Tracking tourism success
A researcher from the School of Tourism has earned a University of Queensland 2008 Dean's Award for Outstanding RHD Theses.
Rodolfo Baggio’s thesis explored the complex question of why some tourist destinations were more successful than others.
Announced this month, the Dean's Awards for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Theses formally recognise PhD and MPhil graduates who receive unanimously outstanding reports from their assessors' reports, which commend them on making genuine and substantial contributions to their field of research.
Rodolfo’s thesis found the success of tourism destinations relied in part on the existence and continued development of strong networks between individuals at each destination.
``A tourism destination lives and develops well when the set of relationships between the public and private organisations operating in its territory are well formed,’’ Rodolfo said.
He said relationships between organisations at various destinations could be viewed as a network that moved useful ideas between members.
Rodolfo said understanding and measuring the way the diffusion of that knowledge occurs creates an opportunity to experiment with different network configurations and choose the most efficient.
Rodolfo’s thesis has shown there is a possibility to implement practical tools and analysis methods able to build future development scenarios and provide more effective guidance to tourism practitioners and managers in their efforts to foster sustainable growth of their organisations.
“We may change the capacity of the organisations in the network to transfer information and see how the speed of diffusion changes,’’ Rodolfo said.
``For example we may see how effective an `education’ program can be for the whole system.
``Or we can modify the linkages and find out whether fostering collaboration among operators can provide better results. The different scenarios can then be evaluated by balancing efforts and results.’’
For more information phone Jodie Powell, Media Officer, UQ School of Tourism, on 0409 946 796.