vieru, 2017; Cellini and Cuccia, 2018). To test
this hypothesis in increased detail, other metropolitan zoos that offer free-admission,
such as Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois or Como Zoo in Saint Paul, Minnesota,
could be useful case-studies when studying the interface of price, attendance, and
weather.
Better understanding how tourists and recreationalists behave today in response

to weather will give insights into how they may also respond to a changing climate.
Zoological parks can use this information to determine a variety of elements to help
improve operational efficiency. For example, understanding the impact of weather
can induce a better prediction of attendances, subsequently assisting in adjusting
staffing levels. Understanding how price may moderate weather-induced attendance
fluctuations can help zoos utilize promotions to facilitate increased attendance on
‘marginal weather days.’ Projecting how future climate change may impact long-
term attendance levels can assist with adjusting exhibit or building design (Salata
et al., 2017) in the context of thermal comfort (Santos Nouri et. al., 2018). Beyond
zoological parks, this type of information—linking attendances and weather—can
potentially be used by communities and businesses in other outdoor areas of the
tourism sector. Such areas include sporting events, concerts, and festivals. Beyond
immediate events, a better understanding of how thermal conditions impact choice
and participation can integrate with longer-term planning such as in urban design
characteristics to assist with better-informed policy and planning decisions.

“The author would like to thank Dr. Keith G. Debbage for his research guidance and kind support throughout the development
of this paper. Additional appreciation is noted for technical statistical assistance provided by the RStats Institute at Missouri
State University.”
220
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DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.1000584
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Analyses of the Tourism Potentials of Dala Hill, Kano Metropolis:

Protecting Heritage Properties and Promoting Sustainable Tourism
Hafeez Idowu Agbabiaka1 , Aliyu Salisu Barau2 , Omotayo Ben Olugbamila3 , Said Shehu Ibrahim4
Abstract
The relationship between human and the Built environments in its complex nature evolved series of consequences
as loss of heritage properties through decay, natural hazard, human factors in the modern society. Hence, this study
analyzed the heritage tourism potentials of Dala Hill, Kano Metropolis, Nigeria. Both qualitative and quantitative data
was collected through detailed inventory and profiling of the site and questionnaire administration on two categories of
respondents (above 60years (Aged) and Between 18 – 59years (Agile)) within 300meters vicinity to the site. Therefore,
45 (Aged) people were selected using snowballing sampling procedure, and 262 (Agile) respondents were surveyed
using systematic sampling procedure. Findings revealed that Dala hill is faced with the threats of neglect, decay and
deterioration induced through weathering and human activities. It has poor sanitary conditions, open defecation,
waste disposal, poor accessibility, and is an abode for hoodlums. However, resident perceived the site to generate more
economic (RPI = 3.38) and sociocultural (RPI = 3.27) importance, and moderate environmental (RPI = 3.18) importance in
the study area if necessary, attention, restoration and transformation plan are designed and implemented.
Keywords
Dala Hill, Heritage Properties, Tourism Potentials, Tourism Sustainability, SDGs, and Conservation
1 Correspondence to: Hafeez Idowu Agbabiaka, Bayero University, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Urban
and Regional Planning, Kano, Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0003-4872-7105
2 Aliyu Salisu Barau (Assoc. Prof), Bayero University, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Urban and Regional
Planning, Kano, Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-1259-3929
3 Omotayo Ben Olugbamila, Obafemi Awolowo University, Faculty of Environmental Design and Management, Department of Urban and
Regional Planning, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-5641-9917
4 Said Shehu Ibrahim, Bayero University, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Kano,
Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-5219-014X
To cite this article: Agbabiaka, H. I., Barau, A. S., Olugbamila, O. B., & Ibrahim, S. S. (2021). Analyses of the Tourism Potentials of Dala Hill,
Kano Metropolis: Protecting Heritage Properties and Promoting Sustainable Tourism. Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 227-239.
Introduction
Protecting cultural and natural heritage has significant impact on the quality of
life of the people as well as enhancing the economic situation of the environment
(Di-Pietro, Guglielmetti, Mattia, and Renzi, 2015). Cultural heritage is a valuable
and irreplaceable body of knowledge and resources that promote economic growth,
employment, and social cohesion (Vecco, 2010). The loss of heritage properties
because of decay, natural hazard (earthquake and floods), human factor (theft,
war, civil disorder, terrorism, neglect, and vandalism) is inevitable in the modern
society (Teijgeler, 2006; Adamo, 2017, Vecco, 2017, and Vecco, 2018). Hence, This
study aimed at providing information, shed light and enhances the reflection on the
implication and impacts of neglect and flood weathering of heritage values of Dala
Hill in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8.9 and 11.4 that placed
emphasizes on protection and safeguarding of heritage, and promote sustainable
tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products (Xiao, Mills, Guidi,
Rodríguez-Gonzálvez, Barsanti, and González-Aguilera, 2018).
Development of a sustainability index of cultural heritage have been the focus

of limited articles such as (Ribeiro, Lira, Piccolo, Pontual, 2012; Villase, Alonso,
Magar, 2012; Mendes, Similä, 2012; and Nocca, 2017), whereas most authors placed
attention on the relationship between sustainability and cultural heritage tourism
(Landorf, 2009). The World Tourism Organization (WTO) have defined sustainable
indicators as ‘the set of measures that provide the necessary information to better
understand the links between the impact of tourism on the cultural and natural setting
in which this takes place (World Tourism Organization, 1996; and Nocca, 2017). WTO
created guidelines for sustainable development of cultural tourism, these guidelines
was grouped into three dimensions such as social, economic, and environmental
(World Tourism Organization, 1996). Considering these dimensions, the potential
of the subject matter “Dala Hill” is holistically examined. The present study aimed
to explore the implications and effects of neglect on cultural heritage property “Dala
Hill” in Kano metropolis, Nigeria, focusing on the targets of sustainable development
goals (SDGs) 11 which states that cities should become ‘inclusive, safe, resilient
and sustainable’, through ‘inclusive and sustainable urbanization, planning and
management’ (Target 11.3) and efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s Cultural
and natural heritage’ (Target 11.4). This target is to protect and safeguard cultural
heritage.
Theoretical Underpinning: Conservation theory (CT) and Dala Hill

Considering the theme of the study, conservation theory was found important in
explaining the subject matter. Conservation Theory is a socially constructed activity
that interacts with and is governed by economic, political, spiritual, religious, social,
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Agbabiaka, Barau, Olugbamila, Ibrahim / Analyses of the Tourism Potentials of Dala Hill, Kano Metropolis: Protecting...
and cultural dynamics in preserving the subject matter. This theory explains the
changes in transformation process, from the materials of heritage objects to the values
that cultural heritage holds for people through the three principles of materials‐based,
values‐based, and peoples‐based; taking cognizance of the external influences (social,
political, technical, and economic). The theory turned away from the usual practice of
preserving heritage, to a mechanism for the creation and re-creation of culture (Sully,
2013; Sully 2007). Going by the principles, materials-based principles explained the
minimum treatment required to stabilize the subject matter, for instance, Dala hill as a
heritage property is gradually deteriorating and weathering away through weather and
climate action. This required social, political, technical, and economic intervention to
aid its stability and restoration. The intervention should also be minimal to maintain,
retain, and enhance the cultural significance of the hill. Lastly, this theory placed
emphasis on the members of the host communities, in this regard the aspiration of the
people residing in the community housing the subject matter were considered in the
restoration process.
Dala Hill: The History / Myth, and State of Art
History and Myth

The Hausa Kingdom of Kano was based on an ancient settlement of Dala Hill
surround by Dogon Nama, Bakin Ruwa, Adakawa, Yalwa, Kantudu, Kabuwaya,
Gwammaja and Madigawa among other settlements. The residual hill is 534 meters
(1,753 feet) high with a circumference of 788 meters, covering a land mass of 289,892
meters (Iliffe, 2007) as shown in Figure 1. There are steps on the hill which has 999
footsteps that aids ascending to the hill top (Adebayo, 2015). The site was the major
source of iron ore, thus attracting skilled craftsmen to mine, smelt and forge iron as
a basic economic and social activities to aid development during the seventh century
(Nast, 2005). Mythically Dala hill served as abode for the deity of Tsumburbura and
her priest Barbushe, who protected the people around the hill from their enemies.
The State of the Art

Dala hill, is a significant landmark and heritage tourism property in Kano, Nigeria.
Despite its historical evolution and importance, it is in a state of fiascoes, facing
both natural and human induced threats. Over the years, the hill has been affected
by weathering (see figure 1 and 2), a situation that strengthen erosion to gradually
wash away parts of the hill, reducing the surface area and creation of gullies around
the hill. On the other hand, the hill has suffered serious encroachment from the locals
in numerous ways, which includes the building of houses, dumping of refuse, open
defecation on and around the hill, lack of management and maintenance leading to
dilapidation of stairs, and the fence (see figure 1). Presently, the site serves as a
229
desolate center that attracts out of school children, hoodlums, and criminals for moral
and immoral activities; instead of its normal attraction components that generate
economic activities in the locality.
Figure 1. Dala Hill in its Present State
Figure 2. Aerial view of the subject matter and its environs
230
Research Methods
The prospect and retrospective study is based on qualitative and quantitative
research design. Considering the theoretical underpinning (Conservation theory),
qualitative data was collected under the three principles of materials, values, and
people, taking cognizance of the external influences such as economic, sociocultural,
and environmental attributes. The survey period for data collection covers 3 months
period from April to June 2021. Qualitative data was collected to valuate materials
and values through detailed inventory of the site; the site was profiled by the authors
during the survey period, global positioning system (GPS) was us to obtain the
coordinates around the perimeter of the hill, delineating the boundaries, estimating
the weathered areas, and determining the existing surface area. Direct observation
was used in documenting the site in terms of pollution, (indiscriminate waste
disposal, open defecation among others on the site); and profile the site’s potential
to accommodate hoodlums and criminal. Quantitative data was collected in the form
of perceptual data from two categories of residents (The Elderly and Agile) within
300meters vicinity to the site, this is because the resident within this radius would
feel the impacts more than residents at a further distance (Dada, Odufuwa, Badiora,
Agbabiaka, Ogunseye, & Samuel, 2020).
This study targeted two categories of respondents (above 60years (Elderly) and
Between 18 – 59years (Agile) and excluded residents below 18years (Minor) from
the study. Due to the need to survey respondents who have deep knowledge and
understanding about the happenings within and around the hill and importance of the
hill. Therefore, forty-five elderly people were selected using snowballing sampling
procedure, in this case the first respondent was contacted in the building adjacent to
the site, in which forms the basis of referrer to subsequent respondents. Preliminary
investigation revealed that there are 2620 buildings within the designated radius.
Using systematic sampling, one of every tenth (10th) residential buildings were
selected where any resident within the age categorization was selected. A total of
262 residents were surveyed. Data collected provided information on values and
people’s expectation and desire about the restoration of the past glory of Dala hill and
to promote its potentials. Data collected was analyzed using pictorial analysis and
Resident Perception Index (RPI) to rate the potential importance of the site.
Analytical Methods
A detailed inventory on the state of art of Dala hill were collected and documented.
The perceptual data collected from residents was analyzed using the mean index.
The residents were provided with a list of attributes (Economic, Sociocultural, and
Environmental), identified in the literature, to measure their perception about the
importance of Dala hill. The res pondents were instructed to score using a Likert
231
scale rating (5= strongly agree, 4= agree, 3= Neutral, 2= disagree and 1= strongly
disagree) their level of agreement with each attribute. To compute the Resident
Perception Index (RPI). The process is as follow:
(i). A weight value of 5,4,3,2 and 1 was attached respectively to each rating of
strongly agree, agree, moderately agree, disagree, and strongly disagree.
(ii). Summation of the weight value (SWV) was computed. It is the addition of
the product of the value attached to a rating and the respective number of residents to
the rating.
(iii). The SWV was divided by the number of residents
This SWV is expressed mathematically as

5
SWV = ∑ X Y … (i)i i
i =1
Where:
SWV = summation of weight value;

Xi = number of residents to rating i;
Yi = the weight assigned a value (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
The SWV, divided by the number of residents’ gives the Resident Perception Index
(RPI). It is expressed mathematically as:
SWV
RPI = …. (ii)
∑
5
i =1
i = Xi
Where RPI is the Resident Perception Index, SWV and Pi are defined previously.
The closer the RPI of a particular indicator to 5 the higher is assured of the importance
attached to such indicator. Computation of Resident Perception Index (RPI) on
importance of Dala Hill in Kano Metropolis as presented in Table 1
Column 1: Attributes (indicators)
Column 2: Number of individual respondents rating each of the indicators with 5

(Strongly agree)
Column 3: Number of individual respondents rating each of the indicators with

4 (Agree)
Column 4: Number of individual respondents rating each of the indicators with 3

(Undecided)
Column 5: Number of individual respondents rating each of the Indicators with

2 (Disagree)
232
Column 6: Number of individual respondents rating each of the Indicators with 1

(Strongly disagree)
Column 7: Addition of product of individual respondents rating a particular

indicator and their respective weight values. For instance, SWV for “Increase
shopping opportunities” = (282×5) + (161×4) + (21×3) + (10x2) + (9x1) = 2146.
Column 8: Resident Perception Index (RPI) equals to the summation of weight

value (SWV) divided by additional of individual respondents rating each indicator. For
instance, RPI for “Increase shopping opportunities” = 1077/(9+10+21+161+282)
= = 3.12
Column 9: Ranking of the indicators according to their rating.
Findings and Result

Going by the principle of the theoretical footings the result was presented in
accordance with the three principles of materials, value, and people’s perception. In
order achieve the materials and value-based principles, the study undertook detailed
profiling of the various elements within and adjoining to arrive at the existing situation
of the site in terms of extent, height and size, and furtherance compute the resident
perception of the importance associated to the subject site, presented as follows:
Resident Perception of the Importance of Dala Hill
Economic Importance
The study revealed that the residents has positive perception of 14 out of the 21
economic attributes and were ranked accordingly, they perceived that the potentials
of the site include: Increase shopping opportunities (RPI = 4.43), Improves
investment spending (RPI = 4.16), Improves means livelihood (RPI = 4.11), Increase
employment opportunities (RPI = 4.08), Improves local economy (PRI = 4.14), Long
term promotional benefit (PRI = 3.90), Improves quality of life (RPI = 3.90), Aid
basic infrastructures rehabilitation (RPI = 3.87), Increase in the price of land and
housing (RPI = 3.85), Increase in property taxes (RPI = 3.76), Increase in average
spending (RPI = 3.72), Provides communal funding (RPI = 3.76), Interruption of
normal business (RPI = 3.65), Earn foreign exchange (RPI = 3.59), from 1st to 14th
respectively. On the contrary, the residents believe that the potentials of the site would
not Increase in cost of transportation, Leads to extraneous dependency, Increase in
cost of living, Result in high leakage effect, Underutilized infrastructure, Inflation
of goods and services, and Create scarcity of goods and services. The implication
of the findings is that the economic benefits of the site as perceived by the residents
will improve the standard of living of the people, elevate local economy and promote
Small and medium scale enterprise (SME) among the locals (See Table 1).
233
Table 1
Economic Importance
SD D UD A SA
ATTRIBUTES SWV RPI DEV. R
1 2 3 4 5
Increase shopping opportunities 5 5 11 81 141 1077 4.43 1.06 1st
Improves investment spending 11 8 22 76 107 932 4.16 0.79 2nd
Improves local economy 15 17 8 66 119 932 4.14 0.77 5th
Improves means livelihood 12 23 11 61 117 920 4.11 0.74 3rd
Increase employment opportunities 9 20 21 68 107 919 4.08 0.71 4th
Long term promotional benefit 17 32 11 60 104 874 3.90 0.53 6th
Improves quality of life 10 28 26 70 89 869 3.90 0.53 7th
Aid infrastructures rehabilitation 11 31 22 74 87 870 3.87 0.50 8th
Increase price of land and housing 12 27 16 96 73 863 3.85 0.48 9th
Increase in property taxes 11 37 20 82 74 843 3.76 0.39 10th
Provides communal funding 18 26 23 78 76 831 3.76 0.39 12th
Increase in average spending 11 32 25 96 60 834 3.72 0.35 11th
Interruption of normal business 31 7 29 100 57 817 3.65 0.28 13th
Earn foreign exchange 17 39 20 89 58 801 3.59 0.22 14th
Leads to extraneous dependency 54 99 21 34 16 531 2.37 -1.00 16th
Increase in cost of living 51 109 16 26 22 531 2.37 -1.00 17th
Increase in cost of transportation 43 118 18 26 18 527 2.36 -1.01 15th
Result in high leakage effect 58 95 28 25 19 527 2.34 -1.03 18th
Underutilized infrastructure 55 106 26 26 11 504 2.25 -1.12 19th
Inflation of goods and services 56 92 58 8 10 496 2.21 -1.16 20th
Create scarcity of goods and services 107 60 14 23 16 441 2.00 -1.37 21st
TOTAL 614 1011 446 1265 1381 15939 70.85 RPI = 3.37
Source: Author’s computation 2021
Sociocultural Importance
The study revealed that the residents has positive perception of 16 out of the 27
Sociocultural importance attributes and were ranked accordingly, they perceived that
the potentials of the site include: Foster support for festival celebration (RPI = 4.52),
Showcase local culture (RPI = 4.42), Protection of local cultural identity (RPI =
4.34), Aid preservation of heritage properties (RPI = 4.28), Create entertainment and
social support (RPI = 4.23), Create opportunities for shopping (RPI = 4.07), Create
a sense of value and identity (RPI = 4.18), Increase interaction with locals (RPI =
4.12), Satisfying leisure needs (RPI = 4.11), Revitalization of arts (RPI = 4.05),
Diversify community economic activities (RPI = 4.03), Exchange of experiences and
information (RPI = 4.00), Create safer community (RPI = 3.95), Commercialized
local tradition (RPI = 3.90), Fosters exchange of culture (RPI = 3.83), and Change in
community social structure (RPI = 3.74), from 1st to 16th respectively. On the contrary,
the residents believe that the potentials of the site would not increase prostitution,
Lead to vandalism, Intensified pressure between locals and tourists, Change value
system, Disrupt local activities, Create negative influence on the locals, Increase
alcoholism, drug trafficking, and crime, Generate xenophobia, and lastly would not
lead to Property damage (See Table 2).
234
Table 2
Sociocultural Importance
SD D UD A SA
ATTRIBUTES SWV RPI DEV R
1 2 3 4 5
Foster support for festival celebration 7 5 8 49 156 1017 4.52 1.25 1st
Showcase local culture 8 11 7 51 147 990 4.42 1.15 2nd
Protection of local cultural identity 5 6 8 94 111 972 4.34 1.07 3rd
Aid preservation of heritage properties 6 16 5 80 117 958 4.28 1.01 4th
Create entertainment and social support 6 13 12 86 107 947 4.23 0.96 5th
Create a sense of value and identity 14 8 11 81 109 932 4.18 0.91 7th
Increase interaction with locals 10 22 10 72 111 927 4.12 0.85 8th
Satisfying leisure needs 18 15 11 61 120 925 4.11 0.84 9th
Create opportunities for shopping 14 16 9 91 100 937 4.07 0.80 6th
Revitalization of arts 10 20 26 60 108 908 4.05 0.78 10th
Diversify community economic activities 19 10 13 87 96 906 4.03 0.76 11th
Exchange of experiences and information 17 24 9 67 107 895 4.00 0.73 12th
Create safer community 11 17 25 92 80 888 3.95 0.68 13th
Commercialized local tradition 16 19 17 92 80 873 3.90 0.63 14th
Fosters exchange of culture 17 27 14 86 80 857 3.83 0.56 15th
Change in community social structure 21 32 10 80 80 835 3.74 0.47 16th
Create an increased in prostitution 56 100 26 15 28 534 2.37 -0.90 17th
Vandalism 65 100 10 27 22 513 2.29 -0.98 18th
Intensified pressure between participants 89 57 26 30 22 511 2.28 -0.99 19th
Change in value system 58 99 31 21 15 508 2.27 -1.00 20th
Disruption of local activities 77 96 14 22 15 474 2.12 -1.15 21st
Negative influence on the locals 92 90 9 19 14 445 1.99 -1.28 22nd
Increased alcoholism 102 78 11 17 16 439 1.96 -1.31 23rd
Increase drug trafficking 100 70 31 14 9 434 1.94 -1.33 24th
Increased crime 96 90 26 7 5 407 1.82 -1.45 25th
Generate xenophobia 108 84 9 13 9 400 1.79 -1.48 26th
Property damaged 106 89 9 12 8 399 1.78 -1.49 27th
TOTAL 1148 1214 397 1426 1872 19831 88.36 RPI=3.27
Environmental Importance
The findings from table 3 reveals that 9 out of the 18 environmental importance
attributes are identified to be positive by the respondents, ranked from most
agreed statements to least agreed statements, The table shows that the residents
rates Conservation and restoration of heritage sites as the top most environmental
importance of the Hill with RPI rating of 4.38, followed Increase considerable
investment in infrastructure with RPI rating of 4.27, Creation of scenic beauty in the
environment with RPI rating of 4.18, Creation of awareness on the need to protect the
resources with RPI rating of 4.17,Improves park and recreation areas, RPI rating 4.13,
Stimulate planning to improve amenities and business RPI rating 4.10, Potential aid
in spread of tourism benefits RPI rating 4.07, Improvement in transport infrastructure
RPI rating 4.03, Attract intervention protect natural environment RPI rating of 3.96
The residents also disagree with the fact that Dala hill Lead to overcrowding with
RPI rating of 2.63, Causes an increases in noise pollution RPI rating of 2.50, create
Traffic congestion RPI rating 2.42, Overstretch of resources RPI rating 2.38, leads to
235
Loss of vegetation RPI rating 2.02, Create visual pollution RPI rating 1.98, Increase
street littering RPI rating 1.93, causes Desert encroachments RPI rating 1.89 And the
respondents rates the statement Causes an increase in air pollution with the lowest
RPI rating of 1.85. This proves that the hill will bring more environmental benefit
than harm to the study area (See Table 3).
Table 3
Environmental Importance
SD D UD A SA
ATTRIBUTES SWV RPI DEV R
1 2 3 4 5
Conservation of heritage sites 2 5 8 99 109 977 4.38 1.22 1st
Increase investment in infrastructure 5 11 9 92 107 957 4.27 1.11 2nd
Creation of scenic beauty 9 21 8 70 117 940 4.18 1.02 3rd
Creation of awareness on the need to
6 10 26 80 102 934 4.17 1.01 4th
protect the resources
Improves park and recreation 12 16 10 80 106 924 4.13 0.97 5th
Stimulate planning to improve amenities 8 12 26 83 96 922 4.10 0.94 6th
Aid in spread of tourism 11 8 25 90 90 912 4.07 0.91 7th
Improve transport infrastructure 17 19 10 73 106 907 4.03 0.87 8th
Attract intervention protect 20 22 13 62 108 891 3.96 0.80 9th
Lead to overcrowding 51 75 24 41 28 577 2.63 -0.53 10th
Causes noise pollution 56 86 19 37 25 558 2.50 -0.66 11th
Traffic congestion 59 90 20 31 24 543 2.42 -0.74 12th
Overstretch of resources 56 101 16 31 21 535 2.38 -0.78 13th
Loss of vegetation 80 96 24 15 10 454 2.02 -1.14 14
Create visual pollution 101 67 29 14 13 443 1.98 -1.18 15th
Increase street littering 77 87 24 10 6 393 1.93 -1.23 16th
Desert encroachments 92 90 26 10 7 425 1.89 -1.27 17th
Causes pollution 96 87 24 10 6 412 1.85 -1.31 18th
TOTAL 758 903 341 928 1081 12704 56.88 RPI= 3.16
The importance of Dala hill was established using indicators that were categorized
into economic, sociocultural, and environmental dimensions. For this study, the
rating scale is on a 5-point Likert’s scale, therefore. The result of the computation of
RPI for economic dimension is 3.38, sociocultural is 3.27, and environmental is 3.65.
Consequently, we can say that the economic dimension accounted for the highest
importance associated with Dala Hill, while that of sociocultural has moderate
importance, and environmental dimensions has Low importance in the study area.
Invariably, the combined index for the three dimensions is 3.28, meaning that the
overall importance associated with Dala hill moderate (See Figure 3).
236
Figure 3. Combine Importance Associated with Dala
Conclusion and Recommendation

The study examined the tourism potential of Dala hill within the ancient Kano city.
It identified complementary tourism potentials within the city wall and vicinity to
Dala hill to include: thirteen (13) ancient city gates, Emir’s Palace (Gidan Murufa),
Historical Museum (Gidan makama), Kofar mata dying pits, Relics of ancient
Kano walls, and ancient African famous market (Kurmi market). These are heritage
properties surrounding the subject matter of the present study, which are worthy to
review, as they form parts of external attraction components to the area. The site’s
major attraction component is its historical evolution. Despite the historical evolution
attached to the hill, it has faced threat of decay and deterioration induced through
weathering and human activities. Presently, the site is characterized with poor
sanitary condition, open defecation, waste disposal, poor accessibility, and abode for
hoodlums.
The residents presented the potentials of the site from three perspective. From the
economic point of view, the respondents affirms that Dala hill has the potentials to
Increase shopping opportunities, investment spending, means livelihood, employment
opportunities, local economy, quality of life, price of land and housing, property
taxes, average spending, communal funding, Interruption of normal business, Aid
basic infrastructures rehabilitation and Earn foreign exchange, among others. From
sociocultural perspective, the site has the capacity to Foster support for festival
celebration, Create a sense of value and identity, Showcase local culture, Protect of
237
local cultural identity, Aid documentation and preservation of heritage properties,

Create entertainment and social support, Create a sense of value and identity, Increase
interaction with locals. Satisfying leisure needs, Revitalization of arts, Exchange
of experiences and information, Create safer community, Commercialized local
tradition, and Fosters exchange of culture. The last perception of the resident is from
environmental view point, which affirm that the has the potentials to Conservation
and restoration of heritage sites, Increase considerable investment in infrastructure,
Creation of scenic beauty in the environment, Creation of awareness on the need to
protect the resources, Improves park and recreation, Attract intervention protect, and
Stimulate planning to improve amenities, among others.
The implication of the study is that Dala Hill has enormous potentials that is
beneficial to the visitors, members of the host communities, and the government as a
tourism site Kano. Hence, the need for good planning and landscape design. In line
with the findings, the following recommendations can be made:
 Stakeholders should encourage the preservation of historic structures by

providing necessary support, For instance, the government should create enabling
environment for National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria
(NCMM) to remove barriers and encourage private sector and community members
to contribute to conserving heritage properties.
 The Kano Emirate should engage with international bodies like United
Nations on Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote
the site to a world class standard. By attracting external aid in rehabilitating the
heritage site to evolve its potentials and attraction components.
 The concept of co-creation should be promoted through cooperate social

responsibility and community participation by private sector and the locals to
contribute their quota in protecting heritage properties
 Adequate publicity on the potentials, attraction components, and significance

of cultural heritage in local and international media.

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239
DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.1007707
Journal of Tourismology Accepted: 24.11.2021
RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Need for Greater Diversification of Tourism Products in the

Samarkand Region of Uzbekistan
Shukhrat Rakhmonov1 , Ian Patterson2
Abstract
Before the Covid pandemic, Samarkand, Uzbekistan was seen as an emerging, exotic tourist destination. This is because
of the growing interest in its historical importance and cultural history which was strongly linked with the Great Silk Road.
This region was included in a list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites under the name of “Samarkand-Crossroads of Cultures”,
and was attracting more foreign tourists each year because of its rich history, magnificent architecture, authentic culture
and Islamic buildings. However, with the advent of the Covid pandemic, the tourism industry collapsed because its borders
were closed to international tourists for a large part of 2020. Only recently, new measures have been implemented to
attract international tourists and to make the Samarkand region the tourism hub of Uzbekistan once again. This study
used a qualitative research design that involved interviewing 10 tourist operators to determine their opinions about the
need for greater diversification of new tourism destinations, assessing their potential and determining the need for the
further expansion of tourism development. As a result, several new niche tourism markets were identified that should be
developed in order to appeal to different special interest segments of international and domestic tourists.
Keywords
tourism potential, tourist destination, tourism product diversification, niche tourism, special interest tourists; Samarkand
Uzbekistan
1 Shukhrat Rakhmonov (Graduate Student), Silk Road International University of Tourism, Department of Tourism and Hospitality
Management, Samarkand, Uzbekistan. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-0726-3095
2 Correspondence to: Ian Patterson (PhD Visiting Prof.), Silk Road International University of Tourism, Department of Tourism and
Hospitality Management, Samarkand, Uzbekistan. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-9277-8164
To cite this article: Rakhmonov, S., & Patterson, I. (2021). The Need for Greater Diversification of Tourism Products in the Samarkand
Region of Uzbekistan. Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 241-264. https://doi.org/10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.1007707
Introduction
Tourism is one of the most significant sectors of the world and has been growing
rapidly, with the total number of international tourist arrivals reaching 1.4 billion
in 2018, which was a 5% increase compared with 2017 (United Nations World
Tourism Organization, 2019), and made up 10.4% of global GDP in 2018 (World
Travel and Tourism Council, 2019). However, in February, 2020 the Covid-19 virus
first appeared in Wuhan, China. After its emergence, the global situation changed
as it negatively influenced all the international collaborations and relationships
between countries. Tourism was one of the industries that suffered the most from
the coronavirus pandemic, losing $2.1 trillion and over 100 million jobs in the sector
(World Travel and Tourism Council, 2020). The recovery and support for the tourism
and hospitality industry after the pandemic has become a pivotal issue around the
world, as many hot-spot destinations have suffered great financial losses.
Uzbekistan is best known for its historical and cultural attractions (Gonzalez, Rio,
& Kim, 2016) of which 140 have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List
(Baxtishodovich, Suyunovich, & Kholiqulov, 2017). Its central location is on the
Great Silk Road, which was a system of caravan routes established in ancient times
connecting Asia with the Mediterranean and European worlds. Lonely Planet (n/d)
writes: “The region’s cradle of culture for more than two millennia, Uzbekistan is
the proud home to a spellbinding arsenal of architecture and ancient cities, all deeply
infused with the bloody, fascinating history of the Silk Road. In terms of sights alone,
Uzbekistan is Central Asia’s biggest draw and most impressive showstopper” (https://
www.lonelyplanet.com/uzbekistan).
In Uzbekistan, the tourism market has become a major focus of the government
since the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and became
a republic. They adopted numerous decrees and laws that supported the development
of the Uzbek tourism industry. The first was the creation of the national tourism
company “Uzbektourism” by presidential decree in 1992 (Tuxliev, Hayitboyev,
Safarov, et al. 2014). In 2016 the State Committee for Tourism Development was
established by presidential decree. In 2017 another presidential decree supported the
accelerated development of the tourism industry, to increase its role and share in
the economy, its diversification and to improve the quality of tourist services and to
expand tourism infrastructure. As a result, the numbers of foreign visitors increased
substantially from 173,000 in 1996 ($15 million, 0.11% of GNP), to 5.35 million
visitors in 2018 ($1.31 billion, 2.6% of GDP) (worlddata.info, 2018). Tourists stated
that they were mainly attracted by the many unique architectural mausoleums,
minarets and mosques in the ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva; and
chose a guided tour provided by local travel agencies (Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Uzbekistan, 2020).
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Rakhmonov, Patterson / The Need for Greater Diversification of Tourism Products in the Samarkand Region of Uzbekistan
Although the numbers of international visitors have been gradually increasing,

Uzbekistan is still regarded as a historical and cultural tourism destination, and is
only visited for a short period of time. Tourism data collected in 2018-19 by the
government shows that the majority of foreign tourists who arrived in Uzbekistan
generally only undertook one standardized cultural tour program and stayed for a brief
amount of time (average duration of stay was 6.9 days) (Tourism, Uzbekistan, 2018).
Based on these findings, Kapiki and Tarikulov (2014) suggested that Uzbekistan
needed to better utilize its tourism resources, as this has slowed down the process
of more rapid development. Kapiki et al. (2014) warned that this should be a major
concern for tourism providers as, “…there is no guarantee that this small tourism
flow arriving in Uzbekistan will not exhaust itself in some time”.
This lack of diversification of its tourism products is based on the fact that its tour
operators and tourism agencies have been offering the same or similar cultural and
historical tourism tours and products to international visitors for the past 30 years.
All these tourism products have been contained within the historical and well-known
cities of Uzbekistan - Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Shakhrisabz. However, there
are many other potential perspectives and tourism opportunities in other cities and
regions of Uzbekistan that need to be developed, and will be further explored in this
study.
Literature Review
Diversification of Tourism Products

The tourism industry has changed considerably over the last few decades, mainly
because of the rapid developments in information technology, modernization of
services, changes in tourist behavior and the emergence of new tourism destinations.
This has resulted in tourism operators creating a variety of diverse tourism products
and services to successfully run their businesses, and not lose their position in the
international tourism market. Halavach and Rubakhau (2014) defined diversification
as “A growth of the variety of products and services, a transition for new tourism
products, an introduction of the new technologies and access to new markets to
improve performance or reduce bankruptcy risk” (p. 26). Romão, Guerreiro, and
Rodrigues (2017) stated that diversification strategies assist in protecting natural
resources, which supports sustainable tourism development and boosts the link
between tourism and other regional industrial sectors.
Weidenfeld (2018) examined the diversification of tourism at the product/market,

regional and sectoral levels and stated that the product/market levels refer to all
geographical levels from the individual firm to the international level. Benur and
Bramwell (2015) indicated that primary tourism products are essential and their
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diversification can be crucial for competitiveness and the sustainable development of

destinations. Destinations need to understand the significance of providing diversified
tourism products as this can diminish the risk and provide considerable benefits
(Weaver & Lawton, 2006). Rotich and Kogola (2012) stated that diversification
provides the sector with a broader stage that strengthens niche tourism types and
hospitality activities. Additionally, Moraru (2011) believed that diversification has
a positive effect on the competitive spirit of the tourism market and that internal
competition between different tourism stakeholders may improve the quality and
performance of services. Moreover, tourism product diversification may assist
destinations to develop synergies and partnership links between tourism products
that can help in improving destination flexibility and competitiveness (Benur, 2013).
Tourist Destinations
According to Dickman (1999) a tourist destination refers to the five “A”
components, which stand for, “attractions, access, accommodation, amenities, and
activities”. Morachat (2003) stated that a tourist destination must have all of these
elements to some degree although they need not be equally balanced or of the
same quality and consistency for each potential destination. According to Popichit,
Anuwichanont, Chuanchom, et al. (2013) the assessment of the destination’s
potential helps to indicate and rate the importance of existing destination resources in
each region or province. Each tourist destination must have its own unique tourism
resources and attractions to appeal to tourists and to develop the tourism industry.
Tourist attractions can also play a vital role in the development of tourism in the
regions. Harris and Howard (1996) defined a tourist attraction as a physical or cultural
feature of a particular area that individual travelers or tourists perceive as capable of
meeting one or more of their specific leisure-related needs. These features might be
ambient in nature, such as climate, culture, vegetation or scenery, or they may be
specific to a location such as a theater performance, a museum or a visit to a waterfall.
Samarkand Region
The Samarkand region is one of the well-known regions of Uzbekistan with its rich
tourist potential, extensive history and cultural significance. The region is located
in the center of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the Zarafshan valley. It is bordered
by the Jizzakh region in the north-east, the Republic of Tajikistan in the east, the
Kashkadarya region in the south and the Navoiy region in the west and north-west.
The total area of the region is 16.77 square kilometers with a population of 3,813,600
people (in 2019). The region consists of four cities (Samarkand, Urgut, Aktash and
Kattakurgan) and 14 districts (see Figure 1).
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1. Bulungur 2. Ishtikhan 3. Djambay 4. Kattakurgan 5. Kushrabat 6. Narpay 7. Nurabad 8. Akdarya 9.

Pakhtachi 10. Payarik 11. Pastdargam 12. Samarkand 13. Taylak 14. Urgut
Figure 1. Administrative-territorial division of the Samarkand region
In the Samarkand region there are 1,105 archeological, 670 architectural, 37

historical attractions, 18 monumental, and 21 memorial zones, totalling 1,851
tangible-cultural heritage objects (Gaibnazarova, 2018). Researchers have supported
the need for greater diversification, “The Samarkand region is rich in tourism
resources to develop cultural, sport, adventure, educational and eco-tourism”
(Aslanova, Sattarova, & Alimova, 2016).
Niche or Special Interest Tourism

With the growing maturity of the global tourism market, a new trend has
emerged, which is moving away from what has been termed ‘mass tourism’ or the
more traditional forms of tourism development, now termed ‘overtourism’. These
new markets are referred to as ‘special interest’ or ‘niche tourism’, which refers to the
desire for travellers to seek out new and exotic tourism markets, especially the more
experienced and highly engaged consumers. Wearing (2002) stated that the tourist in
the 21st century is ‘‘searching for new and exciting forms of travel in defiance of a
mass-produced product’’ (p. 243).
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According to the World Tourism Organization, special interest tourism is defined

as specialized tourism that involves individuals or groups of tourists who wish to
develop their given interests, or to visit sites and places that have a strong connection
with their specific interest or subject. Kruja and Gjyrezi (2011) stated that special
interest tourism includes various travel activities and has become known as a niche
market. This style of tourism has become more sustainable and participants of the
special tourism market enjoy contact with nature, observing the flora and fauna of
the destinations, exploring, discovering and overcoming obstacles and feeling the
pleasure of overcoming them. The most common types of niche tourism markets are
cultural and heritage tourism, gastronomy and wine tourism, adventure and nature-
based tourism, sport tourism, religious tourism, rural tourism and medical tourism
(Novelli, 2005).
Cultural and Heritage Tourism

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, cultural tourism
is a type of tourism in which a traveler’s main aim is to learn, discover, experience
and consume tangible and intangible resources of the particular destination
(UNWTO, n.d.). ECTARC (1989) stated that cultural tourism resources can involve
archaeological places and museums, architecture (ruins, famous buildings, whole
towns), art, sculpture, crafts, galleries, festivals, events, music and dance (classical,
folk, contemporary), drama (theatre, films, dramatists), language and literature study,
tours, events, religious festivals, pilgrimages, complete (folk or primitive) cultures
and sub-cultures.
Cultural and heritage tourism is well developed in the Samarkand city center.
The main and most well-known cultural and heritage tourism landmarks of the
city are at Registan Square: the Amir Timur, Rukhabad, and Aksaray Mausoleums;
the Bibikhonim and Khazrati Khizr mosques, the Mirzo Ulugbek Observatory and
Museum, the Afrasiab Museum: State Museum of Culture History of Uzbekistan,
the El-Merosi theater for historical costume, the Konigil ancient paper factory, the
Chorsu Art Gallery, and the Samarkand Handicrafts Center are always crowded with
foreign visitors in tourist seasons.
Gastronomy Tourism
According to The Committee on Tourism and Competitiveness (CTC) of UNWTO,
gastronomy tourism is defined as a type of tourism activity that is characterized by
tourists who experience food and related products and activities while travelling
(CTC, Gastronomy and Wine Tourism, n/d). UNWTO reported that gastronomic
activities include cookery workshops, visiting museums, food events, food fairs,
visits to markets and food producers, food tours and other food related activities
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(UNWTO, 2012). The term gastronomy tourism is now more commonly used rather
than culinary tourism, tasting tourism or food tourism.
Gastronomy tourism in Samarkand is regarded as a new form of special interest

tourism which the government has been paying close attention to over the past few
years. Recently, a gastronomic area has been established in Orzu Mahmudov Street,
where tourists are able to taste various kinds of food and drinks at the following
restaurants - Brighton, Qanotcha, Lagman House, Evos, and Chopar Pizzeria. It will
also organize gastronomic and food festivals in future years. The main food that
attracts gastro tourists to Samarkand is plov (or pilaf) (consisting of lamb meat, carrot,
and rice) and bean soup which have a long history and special preparation recipes.
Wine Tourism
Wine tourism is defined as the visitation to vineyards, wineries, wine festivals
and wine shows for which grape wine tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of a
grape wine region are the main motivating factors for wine tourism consumers (Hall
& Sharples, 2000). The main goal of tourists is to visit vineyards, wineries, to taste,
consume and purchase wine which is usually near to the source (CTC of UNWTO,
n.d.). According to Carmichael (2005), wine tourism refers to activities motivated
by a tourist’s desire to taste new wines and learn about the traditions and culture of
wine-producing areas. Wine tourism products comprise bundles of activities, services
and benefits that constitute experiences that require cooperation between tourism and
agriculture to generate potential mutual benefits.
Samarkand’s wine is considered as one of the best in the Central Asian region. This
is facilitated by fertile soil, a mild climate and abundant sun. The region has great
potential to further develop wine tourism. According to statistics, 564.3 thousand tons
of grapes (38.7 thousand tons of grapes from the Taylak district. and 30.2 thousand
tons of grapes from the Samarkand district were gathered from the Samarkand region
in 2019) (Samarkand Regional Statistics department, 2019). The most popular wine
tourism attraction in Samarkand is the Khovrenko wine tourism destination, which
includes a winery and museum, and is the oldest wine factory in central Asia, and was
established by the Russian merchant Filatov in 1868. Today, the winery has won over
80 International Awards producing several varieties of wine, brandy and vodka that
can be tasted and purchased.
Sport Tourism
Sport tourism is widely defined as tourist travel to destinations for the primary
purpose of participating in sport activities or related events (Standeven, 1998). There
are many opportunities to develop sport tourism in the Samarkand region, especially
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in the Nurabad and Pastdargam districts, which are famous and are ideal places for
the national sport competition, Kupkari. In Kupkari, experienced horse-riders carry
the body of a dead goat or sheep until they reach the finish line. Kupkari games are
mainly held in autumn and spring, when Uzbek people celebrate a national holiday
during “Navruz”. Equestrians prepare for the Kupkari competition in advance and
carefully choose a strong, short horse of great endurance. The riders usually wear
head protection, quilted cotton robes and pants to protect themselves against other
competitor’s whips. The prizes for the Kupkari winner may be expensive appliances
or a car.
Adventure and Nature-based Tourism

Kane (2002) stated that adventure tourism is defined and marketed as an experience
of excitement, danger and risk. Contained in the understanding of risk is the potential
of loss, injury and death. According to Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA)
adventure tourism is defined as a trip that includes at least two of the following
three elements: physical activity, natural environment, and cultural immersion
(2013). Nature-based tourism can be broadly defined as the visitation to a natural
destination which may be the venue for recreational activity where interaction with
plants and animals is incidental, or the object of the visit to gain an understanding
of the natural history of the destination and to interact with the plants and animals.
There is a link between visitors involved in nature-based tourism activities and the
natural environment (Wolf, Croft & Green, 2019).
There are many opportunities to develop adventure and nature-based tourism in the
districts of the Samarkand region, since the region has great potential and resources
for these types of tourism. One of the potential and attractive nature-based tourism
resources of the region is Teshiktash rock. It is located between the village of Qoratepa
in the Urgut district. This mysterious place has been an area of fascination for a long
time. Under the influence of erosion and winds, a beautiful and charming work of art
was created from the stone. When you look closely at the hole, you can see the heads
of two dinosaurs colliding with each other. According to the Samarkand Department
for Tourism Development, the mountain tourism cluster “Koratepa-Omonkutan” and
tourism village “Tersak” in the Urgut district will be developed which is described as
the best destination for adventure and nature-based tourism.
Religious Tourism
The most common definition of religious tourism refers to “…any kind of travel
outside the usual environment for religious purposes” (Patterson & Turayev, 2020).
Samarkand is visited by many Muslims every year who come from Malaysia,
Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and other Muslim countries. The main destination for Muslim
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travelers is the “Al Bukhariy” complex, which includes a mausoleum, museum and
mosque. Imam al-Bukhari was a great theologian of the East who collected and
recorded about 600 thousand hadiths – or legends based on cases of life or some
sayings of the Prophet. The Al Bukhariy complex is regarded as a “Second Makkah”
and is located in Payarik district, village of Hartang.
Rural or Agritourism
Rural communities see tourism as an opportunity to diversify the economy and to
revitalize rural areas. Rural tourism can be defined as an experience in rural areas that
includes a wide range of attractions and events which take place in agrarian or non-
urban areas. The main features of rural tourism are wide-open spaces, slow tourism
development, and chances for tourists to enjoy agricultural activities in natural
surroundings (Irshad, 2010). These trends can be summarized as: 1) the stimulation
of cultural heritage, folklore, traditions and a renewed interest in buildings and rural
landscapes, and 2) health and well-being that is expressed through the pleasure
associated with improved quality of life, air, water, and in eating in a healthy way
(Ammirato & Felicetti, 2013). Rural tourism’s potential tour destinations are districts
mostly based on agriculture, farming and fishing. The biggest agriculturally based
districts of Samarkand regions are Urgut and Kattakurgan, followed by Payarik and
Ishtikhan.
Aim of the study

The aim of this study is to establish the need for greater diversification of new
niche tourism markets to improve the economic situation of new destinations that are
located in the region of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Research Objectives
The following research objectives are based on gaps in the research literature:
1. To determine the tourism potential of different types of destinations in

Samarkand and to determine how can they be promoted;
2. To assess the special characteristics of the tourism products to determine

whether this will improve the economic circumstances of major stakeholders;
3. To investigate the need for a range of new tourism products to attract special
interest international tourists so as to encourage them to visit for longer
periods of time.
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There are very few research studies that have been conducted on the need for
the greater diversification of tourism products for this region based on their tourism
potential. There is a need to explore the possibility of offering a more diverse range
of tourism products and destinations according to their tourism potential in the 14
districts of the Samarkand region. It is anticipated that attracting tourists to districts
and villages where tourism resources are located will have a positive influence on the
economic resilience of the local population. In addition, by implementing strategies
for the development of these new tourism niche markets, it is expected that tourists
will want to stay longer in Uzbekistan and spend more money to support the local
economy.
Methodology
A qualitative research methodology was selected as the most suitable means for
collecting primary data because it provides a rich description, by the use of semi-
structured face to face interviews of experienced tour operators in Samarkand.
The research questions were designed to examine the tourism potential of various
destinations, and to ascertain the need for greater diversification of tourism products.
Because of the numerous lockdowns and travel restrictions due to the coronavirus
pandemic, the number of international tourists visiting Uzbekistan had decreased to a
trickle, making it impossible to use a quantitative methodology, as it was impossible
to achieve a high enough sample size with the collection of large numbers of survey
questionnaires.
Sample
Samples in qualitative research tend to be small in order to support the depth of
analysis that is fundamental to this mode of inquiry. Qualitative samples are also
purposive, that is, they are selected based on their capacity to provide in-depth
information that is relevant to the phenomenon under investigation (Vasileiou,
Barnett, et al., 2018). A total of 10 tour operators were selected by a snowball
sampling technique to identify potential interviewees who might be interested in
being interviewed. By this method, the interviewers recruit future subjects based on
referrals by their friends and acquaintances (Berg, 2014). This is a non-probability
sampling technique that is used when it is difficult to obtain other travel agents to
agree to be interviewed. This may have been because potential respondents were
fearful about speaking out against government policy.
Data Collection
The method used was individual, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews. In
tourism research, this method of interviewing is the most popular for gaining an in-
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depth understanding of a topic where differences in perception, attitudes, impacts,

behaviors and practices are important (Picken, 2017). Face-to-face interviewing
allows more detailed questions to be asked and allows the researcher to re-word
questions if they are not understood. Furthermore, the researcher is able to detect and
analyze the interviewee’s body language when asking the questions.
The semi-structured interview uses open-ended questions that are prepared in

advance. According to Hancock (2002), “Semi-structured interviews tend to work
well when the interviewer has already identified a number of aspects that he wants to
be sure of addressing” (p. 10). This saves time and helps to reduce discussion about
irrelevant topics. The interviews were recorded on the researcher’s mobile phone
after written permission was provided by the interviewee.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is the process of reducing a considerable amount of information
to make sense of it. According to Patton (1987) three things happen during the
data analysis stage: the collected data is organized, data is then reduced through
summarizing and categorizing, and patterns and themes in the data are determined
and connected. Unlike quantitative data, qualitative data refers to collecting non-
numeric information, including interview tapes and transcripts, taking notes, and
video and audio recordings. The data analysis process for this research began by
analyzing the gathered data using an inductive content analysis to identify common
themes (Galanis, 2018). Firstly, the researchers began by transcribing the interviews
from the tape recordings to computer files, then reading and examining the written
transcripts. Secondly, after reading the collected data, common and similar responses
and themes were highlighted and grouped into major and minor themes according to
their relationships with each other. By coding and sorting the data in this manner, the
researchers were able to compare different ‘pieces’ of data relating to each question
and to separate them into different file folders for further analysis. A frequency count
of various key words or categories was then conducted to determine the significance
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). All findings are presented in the next section in a de-
identified form with pseudonyms used throughout to ensure the anonymity of the
study respondents.
Interview Questions
In order to maintain consistency between the research objectives and the data,
10 interview questions were written to guide the interview process. These questions
related to the themes associated with tourist attractions, destination potential and the
diversification of tourism products. The following questions were developed and
used in the interviews:
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1. Could you compare the tourism industry of the Samarkand region before and
after the coronavirus pandemic?
2. How has COVID-19 affected your business?
3. Are there sufficient tourist attractions or products in the Samarkand region to

develop the niche tourism market and to attract special interest tourists?
4. Is there an appropriate mix or diversity of tourist attractions and products in the

Samarkand region, have they improved in the past ten years, and why do you think
that?
5. Do you have any plans or strategies to broaden the mix or diversity of tourist
attractions and products in the Samarkand region, and, if so, what are these plans?
6. Are there any differences in the tourist attractions and products in the Samarkand
region that are visited by international tourists as compared with domestic tourists?
If so, what are the differences?
7. Which are the main tourist attractions and products in the Samarkand that are
often included in packages put together by tour operators?
8. Does Samarkand have a clear and coherent image as a tourist destination, and if
yes/no why do you think that?
9. Based on your experience what features of the tourist attractions and products in
Samarkand are tourists most satisfied with?
10. Do the tourist attractions and products effectively provide maximum economic
returns and jobs for local people in Samarkand?
Results
Profile of the Respondents

To collect the required data, individual interviews were conducted with experienced
tour operators (n=10) who all had been working in the tourism and hospitality industry
for at least the past three years. The interviews included 6 males and 4 females whose
average age was 28 years. Because many had had previous jobs as tour guides, they
were able to provide knowledge about the tourism potential of the Samarkand region
and tourist satisfaction levels during their trips. All respondents had a high level of
education, having received their academic degrees either at Samarkand Institute of
Economics and Service, or Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages. The
interviewees did not want to provide their names and places of work, preferring to
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remain anonymous. Thus, the names of the respondents were replaced with the use of
pseudonyms to ensure the anonymity of the study respondents (see Table 2).
Table 1
Socio-Demographic Profile Of The Respondents
Current Graduated Higher
Name Age Sex Previous job Educational level
Occupation Educational Institutions
Samarkand Institute of
Tom 31 M Tour operator Tour agent Higher degree
Economics and Service
Samarkand State Institute
Tina 26 F Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
of Foreign Languages
Alice 25 F Tour operator Interpreter Higher degree
Baxter 28 M Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
Jessica 27 F Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
Emily 26 F Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
John 23 M Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
Simon 32 M Tour operator Teacher Higher degree
David 34 M Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
Benjamin 27 M Tour operator Tour guide Higher degree
Themes that Emerged

After categorizing the data, four major themes emerged and were labeled as the
following: (1) Collapse of the industry because of COVID-19 pandemic, (2) Growth
in domestic tourism, (3) Challenges and opportunities to develop niche tourism
market, and
(4) The lack of diversity in tourism products and attractions.
Theme 1. Collapse of the tourism industry of Samarkand because of the COVID-19

pandemic
The negative effects of COVID-19 for the tourism and hospitality industry were
felt across the whole world. Due to the pandemic and strict lockdowns, international
flights between countries were cancelled and borders were closed, which were
antecedents for the collapse of the tourism industry. As the leading tourist destination
of Uzbekistan, Samarkand had attracted thousands of tourists from all over the
world before the pandemic. Tom (aged 31) stated, “Samarkand was the leading
city amongst Central Asian cities in international tourist arrivals in 2018 and at the
beginning of 2019”. David (aged 34) focused on the economic growth of the industry
before the effects of the virus, “Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the flow of tourists
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in Samarkand region was great. The income of most tour firms had been increasing
and they had been working hard to attract more and more tourists to Samarkand”.
However, after the pandemic, the situation changed and the whole tourism industry
of Samarkand began to collapse. Tina (aged 26) stated, “The unexpected appearance
of the coronavirus affected all spheres, and the most damaged sphere was tourism.
Because restrictions on travelling and the closing of borders, even movement between
regions and cities negatively influenced the tourism industry”. John (aged 23) stated
that he was more concerned about people who were working in the tourism sphere,
“…tour guides, tour drivers, tour operators had nothing to do. Overall, it resulted
in a huge financial loss for the people who worked in the tourism industry”. Jessica
(aged 27) agreed when she stated, “Most people became unemployed. I know some
professional guides who changed their professions as they had no choice”.
Theme 2. Growth in domestic tourism

As international tourism came to a standstill to prevent the spread of the virus,
tour operators were forced to change their focus from foreign tourists to domestic
tourists in order to maintain their business and to maintain a regular income. Tina
(aged 26) stated, “After the pandemic, it became difficult for Uzbekistan to redevelop
international tourism, but Uzbekistan was paying closer attention to developing
domestic tourism, and the government was focusing on helping tour organizations
and tourism stakeholders by lowering taxes and allocating subsidies”. Jessica (aged
27) also stated, “After the pandemic, thanks to God, we are working with domestic
tourists, as we had fewer tourists from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan”. Emily
(aged 26) thought that the pandemic also had a positive effect: “After the regional
lockdowns were opened, more and more people were eager to travel and started
travelling, and Samarkand offered up to 50% discounts for their services, which
assisted in attracting a large number of domestic tourists who were encouraged to
visit”. John (aged 23) also supported the idea of the development of domestic tourism
after the pandemic when he stated: “Domestic tourism didn’t affect us so badly;
because there were no foreign tourists, the costs of transportation and entrance fees
for locals decreased, and different kinds of discounts were offered”.
Theme 3. Major challenges and opportunities to develop the niche tourism market
Almost all respondents stated that Samarkand had adequate tourism resources
and attractions to develop special interest tourism and to attract new tourist
segmentations. Moreover, they thought that the development of the niche tourism
market was pivotal for Samarkand to become a world tourism destination. Baxter
(aged 24) stated, “We have all the opportunities to develop niche tourism. Unique
architectural monuments included in the UNESCO cultural heritage list, delicious
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cuisine (legendary Samarkand bread and pilaf), and hospitality of the people have
attracted and will continue to attract tourists. Guests are more and more interested
in getting some kind of special experience, in unusual visits, they want to diversify in
choosing excursions to interact with the local population, to be engaged in cultural
traditions and customs”.
Furthermore, many of the respondents thought that Samarkand had the potential
to develop nature-based tourism, including ecological and mountain-based tourism.
Benjamin (aged 27) stated, “We have eco-tourism resources and nature-based tourism
resources which are still new for tourists and even for some local tour operators”.
Tina (aged 26) also agreed when she stated, “We have enough resources to develop
nature-based tourism, such as hiking, fishing and picnicking”. Several also shared
their experiences about niche tourism. Alice (aged 25) stated, “We organize tours not
only across the city but also to the mountains, and arrange trekking tours with tour
guides where tourists can spend nights in the mountains.”
However, several respondents stated that there were major problems which were
main obstacles to developing a niche tourism market in the Samarkand region. Tina
(aged 26) stated, “The lack of infrastructure and the similarity of tourism products,
the lack of eagerness to learn and investigate new attractions and destinations are
the major problems in developing special interest tourism”. Simon (aged 32) also
added his perspective regarding the difficulties in developing the niche tourism
market, “The main problem which is a great obstacle is the infrastructure and lack
of facilities to develop special interest tourism. The level of service sphere for a niche
tourism market is also very poor”.
Theme 4. The lack of diversity in tourism products and attractions and strategies
to diversify them
There was general agreement that the tourism products of Samarkand that were
usually offered to foreign tourists were very similar. Jessica (aged 27) agreed
when she said, “Each tour firm offers the same products,which are usually tours
around historical monuments”. Emily (aged 26) supported this, “I think there is no
diversification in tourism attractions and products in the Samarkand region because
most of them are historical monuments and are specialized for historical tourism”.
In spite of the similarity in tourism products, most respondents agreed that there
was a need to diversify tourism products and several shared their future plans
regarding the development of specific types of tourism, and specifically nature-based
tourism. Tina (aged 26) stated, “I am going to focus on active forms of tourism,
especially nature-based and mountain tourism.” Jessica (aged 27) also stated,
“We are working on developing ecological and sustainable tourism. We are taking
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tourists to the mountains of the Urgut district…the interest of domestic tourists to

visit eco-destinations is increasing these days”. Simon (aged 32) also supported the
development of nature-based tourism, “Our plan is to develop nature-based tourism,
including rural tourism, agritourism, mountain tourism and ecotourism”.
Discussion Of Results
Research Question 1: What is the tourism potential of different types of
destinations in Samarkand, and how can they be promoted?
Samarkand is a well-known tourist location with its historical-architectural

monuments that have attracted international tourists for many years. Interviews
conducted with tour operators indicated that before the pandemic, Samarkand had
been a leading tourism destination with great potential, attracting a considerable flow
of tourists from different parts of the world. During the interviews, the majority of
tour operators agreed that the tourism potential of Samarkand was its architectural
heritage, including Registan Square, the Amir Temur mausoleum, Bibikhanum
mosque, Shakhi Zinda complex, Khazrati Khizr mosque and Khoja Doniyor
mausoleum. Gaibnazarova (2018) stated that in the Samarkand region there are 1,851
tangible-cultural heritage objects, inclusing 1,105 archeological, 670 architectural,
37 historical attractions, 18 monumental, and 21 memorial zones. According to
Khusenova and Rakhmonov (2018), 37.7 % of tourism resources in Uzbekistan are
situated in the Samarkand region. However, The Minister for Tourism and Sport, Aziz
Abduhakimov, further stated that only 5% of the tourism potential of Samarkand is
actually used (The Tashkent Times, 2021). These figures support the tourism potential
of Samarkand region which is centered around tangible-cultural heritage objects.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in international tourism drying up, creating

a new focus on domestic tourism to help mitigate the negative influence of this
virus. Most of the respondents stated that after the easing of quarantine measures
in Samarkand, tourist attractions were mainly visited by local people. This change
in emphasis was supported by a presidential decree on May 28, 2020 which stated:
“Urgent measures are needed to support the tourism sector to reduce the negative
effects of the coronavirus pandemic.” This helped to restart domestic tourism,
as “green” and “yellow” zones were created to revitalize the activities of tour
operators, tour agents, accommodation facilities, and cultural-heritage objects.
These opportunities were aimed at supporting domestic tourists to travel around the
Samarkand region once again.
Another factor that encouraged domestic tourism in the Samarkand region was
support from the Samarkand Regional Department for Tourism Development, when
they announced a “tourism month” from the 15th of December, 2020 until the 15th
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of January 2021. This resulted in 117 accommodation facilities, 50 tour operators,

10 transport companies, 48 restaurants and all cultural-heritage sites in the region
offering up to 50% discounts. This attracted thousands of people to Samarkand
from other regions of Uzbekistan. As a result of this initiative, 42,400 people from
different cities and districts, and 60,100 people from regional areas of the country
visited Samarkand in one month (Press service of Samarkand Regional Department
for Tourism Development, 2021).
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

concluded that domestic tourism had softened the negative effects of COVID-19,
and many governments took prompt actions to revive and re-activate the tourism
industry to protect jobs and businesses related to the tourism sector. However, as
the OECD (2020) stated, “the real recovery will only be possible when international
tourism returns. This requires global co-operation and evidence-based solutions so
travel restrictions can be safely lifted” (p. 5). However, in spite of the lower income
that was generated from domestic tourism, this form of tourism was the only source
of income for many tourism stakeholders in Samarkand during the pandemic.
Research Question 2: What are the special characteristics of Uzbekistan’s

tourism products, and how can they improve the economic circumstances of major
stakeholders?
This study has demonstrated that there is a relationship between the diversification
of tourism products and strategies to diversify them. Almost all of the tour operators
of Samarkand stated that the tour products of the region were similar; that is, they
are based on historical and cultural tours and this is a pivotal issue that needed to be
addressed as soon as possible to improve the economic conditions of Samarkand.
Bacher (2005) stated that diversification strategies contribute to the growth of the
economy and can improve current economic difficulties. Generally, diversification
measures are used to increase profits, reduce costs, decrease risks and to develop
new markets. According to Zigern-Korn and Olga (2018) tourism destinations need
to diversify their tourism products to help contribute to the further development of
the region and to assist destinations to explore their tourism potential.
Most respondents stated that one of the best and most appropriate ways of
diversifying the tourism products of the Samarkand region was to support the
development of nature-based tourism activities, especially hiking, trekking, fishing,
rafting and other eco-tourism activities. According to many of the tour operators,
nature-based tourism could be developed in the Urgut district of the Samarkand
region, thanks to the imminent establishment of the Koratepa-Omonkuton mountain
tourism cluster in the Urgut district, and Tersak village, also in the Urgut district, will
officially become a tourism village (Samarkand Regional Department for Tourism
257
Development, 2021). In addition, $2 million have been allocated to improve tourism

facilities, and tourism and recreational zones will be established near the Koraepe
water reservoir in the Urgut district (Xalq so’zi, 2021). These strategies are planned
to help diversify tourism products, to prolong tourists’ length of stay in Samarkand,
and to create more job opportunities for local people at the destination.
Most of the respondents stated that tourism products and their diversification
provided local people with job opportunities and brought extra revenue to destinations.
Additionally, diversification may improve the competitiveness of these destinations
and reduce seasonality issues (Dwyer and Kim, 2003; Lopez and Garcia, 2006).
Benur (2015) stated that diversification of tourism products is vital to strengthen the
economic flexibility of destinations.
Research Objective 3: To investigate the need for a range of new tourism products
to attract special interest international tourists so as to encourage them to visit for
longer periods of time.
Comments from various tour operators suggest that Samarkand has many
opportunities to attract a variety of tourists, and to develop a niche tourism market by
using tourism resources to create new tourism products. However, most respondents
stated that there were major problems that restricted the niche tourism market in
Uzbekistan. These included: a lack of suitable infrastructure facilities at tourism
destinations; a lack of eagerness to learn and investigate new tourism attractions;
insufficient allocation of money by the government; and a lack of advertising
and promotion of tourism resources and destinations. Studies have supported the
challenges that are associated with developing a new niche tourism market. According
to McKercher and Robbins (1998) the process of developing a niche tourism market
is difficult and this requires a high level of marketing knowledge which small tourism
firms and agencies generally do not have.
A majority of operators expressed the desire to develop rural and agritourism in

the Samarkand region, and several indicated that they had already begun to offer rural
tourism products, such as trips to the Kushrabat district of the Samarkand region.
Park and Yoon (2009) found that there were a number of distinguishable micro
niches associated with rural tourism. These include participating in not only rural
tourism but also agritourism, recreational tourism and cultural tourism. In addition,
tourists were able to spend two days with a local family living in culturally-decorated
accommodation, work as locals on farms and spend time visiting health clinics and
spas. According to Irshad (2010): “Rural tourism is not just farm-based tourism. It
includes farm-based holidays but also comprises special interest nature holidays
and ecotourism, walking, climbing and riding, adventure, sport and health tourism,
hunting and angling, educational travel, arts and heritage tourism, and, in some areas,
258
ethnic tourism” (p. 2). This suggests that rural tourism is a potential tourism market
for Samarkand which can be developed in districts of the region through the addition
of various tourism activities such as wine tasting, working in the fields, and feeding
animals which are perfect activities for families with young children who may never
have seen a working farm before.
Conclusion
When considering the themes that have been developed, it can be concluded
that Samarkand has a great deal of potential to further develop the tourism sphere.
Although the tourism industry in this region had been rapidly developing before the
pandemic, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic totally changed the situation
for the tourism industry. This was because very few international tourists visited
Samarkand during 2020, due to global travel restrictions and lockdowns. As a result,
many tour agencies and hotels closed and employees lost their jobs and suffered from
a lack of income, resulting in many being forced to change their jobs. Additionally,
shopkeepers who usually sold handmade souvenirs, cultural handicrafts, national
fabrics and traditional cloths to tourists also suffered from the effects of the pandemic
through the loss in income.
The government of Uzbekistan has attempted to provide some support to the

tourism industry during the pandemic by allowing tour operators and tour firms/
agencies to organize domestic tours in “green” and “yellow” zones where the spread
of coronavirus was lower or with fewer cases of the disease reported. Zumrad and
Amiov (2020) stated that it was necessary to support domestic recreational tourism,
so that internal flows could compensate for the absence of foreign tourists. Soon
the positive effects of domestic tourism began to be seen in the Samarkand region
with the local government announcing “tourism months” during the pandemic and
offering up to 50% discounts on many tourism services, resulting in thousands of
domestic tourists visiting the Samarkand region. In Samarkand, domestic tourism
was regarded as the “saver” of the tourism industry of Samarkand and prevented its
total collapse.
The findings from this research support the importance of diversifying the tourism
sector, in order to encourage tourists to stay longer in this region. A lack of diversity
in tourism products was stated as the main reason for the short stay of tourists as no
other types of tourism services, programs or excursions were offered. Some attempts
have been made by the government to initiate new types of nature-based and rural
tourism, but these have been minimal. Samarkand has many opportunities to develop
other niche tourism markets such as wine tourism, gastronomy tourism, MICE
tourism, sport tourism and recreation tourism. It was stated that, “Samarkand is
259
astonishing not only with its ancient mosques, mausoleums and madrassas but also
with its wine. On this blessed land under the scorching rays of the sun grow different
varieties of grapes, which by their sweetness surpass their global counterparts” (Wine
tasting at the old winery, 2020).
However, problems associated with diversification are a lack of finance,

inadequate infrastructure for getting to tourism facilities and the unpopularity of many
destinations due to a lack of promotion. The development of tourism in a particular
region requires a great deal of improvement in the existing infrastructure which
requires an increased amount of investment resources (OECD, 2020). Therefore, the
economic importance and level of development of tourism in a region is determined
by the availability of greater financial resources. Therefore, the government needs
to allocate more money to improve tourism infrastructure and the facilities of these
potential destinations.
Limitations
Overall, there is a lack of literature about niche tourism resources in Samarkand,
and this was a major obstacle in determining new niche tourism attractions, and
analyzing the tourism potential of Samarkand. Another limitation was linked to the
sample size and the method of sampling, in which a small number of experienced
tour operators were interviewed using a purposive sample. The sample size was small
and a larger sample would have helped to increase the validity of the responses.
Furthermore, because of the pandemic, many tour operators were not interested in
being interviewed, resulting in the researchers having to use a snowball sampling
technique to collect the primary data.
Recommendation for further research

In the future, there is a need to expand the case study area to identify further niche
tourism markets not only in Samarkand, but also in other cities of Uzbekistan, such
as Bukhara, Khiva and Tashkent. This would assist tourism providers to increase
the number of visitations and to prolong the overnight stays of international visitors,
especially for special interest tourists.

Authors Contributions: Conception/Design of study: S.R., I.P.; Data Acquisition: S.R.; Data Analysis/Interpretation: S.R.,
I.P.; Drafting Manuscript: S.R., I.P.; Critical Revision of Manuscript: I.P.; Final Approval and Accountability: S.R., I.P.
260
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DOI: 10.26650/jot.2021.7.2.1017009
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Gamification Practices in Museums
Özgül Çetin1 , Fethiye Erbay2
Abstract
Museums as cultural institutions serve a large number of audiences. To communicate effectively with their visitors and
attract new audiences, museums have to develop new methods and tools. The competition from other alternative leisure
time activities makes it increasingly harder for museums to attract visitors. “Gamification” is an effective method for
museums to interact with their visitors. Gamification tools have already been implemented successfully in education,
health, self-improvement, and other areas. There are various studies on the utilization of gamification in marketing,
business, and communication as well. Yet studies on the gamification of museum experiences are scant. The purpose of
this study is to close this gap, identify possible gamification methods in museums, and explore the impact of gamification
on the visitor experience. In order to do so, interviews were conducted with eight museum professionals. Results indicate
that gamification is an engaging tool for a meaningful museum experience for visitors. In addition to the benefits of
gamification, some difficulties and challenges were also explored.
Keywords
Museum, Gamification, Motivation, Visitor Experience, Museum-Visitor Interaction
1 Correspondence to: Özgül Çetin (PhD Candidate), Istanbul University, social Sciences Institute, Museum Management Department,
Istanbul, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-7007-1267
2 Fethiye Erbay (Prof. Dr.), Istanbul University, Faculty of Literature, Museum Management Department, Istanbul, Turkey.
E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-6988-5367
To cite this article: Cetin, O., & Erbay, F. (2021). Gamification Practices in Museums. Journal of Tourismology, 7(2), 265-276.
Introduction
Museums work hard to attract visitors and keep their attention while informing
them about their collections. One of the major discussion issues in museum studies
is the visitor experience and learning in the museum (Vom Lehn & Heath, 2003).
Visitors can have a very dynamic experience in museums while they interact with
other visitors, the artifacts, and their environment. According to Pine and Gilmore
(1998), such experiences can be examined under four main dimensions. These
are: experiences related to education, which are about teaching people new things;
experiences related to entertainment, which are about having good time; aesthetic
experiences, which are art- and beauty-related experiences; and escape experiences,
which are experiences that take people away from their daily worries (Cetin, 2020).
Museums that offer one or more of these types of experiences can better satisfy and
create loyal visitors. Moreover, these different experiences are shared with others and
remembered for a long time.
Gamification in museum settings has the potential to offer all four dimensions of
experience. Museums that use gamification as a tool to create positive, unique, and
memorable experiences are preferred not only among competing museums but also
among other leisure activities (Pine & Gilmore, 1998). Gamification is acknowledged
as an important way to create experiences, but gamification in museums is overlooked
in the literature. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the components of
gamification in museums, a well as the processes and challenges of gamification,
and explore its impact on visitor experience. A qualitative approach was adopted
and museum experts were interviewed on their perceptions of gamification. The
conceptual framework of the study is detailed in the next section.
Literature Review
Games are seen as tools to provide social interaction and have been a part of all
cultures throughout history. With each game’s own rules and goals, games reveal
emotions such as excitement, ambition, friendship, and empathy, which motivate
people while they play. These emotions can also be felt through gamification methods,
which can bring a different perspective to people’s behaviors and habits (Rodriguez,
2006; Walker & Froes, 2011; Deterding et al., 2011).
Gamification was first used in the 1890’s as a method in the marketing industry
for improving the sales of products and services (Christians, 2018). The term
gamification was first used in academic literature in 2010, and scholarly publications
have increased since then. Research on gamification is mainly focused on social
interaction, experience, education, and motivation (Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014).
It should be noted that gamification itself is not a product but a process, and
the output of gamification is the game. In short, gamification is the process of
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Çetin, Erbay / Gamification Practices in Museums
changing an already existing activity using game elements, so that people can be
attracted and motivated (Landers, Auer, Collmus & Amstrong, 2018). Werbach
(2013) defines gamification as the use of game design techniques in business or
non-game environments, such as a human resources management. Redesigning the
daily routines and tasks of business life in a more gamified and interactive way will
make employees more effective and efficient, and will also increase their motivation
by creating a fun environment. Werbach (2014) focuses more on user experience
and sees gamification as a process, arguing that game design elements should be
carefully selected, combined, and applied to non-game environments (Simpson &
Jenkins, 2015; Sailer et al., 2017). Marczewski also defines gamification as activities
aiming to influence behavior by increasing motivation and commitment in people
(Marczewski, 2013).
Deterding et al. (2011) state gamification as the use of game elements and
game design methods in non-game areas, and they focus on the building blocks of
gamification. According to them, three concepts stands out in gamification (Deterding
et al., 2011; Sailer et al., 2017). These are the game elements (i), which contain tools,
such as cooperation, competition, strategy, and so on, that make up the game and help
the players adapt to the game. Game design (ii) is the phase in which the game starts
as an idea and becomes the game for the user. This includes many phases, such as
idea generation, idea maturation, scriptwriting, character design, setting up the player
journey, setting up the reward system, determining the rules of the game, leveling
the challenges, designing the visuals, designing the sound, deciding on the music
or composing the music, prototyping, and testing. Gamification aims to integrate
game elements into processes and environments such as work projects, education,
health, personal development, parenting, and so on, which would not traditionally be
considered games. This non-game environment (iii) is the third concept studied under
gamification (Gamification Guide, 2019).
Gamification improves both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. According to Ryan

and Deci (2000), motivation is very important for the performance of an activity. If
a person finds an activity very interesting and has fun, and if he is very enthusiastic
and energetic, this is due to intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, if the cause for
a behavior is external (such as environmental pressure, punishment, praise, reward,
etc.), the reason for this behavior is extrinsic motivation. Therefore, just as they have
different values, people also have different motivation styles (Ryan &Deci, 2000).
For example, in 2009 the Volkswagen Company developed “The Fun Theory.” They
designed the “The World’s Deepest Bin” project to draw attention to environmental
awareness. The Project included entertainment elements and was designed to both
positively affect people’s behavior and to attract attention. With sensory sound effects
placed in the bin, the feeling of falling into a very deep valley was created when a
267
piece of garbage was thrown into the bin. People who threw their garbage in it were
also curious to look into the bin to understand the source of the sound. The other
project was “The Piano Stairs,” built next to the elevators at metro stations. The stairs
were designed to play piano notes on each step. This project, which increased the
use of stairs by 66%, was fun for people and motivated them to stay fit. In another,
similar application, a slide was built next to the subway stairs so that people in
a hurry could use the slide to both go down faster and have fun (Bohyun, 2015).
Gamification practices that can be adapted to daily life also show the teaching aspect
of gamification while entertaining the audience.
Museums can also tell the stories of their collections to their visitors through
gamification applications designed for their target audiences. But studies about
gamification practices and their effects in the context of museums are scant. First of
all, museums should know their audience well and design gamification applications
to increase the motivation of their target visitors. And these applications should be
designed in a way that will contribute to people’s learning while they have fun, to
create positive behavioral changes (Bohyun, 2015). In traditional museums, visitors
generally experience and learn about the artifacts by reading and by watching their
environment in a passive way. In this case, visitors become passive participants.
Active participation, on the other hand, is defined as the interaction of visitors
with the environment both physically and mentally (Robson et al., 2014). Social
interaction is another important element that affects the experience in museums. It
is a great advantage for museums that visitors can interact with each other, and it is
extremely important that they learn new information from the collections exhibited in
the places they visit. Gamification is one of the approaches that will help increase this
interaction among visitors and collections (Ciolfi & McLoughlin, 2012).
In addition, different gamified applications also support the learning process by

offering fun. Gamification is also emphasized in order to increase young audiences’
interest in and interaction with museums (Squire & Jenkins, 2003). Teenagers usually
do not prefer to spend their free time in museums. Entertainment is very important
to attract this growing audience to museums. For example, The Victoria and Albert
Museum in England created an application for university students in collaboration
with teachers and designers. Teenagers enjoyed participating in the game because it
was a fun activity. In the application, they followed the directions uploaded to mobile
digital devices. For example, students were asked to laugh out loud and watch other
visitors’ reactions. They were also asked to guess what comments were made by
other visitors about a piece, secretly take photographs of visitors’ ankles in front of a
Tudor-era bed, and write messages to other visitors. Additionally, in front of a section
where plates were displayed, students were requested to play a video of someone
breaking the plates and watch the reaction of other visitors. Teachers and curators
268
observed that such unusual practices in a museum, which actually is a place students
find quite boring, make them feel good. At the same time, students learned a lot of new
information with this application. By enabling the students to see objects that would
not normally attract their attention, this gamification activity helped them observe
these objects from a different angle and question their thoughts and perceptions of a
museum (Walker & Froes, 2011).
Therefore, the entertainment element of gamification also makes processes

perceived as boring (both at work and in other areas of life) more enjoyable for the
participants and enhances creativity (Simpson & Jenkins, 2015).
Method
This study aims to investigate gamification practices in museums so that museums
can become interesting places for visitors to have a meaningful museum experience.
For this purpose, interviews were conducted with museum professionals. In these
interviews, the main research questions were identifying the benefits of gamification
practices in museums, the difficulties encountered in these practices, and the
characteristics of successful game design in museums. Five years of experience was
set as a recruitment criterion for the participants in order to collect in-depth answers.
The concept of gamification was reviewed in the literature and four open-ended
questions were prepared as follows:
1. What are the tools and applications you offer your visitors to have an effective
experience in your museum?
2. What do you think are the benefits of gamification practices in museums?
3. What are the difficulties encountered in gamification practices in museums?
4. What is the ideal game set-up in museums?
Initially, interviews were conducted with respondents from the two most-visited
museums in Istanbul (Topkapı and Dolmabahçe Palaces). With the guidance of
these professionals, the contact information of professionals in other museums was
collected by applying snowball sampling. An appointment request was sent to these
museum professionals via e-mail and meetings were arranged. The interviews took
place at a convenient time and location based on respondents’ schedules.
The interviews were electronically recorded and transcribed into written text.
Each interview took approximately 45 minutes and a total 37 pages of transcribed
data were analyzed. Some museums, on the other hand, stated that they found it
appropriate to answer questions in writing instead of through face-to-face interviews
269
due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. The requests were accommodated and

respondents were allowed to send their answers via e-mail by recording their voice.
The age range of the museum professionals was 32-55, and their university education
was in different disciplines, including art history, history, archeology, philosophy,
philology, and economics. The experience of the professionals was between 5 and 30
years. Therefore, experienced museum professionals from different disciplines were
recruited, which also enhanced the representativeness of the sample. Table 1 displays
information about the respondents, their experience, and education. Respondents
were also given pseudonyms (R1 to R8) to protect their anonymity.
Table 1
Museum Professional Respondents
Museum
Experience Year Education Workplace
Professionals
R1 10 Art History Meşher Art Gallery
R2 5 Philosophy Yapı Kredi Culture and Art
R3 6 History Istanbul Research Institute
R4 ANAMED
Economy/Culture
11 (Research Center For Anatolian
Management
Civilizations)
R5 13 Art History Troia Museum
R6 15 Philology Dolmabahce Palace
R7 25 Art History National Palaces Painting Museum
R8 30 History Museum of Palace Collections
Adopting a qualitative enquiry, the study used semi-structured interviews as the

main data collection tool. Respondents were asked about their experiences and the
gamification practices applied in their organizations, the impact of such practices
on effective museum experience, the additional benefits of these applications, the
challenges they encountered in adopting gamification tools, and the characteristics
of games they created. The transcriptions were content analyzed. Keywords were
highlighted and coded under different categories, such as determination of exhibition
content, target audience, transmission of information, and visitor engagement.
Additionally the benefits and difficulties of information transmission were also
explored. Initially this open-coding process was conducted by each researcher
individually. Authors then came together to discuss their findings and emerging
categories. A consensus was sought for each theme to improve the reliability of the
findings. These are discussed in the next section.
Findings
Based on the content analyses, the gamification process in museums starts with
understanding the target audience of the museum well and determining the content
of the exhibitions. Museum professionals stated that museums differ primarily based
on their exhibition contents. According to museum professional Rl, museums are
270
divided in two: there are spaces where valuable works are exhibited and their stories
are told (i), and where more academic subjects with conceptual, abstract messages
are exhibited (ii). The target audiences of these museums are also different from each
other. While art-oriented exhibitions target a wider audience, for the exhibitions with
conceptual and abstract messages, their target audience is more limited. The transfer
of the information about the collections to the target audience should be done with
the appropriate tools. The important thing at this stage is that the tools to be used
in information transfer are understandable by the target audience. The information
should be transferred in a simple, short, and gamified way. This process is displayed
in figure 1.
Figure 1. Gamification Process
According to museum professional R2, if information boards are used, these

should be as simple and understandable as possible. Depending on the content of
the exhibition, it has been stated that the explanations are sometimes supported
by maps or diagrams/charts as well as audio/video works, such as interviews of
experts, collages, and short narratives. In some of their exhibitions, visitors were
also provided with information via touch screens. Again, according to the content of
the exhibitions, museum professional R3 stated that when architectural and graphic
design applications are used, these applications are designed to provide an effective
and a fun experience to their visitors.
Likewise, museum professional R4 stated that when academic content is targeted,

not only research documents but also digital content such as photographs and videos
are used in order to make it understandable for everyone.
Museum professional R2 noted that in guided museum tours for adults and students,
the narratives are supported by particularly interesting stories and anecdotes. R2 also
stated that they provide spaces to universities to give some of their courses in their
museums. In addition, children’s activities and programs are prepared according to
all ages, interests, and capacities. For example, it was stated that depending on the
content of the exhibition, booklets are printed with picture/motif completions, where
the names of the works are matched with their locations. Painting spaces are also
prepared. Again, for school groups, R7 stated that they give students the opportunity
to paint and also play treasure hunt games in the museum. In this case, students
are provided with an interactive visit to have fun and learn at the same time. These
interactive experiences make the visitors active participants in the museum.
271
R6 has the opinion that the Sultanate Boats (reconstructed boats used by the
Ottoman imperial family), which carry visitors from one side of the Bosporus to
the other, provide an enjoyable and unforgettable experience. R6 also stated that the
concerts given by the Janissary Band on certain days at the entrance of the museum
provide an impressive experience to visitors.
R8 stated that since the museum was a palace kitchen in the past, university
gastronomy department teachers and students, in particular, had a more effective
museum visit by applying drama studies.
In line with the definitions of gamification in the literature, the museum professionals
stated that when gamification tools are applied to non-game environments, it is
observed that people are more participative in activities they would otherwise find
boring. In terms of the benefits and challenges of gamification, as long as practices
allow the visitor to have a meaningful visit and fun in the museum, they are considered
beneficial by all museum professionals who participated in the study.
R4 stated that as a museum visitor, she felt more involved in an event with gamified
applications. Likewise, in the exhibitions they prepared, she stated that when a touch
screen or a search button is used in their exhibitions, they usually generate more
attention from the visitors.
R5 said that many definitions of museums have been put forward from the 19th
century to the present, and that people have referred to museums as prisons (i.e.,
Eskihisar Prison). R5 said that they came up with this prison analogy because
museums can be places where ancient artifacts are exhibited in a showcase in a static
and solid form, at a distance from the visitor. It is emphasized that the Eskihisar
Prison perception is based on the lack of communication in the classic museum,
where the objects are “imprisoned” with little interaction.
According to R5, gamification is providing an opportunity to communicate

directly with visitors, establishing an emotional bond between the museum and the
visitor, enabling visitors to become museum’s followers. In addition, R5 stated that
while the artifacts, especially archaeological artifacts, are kept at a distance from
visitors due to their fragility, the process of transferring information to the visitors
is carried out through new communication techniques and gamification. R5 stated
that they had the chance to communicate effectively, especially with children, at the
museum. Thanks to gamification, the information to be conveyed and the messages
to be given can reach their target quickly and in a planned manner, and in this way,
children, especially, become more open to perception with curiosity.
When it comes to the challenges of gamification in museums, more difficulties are

encountered in digital gamification than in non-digital games. R5 stated that due to
272
excessive use, digital devices can break down quickly. For this reason, which was also
stated by R1, a technical team should always be ready. This situation both increases
the costs in terms of maintenance expenses and can cause financial problems as
the applications need to be renewed. Digital tool also become obsolete within a
few years. In addition, senior visitors are a generation away from digital devices.
Therefore, they may find some of the applications complicated to use. Hence, the
design of such applications should be as clear and easy as possible to use.
On the other hand, non-digital gamification often does not appeal to young people,
who spend most of their time in digital applications. For this reason, particularly the
“Z” generation easily gets bored with traditional games and thinks that the museum
does not appeal to them. Additionally, R5 stated that there are big difficulties in
reaching teenagers and establishing communication with them based on their
experiences.
Although gamification applications provide an enjoyable experience for visitors,

these applications can sometimes overshadow the original work, exhibition, and
message. R4 mentioned that for this reason, the dose of gamification needs to be
adjusted carefully. The game should be prevented from becoming the main product
of museums and should always be related to the museum’s mission and contents
of the exhibitions. In addition, the content of gamification should be appropriate
and understandable for all age groups. The expert staff in each museum should
investigate the needs of the target audiences and follow the innovations in the field
of gamification.
One of the points stated by R1 and R4 is the need to measure the effectiveness
of gamification applications on visitors. In addition, understanding the impact of
gamification on museum experiences will facilitate the spread of such practices.
Hence, visitor exit surveys gain importance.
Museum professionals were also asked for their opinions about the applications
they have not developed yet, but have planned for the future. Accordingly to R3, 2D
applications can be counted among the more effective gamification applications than
can digital versions. In addition, R5 said that education workshops, drama, theater
performances, and mobile museum studies are among the future plans of their museum
with regards to gamification applications. In addition, there is the idea of bringing
children together with the museum in schools with mobile museum applications.
Discussion and Conclusion

According to the museum professionals, museums that interact with their visitors
using appropriate gamification methods attract more visitors and are considered more
273
successful than classic museums that do not communicate with their visitors and do
not create any interaction between the exhibited works and their visitors.
Marczewski (2013) mentioned that gamification aims to affect behaviors by

increasing motivation and commitment in people with game like thinking, game
metaphors, and game elements. So museums can provide an enjoyable experience
by offering an active participation opportunity to their visitors and can increase
their motivation with gamification applications. These experiences are important for
museums to create loyal visitors who recommend them to others, contributing to the
development of both visitors and museums. Gamification applications particularly
facilitate communication with children, so that children can learn information
conveyed by the museums easily, while having fun. These gamified applications
also increase memorability. Therefore, gamification practices can secure children as
permanent museum visitors of the future and will be able to contribute to the cultural
development of society, which is the main mission for any museum.
Although respondents mentioned that the new generation is harder to reach,

museum professionals acknowledge gamification as one of the solutions. Literature
supports the idea that there is a game suitable for every person (Cetin, 2020). Studies
and examples show that games as tools of providing social interaction throughout
history provide people with a sense of freedom, which increases creativity. Hence
the pessimistic approach to reaching young people can be overcome by designing
games based on the young generation’s profile and interests. Moreover, research and
practice show that there are some games in museums designed for young people that
do effectively create engagement and interest from younger generations. Meanwhile
studies have also shown that visitors’ biggest motivation (80%) for going to a museum
is to have fun (Lui & Idris, 2018). In the past century, despite an increasing number
of alternative leisure activities, museums have made great efforts to stay attractive
for their visitors. Both in virtual and physical environments, museums are focused on
entertaining their visitors in addition to their mission of conveying information and
education. Therefore, the quality of interaction between the museum and the visitor
is the major discussion.
Museums are no longer static; as dynamic spaces, they adapt new practices,
especially in terms of visitor-centered approaches. Gamification is one of the practices
that provide a fun time and an effective experience in museums for visitors. Museums
that can communicate effectively with their visitors and offer them a comfortable
ambiance where they can interact with their environment, and allow them both to
have fun and learn, provide a meaningful museum experience.
To conclude, gamification can be used in museums to enhance the visitor experience.

However, the contents of the games should match the mission of the museums, their
274
exhibitions, and the needs and profiles of their target visitor groups. Gamification
methods to be used in museums should be designed in a way that is appropriate
for all age groups and that motivates their visitors, in order to give them emotional
and mental experiences. There are also challenges of gamification in museums, such
as the cost of introducing and maintaining gamification applications and tools. The
use of digital devices can also be difficult to understand. That’s why these devices
should be clear and understandable for all age groups. In addition, digital devices
can easily break down and this can cause extra costs. However, as acknowledged
by the museum professionals, the benefits of gamification in museums outweigh its
difficulties, and gamification can meet the expectations of visitors in museums.
Museums that want to communicate effectively with their visitors can design
gamification applications using the findings obtained as a result of the research. The
findings offered in this qualitative study can be used to collect quantitative data in
future studies on gamification applications in museums, and measure their effects
on visitor behavior using a questionnaire. Market segmentation analyses can also be
utilized and scales can be developed in different areas of gamification in museums.

Authors Contributions: Conception/Design of study: Ö.Ç.; Data Acquisition: Ö.Ç.; Data Analysis/Interpretation: Ö.Ç.;
Drafting Manuscript: Ö.Ç.; Critical Revision of Manuscript: Ö.Ç.; Final Approval and Accountability: F.E.
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Mucchielli, A. (1991). Zihniyetler [Mindsets] (A. Kotil, Trans.). İstanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayınları.
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Bilişim.
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[Organization culture: Its functions, elements and importance in leadership and business
management]. In M. Zencirkıran (Ed.), Örgüt sosyolojisi [Organization sociology] (pp. 233–
263). Bursa, Turkey: Dora Basım Yayın.
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nedenleri ve azaltma girişimleri [Source and intervention reduction of stress for parents whose
children are in intensive care unit after surgery]. Istanbul University Florence Nightingale
Journal of Nursing, 15(60), 179–182.
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de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (1999). The discursive construction of national identity. Discourse
and Society, 10(2), 149–173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926599010002002
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England Journal of Medicine, 372, 2087–2096. http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1501184
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Turner, S. J. (2010). Website statistics 2.0: Using Google Analytics to measure library website
effectiveness. Technical Services Quarterly, 27, 261–278. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/
07317131003765910
f) Advance Online Publication
Smith, J. A. (2010). Citing advance online publication: A review. Journal of Psychology. Advance
online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a45d7867
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Doctoral Dissertation, Master’s Thesis, Presentation, Proceeding

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Van Brunt, D. (1997). Networked consumer health information systems (Doctoral dissertation).
Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 9943436)
b) Dissertation/Thesis from an Institutional Database
Yaylalı-Yıldız, B. (2014). University campuses as places of potential publicness: Exploring the
politicals, social and cultural practices in Ege University (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved
from Retrieved from: http://library.iyte.edu.tr/tr/hizli-erisim/iyte-tez-portali
c) Dissertation/Thesis from Web

Tonta, Y. A. (1992). An analysis of search failures in online library catalogs (Doctoral dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley). Retrieved from http://yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~tonta/
yayinlar /phd/ickapak.html
d) Dissertation/Thesis abstracted in Dissertations Abstracts International
Appelbaum, L. G. (2005). Three studies of human information processing: Texture amplification,
motion representation, and figure-ground segregation. Dissertation Abstracts International:
Section B. Sciences and Engineering, 65(10), 5428.
e) Symposium Contribution
Krinsky-McHale, S. J., Zigman, W. B., & Silverman, W. (2012, August). Are neuropsychiatric
symptoms markers of prodromal Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome? In W.
B. Zigman (Chair), Predictors of mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and mortality in adults
with Down syndrome. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the American Psychological
Association, Orlando, FL.
f) Conference Paper Abstract Retrieved Online
Liu, S. (2005, May). Defending against business crises with the help of intelligent agent based
early warning solutions. Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise
Information Systems, Miami, FL. Abstract retrieved from http://www.iceis.org/iceis2005/
abstracts_2005.htm
g) Conference Paper - In Regularly Published Proceedings and Retrieved Online
Herculano-Houzel, S., Collins, C. E., Wong, P., Kaas, J. H., & Lent, R. (2008). The basic
nonuniformity of the cerebral cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
105, 12593–12598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805417105
h) Proceeding in Book Form
Parsons, O. A., Pryzwansky, W. B., Weinstein, D. J., & Wiens, A. N. (1995). Taxonomy for
psychology. In J. N. Reich, H. Sands, & A. N. Wiens (Eds.), Education and training beyond the
doctoral degree: Proceedings of the American Psychological Association National Conference
on Postdoctoral Education and Training in Psychology (pp. 45–50). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
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Nguyen, C. A. (2012, August). Humor and deception in advertising: When laughter may not be
the best medicine. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association,
Orlando, FL.
Other Sources
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Browne, R. (2010, March 21). This brainless patient is no dummy. Sydney Morning Herald, 45.
b) Newspaper Article with no Author
New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15). The Washington
Post, p. A12.
c) Web Page/Blog Post
Bordwell, D. (2013, June 18). David Koepp: Making the world movie-sized [Web log post].
Retrieved from http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/page/27/
d) Online Encyclopedia/Dictionary
Ignition. (1989). In Oxford English online dictionary (2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.
oed.com
Marcoux, A. (2008). Business ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.). The Stanford encyclopedia of
philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-business/
e) Podcast
Dunning, B. (Producer). (2011, January 12). in Fact: Conspiracy theories [Video podcast].
Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/
f) Single Episode in a Television Series
Egan, D. (Writer), & Alexander, J. (Director). (2005). Failure to communicate. [Television series
episode]. In D. Shore (Executive producer), House; New York, NY: Fox Broadcasting.
g) Music
Fuchs, G. (2004). Light the menorah. On Eight nights of Hanukkah [CD]. Brick, NJ: Kid Kosher.
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Journal of Tourismology

Volume: 7 • Number: 2 • December 2021

INDEXING AND ABSTRACTING

Authors bear responsibility for the content of their published articles.

The publication language of the journal is English.

This is a scholarly, international, peer-reviewed and open-access journal published biannually

Publication Type: Periodical

Editorial Management Board Members

Thinking Imaginatively via Generative Vitality in Tourism Studies

In this light, this paper provides an introduction to Deleuzian (or rather, to

It is important that those who work as researchers in Tourism Studies or as

Introduction — Thinking Creatively / Thinking Spirally / Thinking Otherwise:

Three Illustrative Deleuzian ‘Planes of Thought’

There Is Always More To Know

All Life Is Constant ‘Becoming’

There Is No Distinction Between The Actual And The Virtual

To clarify this important matter, under Deleuzian understandings, the virtual is

there is always and everywhere an actual, distinctive, and rigid divergence

To Deleuze, the virtual is a province of unfulfilled potentiality which is

Under this embrace of the virtual, meaningful interpretations of ‘difference’, ipso

In this light, ‘becoming’ is thereby ‘difference’ which is yet to be actualised into

The Reflexity On Nomadic Logic:

Thinking Creatively / Thinking Spirally / Thinking Otherwise

soon as one has reached or made an interpretation (i.e., a decided explication on

And it is thereby a form of creative practical thought (a form of affirmative

Prospect — Thinking With And Via Nomadic Logic:

Applied Deleuzian ‘Generative Vitality’ To Travel, Tourism, And Related

• Reflection Point 1 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Need For More Critical Cartographics

As Deleuze recognised, progress in both ‘social science’ and ‘science’ fields

more complex [scrutiny of the embedded / involved] power of discourses” (Braidotti,

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism /

• Reflection Point 2 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Obligation To Work Commonly With ‘Virtuality’

(Bagini 2018:237, emphasis added [in italics])

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism

Where in tourism programming and packaging are the leading sites of

• Reflection Point 3 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Invocation To Think Spirally And Otherwise

matters of (for example) ‘nomadicism’, ‘affect’, ‘becoming’, whatever; refer

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism /

• Reflection Point 4 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Plea To Monitor The Geography Of Reason

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism

Atlantic fictions which underpin the colonial narratives of tourism? Please

• Reflection Point 5 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Summons — Under The Denormalisation of Things — To Genunely Recog-

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism /

Reflection Point 6 For The Mobilities of Travel / Tourism:

The Cue For Relationality --- Posthuman Connectivity

• Reflective Question(s) On The Nomadic Logic of Travel / Tourism

Overview — The Call For Self-Reflexive Questioning:

Towards ‘Generative Vitality’ Through Tourism / Tourism Studies

Do you (the researcher or practitioner) over-trust the foundational narratives and

Peer-review: Externally peer-reviewed.

Other Tourists as Part of Tourism Product

Begüm Dilara Emiroğlu1

Cross-cultural contacts in tourism generally involve interactions between tourists

Customer to Customer Interactions