The Middle East is one of the fastest growing tourism regions in the world. Especially Dubai (since the 1980s) and Abu Dhabi (since the 1990s) have invested heavily in tourism development to firstly enhance their recognition as international destinations and secondly to diversify their economies away from the oil production. Surprisingly, there is a lack of academic published articles on those two emirates’ international destination image. This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying and comparing the images of Abu Dhabi and Dubai amongst potential first-time visitors from one of their main source markets – Germany. An empirical study amongst 300 respondents from North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, was conducted to reveal the cognitive image attributes of Dubai and Abu Dhabi for non-visitors. Despite both places having a similar basis for destination development, their images differ. Thus, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are not seen as competitors on the tourism market, instead they could even increase the mutual benefits through highlighting specific images more distinctly. Further, the research identified a missing fit between the desired tourism destination image for both destinations and the perceived destination image. This is especially significant for the aspect of sustainability, which both emirates try to promote. Potential tourists rather perceive both emirates as unsustainable and not environmentally conscious.
This research presents a joint project between Texas A&M University and CBS International Business School, designed to bring awareness to students' understandings of other people, cultures, feelings and behaviors. While both explicit and implicit cultural knowledge helps shape our interactions with others, it is the deeper level of understanding that creates cultural competence, allowing one to work and communicate effectively with varying cultures. Applying the Iceberg Concept of Culture and Deardorff's understanding of intercultural competence, we show the effect virtual interaction can have on higher-level cultural learning amongst students. Through interactions, knowledge was coconstructed organically and caused a frame of reference shift. Preand post-interaction culture themes demonstrate a move toward cultural competence. This study shows the value of human interaction and the importance of education by offering face-to-face cultural exchanges through virtual discussion. Implications for educators and the potential of virtual travel experiences are discussed.
Increasingly, crisis situations are affecting the globalized tourism industry. Especially, unfavorable news about the political, economic or social situation at a destination are distributed all over the world through numerous media channels. This paper is aimed at providing a literature-based overview on how a decline in visitor numbers due to the influence of a political crisis can be avoided through proactive crisis management. Generally, the key to success is creating a problem-solving action plan including prevention measures that combine all stakeholders' interests and activities. However, in the tourism industry one problem is, that the equal integration of all stakeholders is mostly complicated. The paper provides a literature-based theoretical foundation about crisis management in general and the application of crisis management within tourism. Based upon this foundation an overview of the different stages of crisis management is developed, integrating all stakeholders and influential interest groups.
Travel and tourism is one of the most important activities worldwide that generates billions of income each year. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (2018a), the total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP in 2017 was USD 8,272.3bn (10.4% of GDP) and this is expected to rise by 4% to USD 12,450.1bn (11.7% of GDP) in 2018. In total, Travel and Tourism in the United Arab Emirates generated AED154.1bn (USD 41,950.5mn), accounted for 11.3% of GDP in 2017 and is expected to accelerate to 4.9% in 2018, and 10.6% in 2028 (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018b). The statistics noted that the number of international tourists visiting the UAE grew by 6.5% in 2017 compared to 2016 (Gulf News, 2018). According to the Dubai Statistics Center (2018), in 2017 the number of tourists who visited Dubai increased by 6% relatively to the previous year (from 14,900,000 to 15,790,000). Despite the increasing number of tourists each year, empirical evidence evaluating Dubai's specific destination image is recent and scarce (Buonincontri & Micera, 2016; Del Vecchio & Passiante, 2017; Khan et al, 2017). This highlights that, the opinions of distinct participants, and the view of visitors is held only in limited scope (Liberato, et al, 2018). Provided that the primary objectives of research on tourist strategies and initiatives are to create better experiences and to improve the marketing and management procedures of destinations from a tourist point of view
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