European Theme Research Articles

The close complementarity of museums and theme parks as a tourist package in European capital cities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse museums and theme parks as a tourist package and how the proximity of airports to the city and public transport influence the development of this tourist package to stimulate tourism demand in cities.Design/methodology/approachQualitative and quantitative indicators have been applied in our methodology to measure the most visited European theme parks and museums from 2012 to 2022. Moreover, the localisation of airports has allowed us to address the importance of theme parks and museums in cities and their regional economies.FindingsThe results suggest that the location of the city, entertainment complementary activity, airport proximity, intermodal passenger transport, air and train accessibility, tourism demand and supply, and a high concentration of population in cities have a high influence on the development of a tourist package that includes museums and theme parks to stimulate the tourism demand in European urban cities. London and Paris are two of the most visited cities in the world, and these are the most attractive European cities for tourists in terms of efficiency because tourists can optimize much better their space and time to visit the city’s tourist attractions during their holidays. Another important finding is that the public transport service plays an important role in museums and theme parks’ visits and the optimization of space-time for tourists when they are visiting a city and its tourist attractions on holidays, especially subways, trains and buses. Although time-space measures of accessibility in public transport in cities must be improved to optimize the time of the native population and tourists.Originality/valueThis research shows the complementary role of museums and theme parks as an attractive tourist package and an entertainment, cultural and educational activity to improve the quality of tourism supply and redistribute tourist flows in European countries. Moreover, there are limited studies that tackle the theme of parks and museums in a tourism context.

Slímusetur in Early Icelandic Law and its European Context

Iceland received new law from its king in 1271, Járnsíða (Ironsides). Among other novelties, it forbade unwelcome and overbearing guests ‘slimesitting’ at other people’s feasts, sitja slímusetri. Analogous articles appear in the Norwegian Landslǫg (National Law, 1274) and Jónsbók (1281). To understand the king’s newly acquired interest in legislating against slímusetur, it is necessary to appreciate both the local context of legal reform and the European context of political language. Many things that had not been the concern of the king now became so. My present argument is that law forbidding people from imposing themselves on others by enforced hospitality must be understood in its European context and in comparison with similar legal provisions made elsewhere during the high Middle Ages. The two contexts, local and European, are but different viewpoints; however, they are useful in separating the specific and contextual from that which is general. The local context of legal reform in the Norwegian realm during the second half of the thirteenth century is principally a variant on a European theme that rang loud in the central Middle Ages. Essentially, it was a part of a larger, European process of state building. The introduction to Icelandic law of a prohibition against slímusetur, in Járnsíða and then Jónsbók, was not a response to local political conditions. Mainly, it was symptomatic of the fact that Iceland had now joined a new and different political unity, the Norwegian realm. In Norway, its introduction corresponded better to local conditions. Ultimately, however, the legal measures taken against forced hospitality in Scandinavia were echoes of a European development in which kings and princes increasingly policed their territories as legislators, supreme judges, and protectors of public peace and order.

Environmental aspects of the theme park development in the Russian Federation

Recreation and leisure are of paramount importance in human life. This article makes a comparison of different recreational areas categories. The main focus of this research is the current situation of Russian amusement and theme parks market. A comparison of Russian and European theme parks, their attributes, qualities, popularity and revenue is given. The research uses data gathering, analysis and synthesis to illustrate the insufficiencies of theme park development in the Russian Federation. The completed research suggests that Russia severely lags behind other European countries in terms of theme park quantity and quality. Factors that contribute towards this insufficiency are revealed in the conclusion of this research.

The “power of incantation”: A linguistic analysis of European theme parks’ websites

Representing “an instance of highly specialized discourse” (Gotti 2006, p. 21), the language of tourism has become an area of great interest in academia, where its multifaceted essence has been studied from different, but intertwined, perspectives. A common feature that characterizes tourist materials is the shared aim of convincing future clients to choose the tourist attraction they are promoting, implementing specific verbal, visual and multimodal techniques. Amongst the strategies commonly associated with the language of tourism promotion tense and magic can be found (Dann 1996). The first projects the tourist outside of present time, denying the existence of time itself, or by transporting the tourist into a nostalgic past or into a utopic future. Magic, on the other hand, relies on the “power of incantation”, and on the transportation to locations that do not only exist outside of time, but also outside of a physical place. This contribution aims at investigating how such strategies come into play in the promotion of major theme parks across Europe. Looking specifically at the language used in the construction of narratives in the official websites of eight major European theme parks, the data will be analysed through both a qualitative and quantitative approach. The use of keywords and expressions pertaining to these two dimensions will be analysed and commented upon, with the aim of investigating which distinctive promotional strategies are used to “convert [tourists] from potential to actual clients” (Dann 1996, p. 2) in the domain of theme parks.

Separatism in the European Union: regularity or exception from the rule?

European integration questions the relationship between nation and state. The transformation of the state in western Europe provides new opportunities for expression for minority nations. It undermines traditional sovereignty and weakens the need for statehood. Minority nationalist movements have in many cases adopted the European theme, adjusting their ideology and strategy accordingly. Europe provides opportunities for territorial movements and grants some minority protections. This paper explores the diverse ways in which parties operating in regional contexts have responded to, interpreted, and used the imagery of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ to advance their territorial demands.

The labyrinthine ways of myth reception: Cretan myths in theme park rides

Abstract This article examines the translation of two ancient Greek myths into theme park attractions in European theme parks. Following a very general discussion of the reasons for the popularity of ancient myths in modern media, the authors present a model of cultural translation in theme parks. The model is then applied to two theme park rides in Terra Mítica (Spain) and Parc Astérix (France), both of which, while referring to different myths, rely on the same iconography to establish their theme (the palace of Cnossos). The article specifically addresses scholars interested in classical reception studies and theme park studies, but may be interesting to anyone studying popular culture, cultural translation, adaptation and reception.

Gender Awareness in European Alpine Protected-Area Management: Achievements, Shortcomings, and the Way Forward

When the first protected areas in the European Alps were established as national parks, biocentric ideas of nature protection and research-oriented ecological approaches were at the heart of these efforts, and gender issues were not considered. With the paradigm shift toward integrative biodiversity politics, gender issues gained significance. In addition, the European Commission Women's Charta 2010, on building a gender perspective into all policies in accordance with the European theme “united in diversity,” required the integration of gender considerations into regional development, including protected areas. Based on a document analysis, an online survey, qualitative interviews, and focus group discussions, this article shows how widely gender mainstreaming is accepted and in which aspects of protected mountain areas gender perspectives are already considered important. Inspired by concepts from gender research and available options for regional (mountain) development, new items are recommended for a mountain agenda.

Critical sociology or sociology of critique. Report on the 11th Conference of The European Sociological Association (28-31 August 2013, Turin)

This year, more participants than ever (about 2600 persons) registered for the biannual professional conference of European sociologists. Over three days a total of 2700 presentations and poster displays took place.The ESA had chosen an important and timely, real European theme for the conference again: “Crises, Critique and Change”. More specifically, it intended to explore three questions: Which crisis? Whose critique? What changes? The participants of the conference attempted to provide a thorough response to the first two questions from various points of view. Answering the third question was less powerfully successful which indicates that the sociologist profession has to make significant efforts to strengthen its social and professional prestige, which appears to have been shaken.

Healthcare quality improvement – policy implications and practicalities

This article aims to explore quality improvement (QI) at individual, group and organisational level. It also aims to identify restraining forces using formative evaluation and discuss implications for current UK policy, particularly quality, innovation, productivity and prevention. Learning events combined with work-based projects, focusing on individual and group responses are evaluated. A total of 11 multi-disciplinary groups drawn from NHS England healthcare Trusts (self-governing operational groups) were sampled. These Trusts have different geographic locations and participants were drawn from primary, secondary and commissioning arms. Mixed methods: questionnaires, observations and reflective accounts were used. The paper finds that solution versus problem identification causes confusion and influences success. Time for problem solving to achieve QI was absent. Feedback and learning structures are often not in place or inflexible. Limited focus on patient-centred services may be related to past assumptions regarding organisational design, hence assumptions and models need to be understood and challenged. The authors revise the Plan, Do, Study; Act (PDSA) model by adding an explicit problem identification step and hence avoiding solution-focused habits; demonstrating the need for more formative evaluations to inform managers and policy makers about healthcare QI processes. - Although UK-centric, the quality agenda is a USA and European theme, findings may help those embarking on this journey or those struggling with QI.

Vocabularies of Difference: Ethnicity and Race in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia

Juliette Cadiot, Le Laboratoire imperial: Russie-URSS, 1870-1940 (The Imperial Laboratory: Russia and the USSR, 1870-1940). 267 pp. Paris: Editions CNRS, 2007. ISBN 2271064821 (paper). Marina Mogil'ner, Homo imperii: Istoriia fizicheskoi antropologii v Rossii (konets XIX-nachalo XX v.) (Imperial Man: The History of Physical Anthropology in Russia in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries). 512 pp., illus. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008. ISBN-13 978-5867935672. Human beings are diverse. This is a fact of nature, as inevitable and universal as the primordial distinction between self and other. But the terms we use to describe, define, and classify human diversity are manmade, rooted in particular cultural, social, and intellectual contexts; in short, they have a history. Since the 1990s, this constructivist truism has formed the basis for a growing body of literature on the conceptualization of human diversity to which scholars of the Russian Empire have made substantial contributions. (1) But while the theme of human diversity has echoed broadly throughout the recent literature of Russia and the Soviet Union, the works under review are among the first to address head on two of the most powerful and pervasive measures of difference: ethnicity in Juliette Cadiot's Le Labaratoire imperial, and race in Marina Mogil'ner's Homo imperii. Cadiot and Mogil'ner place their discussions within roughly congruous chronological boundaries. They begin their narratives in the aftermath of the Great Reforms, focus particular attention on the first decade of the 20th century, and follow their subjects well into the Soviet period. Thus both works join a growing body of recent literature spanning the boundary of 1917 in search of common trajectories and patterns that transcend the dramatic shift in ideology and practices brought by the revolution. (2) Authors of such works tend to view the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an incubator of ideas and practices that would find broader application by the modern state both in the Soviet Union and abroad. Markers of group identity in particular--such as class, gender, nationality, and race--served as instruments through which the state organized its population into manageable units readily arrangeable into hierarchies of utility and trust. Yet the recognition of these tools of identity opens new agendas for research: why were some modes of classification preferred over others? How were markers denoting innate features reconciled with belief in the malleability of the individual? And who controlled the ways in which markers of difference were articulated and deployed? Such questions, of course, were not unique to Russia and the Soviet Union. The fact that Russian statisticians, ethnographers, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and government officials participated in international discussions on the human sciences and their practical applications underlines the importance of the comparative context. Cadiot and Mogil'ner, like many recent scholars, firmly resist the notion of a Russian Sonderweg, showing in considerable detail the international ties of Russian scholars and the circulation of West European concepts within Russia. Nonetheless, the evidence they present suggests a number of ways in which the Russian experience was distinct: the tsarist state's tardiness in embracing the category of ethnicity, for example, or the downplaying of race by key elements within the scholar community, to note two of the most obvious instances. But how much analytical weight do these particularistic elements merit? Were Russia's distinct features merely variations on a larger European imperialist theme, or do they bear witness to fundamental differences? In one way or another, both authors face the challenge of placing Russia's experience in an international context and accounting for its distinctiveness. Both works focus on the processes through which concepts of difference were established and deployed to classify, quantify, and administer the population of the empire; and both writers look to academic disciplines as workshops within which a modern vocabulary of ethnicity and race was formulated and disseminated. …

Occidentalism: A Middle Eastern Approach on a European Theme of Urban Design

Occidentalism: A Middle Eastern Approach on a European Theme of Urban Design

Return on Roller Coasters: A Model to Guide Investments in Theme Park Attractions

Despite the economic significance of the theme park industry and the huge investments needed to set up new attractions, no marketing models exist to guide these investment decisions. This study addresses this gap in the literature by estimating a response model for theme park attendance. The model not only determines the contribution of each attraction to attendance, but also how this contribution is distributed within and across years. The model accommodates saturation effects, which imply that the impact of a new attraction is smaller if similar attractions are already present. It also captures reinforcement effects, meaning that a new attraction may reinforce the drawing power of similar extant attractions, especially when these were introduced recently. The model is calibrated on 25 years of weekly attendance data from the Efteling, a leading European theme park. Our return on investment calculations show that it is more profitable to invest in multiple smaller attractions than in one big one. This finding is in remarkable contrast with the current “arms race” in the industry. Furthermore, even though thrill rides tend to be more effective than theme rides, there are conditions under which one should consider to switch to the latter.

Impact of new attractions on theme park attendance

PurposeWhereas investments in new attractions continue to rise within the theme park industry, knowledge regarding the effects of new attractions on theme park performance and attendance remains scarce. In order to isolate these effects, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of an econometric study explaining the variance in theme park visitor numbers and quantifying the effects of new attractions on theme park attendance.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on an econometric study, in which models were produced for four European theme parks. No pooled modelling was used, meaning that four different models were created; one for each participating theme park. Various variables affecting theme park attendance were identified and quantified, and subsequently the effects of new attractions on visitor numbers were isolated.FindingsFindings indicate that all new attractions opened at Park D during the research period have had a positive long‐term influence on attendance. This positive influence lasted for no more than two years. No significant short‐term influence was found. There were significant differences in effect between new attractions which could not yet be explained.Research limitations/implicationsThe research by design only takes into account the economic effects of new attractions and disregards all environmental and socio‐cultural effects. Even though the research provides an accurate approximation of the effects of new attractions on attendance, this effect should, according to the author, not be perceived as a stand‐alone effect yet as a part of a complex system. A situational approach taking into account several other situational as well as qualitative factors would do the complex reality more justice than a, even though effective, simplified and general approach.Practical implicationsIndustry operators can now use the econometric model presented in this paper to determine the effects of new attractions on their theme park's attendance and use this knowledge to further fine‐tune their investment policy.Originality/valueThe paper presents the first econometric model successful at isolating and quantifying a new attraction's effect on theme park attendance and can thus be a valuable tool in perfecting one's investment policy. The paper furthermore includes a brief introduction to a situational approach of determining a new attraction's effects on theme park performance.

Achieving Attraction Accountability Through an Attraction Response Matrix

ABSTRACT Whereas investments in new attractions continue to rise within the theme park industry, knowledge regarding the effects of new attractions on theme park performance and attendance remains scarce. In order to predict the impact of new attractions on the performance of European theme parks, this article presents an Attraction Response Matrix (ARM). The Attraction Response Matrix offers an integrated framework in which research into the effects of new attractions can take place in a systematic manner. The ARM attempts to transform post priori knowledge into a priori knowledge by better understanding the impact of a new attraction and its' mediating causes. The main premise of the ARM is: “in situation A, attraction B will most likely have effect C on target audience D.” By performing research into the relevant effects within certain cells of the ARM and consecutively investigating the relationship between the various cells, a better insight will be gained in the working of new attractions. ARM is based on an extensive ZMET study conducted in The Netherlands.

Euro Disneyland S.C.A.: The Project Financing

In 1989, the Walt Disney Company financed its major European theme park and real estate development using a variety of financing tools and techniques that, when bundled together, amounted to a project financing. The case recounts the details of this financing and invites students to evaluate the financing from various standpoints, including those of the Walt Disney Company, the government of France, European equity investors, and European banks. The resulting opinion about the attractiveness of the project ultimately hinges on beliefs about European market demand for an American-style theme park. The case may be used to exercise students' skills in valuation analysis, to illustrate techniques for financing major real-property projects, and to explore the creation and transfer of wealth in such projects.

The grieving city

Using a fragment from Lucan’s De bello civili as a convenient fulcrum for the exploration of the theme of Kingship, the article takes recourse to Propp’s model to show that a conventional ‘plot’ can be uncovered in the fragment. It then isolates a number of basic motifs found in it and shows that they recur, at predictable points and with predictable functions, in other textual versions of this ‘plot’. Thirdly, it argues that the integration of plot and motifs into one pattern over a wealth of widely disparate texts provides reliable evidence as to the existence and nature of a European theme of kingship in which the figure of woman plays a conspicuous role. The article contends that this is the old theme of Sovereignty which, though mostly familiar to students in certain areas of medieval Celtic fiction, can be shown to obtain in other European literatures; a subsidiary contention will be that the Sovereignty theme can be approached morphologically. It is shown that by the side of the Adventure of the Hero there is need for a second, more inclusive model that will do justice to the role the female figure plays in the heroic adventure. The article also concludes that (pace Propp) structure and motifs are not two independent or unrelated aspects of the text.

Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France by David Cowling

MLR, I02.2, 2007 507 Given this approach, the analysis of individual texts tends to be underdeveloped. Even when a given dialogue or set of dialogues is singled out for special attention, themethodology adopted isoften a longway from close reading: thehelpfulness of a discussion of dialogue form in theCymbalum mundi, which does not contain a single citation from thework which is thepurported object of study, is curtailed from the outset. This is a shame, because more focused discussions of Pontus de Tyrard's dialogues, and of the role ofRonsard as a character within dialogues, contain insights towhich all specialists would wish to refer. Moreover, albeit that thedefinition ofboth genre and corpus is central tomuch of Eva Kushner's work, the result isnot always convincing. There is not a strong case for devoting two chapters to dialogue in an author who neverwrote one, namelyMontaigne, especially when amajor author who does incorporate dialogues intohis fiction,namely Rabelais, isvirtually ignored.This impression is compounded by the extraordinary claim thatPanurge's consultations in the Tiers Livre are all 'in the formof indirect discourse' (p. 25I), despite several being in dialogue form.There are also surprising omissions: there is littlemention of dialogues in the banquet tradition, and none at all ofGuillaume Bouchet's Les Serees, Cholieres's Matinees and Apresdisnees, nor,more seriously still, of Beroalde de Verville's Le Moyen de parvenir. Given these reservations, the usefulness of Le Dialogue a' la Renaissance is limited. Specialists will need to refer to it,but many aspects of analysis of thephenomenon could be more fullydeveloped. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER HUGH ROBERTS Conceptions ofEurope inRenaissance France. Ed. by DAVID COWLING. (Faux Titre, 28i) Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2006. 204 pp. ?40. ISBN 978-90-420-2006-I. The ten articles in thisFestschrift forKeith Cameron predominantly constitute the kind of scrupulous scholarship with a strong historical focuswith which he is readily associated. Most of the contributors range beyond the chosen theme, presumably because, as Jean Balsamo argues in the excellent essay which opens the volume, the concept ofEurope was not yet fullyformed during theRenaissance. He maintains that theprehistory of thenotion emerges both in theRepublic ofLetters, which was itself formed during theRenaissance, and in amilitary and aristocratic ideal. IanMorri son's reading of Rabelais follows a similar line: doubtless the strongest Rabelaisian conception ofEurope is found in theprologue to the Tiers Livre, which refers to the Franco-Imperial hostilities as a tragicomedy affecting the entire continent, revealing it to be an emergent political and cultural construct, as well as a geographical one. Terence Cave's work on 'pre-histoires' (in Pre-histoires: textes troublesau seuil de la modernite (Geneva: Droz, I999) and inPre-histoires, II:Langues etrangereset troubles economiques au XVIe siecle (Geneva: Droz, 2001)) would have provided a powerful method to accompany these analyses of theprehistory of the concept ofEurope. In deed, Yvonne Bellenger's highly detailed contribution on thehistory ofDu Bartas's La Lepanthe is letdown somewhat by a conclusion which projects our conception of Europe back onto theRenaissance. Similarly, Francoise Charpentier's analysis ofhow the themes of discovery and curiosity in theQuart Livre and the Cinquiesme Livre are constantly linked to a return to the familiar could have made the tension between these two trends, and its implication for the difficultyof a conception of Europe, more explicit. Furthermore, none of the contributors countenances the possibility of a notion of Europe founded on shared popular culture, which would be aworthy object of study.The European theme is implicit in theother contributions, although Frank Lestringant's analysis of 'livres de contrarietes' reveals that a conception of Europe inopposition to the supposedly barbaric ways of the Syrians was obvious to a 5o8 Reviews mid-seventeenth-century Jesuitmissionary. The contrast between differentcultures, and thedefinition in relation to the 'other'which ensues, isalso the theme ofMichael Heath's highly entertaining reading of French representations ofTurkish views of the French. Marie-Madeleine Fragonard's contribution concerns a fascinating case study ofAgrippa d'Aubigne's diplomatic relationswith England, revealing a failed attempt at a unified Protestant Europe. David Trotter's piece engages in similarly thorough historical scholarship, in this case ofmixed-language documents in thePyrenees. In differentways, these contributions show that national identitywas not itself fully...

Spare the rod: The figure of the dominatrix in the literary canon

The commonly cited maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is often traced incorrectly back to the biblical book of Proverbs when its point of origin lies instead first in Langland’s Piers Plowman and then, in the highly satirical and sexualized text of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. Thus, from a religious origin, it has metamorphosed into a woman-man relationship. Indeed to follow the evolution of this phrase is to uncover the extent to which the disciplining impulses of religious rhetoric are eroticized in one Western European literary theme, that of feminine dominance, from the tenth century when the word Dominatrix appeared in the writings of Hroswitha of Gandersheim. The period leading up to the 1650s, when Butler turned the phrase into one line of a heroic iambic couplet in the middle of a stanza on an amorous jaileress, was also a time when medical research on human and animal anatomy and physiology had unravelled the pathways of libido-lifting buttock-beating. Far from demonizing woman the literary image of the whip-wielding mistress did not degrade the female sex but instead apotheosized the dominatrix as a major erotic image of the twentieth century.

Euro Disneyland S.C.A.: The Project Financing

In 1989, the Walt Disney Company financed its major European theme park and real estate development using a variety of financing tools and techniques that, when bundled together, amounted to a project financing. The case recounts the details of this financing and invites students to evaluate the financing from various standpoints, including those of the Walt Disney Company, the government of France, European equity investors, and European banks. The resulting opinion about the attractiveness of the project ultimately hinges on beliefs about European market demand for an American-style theme park. The case may be used to exercise students' skills in valuation analysis, to illustrate techniques for financing major real-property projects, and to explore the creation and transfer of wealth in such projects.

Variations on a northern European Stone Age theme

Variations on a northern European Stone Age theme