Through a case study of Prada Marfa, a site-specific public art sculpture located in West Texas, this dissertation examines the connection of public art, cultural tourism, and image-based social media engagement. Little scholarship that combines all three areas of study exists. To fill this gap, this study incorporates five methods of research to determine how one public art sculpture's existence can contribute to its surrounding community by prompting economic activity and influencing the way that community is seen through a public lens. The five methods encompass a historical analysis of news articles about The City of Marfa and Prada Marfa, a content analysis of Instagram posts, observations of interactions at the Prada Marfa site, a survey sent to Instagram users, and interviews with key stakeholders related to the sculpture and the Marfa community. This dissertation finds that the acts of photography and performance work together to show how Prada Marfa's existence generates intrigue for The City of Marfa and can influence tourism. It emphasizes that, regardless of a tourist's motive to visit the sculpture, they were still influenced to travel to the region specifically to see Prada Marfa. This dissertation also finds that the public narrative of Prada Marfa does not fully represent its local community and that the tourism dollars earned through arts engagement do not touch all individuals living in The City of Marfa. This research further reveals how image-based social media engagement, seen through the lens of cultural tourism to visit an Instagram-able site, can contribute to a community's economy and public-facing identity. This research can be used as an advocacy tool for the nonprofit arts community when trying to discuss the benefits of public visual art.

Ybor City is a historical neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, and a tourist attraction known for its immigrant roots and once-thriving cigar industry. This thesis places Ybor City into the context of the burgeoning heritage tourism market, examining how cities financially reliant on tourism often sanitize their public historical narrative. I identify the main actors involved in Ybor City's marketing and preservation by investigating contemporary newspaper articles and multiple National Park Service documents, thereby uncovering the motivations and decisions that led to Ybor's cultural image of a bustling, relatively peaceful early 20th-century "Latin" community. To correlate Ybor's aestheticized public image with the official record, I review and contrast historical primary sources, academic literature, tourism advertising material, and Ybor's physical historical markers designated to its landmarks. My main argument is that embellishing local memory with overt celebratory overtones and a patriotic message not only fosters a misleading narrative, but it also sidelines traditionally marginalized racial and ethnic groups: Ybor's working-class families, as well as its Jewish, Black Cuban, and African American heritage. This thesis seeks to advance a more authentic interpretation of Ybor City history by proposing a reinvestigation into literary sources and applying both GIS and mobile technology to update the existing scholarship.

This paper discusses the promotion of car ecotourism and its impact on Glacier National Park. Coinciding with the creation of the park's flagship Going-to-the-Sun Road from 1921 to 1932, both the state and the private sector presented the image of the newly commodified automobile as a vehicle to explore nature with. Historically, national parks have served the interests of the middle and upper classes, by suppressing marginalized communities, primarily through forced relocation in order to clear the lands for creation of the parks. The public's conception of the “wilderness” drastically changed during the time the car was commodified, as nature itself was repainted as a place of solitude and contemplation as opposed to savagery, through promotions which emphasized the pleasure of a scenic drive. This new conception of the landscape contrasted with the preexisting idea that nature is for the “uncivilized.” In the following decades, the car's status as a means by which to connect with nature and “escape civilization” only increased, directly as a result of public roads such as Going-to-the-Sun and their marketing. This study analyzes the themes prominent in promotional materials distributed by both the automobile industry and the state, which promote the status of the car as a central way to experience the wilderness, through a case study of Glacier National Park.

Research regarding self-service technology and its integration into the traditional service environment is relatively limited as it applies to the lodging industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate the customer check-in satisfaction and customer commitment impacts of self-service hotel kiosks as implemented in convention hotels by examining perceptions of kiosk users. It has been theorized that customer perceptions of self-service technology attributes are positively related to satisfaction and subsequent commitment. A model was employed in this study that had been previously supported outside of the hospitality industry which demonstrated support for a universal standard of investigating self-service technology impacts regardless of environment, but heretofore had not been tested in the convention hotel segment. This was a quantitative case study using survey analysis to examine customer perceptions of self-service technologies at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida. The results of this study supported a direct association between positive and negatives attributes of SST and corresponding customer check-in satisfaction levels. Secondly, while results supported direct association between customer check-in satisfaction and affective customer commitment, virtually no association was found between satisfaction and instrumental commitment.

Florida bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) were surveyed for the purpose of discovering the attitudes, beliefs, and actual behaviors of B&B owners and operators that contribute to an operation’s success. This study had several objectives: 1) to provide an analysis of attitudes and beliefs perceived to be necessary for success and the actual behaviors exhibited by operators based upon their self-definition of success, 2) to collect demographic information from various bed and breakfasts in Florida, and 3) to expand the limited amount of research that has addressed issues in the bed and breakfast industry. Between July 2009 and August 2009, data was collected by using a mailed survey. After collecting and compiling all of the information, Pearson’s correlation was used to determine if any correlations existed between owners and operator’s attitudes and beliefs and actual behaviors. Furthermore, the total sample was separated into a “successful” group and an “other” group in order to discover disparities between each group’s attitudes/beliefs and behaviors. This study was modeled after Bed and Breakfasts in Virginia: Identification of Success Factors (Kaufman, 1994), and had many correlations that were similar to Virginia’s bed and breakfast industry. In addition to the similar correlations found in the previous study, this study found several more attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that have deemed necessary for success by Florida’s bed and breakfast industry leaders. The study concluded that several attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors were necessary for success: bed and breakfast owners and operators must understand the B&B industry, have had past work experience in the hospitality industry, understand the basic functions of running a business, and maintain a positive relationship with employees and guests.

This thesis explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted wildlife rangers with an emphasis on the influences of tourism rates. Two sets of data are used: one is a survey of rangers around the world and the other looks at global governmental tourism data. While coming from a routine activities perspective, the problem of decreased capable guardianship becomes apparent in the form of massively decreased tourism arrivals and troubling ranger perceptions. This data allows for the establishment of tourism trends and changes during COVID. The findings of this thesis link the downturn in tourism with impacts on formal and informal guardianship within protected areas. Recommendations and discussions include potential ways to preserve guardianship in future pandemic settings.

Numerous media analyses claim that supra-regional multi-resort season passes (mega passes) are negatively impacting skiing, snowboarding, and winter-sport communities. In particular, media claims that ski areas on these season passes are charging higher single-day lift ticket prices to nudge people to buy their season pass products. To test this claim, I use a hedonic pricing model to estimate the impact of season passes on adult single-day lift ticket prices. By applying OLS regressions to a dataset of 302 US ski areas for the winter of 2018-19, I find that the ski areas on the leading season passes (Ikon and Epic Pass) charge price premiums for their adult single-day lift tickets. However, the magnitude of the price premiums is much smaller after controlling for ski area characteristics and regional fixed effects.

With increasing trust and utilization of the Internet, the sharing economy is emerging in the tourism and hospitality marketplace. This study focused on tourist non-purchase intention to use peer-to-peer accommodation. To explore the non-purchase intention, the relationship between perceived risk and tourist non-purchase intention to use peer-to-peer accommodation, as well as the relationship between impeding factors and perceived risk were tested. The study employed survey data (N = 280) gathered from active adult U.S travelers who have never used peer-to-peer accommodation before and have no intention to use peer-to-peer accommodation in future. The results showed that six impeding factors (i.e., lack of trust, perceived cognitive effort, perceived cost, perceived safety and security, perceived service quality, perceived cleanliness) had significant effects on tourists’ perceived risks. Two perceived risks (i.e., Performance Risk, Psychological Risk) had significant effects on tourist non-purchase intention. Based on the results. both academic and practical implications are provided.

Increased urban diversity in the metropolises of North America urges us to examine the different forms of mobility of transnational communities in cosmopolitan societies. Recent technological advancements, including developments in transport and communication networks, have significantly influenced participation in transnational activities and belonging to transnational social spaces. This study examines the relationships between long-term mobility (migration) and short-term mobility (tourism) by investigation the “visiting friends and family” travel of immigrants that best exemplifies the nexus between the two contemporary phenomena. As increasing levels of globalization and international migration are likely to be accompanied by increased transnationalism, the research uses transnationalism as a conceptual framework to study immigrants’ overseas travel. Research into the relationship between tourism and migration requires engaging with issues of citizenship as different categories of migrants have different rights in the country of settlement. This has implications for travel as revealed in the movements that occur between the places of origin of immigrants (which become destinations) and the new places of residence (which become new origins). These movements are likely to be influenced by the rights and duties of immigrants as citizens living within and moving around different states. This study examines the relationship between the overseas travel patterns of immigrants and their citizenship status. It also examines the role of ethnic and family reunion in shaping these travel patterns. The study also provides a deeper theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of ethnic reunion in shaping the travel patterns of immigrants and of the social and cultural meanings associated with the travel to the ancestral homeland. All of these issues are tackled by examining Palestinian immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and by employing a mixed methods approach engaging both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Major research methods that are employed in the research include key informant interviews, questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, observation and field notes, and the use of secondary data. The study explored the politics of mobility for Palestinian-Canadians, an understudied population in terms of transnational practices and issues of identity and hybridity. It also explored issues of citizenship and belonging using extensive interview data with Palestinian-Canadians in the GTA. Throughout the thesis the highly politicized aspect of mobility/immobility, national identity, and national autonomy in the Palestinian case was present. The research highlighted the continuing role of state actors in determining mobility and rights, despite the increasing rhetoric of borderless mobility. The study reveals that the majority of the Palestinian Canadians travel overseas regularly and their outbound travel patterns demonstrate a significant ethnic component. Palestinian Canadians travel to their country of birth as their dominant outbound travel destination for the purposes of visiting friends and relatives and maintaining social and cultural ties, indicating strong ties with homeland that have ethnic links. However, Palestinians holding Canadian citizenship have a higher propensity to travel overseas than permanent resident. The return visits have social and cultural significance to the first and second generations. However, these return visits do not facilitate return migration.

Increased urban diversity in the metropolises of North America urges us to examine the different forms of mobility of transnational communities in cosmopolitan societies. Recent technological advancements, including developments in transport and communication networks, have significantly influenced participation in transnational activities and belonging to transnational social spaces. This study examines the relationships between long-term mobility (migration) and short-term mobility (tourism) by investigation the “visiting friends and family” travel of immigrants that best exemplifies the nexus between the two contemporary phenomena. As increasing levels of globalization and international migration are likely to be accompanied by increased transnationalism, the research uses transnationalism as a conceptual framework to study immigrants’ overseas travel. Research into the relationship between tourism and migration requires engaging with issues of citizenship as different categories of migrants have different rights in the country of settlement. This has implications for travel as revealed in the movements that occur between the places of origin of immigrants (which become destinations) and the new places of residence (which become new origins). These movements are likely to be influenced by the rights and duties of immigrants as citizens living within and moving around different states. This study examines the relationship between the overseas travel patterns of immigrants and their citizenship status. It also examines the role of ethnic and family reunion in shaping these travel patterns. The study also provides a deeper theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of ethnic reunion in shaping the travel patterns of immigrants and of the social and cultural meanings associated with the travel to the ancestral homeland. All of these issues are tackled by examining Palestinian immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and by employing a mixed methods approach engaging both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Major research methods that are employed in the research include key informant interviews, questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, observation and field notes, and the use of secondary data. The study explored the politics of mobility for Palestinian-Canadians, an understudied population in terms of transnational practices and issues of identity and hybridity. It also explored issues of citizenship and belonging using extensive interview data with Palestinian-Canadians in the GTA. Throughout the thesis the highly politicized aspect of mobility/immobility, national identity, and national autonomy in the Palestinian case was present. The research highlighted the continuing role of state actors in determining mobility and rights, despite the increasing rhetoric of borderless mobility. The study reveals that the majority of the Palestinian Canadians travel overseas regularly and their outbound travel patterns demonstrate a significant ethnic component. Palestinian Canadians travel to their country of birth as their dominant outbound travel destination for the purposes of visiting friends and relatives and maintaining social and cultural ties, indicating strong ties with homeland that have ethnic links. However, Palestinians holding Canadian citizenship have a higher propensity to travel overseas than permanent resident. The return visits have social and cultural significance to the first and second generations. However, these return visits do not facilitate return migration.