Role Of Travel Research Articles

Time as culture: exploring its influence in volunteer tourism

ABSTRACTVolunteer tourism engages the volunteer in a cultural exchange that is personal and often influential in their life experience. This paper explores one aspect of this exchange, the idea of time in travel, and finds that the volunteer tourist experience is particularly influenced by cultural time differences. When volunteer tourists travel and return home, the emotions and behaviours which emerge in their narratives of experience are usually framed by a range of reference points. One of these is the notion of time. ‘Time' appears to play a role in travel across cultures and continues to affect tourists when they return home. This idea is explored here through the experiences of 12 volunteer tourists. Although all of their experiences, both in-country and on re-entry, were very unique, each volunteer tourist spoke directly or indirectly about adjustment to cultural time differences and this was the key factor in their ability to adapt in both settings.

Measuring the effect of aviation safety risk reduction on flight choice in young travellers

More information about safety is becoming more generally available to travellers, but the extent to which passengers use safety information to make decisions about which airlines to take is relatively unknown. This study attempts to examine the extent to which safety information plays a role in travellers’ flight choices. Using the stated choice methodology, we modelled how the choice of a flight option is related to factors, including price, schedule, safety, travel time and airline inflight service quality. The study found that, in the context of a young adult college student population, price and safety information emerge as the most important factors influencing airline choices. Interestingly, the study found that most of the potential travellers surveyed, when asked about the factors they consider when making flight choices, do not nominate safety. However, when specific safety-risk information is introduced in the stated choice conditions, respondents considered this factor in making their choices between flight alternatives. This paper contributes towards a more complete understanding of how passengers use safety information and notes how this can be analytically translated into commercial implications for the aviation industry.

Probable Importation of Dengue Virus Type 4 to Angola from Brazil

To the Editor: The prevalence of dengue virus (DENV) infection in Africa may have been grossly underestimated for many years (1). Even though published reports are scarce, dengue has been documented in at least 34 countries in Africa (2). The role of travelers as sentinels of infectious disease has proven to be invaluable in this regard; dengue in returning travelers was the only evidence for local DENV transmission for 12 of these countries. During April 2013, simultaneous reports of travelers returning from Luanda, Angola, with dengue fever emerged from Israel, several countries in Europe, Canada, and South Africa; PCR and sequencing of viral RNA confirmed the causative species to be DENV type 1 (DENV-1) (3). Concomitantly, a large outbreak of dengue was confirmed by local authorities in Luanda, and DENV-1 was isolated in samples from local residents (4). The origin of the outbreak strain was not ascertained, but phylogenetic analysis suggested that it had close affinity with isolates from West Africa (4,5). These reports involved almost 100 travelers and >500 residents of Luanda who become within a short time. Active DENV transmission and occurrence of new cases in Luanda were still ongoing during early July 2013 (6), but since then, to our knowledge, no additional local data on DENV activity in Luanda have been published. We report 3 new cases of dengue fever acquired in Luanda during December 2013–February 2014. Two cases occurred in travelers who returned to Israel, and 1 occurred in a traveler who returned to Germany. All 3 cases occurred in middle-aged businessmen who had traveled to Angola and who were hospitalized within days of returning to their home countries because of signs and symptoms of dengue fever. None of the case-patients met criteria for severe dengue, and all recovered uneventfully. Acute DENV infection was confirmed by serologic testing in all 3 patients and by positive results for a nonstructural protein 1 serum antigen test in 2 travelers. In a serum sample taken from 1 of the travelers from Israel on the second day of fever, DENV RNA was detected by using reverse transcription PCR. This strain was found to belong to DENV type 4 (DENV-4). Phylogenetic analysis was performed, and multiple sequence alignment of this DENV-4 sequence, in comparison to other DENV-4 sequences retrieved from GenBank, was performed by using the Sequencher 5.0 program (Gencodes Corporation, Ann Arbor, MI, USA). A maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree was inferred from the sequence alignment by using ClustalX (http://www.clustal.org), and the robustness of the tree was assessed by 1,000 bootstrap replications. The tree was visualized and produced by using NJ plot software (http://doua.prabi.fr/software/njplot). Results showed that RNA from this isolate was most closely related to that of a DENV-4 strain identified in 2010 in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima State in the Amazon Region of Brazil (7) (Figure). Figure Phylogenetic analysis of a dengue virus (DENV) type 4 strain isolate (boldface) from a patient in Israel who apparently acquired DENV in Angola in 2014, showing close relationship with isolates from Brazil. The DENV isolate was aligned with representative ... DENV-4 infection was previously reported in Africa in 1986, when 2 cases were identified in travelers returning from Senegal (8), but to our knowledge, no other cases have been reported in western or southwestern Africa. During the April 2013 dengue outbreak in Luanda, only DENV-1 was isolated (3,4). After that outbreak, a study conducted on the basis of modeling of international commercial flight data to and from Angola suggested that DENV would most likely have been imported from Latin America (5). Our finding, a year later, of DENV-4 in Angola that was closely related to strains from Brazil appears to vindicate this modeling system. During the past decade, Brazil had been experiencing a consistent increase in dengue epidemics and in severity of disease (9). Brazil’s large and growing economy, its increasingly prominent place in world trade, and its growing tourism industry highlight the country’s potential role in the global circulation of DENV. Our findings are corroborated by a recently reported case of dengue in a traveler from Portugal that was acquired in Luanda concomitantly with our cases and also found to be caused by DENV-4 (10). In light of the apparent introduction of DENV-4 to Angola, probably from Brazil, health authorities should be encouraged to enhance surveillance and vector control efforts. In addition, health practitioners treating travelers returning from Angola should be aware of the risk for DENV infection.

The role of travel and mobility in processes of identity formation among the Positanesi

This article is based on an ethnographic study of the community of Positano on the Amalfi Coast in the south of Italy. It examines how the flows of visiting tourists have shaped the economy, lifestyle and rhythms of this small but world-famous tourist destination. Through visual imagery and narratives, I explore how residents of the community create meaningful identities amidst the continuous flux and flow of people arriving and departing. The article builds on the concepts of travel and mobility as underlying features in postmodern societies and as vehicles of identity formation among residents in tourist destinations. The findings illustrate how tourism has transformed the locality of Positano into a network of networks, and has thrust the inhabitants of this small coastal village into the global economy. The research also explores some of the intergenerational differences among older and younger residents that are exacerbated by the changes brought about by tourism. Reflecting on my role as an anthropologist doing research ‘at home’, the article seeks to contribute to the growing field of the anthropology of tourism.

Locating Pays de Galles in the twenty-first century: dynamic model or forgotten world?

In spite of the increased profile of Welsh national identity in the post-devolutionary age, the role of travellers and in particular travel writers in representing Wales beyond its borders remains largely unstudied. This essay explores the contrasting constructions of Wales, Welsh political structures and cultural landscapes at the dawn of the twenty-first century offered by two francophone travel narratives by Quebecois Dominic Ménard-Bilodeau (2004) and Breton Jean-Yves Le Disez (2006). It investigates how the travellers' divergent discursive axes and respective emphases on heritage and ethnic tourism result in polarised perceptions of contemporary Wales as a romanticised and mysterious forgotten world on the one hand, and a vibrant and dynamic model to be emulated by non-state nations on the other. By examining the extent of the travellers' political awareness of Wales, the essay probes the possible effects of devolution on travellers' evolving perceptions of Wales and its representation in travel literature.

The Particular and the Work of Retrospection in Isaac Fadoyebo's ‘A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck’

Isaac Fadoyebo's Second World War memoirA Stroke of Unbelievable Luckis an unusual and compelling memoir of a West African soldier's Second World War service. Although much of Fadoyebo's narrative centres on the Second World War, the memoir as a whole has much more to offer. Fadoyebo uses his military service to structure a narrative that covers much of his life until the 1980s. Although this coverage is not systematic, it leaves the reader with a vivid impression of Fadoyebo's upbringing, education, post-war career, and his positioning of the past from the vantage point of old-age. This article will focus on the role of travel, showing how the constraints of military service and wartime shaped a distinct descriptive language. It will argue that this language is characterised by attention to the particular. More specifically, it will show how the particular becomes especially important when the ‘bigger picture’ of movements, motivations and landscapes remains unknown to the soldiers.

Trafficking Literature: Travel, Modernity, and the Middle Ground of Canadian and Australian Middlebrow Print Cultures

This article explores the possibility of renewing the comparative study of Canadian and Australian literatures through an alertness to parallel developments in mid-range magazines and middlebrow print cultures in Canada and Australia in the early- to mid-twentieth century. While scoping the possibilities of full-fledged comparative studies, its focus is a case study of the Australian magazine BP: a well-capitalized, plush upmarket publication published by the Australian steamship company Burns Philp. The BP Magazine promoted travel between 1928 and 1942 as the nation underwent a transition from settler colonialism to vernacular modernity. The magazine lays bare tensions between literary aspiration and commodity culture, sophistication and escapism, edification and entertainment, and modernity and primitiveness. The aim of this case study is to raise questions that might be asked of both national literary cultures about the role of travel, modern consumer culture, magazines, and nationhood as the scales of literary values changed during the development of local middlebrow values and tastes.

Mark Tully on India and Hinduism: From the Political to the Personal

The article looks at the unique position of Mark Tully in talking about India and the role of travel in developing his oeuvre of writing. The article contextualizes Tully's “English” identity and problematizes the colonial spaces that dislodge the concept of a national identity based on boundaries. It also relates the traveler's sense of engagement at a deeper level due to his participation in India's national life at various levels, analyzing his two residences and his awareness of two different audiences. It posits that a look at the culture of the Other makes the writer self-aware of his own upbringing, religious beliefs, and social understanding. It also positions the traveler as an interpreter of cultures—the others and his own—tracing the development of his perspective from his No Full Stops in India (1991) to India: The Road Ahead (2011).

Multi-sited global ethnography and travel: gendered journeys in three registers

This paper joins a barely begun conversation about multi-sited and global ethnography in educational research; a conversation that is likely to intensify along with growing interest in the links between education, globalisation, internationalisation and transnationalism. Drawing on an ongoing multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools and globalisation, this paper explores the role of travel in multi-sited global ethnography and offers a feminist engagement with it. It considers the idea of fieldwork as a travel practice through three different travel registers; the traveller’s tale, critical travel studies and travel as exile. In so doing, it illustrates the reflexive affordances each register offers with regard to the directions of our feminist inquiries into elite schools and our feminist ethnographic practices.

ST93-Queensland community-acquired meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus clone in France: outbreak in a scout camp and sporadic cases, July to August 2012

We describe the occurrence in France of a Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL)-positive meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) ST93 clone, a predominant community-acquired (CA)-MRSA in Australia. In July to August 2012, an outbreak in a scout camp (n=3) and sporadic cases (n=2) of skin and soft tissue infections were reported. Investigations suggested importation of the clone through travel and onward transmission. This illustrates the epidemic potential of this lineage and the role of travellers in the spread of PVL-positive CA-MRSA.

A multi‐class mean‐excess traffic equilibrium model with elastic demand

SUMMARYRecent empirical studies have revealed that travel time variability plays an important role in travelers' route choice decisions. To simultaneously account for both reliability and unreliability aspects of travel time variability, the concept of mean‐excess travel time (METT) was recently proposed as a new risk‐averse route choice criterion. In this paper, we extend the mean‐excess traffic equilibrium model to include heterogeneous risk‐aversion attitudes and elastic demand. Specifically, this model explicitly considers (1) multiple user classes with different risk‐aversions toward travel time variability when making route choice decisions under uncertainty and (2) the elasticity of travel demand as a function of METT when making travel choice decisions under uncertainty. This model is thus capable of modeling travelers' heterogeneous risk‐averse behaviors with both travel choice and route choice considerations. The proposed model is formulated as a variational inequality problem and solved via a route‐based algorithm using the modified alternating direction method. Numerical analyses are also provided to illustrate the features of the proposed model and the applicability of the solution algorithm. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Knowledge and interests of Romanian medical students in parasitology, tropical and travel medicine

As travel has become easier and faster, the rate of tropical infections across the world is expected to increase; more students working abroad are going to encounter these diseases more often. Disorders of parasitic etiology play an important role in travel and tropical medicine. The aim of our study was to assess the preclinical students’ knowledge regarding parasitic diseases, tropical and travel medicine in the broad context of their professional background. A total of 346 Romanian medical students completed a 13-item questionnaire on the above-mentioned topics. In order to allow for complex evaluation, the questionnaire also included items related to their extracurricular training as well as their future perspectives. The majority of the students (97.7%) declared they had prior knowledge (before studying parasitology) of malaria. Most of the responders (90.2%) knew that a journey in (sub)tropical regions requires adequate prophylactic measures. About a quarter of those interviewed (26.4%) would agree to practice tropical medicine after graduation. They were mainly interested in helping people from underdeveloped countries regardless of remuneration (52.7%). The majority of students (59.8%) wished to practice clinical medicine. It has been observed that fewer than 5% of the questioned students had ever read a scientific paper or book in the field of tropical medicine. English was the most commonly spoken foreign language (92.8%), and 99.1% of students had at least intermediate computer skills. Finally, 71.6% of students would choose to practice the specialty of travel medicine if it were available in Romania. The implementation of appropriate measures towards the globalization of medical teaching in Romanian universities should represent an important issue in this new millennium, in which borders between various nations are starting to fade; otherwise the next generations of physicians will lose the chance to gain wider experiences and share the international influences on health.

‘Whirl’d through the World’: The Role of Travel in the Making of Dora Montefiore, 1851–1933

New technologies of mobility which emerged in the wake of industrialisation helped to create a radical diaspora which in the first decades of the twentieth century began to create new transnationalist politics. This diaspora of socialists, feminists and anarchists consisted both of migrants (whose politics spurred migration or whose migration prompted political engagement) and travellers. Amongst the latter was Dora Montefiore, an English suffragist, socialist and later communist, who sought to make an internationalist politics in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. During her personal political journey through the changing landscape of progressive politics, travel was to be an important ingredient in her developing political practice. This essay explores the ways in which travel affected how Montefiore ‘did’ her politics. It considers why travel was such an important feature of her life as well as the different kinds of political travel she engaged in and its function in her politics. Political tourism, networking and propagandist tours are all explored. For Montefiore, travel could enable unforeseen conversations, serendipitous encounters, new experiences and even friendships which could be put to work by her as a political activist. These experiences often had a lasting effect on her politics. Travel could also be transformative when it was about leisure, pleasure and recuperation. Many of Montefiore’s journeys contained all of these elements. However, increasingly the constraints on such travel, particularly the growth of police surveillance, changed the nature of how travel was experienced by political activists and thus what they could do with it within their politics. This essay is therefore about the possibilities of travel for a political activist, but also its limitations. How a radical activist ‘whirl’d through the world’ was always contingent, but the process of this kind of political travel necessarily affected the traveller herself as well as those she encountered along the way.

The contribution of tourism to well-being and welfare: the case of Hungary

In the process of achieving well-being and welfare, tourism may act as a stimulus on many levels. Based on two national surveys conducted by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office in 2007, and by the Geographical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Kodolanyi Janos University of Applied Sciences, the paper explores the influence of tourism on the Hungarian society’s perception of well-being and welfare. The research findings indicate that although various benefits of tourism are acknowledged, it is not considered a crucial component of one’s quality of life. The analysis of socio-cultural factors indicates that age and financial circumstances affect the contribution of tourism to well-being: a person’s financial situation and age determine, to a great extent, the role of travel in their life, and consequently also influences the function of travel as a happiness-inducing factor.

Assessing the Importance and Relationships of Ratings on User-Generated Traveler Reviews

The growth of Internet travel sites has increased the importance of the traveler reviews provided on those sites. These reviews play an important role in travelers' hotel selection. Expedia allows travelers to rate hotels not only on overall satisfaction, but also on four important aspects of their hotel stay (Hotel Service, Hotel Condition, Room Cleanliness, and Room Comfort), and their willingness to recommend the hotel to other travelers. This study looked at over 60,000 traveler ratings. The majority of all four quality ratings and overall satisfaction rating were positive. Additionally, nearly 75% of responses indicated willingness to recommend the hotel. All four quality ratings were found to have similarly strong associations with travelers' overall rating and willingness to recommend. Partial correlations differed, with hotel service and room comfort being highest, followed by hotel condition then room cleanliness.

Eat, pray, love mimic: Female citizenship and otherness

Looking at Asia and the Asian Diaspora as a geopolitical post-colonial space, this paper aims to examine the role of travel and tourism as a sign of modernity and how it influenced and reconstruct the use of existing spatial gender categorization in cultural practices. Through the understanding of tradition as a fluid bodily knowledge in contemporary cultural political economics, this paper questions the intervention and innovation of the female bodies in Asian global tourism and indigenous Diaspora subjects within globalization. Based on the novel Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, to mediate the analysis of the effect on space in cultural modernity, in the construction of otherness, which provokes the understanding of other culture as ‘non-modern’ yet reiterating tourism as one of the possible mechanism to mediate this encounter in bringing the ‘un-modern’ cultural practices to the world of modernity. This paper seeks to discuss the invisibility and visibility of female bodies in tourism space and cultural imagination by using specific examples of various events mentioned in the book that convey contradictory memories and values to local citizens and, in the meanwhile, the space and events are re-appropriated again for the purpose of globalized concern.

Activities and Activity Patterns Involving Travel Abroad while Growing up: The Case of Young Swedes

Departing from ongoing discussions concerning the changing role and motive structure of transnational mobility among ordinary people, this article investigates activities and activity patterns motivating travel abroad among a group of Swedish youth. Using retrospective travel data covering the years of childhood and adolescence of 140 individuals, three specific issues are addressed: (a) the extent to which travel abroad has become part of a broad range of activities; (b) the role of travel in relation to school and other organized activities; (c) the occurrence and forms of repetitive travel behaviour. The most important findings concern repetitive travel behaviour: a little less than half of the respondents have highly repetitive travel patterns as regards activity or purpose of travel. Moreover, about two thirds of the repetitive travel patterns are largely or completely dominated by trips to the same country of destination. Many are motivated by visiting relatives abroad but the majority are motivated by leisure activities seemingly unrelated to the spatial configuration of social relationships.

Climate change and tourism: the implications for the Caribbean

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of travel and tourism industry in climate change and to consider the implications of climate change for the travel and tourism industry.Design/methodology/approachThe paper outlines why the Caribbean is currently the most tourism‐dependent region in the world and profiles the reasons why the island economies of the Caribbean are so vulnerable to climate change.FindingsThe paper advocates action based on the available evidence and the fact that most of the essential infrastructure for tourism is located at or near the shoreline, in areas that will be vulnerable to sea‐level rise and storm surge. This combination of dependency and vulnerability makes the Caribbean a particularly pertinent and poignant example of how countries can come to rely on an industry that might prove to contain the seed of not only its own destruction, but also that of some vulnerable host economies.Originality/valueThis paper provides a comprehensive summary of the key evidence relating to the growing threat of climate change to the Caribbean.

‘Not Just Another Country’: The Olmert Family Sojourn Through China as a Case Study of the Role of Travel in Jewish Identity Formation

This essay examines the general role of ‘travel’ and ‘journeys’ in the formation of Jewish identity. In particular, it analyses the sojourn through China of the family of one of Israel's best known personalities of the early twenty-first century, that of Jerusalem mayor, Vice Prime Minister, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. His family's political identity coalesced in an Asian political context. His father Mordechai, usually called Motti, underwent an ideological epiphany while travelling to and residing in Harbin, China. Jewish identity in that metropolis had already been defined as a mixture of culture, language, politics, and religion. The essay utilises a four-part analytical framework applicable to Jewish journeys to many parts of the world. First, it focuses on ‘leavings’, or what motivated Jews to abandon their ancestral homeland; second, ‘passages’, or how the vicissitudes of travel to relatively unknown destinations shaped Jewish consciousness, thought and behaviour; third, ‘identity’, the cultural and intellectual characteristics which Jews adopted at their new destinations; and fourth, ‘return’, the ways in which Jews, in their new homelands, remembered, memorialised, and utilised their ties to the past and revisited their ancestral homelands.

M1197 The Role of Travelers' Diarrhea in the Development and Worsening of PI-IBS

M1197 The Role of Travelers' Diarrhea in the Development and Worsening of PI-IBS