Bournemouth University

Faculty Member, School of Tourism

About

My research focuses on adapting tourism and travel for a lower carbon future. I employ qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain an insight into the way tourist travel is constructed and the way this enables or constrains holiday travel practice. My research seeks to identify practical measures that will develop more sustainable holiday travel. Recent work has focused on slow travel. Current work, the 6th Sense Transport project(http://www.sixthsensetransport.com/) funded by the EPSRC, is exploring a more fluid interpretation of travel time utilising mobile social networking principles.


My general interests lie in the analysis of social practices within transport and tourism and the implications of this for management. My PhD focused on a social representations perspective of transport and travel in a rural destination area. Recent work focuses on how holiday travel practices are influenced by social norms, experiences and expectations of travel together with structures of provision. I am especially interested in the concept of `slow travel'. Slow travel is, as yet, poorly defined but can embrace tourism where air travel is rejected in favour of more environmentally benign forms of overland transport which generally take much longer and become incorporated as part of the holiday experience. This offers potential as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy for tourism. 


In broad terms I have two interlinked topics of research: sustainable tourism and leisure; and transport. Previous studies include work on:

-Social theory of time and transport

-Social representations of transport and tourism

-Managing transport and tourism in destination areas

-Leisure, lifestyle and transport

-Managing recreation and tourism in the rural environment

-Organizational behaviour: travel plans and travel to work