Abstract:The market of tourists with disabilities consists of a sizeable percentage of total tourism and is rapidly growing globally but little is known about tour guides experiences with them. These tourists with disabilities seem to have less holiday offers thereby reducing the frequency of tour guide encounters with them. While most tourism literature supports tour guides and their contribution to tourist experience, very little research is done in developing countries to show experiences of tour guides with tourists with disabilities. There is a knowledge gap of how the interactions between the guide and tourists with disabilities participating in the guided tours influence the tour guides' experience. Using face to face interviews and focus group discussions with tour guides the study sought to establish people with disabilities types of holidays, concerns they raise during tours and challenges encountered by tour guides when touring with PwD. Non-probability, namely convenience and judgemental sampling methods were followed to pick tour guides from museums and national parks. Study results revealed the activities that tour guides are offering people with disabilities, guides' own choice of activities for tourists with disabilities and the challenges faced by tour guides in the provision of those activities. The study concludes that the guiding industry has inadequate information about tourists with disabilities and thus is failing to fully serve the market. Lastly the study provides a set of recommendations that can be used by the tour guiding industry in order to effectively serve the market of tourists with disabilities.
It is evident from literature that the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the world economiesto its ‘knees’. No industry has gone untouched by the effects of this pandemic. Globally there has beenan adverse impact on travel which is backbone of the hotel industry. This study focuses on exploringthe impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on Zimbabwean hotel sector. The objectives of thestudy focused on investigating the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on hotel occupancy and revenue andproposing strategies that can be implemented for recovery post the pandemic. The study adopted amixed method approach, semi-structured questionnaires were used to gather data from 29 (3-5 star) hotel management across the various major tourism cities in Zimbabwe. Findings reveal that the Covid-19 pandemic has had an adverse impact on hotel occupancy and revenue. Occupancy and revenue have dropped. Strategies have been employed by hotel to cope with the adverse impact of reducedoccupancy and revenue, these include working with minimal staff to avoid increases exposure, closingother parts of the hotel to reduce operational cost and operating on take out bases. It can be concludedthat hotels in Zimbabwe are not prepared for pandemics like Covid-19. It is therefore recommendedthat disaster management plans relating to pandemics be developed and implemented by hotels.
Background: South African tourism is evolving towards accommodating disabled people. Within the same standpoint, the country receives ageing tourists as a major international tourism market from the Global North, whose access needs are similar to disabled people. The present article explored ‘blind and blank spots’ in the extant literature on tourism–impairment disability as a synchronised field within academic research to provide theoretical insights and gaps for the disability-tourism research community to consider the composite concept instead of individualistic concepts.Objective: The objectives were: (1) to track knowledge development from 1990 to 2018 using a narrative literature review approach and (2) to justify future research areas previously overlooked and understudied within a tourism–impairments–disability perspective in South Africa and beyond.Method: A narrative literature review search strategy was used. Keywords and synonymous terms were used in electronic searches of Scopus, ScienceDirect, Sabinet Online, Emerald Insights Journals, African Journals and Google Scholar. The literature screening process used predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria for the data source. Content thematic analysis was adopted for the present study.Results: The findings reflect a dearth of tourism–impairments–disability research in South Africa. Nonetheless, there is an observable pattern of slow growth in research after the 2000s. The extant literature is skewed towards the tourism supply side and sporadic on tourism demand (tourist experiences), education and skills development.Conclusions: It is clear that the absence of scientifically developed knowledge on disability–impairments–tourism affects inclusive tourism growth. Therefore, the research community should consider disability-inclusive (accessible) tourism management, human resources and marketing practices and knowledge for teaching material in future research.Contribution: The article mapped and provided insights that sets a research agenda for tourism research community to see the gaps in literature and/or knowledge for accessible tourism (disability-inclusive) tourism to be a game changer as found by UNWTO (2020) with low-resources setting. Thereby setting a tone towards call for more research that can uncover an economic narrative that shows a relationship between skills development, labour and consumer markets for the participation of diverse disabled persons as such is shown as understudied in Low-to-Middle income earning countries like South Africa.
Sustainable agritourism development is at the apex of contemporary discussions on sustainable tourism development as evidenced by enormous studies being done on this tourism concept. This review paper discussed the contributions of one hundred and five (105) research articles that were published in several tourism journals. The main objective of this paper was to establish the current state of literature on Success Factors (SFs) for sustainable agritourism development, identify research gaps, suggest areas of future study and draw lessons that are of importance to the development of agritourism in Zimbabwe. Statistical analysis was employed in order to establish the distribution of the sampled research articles over time, by continent, distribution by research method, distribution by research approach and distribution by research themes. The results of this study revealed that research on agritourism development is biased towards the developed countries, most of the research used qualitative research with focus more on the supply side and little has been done to establish the requirements and CSFs for the development of this tourism concept. The findings of this study provide a baseline upon which future studies in agritourism, could be build.
This chapter is based on a doctoral thesis on the development of a destination image (DI) recovery model for enhancing the performance of the tourism sector in Zimbabwe. The study was prompted by the failure of African destinations to develop DI image recovery models. A pragmatist paradigm, a convergent parallel mixed methodology research approach and a cross sectional survey were adopted. A sample of three hundred and nineteen comprising international tourists, service providers and key informants was used. A structured, semi-structured questionnaire and semi-structured interview guide were used respectively. Quantitative data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and AMOS version 25 while qualitative data was analyzed using NVivo version 12. Tests were conducted using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the multiple independent variables. The major findings were that price, ancillary services and amenities significantly influenced affective image while ancillary services significantly influenced destination performance. The study recommended that the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry trains tourism stakeholders including the host community in order to achieve sustainable destination image recovery.
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