Leisure Management

During last two decades remarkable changes have been taken place in developed as well as developing nations caused by the economic and technological advancements. These changes have posed several challenges for the transformation of the whole educational system, including educational curricula, learning materials, instructional practices and education stakeholders. Tourism and hospitality industry within the global economy has become a pivotal sector generating huge employment opportunities. The calibre human resources differentiate it from other industrial sectors. Thus, the tourism & hospitality education is focusing on building tomorrow's manpower for the industry. This paper originates in the context of growing recognition that the success of global tourism industry will ultimately depends of quality human resources. This paper will add to the extant literature on tourism& hospitality management education by addressing challenges and issues Indian hospitality industry facing.

Recently youth tourism has had great importance and intension by researchers. This due to its wide and different benefits especially in economic concern. Moreover, this type of tourism attracts different segments of youths all over the world. This study aims to identify the awareness of Jordanian and Egyptian stakeholders (public sector-private sector-experts) about the youth tourism and its dimensions; and evaluate the current situation of youth tourism in both Jordan and Egypt. The methodology of study includes Descriptive analytical method and case study technique, SPSS for data analysis and Sample and Questionnaire. Techniques of analysis are Frequencies, Mean, S. Deviation, S. Error of Mean, One-Way ANOVA Analysis to test Significance of Variance. This study has evaluated the current status of youth tourism in Jordan and Egypt through various dimensions. The most outstanding results are that both Jordan and Egypt are attractive tourism destinations for young people as the two countries contain the attractions for youth tourism. And the average cost per youth trip in both Jordan and Egypt is less than the international average of spend especially in Australia and European; and this is a good point in favor of the two countries to compete for the youth tourism international markets.

Complete conference proceedings for the II Brazilian Congress of Leisure Studies that took place September 2016 in the city of Belém, Brazil.
Anais completos do II Congresso Brasileiro de Estudos do Lazer, realizado em setembro de 2016 na cidade de Belém-PA.

Employee safety and health is considered to be one of the major important human resource functions for any hotel organization. The current paper focuses on the application of occupational safety and health of laundry employees looking at the nature of the tasks performed in day to day operations. OSH is one of the significant factors responsible for employees' inspiration and moreover retention in a hotel organization. Health, safety and performance of the employees are dependent on understanding and application of ergonomic practices followed during laundry operations. The paper explores laundry employee protection against various critical factors such as injuries, accidents, work postures, chemical exposure, heat, fire, noise, etc. A questionnaire was used to perpetuate perception of laundry employees in regard to protection from factors concerning safety and health issues from hotels of India. The results reveal that some of the OSH practices are been followed in hotels, while some were missing from hotels such as training, periodical audit and protection against chemical hazards. The present study suggests need for adopting OSH practices and enforcing periodical check for the same in every hotel besides of its categorization.

Booming travel and tourism trade cause a tremendous growth in hotel industry in Malaysia. This industry will continue to promote country and other businesses in a good way. Therefore, the evaluation of customers' perception, satisfaction and loyalty in hospitality industry has been major of attention in marketing strategies. This research aims to evaluate customer loyalty at in-house restaurant hotels in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, this research takes two steps to better understand the role and influence of each constructs; (1) Examines customer satisfaction by considering the effect of service quality antecedents on customer satisfaction. (2) Investigates the association between customer satisfaction and loyalty by identifying the moderating role of switching cost in satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The data is collected through self-administrated questionnaire from hotels in two states of Malaysia from 200 customers who have been served at in-house restaurant of those hotels since last three months. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the reliability and validity of data and the hypothesized relationships in the proposed research model.

Over the last fifty years tourism has grown to be one of the major industries in the world, playing an important role in the economies of many countries. Recent tourism marketing researches focus mainly on competitiveness, attractiveness, tourist loyalty to a destination, tourist satisfaction and perceived service quality, and destination image. In this study, tourist behaviour can be regarded as an aggregate construct, comprising pre-visit determinants for destination choice (e.g., motivation); on-site experience (e.g., perception); post-visit evaluation (e.g., satisfaction); and future behavioural intentions (destination loyalty). Combined, these factors help to understand comprehensive destination visitor behaviour. Identifying motivations of visitors and increasing the service quality of destinations are viable ways for destinations to remain competitive. In order to secure or expand Egypt tourism market share, tourism marketers in Egypt should pay close attention to travelers' behaviour and their perceptions of Egypt as a tourism destination. This study aims to: Understand and examine the theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal relationships among tourist motivations, tourist perceptions and tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty and examine tourists' motivations and perceptions of Egypt as a tourism destination to gain a better understanding of tourists' behavior finally, examine the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. To achieve these aims a self field questionnaire was used to collect information. Path analysis used to study the relationships among variables. 400 tourists were investigated as a sample and the collected Questionnaires are 232 ones which represent a response rate of 58%. The important findings indicated that tourists' motivations and perceptions had an effective influence on satisfaction as well as willingness to return, both motivations and perceptions are significantly affecting satisfaction and also motivations, perceptions and satisfaction are significantly affecting loyalty.

This essay, or rather collection of essays, draws together three distinct streams of thought, time and space into a single river of understanding concerning labor, leisure, human-nature relations, city and town planning and human evolution at both the individual and collective levels. From Daoist tales of effortless leisure under 'useless trees' to Pieper's eulogy of leisure in the Modernist world(view) of total work and onto the planning theory and practice of Sir. Patrick Geddes, this ambling and nomadic stream seeks to problematize hegemonic contemporary conceptions of evolution, order, labor, leisure, nature and human-nature relations and to plant the seeds of a new principle, a new mythos, to which human evolution and being can be oriented in ashes of the charred edifice of Modernity. Can we transcend the materially rationalist, labor centric conceptions of humanity that reign in contemporary hegemonic culture for a more holistic perspective in which the infinite and finite aspects of human being can co-exist without either one interfering with the other? Can human-nature relations, especially as cultivated through city and town planning, transcend the present order of hierarchical domination, objectification and callous consumption of nature for an order of relations in which nature acts upon us as a teacher and we consume nature in harmony with its own natural order rather than through creation of an artificial order?

The aim of this study was to reveal the factors that constraints and facilitators health and fitness club members in Ankara to attend the leisure activities. The population for the research consists of large-scale health and fitness club members in Ankara. Research samples include 389 participants of 190 (Mage= 31.26; SD= 8.86) women and 199 (Mage= 31.31, SD= 9.06) men selected with convenience sampling method from four large-scale health and fitness club members in Ankara. Leisure Constraint Questionnaire was used in the study to determine the participants’ constraints and Leisure Facilitators Scale to determine the facilitators they face while attending leisure activities. It was determined that though the health and fitness club users have constraints on leisure activity attendance, they use the facilitators to a considerable extent. While the most significant facilitators that enable the participants to attend the leisure activities were the intrapersonal facilitators, the least significant ones were interpersonal facilitators. When the constraints were analysed, the participants were seen to face these, the most on facility level and the least on lack of interest level. It was concluded that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the participants’ leisure constraints and facilitators, and also between the sub dimensions of the scales. This matter shows that the participants face constraints during leisure attendance but still attend or continue using the facilitators.

The main objective of this study was to determine if emotional labour has become a criterion in performance appraisal, job description, selection, and training schemes in the hotel industry in Nigeria. Our main assumption was that majority of hotel organizations have not built emotional labour into their human resources management schemes. Data were gathered by the use of structured questionnaires designed in Likert format, and interviews. The focus group was managers of the selected hotels. Analyses revealed that majority of the hotels have not built emotional labour into their human resources schemes particularly in the 1, 2, and 3-star hotels. It was observed that service employees of 1, 2, and 3-star hotels have not been adequately trained to perform emotional labour; a critical factor in quality service delivery. Managers of 1, 2, and 3-star hotels have not given serious thought to emotional labour as a critical factor in quality service delivery. The study revealed that suitability of an individual's characteristics is not being considered as a criterion for selection and performance appraisal for service employees. The implication of this is that, person-job-fit is not seriously considered. It was observed that there has been a disconnect between required emotional competency, its recognition, evaluation and training. Based on the findings of this study, it is concluded that selection, training, job description and performance appraisal instruments in use in hotels in Nigeria are inadequate. Human resource implications of the findings in this study are presented. It is recommended that hotel organizations should redesign and plan the emotional content and context of their human resources practices to reflect the emotional demands of frontline jobs in the hotel industry and the crucial role emotional labour plays during service encounters.

En este trabajo intentamos abordar algunas de las señas de identidad de la recreación en Venezuela. La recreación que es pensada, asumida y experienciada en Venezuela como modelo social para la atención de las y los ciudadanos está enmarcada en el ideario profundo de la libertad, la justicia social y la democracia. De allí que sea necesario el debate para la construcción permanente de espacios y posibilidades para el derrumbe definitivo de una cultura anestesiante del entretenimiento y la diversión desechable. Así, la práctica social permanente, el empoderamiento del pueblo para el ejercicio de sus derechos sociales, políticos y constitucionales, una legislación coherente con los procesos de transformación social son imprescindibles para acompañar la esperanza y el ideal de liberación.

The current study is an attempt to identify the various critical factors that are essential for creating value for money and therefore, customer satisfaction and loyalty. The review of literature indicated a gap in the area of relationship between value for money and customer satisfaction. For this, a study was placed in which a sample of 300 foreign tourists in Goa was taken and a survey was conducted to analyze which factors led to their increase in value for money. It was found that the value for money was affected by both ease of visiting Goa and level of enjoyment experience offered by Goa. Out of these two factors, the level of enjoyment was found to be more significantly and positively affecting the foreign tourist perception of value for money and satisfaction level as compared to the ease of visiting.

Are people who spend more time with others always happier than those who spend less time in social activities? Across four studies with more than 250,000 participants, we show that social time has declining marginal utility for subjective well-being. In Study 1 (N=243,075), we use the Gallup World Poll with people from 166 countries, and in Study 2 (N=10,387) the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), to show that social time has declining returns for well-being. In Study 3a (N=168) and Study 3b (N=174), we employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to provide initial evidence for both intra-domain (principle of diminishing satisfaction) and inter- domain mechanisms (principle of satisfaction limits). We discuss implications for theory, research methodology, and practice.

The aim of the study presented in this paper was to analyze the physical structures in the Stadium “Governor Lourival Baptista” in the city of Aracaju, Sergipe (Brazil), in regards to accessibility - in the categories security and autonomy – for receiving wheelchair users in the events that occur in this specific leisure equipment. Methodologically, the research was characterized as a case study with a qualitative bias. The data was collected through participant observation for five days, one of which occurred during a football match in the 2015 state championship. The researchers also photographed specific sites in the stadium – following a preconceived script – including facilities inside and outside the stadium. These images were also part of the analysis. The paper concludes that the internal areas of the stadium offer accessibility for wheelchair users as recommended by the legal orientations of the document ABNT 9050. However, some structures of the external areas of the stadium do not meet the needs of people with disabilities regarding autonomy and safety.

The purpose of this study is to examine university students' perceived social support level in recreational activity participation. 536 students who were selected from 3 different universities using convenience sampling participated in the study voluntarily. As data collection form; Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS-R) and Preference Factors of Recreation Areas (PFRA) scale were used. For the analyses of the data; descriptive statistics, Independent Samples T Test used for two groups depending on the number of the variables and One Way ANOVA used for groups more than two were used. In order to find out which group demonstrated the difference found as a result of variance analyses, Tukey test-one of the multiple comparison tests-was used. In terms of recreational activity participation, the most effective factor in students' average scores of perceived social support scale was peer support (2.690±0.372) while the least effective factor was teacher support (2.033±0.535). Total average score was found to be 2.441±0.274. The most effective factor in students' average scores of Recreation Area Preference Agents Scale was sporting diversity (4.448±0.776) and staff (4.128±0.681) and these factors were followed by physical facilities (3.736±0.562), location (3.185±0.647) and activity diversity (3.074±0.586); respectively. Besides, there were significant differences in perceived social support levels of the study group in terms of gender and accommodation variables. It was concluded that the highest support for students' recreational activity participation came from their peers while the lowest support was obtained from teachers. It may be argued that students staying at public dormitories used recreational areas built by municipalities more than other students. It was identified that criterion that all the student groups put the biggest emphasis on while preferring recreation areas was sporting diversity offered by the recreation areas.

Raphaela Stadler, Sacha Reid and Simone Fullagar.
The purpose of this article is to examine the utilisation and application of ethnography as an interpretative methodology for researching knowledge practices within festival organisations.

Design/methodology/approach - The ethnographic approach incorporates two methods of data collection in the research design; participant observation and in-depth interviews.

Findings - The research identified that knowledge management practices and processes are often invisible to festival staff when they are embedded within a cohesive organisational culture. Ethnography enables the researcher to make explicit the tacit and normalised ways of working that contribute to the success (and failure) of festival organisations to manage knowledge. The immersion of the researcher in the ethnographic process provided a rich understanding of the relational dimension of knowledge management that would be difficult to elicit from in-depth interviews alone.

Research limitations/implications - New fields of study require a range of research methodologies to inform theoretical and practice based knowledge related to event participation and management. This article contributes to the growing event management literature through a unique focus on ethnography as a research method that offers a deeper understanding of knowledge practices within festival organisations.

Originality/value - Limited research has applied an ethnographic approach to festival and event management. This article builds upon early adopters and provides critical insight into the benefits and constraints of ethnographic research."

Slides for the "Leisure theories" curricular unit in the Physical Education Program at the Federal University of Sergipe (2016 - readings for the first debate).
Slides para a disciplina "Teorias do Lazer" do Curso de Educação Física da Universidade Federal de Sergipe (2016 - leituras para o primeiro debate).

El artículo tiene como objetivo general analizar la relación entre ocio y trabajo en la actuación de músicos en la ciudad de São Paulo, Brasil, bajo el prisma del concepto de serious leisure. Serious leisure se define como actividades practicadas por aficionados, voluntarios y practicantes de hobbys. Para tales individuos estas actividades son inmensamente importantes y gratificantes, y que en algunos casos pueden significar el inicio de una carrera centrada en la adquisición y expresión de habilidades especiales, conocimientos y experiencias. Este concepto también se define por la perseverancia que los participantes deben poseer para superar los eventuales momentos de dificultad relacionada al desarrollo del serious leisure y los beneficios tanto personales como sociales que acompañan esta práctica tal como la auto-realización, el auto-enriquecimiento, el sentimiento de pertenencia y la interacción social. Cuando las habilidades y los conocimientos adquiridos permiten que los participantes sean considerados "serios", en algunos casos, en la medida en que las oportunidades aparecen, algunos de estos participantes pueden salir de la condición de aficionados, volviéndose profesionales. Los objetivos específicos son los siguientes: a) investigar los motivos que llevaron a estos músicos a transformar esa actividad, inicialmente considerada una actividad de ocio, en un ejercicio profesional; b) comprender cómo las seis características fundamentales del sistema serious leisure se presentan en la actuación de los músicos. La metodología utilizada fue una investigación de tipo cualitativo, en un estudio de caso entendiéndolo cómo el método apropiado a la determinación de características únicas de individuos de instituciones o comunidades. La investigación posee un carácter exploratorio que combina los enfoques bibliográficos y de campo. La dimensión bibliográfica abarca artículos científicos, libros y demás publicaciones sobre el concepto de serious leisure. Y la de campo, con investigaciones in loco a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas con músicos que actúan en la ciudad de São Paulo. Los resultados de la investigación indican que el placer proporcionado por la música, así como la remuneración obtenida a través de ella, son los factores que más influenciaron a los entrevistados en la elección de la música como profesión. Se concluye también que la relación establecida entre el contenido artístico y la música es evidente ya que la música como arte se remite principalmente a la subjetividad de las personas, traduciendo sentimientos, expresando deseos y manifestando ideas. Las ideas como destino, predestinación, el talento innato, contribuyen a formar en las personas la concepción de que un músico, así como artistas de otras ramas, ya nació 'sabiendo' realizar esa actividad y, por lo tanto, son personas únicas y especiales. En este sentido, el artista ejerce un cierto "lenguaje especial", en este caso por la música, que tiende a obtener cierto reconocimiento por la sociedad como un todo. Los datos refuerzan que el ocio se caracteriza por resultar de una elección libre que no puede estar sometido a ningún fin lucrativo.

Booming travel and tourism trade cause a tremendous growth in hotel industry in Malaysia. This industry will continue to promote country and other businesses in a good way. Therefore, the evaluation of customers perception, satisfaction and loyalty in hospitality industry has been major of attention in marketing strategies. This research aims to evaluate customer loyalty at in-house restaurant hotels in Malaysia. To achieve this goal, this research takes two steps to better understand the role and influence of each constructs, (1) Examines customer satisfaction by considering the effect of service quality antecedents on customer satisfaction. (2) Investigates the association between customer satisfaction and loyalty by identifying the moderating role of switching cost in satisfaction-loyalty relationship. The data is collected through self-administrated questionnaire from hotels in two states of Malaysia from 200 customers who have been served at in-house restaurant of those hotels ...

Call for Book Chapters - Trends and Advances in Sport and Leisure Management: Expanding the Frontiers; Editor: Vassilios Ziakas.

The purpose of this edited collection is to better understand from an interdisciplinary perspective, the global forces that reshape sport and leisure provision, alongside the responses of key organisations and stakeholders. The volume therefore seeks contributions that account for the trends remodeling sport and leisure, and thus pinpoint advances for theory and practice that ultimately expand the frontiers of sport and leisure management.

The volume is part of Cambridge Scholars Publishing's Guest Edited Collections that encompass more than 150 titles across a wide range of disciplines.
For details please visit: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/pages/guest-edited-collections

If you are interested in contributing, please return the attached completed form to admin@cambridgescholars.com or contact me directly for any questions at v_ziakas@yahoo.co.uk