Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 54).

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

This thesis gives an overview and seeks to establish a framework for creating the built environments that would support an ethical and environmentally aware global counterculture in travel and tourism. It seeks to advocate for the use of natural building techniques, responsive architecture, and sustainability in hospitality design and demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies might have on the visitor as well as the host community. Such reciprocal benefits are achieved by encouraging respectful, ecologically, and culturally sustainable design of global hospitality facilities, while the visitor is immersed in contextually-conscious spaces and environments. This approach is illustrated in several global terroir-driven vineyard case-studies. A new design and development methodology is outlined, stemming from Goethean science and its emphasis on the relationship between people and environment, a methodology that involves reciprocity, wonderment, and gratitude. The thesis maintains that if a hospitality environment is developed as holistically as possible, the spirit of the place visited will be amplified to the extent that visitors will feel that un-namable sense of energy that comes from a deeper, almost spiritual, connection. In its detailed approach, this thesis examines the environmental design theories of Christopher Day. Additionally, the architectural theories of Christopher Alexander in his work 'The Timeless Way of Building', as they appear and have been adapted in built projects, and in the promise they hold for future of hospitality design, are reviewed. Overall, this thesis investigates the potential of the built environments of an alternative tourism. Responding to the evolving definitions of personal luxury and motivations for travel, this thesis is inspired by the notion that people are affected physically, mentally, and spiritually by the built environment that surrounds them. In its conclusion, this thesis outlines potential guidelines for the future of hospitality design and the interpretation of place as fundamental to the integrity of a destination and infinitely rewarding for the visitors that go there.

This thesis gives an overview and seeks to establish a framework for creating the built environments that would support an ethical and environmentally aware global counterculture in travel and tourism. It seeks to advocate for the use of natural building techniques, responsive architecture, and sustainability in hospitality design and demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies might have on the visitor as well as the host community. Such reciprocal benefits are achieved by encouraging respectful, ecologically, and culturally sustainable design of global hospitality facilities, while the visitor is immersed in contextually-conscious spaces and environments. This approach is illustrated in several global terroir-driven vineyard case-studies. A new design and development methodology is outlined, stemming from Goethean science and its emphasis on the relationship between people and environment, a methodology that involves reciprocity, wonderment, and gratitude. The thesis maintains that if a hospitality environment is developed as holistically as possible, the spirit of the place visited will be amplified to the extent that visitors will feel that un-namable sense of energy that comes from a deeper, almost spiritual, connection. In its detailed approach, this thesis examines the environmental design theories of Christopher Day. Additionally, the architectural theories of Christopher Alexander in his work 'The Timeless Way of Building', as they appear and have been adapted in built projects, and in the promise they hold for future of hospitality design, are reviewed. Overall, this thesis investigates the potential of the built environments of an alternative tourism. Responding to the evolving definitions of personal luxury and motivations for travel, this thesis is inspired by the notion that people are affected physically, mentally, and spiritually by the built environment that surrounds them. In its conclusion, this thesis outlines potential guidelines for the future of hospitality design and the interpretation of place as fundamental to the integrity of a destination and infinitely rewarding for the visitors that go there.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-93). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-67).

The rapid expansion of tourism degrees over the last 30 years has been fuelled by the expansion of Higher Education, the popularity of tourism as an area of study, and the attraction of tourism careers. However, the tourism industry has not always been involved in these developments, nor appreciative of tourism degrees. Tourism employers have suggested that tourism graduates do not meet their needs, and voiced concern about the relevance of tourism degrees. Yet, there has not been a comprehensive study which explores employers' perceptions of the value of tourism degrees. This thesis aims to address this by providing an in-depth exploration of how tourism employers perceive the value of tourism degrees. To achieve this aim, a mixed method approach was adopted. A qualitative approach to this study was employed in its first stage. The findings from this stage were used to inform the second quantitative stage. The results indicate that the perceived value of tourism degrees is based on both its employment relevance and academic status. From an employment perspective, the majority of jobs available to graduates are entry level jobs which do not require holding a degree. These jobs are often customer facing, with what employers term as 'personality' being considered a key requirement. Tourism degrees are not seen to contribute to graduates meeting this requirement. Rather, they are seen to contribute to gaining knowledge of the industry, which incidentally is low on the employers' list of requirements. The importance of relevant work experience where skills such as customer-service skills can be developed and demonstrated should thus not be overlooked. Work experience schemes based on cooperation between universities and the industry could also have a positive effect on graduates' employability not only by expanding their work experience, but also because such cooperation is often linked to a more positive view ofthe value of tourism degrees. Where jobs which do require holding a degree are concerned, employers indicated that tourism degrees do not provide an advantage. They associated tourism degrees with new universities, and perceive graduates from new universities to exhibit deficiencies in higher level graduate skills. This suggests that although the expansion of HE was designed to meet the needs of the economy, employers may not be convinced of its benefits. The results indicate that regardless of whether the tourism degrees provide good, sound academic base, if employers associate them with former polytechnics and lower academic standards they will still opt for graduates from elite institutions and more traditional degree subjects.

This thesis uses early travel accounts (1838-1959), travelogues (1996-2001) and travel brochures (2001) to investigate the image of Oman and its people in British travel texts. Although there have been a number of imagery studies within the field of tourism over the last two decades, they have been recently criticised by Gallarza et al. (2002) for their lack of theoretical orientation. This thesis is intended to be a modest step in addressing this criticism by re-appraising Said's well known work on Orientalism (1978) and works that foreshadowed it, by testing their political, theoretical and polemical propositions against detailed evidence to be found in case study evidence derived from close analysis of English texts on one country; Oman. The thesis investigates the extent to which these texts confirm/disconfirm Said's predominantly critical evaluation of Western (particularly British and French) representations of the east through the construct he calls 'Orientalism'. Through exploration of the imagery attached to Oman, this analysis is intended to contribute to the wider "Othering" debate in suggesting how people of a developing country are defined and gendered by people from developed ones. The thesis, which is based on three genres of travel texts, suggests a much more complex picture of the mechanisms of representations than Said (1978) suggests, showing, for example, that each textual category (travel book, travelogue, and brochure) had its own distinguishing variations in terms of ideological perspective, mode of address and substantive content. For example, political and imperial discourses were widely present in early travel accounts, while, by contrast, travelogue and travel brochure data were more constituted by discourses of consumerism and commerce, with residual I'olitical and imperial traces either silenced, muted or reconstituted as forms of nostalgia, or a depoliticised, sometimes, aestheticised, historic heritage. Moreover, although some early accounts contain negative denotations and connotations relating to Oman and its people that would support Said's broadly critical deconstruction of "Orientalism" as an ideological mechanism of control and appropriation, all three media representations, historical travel texts included, were far from presenting a uniform, or even predominant construction of Oman and its people that would support Said's critique. In two contextual chapters, this thesis appraIses historical encounters between Omanis and Westerns with focus on the British and Omani relationship, and offers an overview ofthe development of tourism in Oman. On the methodological front, the study is unusual as an investigation that combines inductive with deductive approaches, quantitative content analysis with qualitative semiotic analysis. Content analysis was used to examine the images of Oman reproduced in the three media. The quantitative findings were analysed qualitatively by using semiotic analysis to explore and interpret the meanings behind the quantitative results.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2004. / Title from title screen (viewed on January 11, 2006).

This PhD thesis is concerned with sports tourism as a way of experiencing a sense of self, belonging and location in the social world. It is about how identity is developed, expressed and experienced when gymnasts interact within their specific sports community while travelling to take part in a non-competitive, international group gymnastics event. In particular, the research aim is to identify and make sense of the meaning participants attach to their involvement in sports event tourism in the context of the 2011 World Gymnaestrada in Lausanne/Switzerland, the purely non-competitive, official world event of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).