ABSTRACT AGRI-TOURISM: AS A NEW ELEMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT DemirbaS Topcu, Elif MS., City and Regional Planning Department, Urban Design Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Baykan G&uuml / nay October 2007, 187 Pages This thesis study is developed under the lights of new developments related to rural tourism sector in the world. With the effects of emerging term &lsquo / sustainability&rsquo / in 1980s, sustainable tourism concept has found new implementation areas. The increasing demand on the tourism activities taking place in rural areas has lead the governments to find ways of benefiting from this tendency in a sustainable way. Since the early 1990s, a new type of rural tourism called as agri-tourism has been developed as a concept that integrates agriculture and tourism activities in the western world. Whether it is evaluated as a tourism or agriculture development element, it is a new element of country planning. Nowadays, it is seen that there is also a new tendency for agri-tourism at local level through local initiatives in Turkey. Although there is still no governmental regulation for agri-tourism activities, political and practical developments demonstrate that the sector should be evaluated as a planning element for Turkey. The main purpose of this study is examining the rural development element characteristic of agri-tourism concept as an element for enhancing the rural tourism activities in Turkey. To achieve the purpose, two examples from EU- Lublin and Tuscany Regions were examined to understand the dynamics of agri-tourism as a planning element. For these study interpretative-comparative-textual method is used. Accordingly, the present condition in Turkey is evaluated through the obtained data and SWOT Analysis method was employed for analyzing the data. Accordingly, some suggestions are presented for developing agri-tourism sector in Turkey.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Encouraging local people to participate in tourism planning and management can enhance local sustainable development because the host community plays a major role in the future direction of tourism (Murphy, 1985 and Mowforth and Munt, 1998). However, tourism sites in developing countries have limitations in terms of local participatory actions (Tosun, 2000). From the 1990s onwards, creative tourism has increased in popularity in many places around the world. This is thought to be due to its generation of profits that can be used to develop and preserve communities and provide a motivation for local participation. Previous studies have indicated creative tourism is one appropriate solution for challenges in cultural tourism because it can respond to the needs of cultural-based tourism sites to revive and differentiate themselves and provide for active tourists’ needs. There have only been a few studies that have explored the links between sustainable development and creative tourism (Solène, 2011; and Vide 2013). No study has yet linked community-based management with creative tourism. In this study, grounded theory was applied to provide an intensive explanation of the phenomenon and to produce a framework to assist with sustainable development in a community that has value in terms of local wisdom and culture in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. It presents the factors and processes of community-based creative tourism management which can encourage a higher level of local participatory action and lead to local sustainable development. It is the result of collaboration among local stakeholders, residents and tourism networks and was produced to create a sustainable process of community-based development and management of creative tourism activities that provide valuable knowledge and skills for tourists while developing and preserving the community. The research results can add to previous literature with a new theoretical perspective into community-based creative tourism management in rural areas.

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The aim of my Master’s thesis is create business plan financed by Countryside development program. The project is about reconstruction agricultural building into pension, which will offer ativities on organic farm and will be aimed on families with childern.

Title: Sport Tourism and its Influence on Development of Regions Objectives: The objective of the thesis is to introduce the sport tourism as a convenient tool for the regional development, to find out if the regions think about it in this way nowadays and how the sport tourism is incorporated in the strategic documents if so. The finding if the sport tourism is considered as a separate branch or if it is still divided into sport and tourism industry is also remarkable. This thesis sets the target to outline the different ways of the sport tourism application in a regional development and to determine certain recommendations as well. Methods: The methods used at research are qualitative content analysis and semi- structured interview. The analysis is used for the strategic documents of regions and the interviews are held with the regional representatives and the private institution agents chosen by a snowball sampling. Subsequently, a holistic analysis and an interpretation of discovered results are made. Results: I have revealed that sport and tourism are both part of the strategic documents of the regions, but no region uses the term 'sport tourism' in these documents. Sport and tourism are still two separate industries in the conception of the regions. Basically, it is possible to say that sport...

This exploratory study examined the different tourism market development strategies that tourism Multinational Corporations (MNCs) implement in their operations in African host countries. It empirically investigated the existence of any relationships between tourism MNCs’ market development strategies and the “Needs and Expectations of African host countries.” Also, it investigated the influences of external environmental factors on tourism MNCs’ tourism market strategic choice. Its sample population were top management executives of tourism MNCs‘ with operations in the African market. The unit of analysis was the corporation. The sample frame was an exhaustive list of tourism MNCs with operations in the African region. The initial sample size was 106 tourism MNCs’ executives. Thirty-seven of them responded to a mail in survey questionnaire. Two of the questionnaires were discarded due to numerous missing data. Thus, there were 35 usable questionnaires for data analysis, which is a response rate of 33%. The study results identified relationships between the integration of Multinational Corporations’ (MNCs) tourism market development strategies with the needs and expectations of developing African host countries, and their successful performance in those host countries in terms of growth in operations and profitability. It revealed that significant differences exist among the market development strategies on the factors of needs and expectations of African host countries. The significant factors were community participation, local entrepreneurship, and job and national security. Also, the economic development factor was observed to be partially significant. This study also identified free trade economy in the African host countries as a significant factor on the influence of external environment. The framework of this study is embedded in the underlying theories of international strategic management, international business, international development, and needs and expectations. The study’s final conceptual model depicts the significant factors of African host countries’ needs and expectations, the tourism market development strategies, an integration of the two concepts and the resultant tourism MNCs successful performance. This research study investigated MNCs in all sectors of the tourism industry. And the findings have shown that for the tourism MNCs to be successful in their African host countries, they should be sensitive to the identified sectors, namely economic development, community participation, local entrepreneurship, and job and national security measures. Also, they should exert more efforts in exploring African free trade economies for their business locations in the region. / Ph. D.

The aim of this PhD research project was to critically examine the self-reported socially-responsible activities of European full-service and low-fares airlines. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that has been described using many terms and with varying definitions. Broadly, it is the recognition that businesses should voluntarily mitigate and manage their externalities. CSR has been touted by businesses and governments alike as a preferred alternative to regulation. This research looked at the self-reported CSR approaches of the European airline sector, which has historically been heavily regulated and is currently facing increasing pressures regarding its impacts on CSR- and sustainability-related concerns. Low cost carriers have been under particular scrutiny for their impacts, and therefore, this research compared the CSR approaches of the two dominant airline business models in Europe: low cost and full service models. The sample consisted of 21 full service and 13 low cost carriers with headquarters in Europe. Mixed qualitative methods were applied to 566 secondary documents (websites, press releases, annual reports, and standalone CSR reports) and 15 elite interviews with airline managers. A range of established CSR indicators were assessed, including: definitions, reported practices, motivations and justifications for CSR activities, and CSR management and monitoring. Much of what the airlines reported as their CSR was at odds with academic and governmental definitions; as a whole, they placed considerable emphasis on environmental issues and adhering to regulations. This study also found that the CSR practices were closely correlated with business practices and key sector issues – an understanding of CSR that is most compatible with stakeholder theory-based conceptualisations. Business models on their own were found to be an overly-simplistic explanation for the wide variances of practice that were found in the sample. Instead, four ‘profiles of responsibility’ were identified, which better captured the differences in practices.

Abstract Tourism has developed into an important field of economy in the northern sparsely populated areas of Finland. State bodies of different spatial scales continuously put efforts to foster tourism growth and tourism is viewed as a prosperous economic path for the future. The prevailing tourism development is resort-oriented, which has transformed rural geographies in the North. Critical tourism geography research highlights that such market-driven tourism development has negative social and environmental consequences. Thus, tourism change needs to be examined from a broader perspective than economic benefits alone. It is required that tourism economy serves people and not vice versa. To increase sustainability in destination localities, collective economic agency in destinations is encouraged in tourism research and development. To date, tourism research has tended to draw on multiple, often contradicting, theoretical perspectives in an attempt to clarify how collective agency in tourism destinations should be best organized in order to foster social justice and ecological sustainability. The aim of this thesis is to understand how sustainability can be facilitated through local economic relations in resort-oriented destination development contexts. Sustainability discussions in tourism research are advanced by drawing on economic geography and its critical takes. The thesis consists of three studies that each examine sustainability in tourism destinations from a different viewpoint. The thesis first examines how (un)sustainability currently manifests in local economic relations and then discusses what changes are required to move towards more sustainable tourism futures. Ethnographically oriented case studies and a contemporary variant of the grounded theory method enables approaching tourism economies from the perspective of everyday tourism realities. The empirical part of the research is conducted in the Ruka and Ylläs destinations in the Finnish North. Insights were gathered by semi-structured in-depth interviews with local tourism actors in 2012 and 2015. The study introduces a poststructural political economy approach to sustainability transformations in tourism destinations. The less growth-focused economic thinking that exists in destinations is brought to light. Tourism actors’ motives and aims can differ drastically from the rationales of growth-focused tourism destination development that dominate in networked tourism governance. Many of the tourism actors desire conservation of natural and cultural environment in destinations. This creates conflict between the coexisting tourism paths. In the thesis, it is argued that economic difference in tourism should not be conceptualized merely as a source of diversification of tourism supply and thus as beneficial for destination growth; it should be recognized as political agency in tourism economy. Tourism networking is already now often value-driven, and this needs to be encouraged. That is, transformative agency for tourism change can be gained and new tourism paths created also through incremental changes ‘from below’, not only via policy actions. To contribute to the critical (economic) geography research on social and economic change, this thesis highlights that it is central to understand not only what new economic futures look like but also how to work towards them in everyday politics. Although the alternative and critical voices are valuable as they accurately state a socially just view of how things ought to be, these voices may not be the best way to bring about a change. This is because power hierarchies are not easily recognized in everyday tourism work. Each actor interprets the social from their subjective point of view. Even actors with the most power can have personal experiences of powerlessness. Thus, to foster change, it is necessary to facilitate the transformation of the existing conflictual inter-group relations. Dialogical everyday politics could work as a means to foster understanding of different groups’ tourism realities and their mutual influence. Conflict could be regarded not solely as an innate feature of capitalist economic relations but also as moments where mutual understanding can be facilitated. This is a way to establish local economic relations that enable community building. Destination sustainability touches not only firm-level practices but the mode of economic organization in tourism destinations. The thesis highlights that to advance social justice and environmental sustainability in destinations, destination development and planning should account for the possibility for a less growth-focused destination development path. As alternative tourism paths do not, as a rule, depend on new, large-scale tourism construction, they would likewise not foster growth in international tourist numbers and air travel. This unconventional view on economic path creation is to be encouraged as it is better in line with climate change mitigation needs and critical sustainability theorizing. / Original papers The original publications are not included in the electronic version of the dissertation. Kulusjärvi, O. (2016). Resort-oriented tourism development and local tourism networks – a case study from Northern Finland. Fennia 194: 1, 3–17. https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/41450 http://jultika.oulu.fi/Record/nbnfi-fe2019103136035 Kulusjärvi, O. (2017). Sustainable Destination Development in Northern Peripheries: A Focus on Alternative Tourism Paths. Journal of Rural and Community Development 12:2/3, 41–58. https://journals.brandonu.ca/jrcd/article/view/1466 http://jultika.oulu.fi/Record/nbnfi-fe2018051524148 Kulusjärvi, O. (accepted). Towards just production of tourism space via dialogical everyday politics in destination communities. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.

This thesis is concerned with the sustainable tourism development in the Protected Landscape Area Kokořínsko. The aim is to evaluate current state of sustainable tourism in this area and outline the perspectives of its further development. The theoretical part is dedicated to the definition of the concept of sustainable development and its application to the tourism in protected areas. The beggining of the practical part describes the Protected Landscape Area Kokořínsko. The practical part is also concerned with the organization of tourism and an analysis of offer of environmentally friendly forms of tourism. The thesis is completed with an overall evaluation based on the SWOT analysis, chosen indicators of sustainable tourism development and a questionnaire survey among tourists, residents, entrepreneurs in the tourism industry and municipalities in the region of the Protected Landscape Area Kokořínsko.