Bus Tour Research Articles

Authenticity, absence, and pedagogy on a historical injustice bus tour

This article explores how memory practices at sites of historical injustice are shaped by authenticity and absence. It explores a case study of a weeklong bus tour which visited over 15 historic sites dedicated to memorializing the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Drawing on the concept of dark tourism, this article explores how the bus tour was simultaneously a planned pedagogical experience, and part of a larger and sustained set of memory practices dedicated to maintaining and cultivating the cultural memory of injustices faced by Japanese Canadians. The article illustrates how these memory practices helped establish a pedagogical authority for some attendees and facilitated certain ethical engagements with the difficult past while avoiding and excluding others. It also demonstrates how the practice of dark tourism is implicated in larger conversations about the erasure of settler colonialism at sites of memory in Canada.

Teaching health disparities on the road: An experiential educational intervention for doctor of nursing practice students

AimThis analysis was conducted to understand the nuanced and underlying benefits and challenges of an experiential educational intervention for DNP students learning how neighborhoods and health disparities may be related. BackgroundPoor social and environmental conditions in many low-income urban neighborhoods are linked to deleterious health outcomes. Many of the structural and political influences are unknown to health providers, which can inhibit their understanding of the social effects on health. One aspect of a new DNP social determinants of health curriculum is a guided community bus tour in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods to enhance understanding of health disparities. DesignA concurrent mixed methods design, including comparison surveys and thematic analysis, was used to analyze student responses to the experiential educational intervention. MethodA community-based bus tour implemented in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in an urban environment was the study focus. New DNP students (n=91) in a midwestern university introductory course agreed to provide feedback following an experiential learning activity. The analysis of responses to the educational intervention was completed using a systematic thematic analysis alongside descriptive statistics and paired t-tests in a convergent mixed methods analytical approach to answer the research aim. ResultsStudents expressed confidence in naming and addressing health disparities after the bus tour activity. Analysis showed: (a) A visual tour can impact new learning, (b) Policy can explain inequity and is new to students, (c) Students do not well articulate racial disparities and (d) Understanding racial history requires attention and conversation. ConclusionA community bus tour met our expectations for teaching DNP students concepts related to health disparities as it illustrated real-life situations in actual neighborhoods. However, there were unusual student responses that prompted us to reflect on the activity and consider improvements. More emphasis needs to be placed on cultural wealth and on discussion planning for such experiences. Our results lay the groundwork for curriculum development. Setting goals and targets in line with the 2022 CDC’s Core Health Equity Science and Implementation Strategy is essential.

Current, former student‐athletes, coaches embark on ‘Take Back Title IX’ bus tour

LAS VEGAS — More than a dozen current and former student‐athletes and coaches recently embarked on a coast‐to‐coast bus tour to raise awareness and garner more support for a cause near and dear to their hearts. At each stop of the “Take Back Title IX” tour, they held rallies, spreading their message that women's athletics opportunities “are being stripped away.”

Urban walkability and tour bus travel

Urban walkability is receiving increasing research attention due to the environmental and health benefits of walking in comparison to driving, yet little is known regarding the walking behaviors of urban visitors who arrive by tour bus. The purpose of this study is to investigate the walking behaviors of diverse tour bus user groups visiting a spatially complex urban destination to better understand urban walkability, barriers to walking, and the derived benefits to walking for tour bus participants. Using an immersive mixed-methods approach, researchers collected eight days of on-bus/off-bus data to document information specific to walking activities, site-to-site transport, tour bus cruising/idling, operational efficiency, mobility, access, and safety. Four target visitor groups included school age, adults, international, and senior citizen veterans. Pedestrian miles traveled ranged from 2.0 to 10.5 miles during tours that lasted between 4.30 and 14.15 h, while primary barriers to walking included itineraries, weather, and safety considerations. Addressing the psychology of walking to evolve from utilitarian to a purposefully integrated leisure activity within tour bus itineraries is the key to decreasing dependency on tour buses for site-to-site transport in urban destinations. Management implications•Spatially complex urban park designs should consider walkability factors such as access, connectivity, path quality, safety, and aesthetics.•Policies that highlight and reward smart mobility should be prioritized to increase utilitarian and leisure walking in urban parks.•Tour mode bundles should purposefully embed walking activities in itineraries to increase physical benefits and participant satisfaction.

Collaboration and Destination Marketing: Creating Film-Induced Tourism

Increased attention to film tourism processes has driven the need for research on its relevance to destination marketing. Film tourism involves different actors with various interests, often making collaboration challenging. This study aims to understand how film tourism can succeed within complex processes involving multiple actors by using in-depth semistructured interviews. Using actor-network theory and emphasizing the relational network in the case study of film location bus tours, it shows that human and nonhuman actors, the tourism and film industries, film commissions, advertising agencies, residents, tourists, ports, and buses interact to create film tourism. This study shows that film tourism networks that were formed successfully are disbanded because of the changing relations between human and nonhuman actors in film tourism. The analysis reveals that power lies in the network created by collaboration among all actors, and the future of film tourism development relies on how heterogeneity is processed. It critically examines the binary of host and guest in tourism and attempts to transcend it constructively. Theoretically, it extends the context of how different actors’ interests are effectively processed. This study contributes toward enhancing sustainable tourism by reflecting the nature unique to the region, integrating with films shot in a destination to revitalize the regional economy.

Exploring the excellence: unraveling the service quality of tour bus operators in Thailand

Exploring the excellence: unraveling the service quality of tour bus operators in Thailand

МАРКЕТИНГОВА ДІЯЛЬНІСТЬ НІШОВИХ ТУРОПЕРАТОРІВ В УМОВАХ КРИЗОВОГО СТАНУ ТУРИСТИЧНОГО РИНКУ

The war in Ukraine, the closure of airspace and drastic changes in demand affected the marketing, advertising, eventing and logistics of tour operators. In this regard, the segment of bus tours, which allow tour operators to avoid logistical problems, is actively developing. Entry into the niche of bus tours by new competitors presupposes the active use of marketing tools by all market participants. Marketing in the segment of bus tours is changing radically under the influence of the recent pandemic and quarantine restrictions, the war in Ukraine, the economic crisis, the active implementation of information technologies and digitalization, the emergence of new generations of consumers, environmental activities and other factors. Theoretical aspects of bus tourism marketing are developed and practices of using marketing tools by tourist operators of the bus tour segment in the crisis state of the domestic tourist market are generalized in this article. The essence, goals and objectives of marketing activity in the field of organized bus tourism are considered. The concept, specifics and types of bus tourism are described. It is proposed to understand bus tours as trips of organized groups of tourists on their own or rented buses of tourist operators along a certain route and a formed excursion program. Factors affecting the development of bus tourism and tourist demand for bus tours are noted. The marketing practice of domestic tourist operators in the «bus tours» segment is summarized and it is concluded that they understand the threats and modern challenges, therefore they actively use marketing tools to successfully compete and maintain their market share. The considered practices of marketing activity form cases for players of the tourism market to adapt their offer to modern realities related to the crisis state of the domestic tourism market caused by the war, a decrease in demand, population migration, the change of generations of consumers and demonstrate experience in using new communication channels, tools of sustainable tourism, etc.

Outcomes of a Comprehensive Forest Landowner Extension Program

AbstractForestry in South Carolina has an annual economic impact of $23 billion and provides over 100,000 jobs statewide. Approximately 87% of forest lands in South Carolina is privately owned and faces shifts in ownership and management practices that may impact forest health. We conducted a bus tour that demonstrated the entire life cycle of a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) forest from final harvest through forest maturity. The bus tour was aimed at increasing landowner knowledge and influencing the likelihood that they will implement forest management practices. An evaluation using multiple methods was conducted to determine whether the bus tour achieved its objectives. Qualitative and quantitative data converged to show that the forest management bus tour appeared to have been effective in increasing forest landowner knowledge and intent to implement forest management practices, thus potentially increasing forest health across the state.

Building Community Resiliency through Immersive Communal Extended Reality (CXR)

Situated and shared experiences can motivate community members to plan shared action, promoting community engagement. We deployed and evaluated a communal extended-reality (CXR) bus tour that depicts the possible impacts of flooding and climate change. This paper describes the results of seven community engagement sessions with a total of N = 74 members of the Roosevelt Island community. We conducted pre- and post-bus tour focus groups to understand how the tour affected these community members’ awareness and motivation to take action. We found that the unique qualities of immersive, situated, and geo-located virtual reality (VR) on a bus made climate change feel real, brought the consequences of climate change closer to home, and highlighted existing community resources to address the issue. Our results showed that the CXR experience helped to simulate a physical emergency state, which empowered the community to translate feelings of hopelessness into creative and actionable ideas. Our finding exemplifies that geo-located VR on a bus can be a powerful tool to motivate innovations and collective action. Our work is a first-of-its-kind empirical contribution showing that CXR experiences can inspire action. It offers a proof-of-concept of a large-scale community engagement process featuring simulated communal experiences, leading to creative ideas for a bottom-up community resiliency plan.

Revisit Intention Model on Urban Tourism Basis by City Tour Bus with Destination Image as Intervening Variable

Tourists visiting urban tourist destinations choose mass transportation modes that make it easier to travel and avoid the risk of congestion, and there is connectivity between the city center and domestic and international airports so land transportation by bus is needed.
 The promotion mix and service quality will have an influence on the image and tourist attractiveness of a city and its influence on revisit intentions in urban tourist destinations. The purpose of writing this research is to analyze (1) the promotion mix, (2) the quality of service performed by city tour bus managers in Jakarta, (3) the indirect effect of the promotion mix and service quality on revisit intention and then determine (4) the city tour bus management model.
 This study uses a quantitative design with a positivistic paradigm on the implementation of the promotion mix and the quality of city tour bus services in Jakarta which has an influence on revisit intention with the intervening destination image variable. The method of determining the sample uses purposive sampling. The hypothesis will be tested using path analysis to measure the correlation coefficient through a questionnaire with an ordinal scale on a Likert scale with a Structural Equation Model (SEM) approach based on Partial Least Square (PLS) to measure the Structural Inner Model and Outer Model. The results obtained in this study are the influence of the promotion mix and service quality on the destination image and significantly influence revisit intention.

기억에 남는 관광 경험이 지각된 품질, 기억, 그리고 이미지에 미치는 영향관계 분석: 시티투어버스 이용객을 대상으로

본 연구는 시티투어버스가 기억에 남는 관광 경험을 제공하는 대상인지를 여러 구성개념(기억에 남는 관광 경험, 지각된 품질, 자서전적 기억, 이미지) 간 영향관계를 통해 살펴보았다. 이러한 연구목적을 달성하기 위해 데이터는 온라인 조사를 통해 4일 동안 수집되었다. 최근 3년 이내(2019년 기준)에 국내에서 시티투어버스를 경험했던 이용객 총 256명의 표본은 지역별, 연령별, 성별에 따라 층화추출법을 사용하여 얻게 되었다. 연구모형의 영향관계들에 대한 분석결과 연구가설3-2(기억의 선명도→정서적 이미지)를 제외하고, 대부분의 연구가설이 통계적으로 유의한 것으로 나타났다. 구체적인 결과들은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 기억에 남는 관광 경험은 지각된 품질에 긍정적으로 관련이 있음을 보여준다. 둘째, 지각된 품질은 자서전적 기억의 구성개념(기억력, 기억의 선명도) 모두에 긍정적으로 영향을 미치는 것이 발견되었다. 셋째, 자서전적 기억 중 기억력은 정서적 이미지에 긍정적으로 연관되어 있음이 밝혀졌다. 마지막으로, 정서적 이미지는 전반적 이미지에 긍정적인 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구의 결과들은 시티투어버스가 기억에 남는 관광 경험을 제공하는 관광 매력물이 되기 위해서는 품질 관리가 중요함을 제안한다. 또한 시티투어버스는 관광교통 수단으로서의 주기능이 있기 때문에 전체적인 회상의 대상물이라는 점을 확인할 수 있다. 이에 대한 몇몇 시사점들은 결론 부분에 더 논의되었다.

Keterampilan Menulis Dan Bercerita Untuk Membangkitkan Kecintaan Sejarah Bagi Generasi Muda

This research aimed to develop a Community Service Program that focuses on improving the reading and writing skills of elementary and junior high school youth regarding local history in the East Bandung area. The program addressed issues such as the need for more understanding of local history, low interest in historical topics, and limited writing and storytelling skills among adolescents in the area. The program began with delivering material on writing and storytelling skills and local historical concepts to the participants. Although initially hesitant and embarrassed, the participants gradually became enthusiastic about sharing their stories. The program then continued with the practice of historical storytelling through objects in East Bandung, starting with the Bandros bus tour. The young educators within Bandros supported the program by hosting visits to Teras Sunda and Tugu Perjuangan. The program laid the foundation for habitual action to write and tell stories about local history among teenagers. The participants demonstrated their ability to tell stories with simple narrative formulations, such as what, where, when, who, why, and how. However, the program faced challenges in terms of timeliness, and the young participants were still hesitant to write down ideas related to historical places in their surroundings. Overall, the Community Service Program can potentially improve historical awareness and writing skills among the millennial generation in the East Bandung area.Keywords: Historical awareness, writing skills, millennial generation.

695 - Community health needs bus tour: understanding social determinants of health and racism

695 - Community health needs bus tour: understanding social determinants of health and racism

A Development of Optimal Design and Operation Algorithm for Battery-Powered Electric City Tour Bus System

After overcoming COVID-19, the tourism demand around the world is on the rise again. At the same time, the interest in eco-friendliness is growing again, and efforts are being made to build an eco-friendly tourism ecosystem. In this study, assuming that a battery-powered electric city tour bus is adopted instead of an existing internal combustion engine city tour bus, we tried to develop optimal design and operation algorithms for battery-powered electric city tour bus systems. The developed algorithm pursues the maximization of the profit, which is calculated through the ticket price paid by tourists using the city tour bus and the overall cost of the electric city tour bus system. In addition, the decision variables of the algorithm are the daily number and interval of operations of the electric city tour bus, which are related to the tourism demand, the battery capacity of the electric city tour bus, and whether a pantograph-type wireless charger is installed or not at the bus stop. The operations research method is used to develop the design algorithm, and numerical examples are derived as the result of the optimal design to verify the proposed algorithm by referring to the operating situation of the Blue Trolley Line in Oahu, Hawai’i. As a result, it is found that profit maximization can be achieved by changes in the daily number and interval of operations on designated routes.

Hop on! Bus Tours and Corporate Access

Hop on! Bus Tours and Corporate Access

TOUR BUS CRASHES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TOUR GUIDES

Purpose – This study aims to understand the causes of tour bus crashes (TBCs) and related injuries, which are considered in the context of work-related accidents (WRAs). Design/Methodology/Approach – Five categories were obtained under occupational safety and health (OSH) by adopting qualitative and quantitative methods. Content analyses were employed by MAXQDA, 2020 for both open-ended survey questions and focus group interviews. Findings – TBCs and resulting injuries substantially result from i) negligence and unintentional faults of tour guides, ii) physical faults of drivers such as fatigue and insomnia, iii) physical conditions such as the environment and roads, iv) cost-orientation by travel agencies and intensive tour programs v) structural reasons such as night travels. A significant relationship was determined between the physical faults of drivers and intensive tour programs of travel agencies. Therefore, it was determined that unsafe conditions have a much higher impact than expected on TBCs. Originality of the research – TBCs were studied in the context of OSH for the first time. The study unveils the reasons behind fatal and non-fatal injuries of the TBCs by focusing on unsafe behavior and unsafe conditions.

Entropy-Based Transit Tour Synthesis Using Fuzzy Logic

This paper presents an entropy-based transit tour synthesis (TTS) using fuzzy logic (FL) based on entropy maximization (EM). The objective is to obtain the most probable transit (bus) tour flow distribution in the network based on traffic counts. These models consider fixed parameters and constraints. The costs, traffic counts, and demand for buses vary depending on different aspects (e.g., congestion), which are not captured in detail in the models. Then, as the FL can be included in modeling that variability, it allows obtaining solutions where some or all the constraints do not entirely satisfy their expected value, but are close to it, due to the flexibility this method provides to the model. This optimization problem was transformed into a bi-objective problem when the optimization variables were the membership and entropy. The performance of the proposed formulation was assessed in the Sioux Falls Network. We created an indicator (Δ) that measures the distance between the model’s obtained solution and the requested value or target value. It was calculated for both production and volume constraints. The indicator allowed us to observe that the flexible problem (FL Mode) had smaller Δ values than the ones obtained in the No FL models. These results prove that the inclusion of the FL and EM approaches to estimate bus tour flow, applying the synthesis method (traffic counts), improves the quality of the tour estimation.

Motel Builders of the Modern West

Motel Builders of the Modern West

A Fieldwork Forum for the VAF

A Fieldwork Forum for the VAF Brent R. Fortenberry and James Michael Buckley Fieldwork—the recording of buildings in situ with measured drawings and photographs—is one of the distinguishing features of vernacular architecture as a field of study. —Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley As Tom Carter and Betsy Cromley emphasize in their Invitation to Vernacular Architecture, the foundational introductory text for our field, fieldwork is central to the work of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. At the 2021 VAF Virtual Conference, we convened a group of VAF members for a plenary session called “Fieldwork Futures” that considered how our work in the field is evolving as intellectual, social, and technological conditions change around us. This panel led to a wide-ranging discussion among all those assembled about what the future of vernacular fieldwork might look like.1 After that session, we asked our panelists to follow up with a round of written commentary for this issue of Buildings & Landscapes, and we are delighted with the result. These articles allow the panelists room to expand on points they made during the session and to issue new challenges to our field in the twenty-first century. All of these authors ask about the meaning and relevance of vernacular fieldwork in the contemporary world and offer suggestions about how our field should carry out its mission to explore the ordinary built environment. Danielle Willkens discusses the opportunities and challenges of digital measurement techniques and demonstrates that there is as much craft involved with these technologies as there is with handheld tape measures and mechanical pencils. Elaine B. Stiles explores how preserving vernacular architecture will require “a fieldwork model that starts with people rather than material and received histories” in order to record for “a more representative, equitable, and just public history landscape” than we have achieved in the past. The role of oral history and ethnography involving living communities is the subject of Sarah Lopez’s reflection on interacting with Mexican migrants, and she offers some insights about how vernacular architecture fieldwork can enlarge the historical record with new types of evidence gleaned from those who presently make use of ordinary spaces. Arijit Sen challenges us to consider going beyond the physical recording of buildings by working with local communities toward social justice and by remaining open to the “serendipity” we always find out in the field. As we begin the exciting Mellon-funded VAF/ University of Virginia African American fieldwork program this summer, we will have the opportunity to test all of these methods of updating our fieldwork practice. We hope that by continuing our conversation at last year’s conference, this set of essays will help us keep thinking about our fieldwork in future issues of B&L, in conference sessions, and, of course, on long tour bus rides. notes 1. Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes (University of Tennessee Press, 2005), xvi. Copyright © 2022 Vernacular Architecture Forum

The Effect of the Quality of Public Transportation Services on the Interest of Jakarta Tourism Visits

This study aims to determine the influence of the quality of public transportation mode services on the Interest of tourist visits in DKI Jakarta. The mode of transportation in question is the Jakarta Explorer Tour Bus service in DKI Jakarta. This study used quantitative methods with a sample of 100 users of public transportation modes. The results showed service quality's influence on tourist visits' Interest with a regression equation of Y = 16.747 + 0.577X. Based on the hypothesis test, the calculated t value of 7,781 > t table is 1.984 and the value (Sig) of 0.000 < 0.05, which means that the service quality variable (X) has a significant effect on the tourist attraction variable (Y) with a coefficient of determination value (R2) of 0.382, it shows that the Quality of Service (X) of Tourism Visiting Interest (Y) is 38.2%.