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Global
Change and Economic Crisis in Tourism – IGU Conference in
Stellenbosch, South Africa 5-9 September 2010
Introduction
This conference is being
organised on behalf of the International Geographical Union’s (IGU)
Commission of Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and will be held at
the Stellenbosch University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in
Stellenbosch, South Africa (60 km from Cape Town).
Tourism is a global-scale
industry with growing impacts on the environment, as well as profound
implications for regional and local development. In many developed
and developing countries tourism increasingly provides new
opportunities, employment and economic benefits to local communities,
many countries seeing tourism promotion as an expedient and
relatively inexpensive strategy to attract foreign direct investment
by, for example, showcasing natural areas and local indigenous
cultures. Growing tourism activity in many places in the world is
increasingly tying them to the industry and related cultural, social,
economic and political networks. At the same time tourism is deeply
influenced by its changing physical and social environments and
larger processes such as global climate change. The current global
economic credit crisis has, in addition, underlined the impact of
shifting economic fortunes on the global tourism system.
Tourism has become an
important policy tool for community and regional development in many
developed and developing countries, not least of which in Africa.
Tourism also has significant potential to influence and change the
use of natural and cultural resources in regions. This has
highlighted the role of sustainability, management and governance in
tourism development and turned tourism not only into an economic but
also a social and political activity that influences the wider
environment in various ways. At policy level, tourism is more and
more being viewed as an essential sector of regional and national
reconstruction and development. In this sense the rationale for
tourism development has evolved towards the idea of tourism as a tool
for regional and sustainable development and, recently, to a
relatively new idea of tourism as an instrument of social and
economic empowerment and poverty reduction. Consequently, there are
many regional and local development programmes giving prominence to
the role of tourism in regional and sustainable development and
empowerment. Currently, the decline in global economic output and
growth has drawn attention to the potential vulnerability of various
regions’ tourism systems to economic shocks. This has challenged
the general conviction that tourism-led development is a sustainable
and necessarily solid platform from which to develop local, national
and regional economies.
Conference Goals and
Objectives
The aim of the commission
meeting is to discuss the relationship between tourism and
development in the contexts of economic crises, global environmental
change and changing tourist behaviour and preferences. The conference
will focus on the roles and potential of tourism for development,
sustainability in tourism and relations between tourism, environment
and broad global processes of change at different levels of analysis,
highlighting different types of “crises”.
The general aims of the
conference are to:
Discuss the nature
and roles of tourism development in specific developed and
developing world contexts.
Examine the role of
tourism in sustainable development and the impacts of tourism in
natural, cultural and heritage landscapes.
Explore various ways
of using tourism to achieve pro-poor development at different scales
in the context of different types of “crises”.
Develop new
approaches to use tourism for development, especially for
sustainable development in crisis-type environments.
Analyse contemporary
issues, practices, future changes and challenges (such as global
climate change, economic decline or policy shortcomings) in tourism
development.
Assess the role of
tourism and sustainable development in the context of many different
types of “crises”.
Clarify the politics
of sustainable tourism in crisis environments.
Reviews tourism and
gender relations
Appraise the
positioning of tourism in unstable political environments
Scrutinize the
effects of regional warfare and global terrorism on tourism
Paper
Types
Following the ATLAS
conference format the study group meeting distinguishes between A-
and B-type papers.
A-type papers will be
presented in a maximum of 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of
questions and discussion. The sessions are expected to last around
two hours for four presentations. During these sessions a wide range
of topics is expected to be discussed (results of empirical research;
case studies; descriptive studies; good practices, etc.) A-type
papers will be accepted on submission of an abstract. Final papers
are due one month before the conference.
B-type papers are based
on theoretical and conceptual issues related to the conference theme.
B-type papers will be accepted on submission of an abstract. Authors
of B-type papers are invited to submit full papers one month before
the conference. According to conventional methods of reviewing
scientific articles, once the papers are accepted, authors will be
invited to present them in an half an hour, followed by half an hour
discussion.
Abstract
Submission
A- and B-type abstracts
will be subject to double-blind review by members of the scientific
committee. Acceptance of a submission will be based on: theoretical
and empirical significance; methodological soundness; relevance to
the theme of the conference; and logical clarity. The official
language of the conference is English.
Abstracts should be
submitted to Gustav Visser (
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) not later than 15
April 2010 and should include the author’s name, title, institution
and contact address/e-mail.
Abstracts (300-500 words)
should indicate background, theoretical/practical implications,
methods and/or data sources, and the findings of the paper. The title
should comprise be no more than 12 words. Please indicate clearly the
type of paper (A- or B- type). Abstracts that do not clearly relate
to the theme of the conference will not be accepted.
Receipt of abstracts will
be acknowledged by email and decisions on acceptance will be provided
no later than 30 April 2010.
Publication
Details
An edited conference
proceedings will be compiled. In addition, selected full papers will
be considered for publication in an edited book provisionally titled
“Tourism in an Age of Crises”.
Important
dates and deadline
Submission of abstracts
for A- and B-type papers: 16 April 2010
Notification of
acceptance of early submissions: 16 April 2010
Notification of
acceptance of all abstracts: 30 April 2010
Final submission of all
types of papers: 5 August 2010
Provisional
Conference Programme
The conference will
comprise plenary sessions, normal sessions and a fieldtrip:
Sunday 5 September 2010
Monday 6 September 2010
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Wednesday 8 September
2010
Conference Field trip
There will be a
conference tour of the ‘Winelands’ including an evening meal
organised on Monday 6 September 2010.
We are looking forward
to hosting you in Stellenbosch
Sanette Ferreira and
Gustav Visser
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Tourism Conferences 
