Strikes me that fairness is an issue, whether we are talking about yesterday’s announcement of where, upon whom and how heavily the carbon tax (‘non tax’ according to the President?) will ‘fall’ or how a student submitting work later than colleagues may be treated. I recall well enough a discussion with my ‘External Examiners’ at Bournemouth University (for those of a French disposition for whom the term is unknown, ‘External Examiners in the UK system are imposed upon all courses at all levels by the government paymaster: they are other academics and industry representatives who examine all areas of teaching and learning including watching classes, listening to student grievances, speaking to hard-pressed staff and sitting in no little judgment on the final examinations and certificates to be awarded [to ensure that they are ‘in line’ with other such qualifications]. If ‘Externals’ don’t like what they see, they can suggest [ie politely demand] changes to students marks or to course content….) an issue concerning students who had written well over the 10-12000 dissertation or 20,000 – 24,000 thesis word limit. One ‘External’ took a commercial view: ‘they’ve not complied with published limits – if they did that in industry it would be wholly unacceptable – so penalise them severely’, whereas the other suggested that ‘word over-run is its own worst enemy – it is there because the student cannot edit efficiently and is probably merely describing superficially and uncontrollably when he should be analysing and evaluating, so just mark what is there, it will almost certainly be poor anyway, there is no need to add a further penalty’. 1 x ‘simple’ question + 2 x experts = 2 diametrically opposed responses. For the students, however, it is always simpler: ‘He /she had more time / more words than me. I stuck to the limits. He didn’t. He got away with it.’…… Wherever there is a limit, a margin, there is inevitably friction on the borderline. Those closest to the ‘fire’ feel it most acutely. I am not sure we have really caught hold of this in society, whether we are talking about imposition of taxes, availability of subventions and subsidies or the mark given. Perhaps we are happy to take...
Read MoreOK…. so it’s official (whatever that is!), the crisis is over in France and Germany, or as the BBC put it: “The French and German economies both grew by 0.3% between April and June, bringing to an end year-long recessions in Europe’s largest economies.” No-one seemed more surprised, apparently than the French Minister for the Economy, Christine Laguarde, who seemed (if you will forgive the pun) to have been caught off-guard: “The data is very surprising. After four negative quarters France is coming out of the red.” Not sure I believe it, even if the statistics are scrupulously accurate: I don’t feel it….. ….. and folks around here still have their hatches battened down, some very...
Read MoreOk, let me own up: I think the title is a bit ‘cute’… but there is a point here that arises from research on Sustainability (Developpement Durable, as it is termed here) that I have undertaken over the last two or three years with my university students in France and Germany: they seem to have quite readily assimilated a reasonably sustainable approach to their personal consumption activities in their daily lives – but when it comes to thinking about Tourism consumption choices, they were, themselves, somewhat shocked to find that it is as if the synapses shut down almost 100% and the thought of sustainability applied to Tourism consumption choice just does not register. Tourism appears to be cause to escape normality and to forget normal constraints and concerns altogether. To me this seems particularly significant for the following reasons:- these are students in their early 20s. They were born at about the time of publication of the Brundtland Report : ‘Our Common Future’ / ‘Notre Avenir à Tous’ (World Commission on Environment and Development) published in 1987 and the subsequent ‘Rio Conference’ that launched sustainability upon the world political stage. Chernobyl, Ozone Layer depletion, global warming and the disappearance of the ice-shelf at the poles have been part of their immediate and present history. They have theoretically been living and learning in a world increasingly rife with the sustainability message running through all media since their birth: they are, surely, the most likely to be aware of the ‘message’ and to have ‘bought-in’ to it….. yet when it comes to Tourism, there is a surprising disconnection: sustainability almost doesn’t figure at all (‘though it does feature significantly in other aspects of daily life). the Tourism industry seems to be waiting (not entirely unreasonably) for Tourism demand to shift significantly in the direction of Sustainable Tourism products and services. After all, what industry or corporation would make an investment in something that its market did not seem to be actively demanding? Some do target small niches admittedly, and successfully so, but commercial history is littered with organisations that dive over the ‘leading edge’ and find themselves on what is often termed ‘the bleeding edge’. For example, Click Mango was...
Read MoreTravelmole.com reports today (7th July ’09) that a company called ‘The Holiday Team’ is calling for far more co-operation in the teeth of this crisis in which company budgets are under such pressure (because, as we all know, the fastest way to produce a profit is to cut costs): “At a time when agents are reviewing costs on every level suppliers to the travel trade need to be innovative and offer something extra to help agents increase their profit in difficult times. Now is the time for businesses with shared commercial interests to work together to develop plans which will help to boost sales. This week we launched a commitment to our travel agency partners to assist them with marketing advice and support. And on a selective basis we’ll even offer a financial package to help with marketing.” Although glad that this sort of approach is finding greater favour nowadays, it is somewhat galling that it hadn’t ‘caught on’ in the industry far earlier as there have been no end of good examples and templates. For donkeys’ years we have been stuck on a roundabout (or ‘in a rut’, as you prefer) of cut-throat, dog-eat-dog competition where the thought of co-operation or ‘co-opetition’ is anathema. We are belatedly realising in this crisis that there are other avenues open to us, largely because we are discovering how wasteful all-out competition can be and that we have little alternative but to cooperate at some level because the budgets are no longer there at the level of the individual business. Good to see this cooperative approach stimulated, in this example, by the private sector, because, in fact, (and perhaps somewhat surprisingly), the public sector has, for some considerable time, been leading the way in developing Tourism partnerships and cooperative ventures and offering opportunity for the private sector tourism industry to get involved. Take the Dorset and New Forest Tourism Partnership, for example: a visionary partnership initiated by all the local authorities of the region with the intermediary assistance of Bournemouth University and other NGO partners providing considerable ‘seedcorn’ monies up front over a period of years now, then securing EU matched funding to generate a considerable range of opportunities for the Tourism...
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Several things strike me the moment anyone talks about ‘the crisis’ or ‘La Crise’: things seem to be going on to all intents and purposes pretty ‘normally’ outside the office window the irresistible urge to say ‘Crisis? What crisis?‘ after the title of a famous 1975 Supertramp album (Not that I can remember anything about the album, bar Roger Hodgson’s rather squeaky voice and his sneakily simple piano melodies that go round and round in your head whether you like it or not). with remarkable prescience, Captain Edmund Blackadder (with no little help from Messrs. Rowan Atkinson, Ben Elton and Richard Curtis) got it about right in the trenches in 1915 when he put it most elegantly that: “This is a crisis, a large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it is a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeted throughout; twenty-four hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying: ‘This is a Large Crisis’. And a large crisis requires a large plan. Get me a ruler, two pencils and a pair of underpants.” Blackadder Goes Forth. Final Episode: ‘Goodbyeeee‘. (1989) The Tourism industry is worried. Already there are rumours of large airline collapses and suggestions and projections of $9bn losses for the airline industry worldwide this year (I personally think that will prove to be an under-estimate). Ryanair posted a loss of some $239m in June. If that is for a June-June period then it includes 4 or 5 months before the ‘Crisis’ fully hit (if to the normal April year end, then 6 or 7 months)- and that is one of Europe’s two most successful low-cost operators who have generally been outperforming the flag-carriers for a number of years. Ryanair’s principal competitor, easyJet posted a 6 month loss of some £129.8m in April this year. If the fastest-growing, most popular and lowest-cost operators are performing at this level…. what are we likely to see of the others? For years Tourism has been considerin g itself a ‘necessity’: in a busy world, where the pressure is mounting on employees in a globally competitive environment run by technologies with which we are not equipped to keep up, then ‘downtime’: holiday, clearly becomes precious. The...
Read More[A draft article I wrote for the British Tourism Society focusing upon the point that it is the contexts and cultures in which ICT is to be embedded which determines how it looks, feels, is used and the degree to which it is successful rather than the technology itself.] Le Tourisme et les Nouvelles Technologies: TNT – just about says it all, really – it has considerable explosive potential. However, as ever, it is not technology that is the important issue here, so much as the context in which it is employed; a realisation that dawned upon me most emphatically on the evening of my 17th birthday on the old Homesley Aerodrome in the New Forest some thirty-odd years ago when my Dad set me behind the wheel of the car for my first unofficial driving lesson with the words: “This is the first time you’ve had a loaded weapon in your hand – you can kill someone with this if you are not careful”. The car is not the issue so much as the driver. In information and communication technology (ICT) terms it is very much the same: it’s not what it is, so much as what you do with it that counts. In 2003, whilst still teaching Tourism at Bournemouth University, as part of the role of my Learning and Teaching Fellowship, I was engaged in talking to other universities about the potential involved in the use of the internet as a support tool for learning in a university ‘attendance’ (rather than distance learning) mode. As part of this endeavour I was invited to the Université d’Haute Alsace (Mulhouse, France) to address and work with a faculty upon the development of a vision and a strategy for the application of ICT in learning and teaching. Certain things became immediately apparent: the degree of Faculty and individual lecturer autonomy (sovereignty, even) were very much stronger than in England in the light of such independence, the University ‘centre’ found it difficult either to lead or to impose new ICT initiatives and was looking for something to emerge from the faculties themselves. the largely collegiate nature of operation within Faculties and their Departments made it ‘difficult’ for coherent ICT initiatives...
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