Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in tourism have attracted the attention of both policymakers and academic researchers. Yet, there is little evidence to suggest that the work of the former is influenced to a significant extent by the advances in knowledge claimed by the latter. The study’s critique, supported by a narrative review of the literature, is twofold. Firstly, that the literature contains a degree of conceptual inconsistency on matters of substance affecting SMEs and that this weakens the clarity of analysis offered by academic researchers. Secondly, there has been limited research progress made on issues of fundamental importance to policymakers, and that significant gaps in understanding of other topics relating to tourism SMEs remain. This paper aims to enhance the ability of academic researchers to influence policymakers and the practice of SMEs by promoting the consistent use of foundational (or no longer contested) knowledge, reviewing where academic research has enhanced understanding and identifying research priorities. It demonstrates that a complex interplay of factors affects SME behaviour in various contexts and advocates greater innovation in theorising SMEs. The paper has implications for policymakers as well as for academic researchers.

This article examines the role community events can play in negotiating forms of community and place identity against a backdrop of social, economic, and urban change. Our contention is that in the context of globalization and deindustrialization, forms of working-class community may be expressed and re-created through maintaining traditions and practices established in place-based community events. The article is based on an ethnographic study of the World Coal Carrying Chamobservations, and archival analysis. The findings show how the WCCC is invested with powerful symbols and invented traditions that are activated through the event. By reconstructing and remobilizing shared pasts in the present, the WCCC permits community members to create an affective sense of community in the contemporary context, in spite of the destabilizing loss of other aspects of their industrial lives.

This chapter considers the characteristics of performance-based research funding systems (PBRFS) and what they mean for academic researchers in tourism. PBRFS are ways of allocating public research funds based on the performance of an individual or group during a stipulated period. The core characteristics of national systems are described - they involve an assessment of the quality of research outputs and related matters - but not the detail of each system (the emphasis of each often changes). Particular attention is paid to Australia, New Zealand and the UK. By revealing the operation of PBRFS, readers will be able to develop bespoke approaches to career planning that reflect their personal circumstances and outlook.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the important role public policy, including tourism policy, plays in improving economic and social welfare. This paper advocates consideration of the potential value of hubristic leadership theories when seeking to explain tourism policy failure (though it might also be used to contribute to examinations of policy innovation). In doing so, it seeks to complement existing literature by introducing 'lower-level' frameworks to show how more localized crises may occur. The flavour of a growing body of theoretical work in this field is provided alongside a truncated illustrative case study of policy failure in a British regional tourism policy context.

This paper analyses policies and practices designed to support digital transformation in the tourism workforce in six OECD countries, namely Germany, Greece, Iceland, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Data for the project were gathered via a questionnaire survey, interviews with key informants and examination of various policy documents in 2021. Contrasting practice in relation to digital skills development is revealed. Significant deficiencies are evident in relation to the availability of high-quality data, evaluation, understanding, leadership, and infrastructure among the six countries. Ways in which effective policy development might emerge are suggested.

Strategies to gain academic acceptance for emerging fields such as event management tend to involve a predictable set of activities. These include the creation of specialist peer reviewed journals ...

Public investment in convention centers represents a relatively common approach to stimulating economic development in many large cities throughout the world. The rationale is that metropolitan authorities can thereby attract business tourists and promote positive (business friendly) images of their locality. Although the economic dimension of such spending has received some attention, especially by consultants, there has been little theorizing or empirical research that has examined residents’ perceptions of such development. This is in sharp contrast to examinations of resident perceptions of leisure tourism, which has witnessed extensive academic interest. This article analyzes residents’ perceptions of the Busan Exhibition and Convention Centre in South Korea. Distance decay theories, geographic decay, and cognitive decay are used to inform the analysis. The findings indicate that increasing residents’ engagement with, and knowledge of, convention centers is likely to engender positive perceptions of their impacts. It is suggested that urban policymakers in many parts of the world could learn from this study and should take residents’ perceptions into account when financing and managing convention centers.

We advocate the adoption of more expansive and creative methodological approaches the study of tourism. More specifically, we argue that by examining how individuals narrate their experiences and social practices, researchers can gain an insight into the meanings actors attach to their actions. Considered from this perspective, narratives become performative; they prompt actors to take actions that (they feel) actualise the story they are seeking to tell. To illustrate its value, we use linguistic narrative analysis to explore how the owner-managers of small values-based tourism firms narrate the operation of their business. A dataset of first person accounts made of both narratives in storified form featuring a chronological order with beginning, middle, and end, and narratives without a storified form largely recounting opinions, feelings, and points of view, are interpreted to offer new perspectives on the behaviours of small firms in tourism. We argue that narrative approaches should complement methods used routinely by tourism scholars to examine this constituency of actors (and others).

This paper adds to previous conceptualisations of lifestyle entrepreneurship in tourism by framing the identity construction of such enterprises in terms of their ethical commitment to global issues, social and economic inequalities, and radical criticism of neoliberal capitalism. The study addresses a gap in the tourism studies literature which usually conceptualises entrepreneurs as either commercially oriented or lifestyle oriented. Such dichotomies do not easily accommodate entrepreneurs who are driven by a set of values associated with 'doing good'. A linguistic narrative analysis - combined with features of structural narrative analysis - is used to reveal three prominent entrepreneurial identities among a group of values-based Italian entrepreneurs: the intellectual and educational, the professional and entrepreneurial, and the empathic 'free speech'. These entrepreneurial identities challenge several assumptions about entrepreneurship in small non-commercially oriented tourism firms, thereby revealing some key theoretical and practical insights.

This paper examines an increasingly pervasive aspect of neoliberal research funding regimes, namely the expectation that academic research should influence non-academic policy and practice. More specifically, it explores the reaction of British academic researchers with an interest in sustainable tourism to what has become known as the impact agenda. How do they conceptualise impact? Do they moralise impact (perhaps in relation to the limits of their expertise or the veracity of their claims)? Does this aspect of research policy affect their approach to academic work? The findings of a qualitative study reveal a constituency of academic researchers primarily concerned with their own performativity. There is seemingly limited moral framing of research impact and a suggestion of moral hypocrisy. Widespread affective subjectivation provides a plausible explanation for current academic behaviour. The paper concludes by arguing that without a collective re-thinking of how sustainable tourism research might gain influence beyond academia, it is probable that performative practices will continue to characterise academic responses to the impact agenda.

•Critique of Brauer et al.'s (2019) assessment of tourism research impact.•Argues for theoretical sophistication and empirical rigour.•Advocates greater consideration of non-academic impact by tourism researchers.

This article presents a grounded theory to explain why some small businesses in tourism adopt sustainable business practices while others do not, even when they share environmental and wider sustainability concerns. It does so based on research undertaken among business owners in Crete. The paper starts by considering studies on sustainability awareness, knowledge and the mechanisms for accepting responsibility. Secondly, it summarises the influence of task difficulty and effort on sustainability self-efficacy. Thirdly, it focuses on social comparisons and vicarious experiences, as a way of learning what is important. Finally, it examines powerlessness due to perceived situational constraints. In so doing, the study finds that self-efficacy helps to explain sustainable attitude formation and the attitude-behaviour gap; it partly shifts the locus of responsibility for an inability to act sustainably away from the individual and towards their context. The paper contributes to the theoretical literature on small businesses and sustainability, and leads to new avenues for policy interventions.

This chapter explores the literature on innovation in tourism and related sectors, paying particular attention to the role of external knowledge in the innovation process. Influential conceptualisations of knowledge flows and innovation, notably absorptive capacity, are explored and a wide range of empirical evidence evaluated. This is followed by a brief review of mainstream theorising on public policy formation and a discussion of the factors influencing tourism policy chance. The chapter concludes by noting that universities do not feature prominently in most accounts of commercial innovation or policy change in tourism. Combined with other arguments developed in this book, it suggests that the potential for academic research to have a sustained-as opposed to sporadic-impact on innovation (and competitiveness) in tourism and other marginal sectors is very limited.

Calls by research policy-makers for greater non-academic impact will not yield the intended outcomes in marginal fields such as tourism. This is because practitioner (and organisational) behaviours are contrary to official conceptualisations and because of the orientation of researchers and the quality of their work. This concluding chapter advocates a new social contract that emphasises the role of educating students as a means of creating knowledge flows from universities. Research with impact might then be achievable. For policy-makers, this would mean enabling university departments to educate effectively rather than encouraging them to generate 'noise' and, in most cases, to make exaggerated claims of impact.

Professional associations are often considered to be valuable conduits for knowledge exchange between practitioners and universities. Their advocacy of professional standards, continuous professional development and 'best practice' resonate comfortably with statements universities make about research impact. This chapter draws upon research into the professionalisation of occupations in tourism and events (Thomas and Thomas in Tourism Manage Perspect 6:8-14, 2013; Thomas and Thomas in Serv Ind J 34:38-55, 2014) and reports ethnographic reflections on pro bono and paid work undertaken by the author with the Institute of Travel and Tourism (ITT) and the Association of British Professional Conference Organisers (ABPCO). It argues that collaborative activity does not represent a stimulus for the promotion and utilisation of research insights for more effective practice (impact) but a benign harnessing of academic work to create stories for their members.