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The consumption of culture is one of the most important aspects of tourism activity. Cultural tourism includes experiencing local culture, traditions and lifestyle, participation in arts-related activities, and visits to museums, monuments and heritage sites. This book reviews a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research methods applied to the field of cultural tourism, including surveys, mystery tourist visits, visitor tracking, grand tour narratives, collage, researcher-created video, photo-based interviews, ethnographic and actor-network approaches. It provides a practical guide on how to conduct research as well as a discussion and evaluation of the methods.

Tourism has long been associated with improved health, resulting in a boom of spas, yoga and rejuvenation treatments. Medical tourism itself is a more recent example of niche tourism, with increasing numbers of people travelling abroad in search of cosmetic enhancement and solutions to various serious medical conditions often by surgery. Medical Tourism looks at the background and rise of health tourism, new emerging facets of the sector, and examines how medical tourism benefits local health care providers, economies and the tourism industry as a whole. It offers a unique overview of an emerging component of the tourist industry and a distinct and controversial element of health provision.

Landscape today is no longer just a cultural aspect, intended as an elitist phenomenon, but emerges as an essential element in the definition and the application of a modern approach in sustainable development. Historical locally adapted distinctive and ingenious combinations of management practices have contributed and continue to contribute tremendously to the biodiversity of the world, resulting not only in outstanding aesthetic beauty, but, in the sustained provision of multiple goods and services, food and livelihood security and quality of life. The development of policies to preserve and manage landscape resources, has to face both the degradation of cultural landscape due to socio-economic development and the need to develop appropriate methods and approaches. This book presents different methodologies developed to analyse, manage and plan landscape resources. It reports recent research findings and case studies from Europe and North America, suggesting also the revision of some orientations and views of the current policies concerning forestry, rural development and nature conservation, often contributing to degrade cultural landscapes.

Providing a wide range of case studies in sustainable tourism planning, this authoritative work presents cases at both international and national levels as well as on a regional, sub-regional, urban, local and site scale. Drawing on the author's world-wide experience and with contributions from professionals in the field, this book takes a comparative approach relating to different economic, political and temporal dimensions, examining established initiatives both in the context of the standards of the time and from a modern perspective looking back. With an emphasis on sustainability, this unique collection is an essential resource for tourism planners, researchers and students.

In recent years, the rapidly growing industry of leisure has displayed some signs of overcrowding on account of the diminished capacities of turning employed resources into profit and the lowered personnel productivity in Romania. Economic agents striving to succeed in this rapidly evolving economic sector should reconsider their position and plan a strategy to grow or reinforce their business. The present paper provides a starting point in outlying the local recreation market specificity by investigating consumer preferences and drivers of choice. Results show that although there is an active demand for commercial recreational activities, its quantum is rather low. Moreover, the study shows that service-related factors (such as quality, personnel qualification, price and novelty) appear to have the highest importance for consumers, that positive word of mouth is a rather strong influencer, while advertising and location-related factors rank lowest on the list of priorities when choosing a recreation provider.

The aim of this investigation was to measure the impact of the arts broadly construed on the quality of life. A randomly drawn household sample of 315 adult residents of Prince George, British Columbia served as the working data-set. Examining zero-order correlations, among other things, it was found that playing a musical instrument a number of times per year was positively associated with general health (r = 0.37), while singing alone a number of hours per week was negatively associated with general health (r = -0.19). The strongest positive associations with life satisfaction are satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking and embroidery, needlepoint or cross-stitching, at r = 0.39 and r = 0.32, respectively. The satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking (r = 0.35) and buying works of art (r = 0.32) were the most positive influences on happiness. The strongest associations with the Index of Subjective Well-Being are the satisfaction obtained from gourmet cooking (r = 0.37) and the satisfaction obtained from knitting or crocheting (r = 0.34). Examining multivariate relations, it was found that eight predictors combined to explain 59% of the variance in life satisfaction scores, with self-esteem satisfaction (β = 0.35) and friendship satisfaction (β = 0.27) most influential. Among the arts-related predictors in the eight, singing alone was fairly influential and negative (β = -0.18), while the satisfaction obtained from reading to others (β = 0.08) and the Index of Arts as Self-Health Enhancers (β = 0.11) were somewhat less influential. When the arts-related predictors were combined with a set of domain satisfaction predictors, total explanatory power was increased by only 3 percentage points. Seven predictors could explain 58% of the variance in satisfaction with the overall quality of life scores. Of the arts-related predictors, only time spent going to non-art museums was significant (β = 0.07). Arts-related predictors did not increase explanatory power at all beyond that obtained from domain satisfaction variables alone. Eight predictors explained 42% of the variance in happiness scores, with the most influential predictors including satisfaction with self-esteem (β = 0.37) and financial security (β = 0.21), followed by the Index of Arts as Self-Developing Activities (β = 0.18). Arts-related predictors added 3 percentage points of explanatory power to that obtained from domain satisfaction scores. Seven predictors could explain 65% of the variance in scores on the Index of Subjective Well-Being, led by self-esteem satisfaction (β = 0.35) and financial security satisfaction (β = 0.30). The Index of Arts as Community Builders had a modest influence (β = 0.11), but all together, arts-related predictors increased our total explanatory power by a single percentage point. Summarizing these multivariate results, it seems fair to say that, relative to the satisfaction obtained from other domains of life, the arts had a very small impact on the quality of life (measured in four somewhat different ways) of a sample of residents of Prince George who generally cared about the arts. Even in absolute terms, arts-related activities could only explain from 5% to 11% of the variance in four plausible measures of the self-perceived quality of respondents' lives. By comparing the composition of our sample with census data from 2001, it was demonstrated that the sample was not representative of residents of our city. It would, therefore, be wrong to generalize our findings to the whole population of Prince George or to any larger population.

*The first book to cover events management from a research angle*Includes a number of case studies to provide a well-rounded approach to the subject*Addresses key concepts, theories and discussions around subjects such as consumer behaviour, authenticity and new technology

The Artist as Culture Producer illustrates how today's contemporary artists add to creative economies through out-of-the-box thinking while also generously contributing to the well-being of others. By turns humorous, heartbreaking and instructive, the testimonies of these forty diverse working artists will inspire and encourage every reader - from the art student to the established artist.

The Guerilla Performance and Multimedia Handbook is the ultimate guide for artists at all stages of their careers engaged in creating original performance and multimedia work, including hybrids of theatre, visual art, installation, physical theatre, dance, CD-Rom and web design. It covers all aspects of artist support including starting up a company, funding, multimedia tools, and documentation and marketing, and incorporates a useful Yellow Pages section with contact information for production, funding, venues, galleries, publications, festivals, printers, equipment hire, technical support, artists organizations, performance archives, copyright offices and software support. The book is lavishly illustrated and interviews from major artists and directors of some of the leading artist support groups in the UK and US along with illuminating case studies address practical questions and offer indispensable insights into how to succeed in the performance arts.

Rivers constitute a major tourism resource, providing spectacular settings, recreation facilities, a means of transport, a sense of heritage and adventure, and links with the environment and natural world. River tourism accounts for a significant proportion of the world’s tourism consumption, with activities such as Nile cruises and rafting holidays making it an economically important area of tourism demanding in-depth analysis. This book explores river tourism from a range of perspectives including uses, heritage, management, environmental concerns, and marketing