Call for Papers

Conference title: Rethinking Tourism, Hospitality and Events for a Better Future – connecting researchers and practitioners in tourism, hospitality and events.

 

The first edition of “International Conference on Tourism and Social Research” under the title “Rethinking Toursim,Hospitality and Events for a Better Future” will be held on 2 - 5 August 2022 in the beautiful island destination of the Republic of the Maldives, crowned the World’s Leading Destination in 2020 and 2021 by the World Travel Awards (www.worldtravelawards.com).

 

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has not only brought international tourism to a standstill but has had severe impacts on local economies and communities. Given the importance of the tourism and hospitality sector for many communities around the world, it is vital to rebuild the industry and make it more resilient and sustainable in the future. To that end, more than ever, the global tourism industry is in need of researchers and practitioners to join hands in a global partnership to assist in this task.

 

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly implicated tourism globally, small island communities, like the Maldives, have been one of the hardest-hit destinations, being highly dependent on tourism as a main source of income and employment. The island of Ukulhas is such a case in point and the organisers of the conference hope to support this island community by hosting the conference during its low season in August.

 

Objective of the Conference:

 

The Conference aims to discuss ideas, knowledge and research on redeveloping global tourism hospitality and events. Practitioners, policy decision-makers and academics are invited to share research, cases and stories about current challenges and possible ways forward in building a more resilient global tourism industry in the future.

 

Conference Topics

 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

 

 

  • Tourist behaviour

    risk perception; authentic experience; destination familiarity; shifting markets; reshaping leisure, recreation, and wellbeing; hygiene; travel restrictions; GenZ

 

  • Technology, artificial intelligence, innovation and services

    use of technology and integrating technology to enhance tourist experiences and services; artificial intelligence; big-data; smart-tourism; service design

 

  • Human Resource Management

    employee motivation and well-being; job security; new models of work (e.g., work from home); new employee relations; mobility; re-skilling, labour shortage; gender equality

 

  • Cultural Tourism

    gastronomy (culinary / food), art, culture, Islamic tourism and heritage

 

  • Social issues

    diversity and inclusion; community-based tourism; inclusive tourism, women empowerment; resistance to tourism; vaccination; public support for tourism; anxiety; tourism and quality of life

 

  • Environment

    climate change; environmental sustainability; eco-tourism; marine conservation; waste management

 

  • Marketing and social media

    destination marketing; tourism diversification; re-shaping the tourist experience; destination competitiveness; global and regional trends in tourism; PR and social media; destination rediscovery

 

  • Governance, Policy & Practice

    crisis management and crisis response capabilities; new destination governance models; sustainable tourism policy & planning

 

Partners

 

The Conference will be hosted by Clique College (Maldives) with Curtin University (Australia) and Nottingham Trent University (UK) as co-hosting universities. The Chair of the conference, Dr Naushad Mohamed, co-chairs Professor Christof Pforr and Professor Babak Taheri, all look forward to welcoming you on the island of Ukhulhas.

 

Venue

 

The Conference will be held in the island of Ukhulhas, in the Alif Alif Atoll of the Maldives. Ukhulhas is a well-known island for tourism with 33 registered boutique hotels, 72 km from the capital Male’. The destination is renowned for excellent game fishing, its coral reefs, turtles and manta rays.

Ukhulhas has recently built a conference facility ideally suited to host international conferences. As a remote island with a small local island community it is an ideal and safe destination to hold the conference amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. The conference will also help to revive tourism and stimulate the local economy.

 

 

 

Supporting Partner Universities

 

Curtin University (Australia)

Curtin University is an innovative, global university known for its high impact research and strong industry partnerships. In 2021 Curtin University was ranked among the top one per cent of universities worldwide according to the highly regarded Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). (Source: www.curtin.edu.au) In 2021, tourism & hospitality research at Curtin has been listed in the top 50 in the world for the 5th consecutive year by the highly renowned Shanghai Ranking. Within Australia, it is ranked 3rd and continuous to be the No. 1 tourism and hospitality program in Western Australia. Furthermore, according to the Australian Research Council, tourism research at Curtin is recognized as ‘world-class’ with four consecutive ERA ‘3’ rankings (2010, 2012, 2015 & 2018).

 

Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University (UK)

Nottingham Business School has a truly collegiate and diverse environment with colleagues from across the world working together to deliver our mission. The colleagues are chosen for their academic pedigree and direct business experience who engage with leaders and practitioners in business, public bodies and government and hence combine academic excellence with industrial and/or international experience. Nottingham Business School has been ranked in the top 100 European Business Schools by the Financial Times for the second year running. NBS is an EQUIS and ACCSB accredited Business School and was a finalist for Business School of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards 2018. The 2019 Guardian League tables also place NBS’ Accounting and Finance at 8th, Economics at 13th and Business and related subjects in 18th position.

 

 




Keynote Speakers
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Professor Babak Taheri


Professor Babak Taheri is a Professor of Marketing at Nottingham Trent University and has held a number academic and research leadership positions in the past. He is also Honorary Professor of Marketing in Business School at University of Aberdeen. He has an established reputation in the marketing field with a specific expertise in services marketing management, consumer behaviour and tourism, leisure and cultural consumption. The innovative nature of his research traces to multi-disciplinary work and to methodologically robust measurement and assessment of key concepts. He has published consistently in internationally rated top-tier journals with high impact factors (over 120 academic publications) and held funds from bodies in the EU and UK such as Horizon 2020 and Innovate UK Research Grant – KTP. Prof. Taheri currently serves as Senior Editor for Tourism Management Perspectives and Associate Editor for: The Service Industries Journal and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. He also is on the editorial review board of several social science journals, including the Journal of Business Research and Journal of Travel Research.

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Professor Fevzi Okumus


Professor Fevzi Okumus is the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association (CFHLA) Preeminent Chair Professor within the Hospitality Services Department at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management. He was the Founding Chair of the Hospitality Services Department at UCF Rosen College. He has over 270 academic publications (over 170 refereed journal articles, three books, 12 book chapters and 90 conference presentations and reports). As of December 21st, 2021, his publications have received over 14500 citations, and he has an h-index of 58. He has chaired/co-chaired and served on numerous PhD dissertation and master thesis committees. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM) (IF: 6.514) and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights (JHTI). He is a frequent speaker at international conferences. He has received numerous prestigious research awards and recognitions including “The Michael D. Olsen Research Award” in 2016; “The University of Central Florida Scroll & Quill Society Award” in 2017, the “CFHLA Preeminent Professor” again in 2017 and the John Wiley & Sons Lifetime Research Achievement Award from ICHRIE in 2018. According to Baas et al. (2021), Prof. Okumus was ranked 58th among all the scholars in the Sport, Leisure & Tourism field globally. Finally, Prof. Okumus was recognized as a “Highly Cited Researcher” for 2021 by Clarivate, based on data from Web of Science. The Highly Cited Researchers rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™ citation index.

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Associate Professor Michael Volgger


Dr Michael Volgger is an Associate Professor with the School of Management and Marketing at Curtin University in Western Australia where he is Co-Director of the Tourism Research Cluster and the Research Lead of Australia’s South West Sustainable Tourism Observatory. He is also the Research Lead of Curtin University’s Indian Ocean Tourism Research Initiative. Michael is a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt (Germany) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Tourism Research at Wakayama University (Japan) as well as the “Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research” (ACTHR) Series Co-Editor. Michael holds a doctoral degree in Economics and Business Administration and a master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology. His areas of expertise span questions of transformation and coordination in tourism destination management, regional development, tourism product development and consumer behaviour. Among others, he has published extensively on tourism governance and crisis recovery marketing. Michael’s research has been supported by industry and government through 40 research grants and he has published 80 academic articles, five books and more than 20 industry or government reports.

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Professor Marianna Sigala


Marianna Sigala is Professor at the University of Piraeus, Greece. She previously hold the position of the Professor of Tourism and the Director of the Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management at the University of South Australia (2015 – 2021). She has also been an academic staff at the University of Strathclyde and Westminster University (UK), and the University of the Aegean (Greece). Her academic credentials are combined with her professional experience in the tourism industry. Her interests include services and experience management, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in tourism and hospitality, as well as wine tourism. She is a widely published and multi-awarded authority: nine books, numerous papers in academic journals, and (keynote) presentations in international conferences. She has a long record of leadership and participation in international research projects funded by various entities such as the E.U., the Council of Europe and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia. She is a past President of EuroCHRIE and a past member of the executive board of ICHRIE and IFITT. She currently serves at the executive board of CAUTHE. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Service Theory & Practice, and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management. In 2016, she has been awarded the prestigious EuroCHRIE Presidents’ Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements to tourism and hospitality education. Since 2020, Professor Sigala is also appointed as Research Fellow of CAUTHE.

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Professor Justin Paul


Dr Justin Paul, serves as Editor-in-chief of A ranked International Journal of Consumer studies (Cite score 7.0, IF 3.9, Expected IF for 2021- 7.0), and as an Associate Editor of Journal of Business Research. A former faculty member with the University of Washington, he serves as Full Professor of PhD & MBA programs, University of Puerto Rico, USA and holds concurrent appointment at Henley Business school, University of Reading, England for 3 years. He holds three honorary titles as 'Distinguished Professor' with three reputed universities including- Indian Institute of Management (IIM-K), SIBM, Pune & MS University. He is known as an author/co-author of books such as Business Environment (4th ed), International Marketing, Services Marketing, Export-Import Management (2nd edition), Management of Banking & Financial Services by McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press & Pearson respectively. He is also an Associate Editor with European Management Journal, & Journal of Strategic Marketing. Dr. Paul introduced the Masstige model and measure for brand management, CPP Model for internationalization, SCOPE framework for small firms and 7-P Framework for International Marketing. His articles have been downloaded over 800,000 times during the last six years. He is ranked among the world's top 0.1% highly cited researchers based on Web of Science statistics with citations increasing at 375 per month in 2021. An author of over 130 research papers in SSCI journals, Justin has over 70 papers are in A or A star journals. He has also served as an associate professor at Nagoya University, Japan and as Department Chair at IIM. In addition, he has taught full courses at Aarhus University- Denmark, Grenoble Eco le de Management-& University of Versailles -France, University-Lithuania, Warsaw -Poland and has been a visiting professor at University of Chicago, Vienna University- Austria, Fudan & UIBE-China, UAB- Barcelona and Madrid and has published three best- selling case studies with Ivey & Harvard. He has visited over 60 countries as a visiting professor / speaker.

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Professor Jane Ali-Knight


Dr Jane Ali-Knight is a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Perth. She is currently leading and developing the festival and event subject group as well as lecturing at universities internationally and facilitating training and development in the field. Her core activities fall into three main areas: designing and delivering event and festival related academic and commercial programs; research and publications and conferences and professional festival and event delivery. Current academic research activity focuses on accessibility and inclusion in festivals and events; festival and event lifecycles, recovery, resilience, and wellbeing tourism. She is currently a board member of BAFA (British Arts and Festivals Association); Hidden Door Festival; Without Walls; WIT (Women in Tourism) and is a Fellow of the HEA and Royal Society of the Arts.




Supporting Journals
contemporary
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hti
hti
ijcs
ijcs




Abstract Submission Guideline:

 

All submissions should have a cover sheet that includes the following information:

  • Title of paper

  • Names, institutional affiliations and email addresses of all authors (highlighting the corresponding author).

 

The abstract (in word doc format) should be in English and between 1,000 and 1,500 words in length and should include an overview of the theoretical context, research objectives or questions, research methodology, main findings and conclusions. We also welcome practitioner contributions.


 

The purpose of the abstract is to evaluate the quality and appropriateness of the presentation to the intended audience. All submissions will be subject to a double-blind review process, managed by the Conference Co-Chairs. Decisions will be based on the reviewer feedback received and are final.

If your paper is accepted, at least one author must register, pay and attend the conference to present the paper.

To submit your abstract please email to submit@socialresearchcentre.com

Key Dates

Abstract Submission - 20th May 2022
Early Bird Registration - 15th May 2022
Registration Deadline - 21st July 2022