Seminar

Abstract: In the Trobriand Islands, well known in anthropology, local residents are keenly aware of their difference, both from other Papua New Guineans and from foreigners abroad especially the visitors who come to experience such difference for themselves.

Through ethnographic fieldwork with both tourists and Trobriand Islanders, I examine the commoditization of culture for tourism. I explore how the touristic experience is conceptualized both by resident Trobriand Islanders – how they choose to represent and enact “Trobriandness”; and by tourists – how they experience and narrate their interpretation of that enactment.

Abstract: The history of food in Singapore—its importation, preparation, consumption and social/political/national meaning—is a substantially under-historicized area of study. Singapore’s outstanding economic transformation since independence understandably dominates scholarly attention.

Abstract: Most ports and governments see cruise tourism as a potential economic boom. They are mesmerized by the glamour and majesty of cruise tourism and often overlook that cruise tourism is big business - the three major cruise lines typically earn more than $3 billion a year in net profit, while paying little to no taxes in the locales where they earn their income. Local ports and local governments need to also approach cruise tourism as big business. They need to recognize the economic drivers of the cruise industry, maintain a realistic (empirically-based) perspective about the economic benefits (and costs) of cruise tourism, and have a plan for how cruise tourism will directly benefit local interests and the local economy.

 Abstract:

Abstract: Academics over the years have lamented the underestimation of the VFR influence and the subsequent dismissal of VFR as a tourism market segment. This underestimation assumed that VFR travellers spent very little money and therefore are not important economically.  Whilst this is true of a few, including the pure VFR tourists (and we have no idea how many), it is not true of all VFR tourists. When accommodation expenses are excluded, VFR to the Gold Coast, Australia spend more than holiday tourists on eating out and attractions. More importantly, there are other economic measures which make VFR a valuable market segment: their PED (price elasticity of demand) and IED (income elasticity of demand) are inelastic.