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Subject: search.filters.subject.350806 Tourist behaviour and visitor experience

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    From film tourism to sustainable contents tourism in New Zealand : the essential role of stakeholder collaboration : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Management at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025) Zhu, Haohan
    Contents tourism refers to the tourism generated by stimulating tourists through media works, which is an innovative form of tourism that can enhance tourism attractiveness and increase the number of off-season tourists, in line with New Zealand's tourism strategy. From the perspective of sustainable tourism and based on stakeholder theory, this study aims to identify the status of contents tourism in New Zealand and analyse its feasibility for further development. While contents tourism has begun to emerge in New Zealand, it has received little academic or industry attention, mainly focusing on film tourism. Through semi structured interviews, the researcher highlighted that New Zealand has abundant potential contents tourism resources and advantages, which have yet to be developed and recognised by stakeholders. Meanwhile, most of the current contents tourism destinations lack competitiveness and are unsustainable. Therefore, this study attempts to extend New Zealand's film tourism research to the field of contents tourism and provide insights into exploring sustainable forms of contents tourism by identifying the four components of sustainable contents tourism. Finally, this study suggests the core role of stakeholder collaboration in sustainable contents tourism, divided 16 types of stakeholders, and designed a process diagram of co-development for sustainable contents tourism to provide reference for tourism practices.
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    Exploring the Art of Deco : transforming cityscape and bodyscape : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Marketing at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Jackson, Victoria
    In an increasingly saturated ‘experience’ market, immersive events have risen in popularity. The attractiveness of immersive events to tourists revolves around the intimate people-event relationship, centering the tourist as a participant, as opposed to a spectator. By assuming a participant role, tourists are now known as co-producers, responsible for co-creating their own touristic experiences. This study examines the immersive and co-creative experience of attending the Napier Art Deco Festival, embedded in the narratives of the festival attendees. Specific to the Napier Art Deco Festival, this event demonstrates a strong sense of place, characterised by an intimate people-event-place relationship. An in-depth, semi-structured interview strategy was adopted for this study. The findings depicted two transformative processes that occur during the festival period. Firstly, elements of the cityscape, including tangible and intangible, were orchestrated to offer a cityscape transformation. Secondly, the tourists similarly manufactured their bodyscapes, using material culture, to experience a transformation of the bodyscape. Overall, the Napier Art Deco Festival facilitated a site where these two transformations could occur simultaneously, offering an enhanced and co-creative experience for the festival attendees. The complex interplay of the two transformations produced five elements including place dependence, mass orchestration, collectiveness, consumption experience, and the multi-sensory nature. These elements enhanced the immersive festival experience. The findings identify the festival offered a desirable lifestyle for its attendees, with escaping and seeking opportunities being identified as motivators of attendance. This thesis provides helpful insights for site managers to guide experience design, execution, and interpretation of co-creative immersive events.
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    Trouble in paradise : contradictions in platform capitalism and the production of surplus by Airbnb hosts in regional tourist towns : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Pennell, Stella Maria
    A tendency toward crisis in social reproduction characterizes digital capitalism. Increasingly, the economic system shows itself unable to generate subjectivities and social processes for addressing the physical and psychical need required for its reproduction. Emblematic of that contradiction is the individualism of digital capitalism which compels people to commodify themselves beyond the ‘normal’ state of abstracted labour power associated with capitalism, to become ‘entrepreneurs of the self’. An extreme form of commodification of the self is evident in a new form of capitalism termed ‘platform capitalism’ which manifests through organizations such as Airbnb. Like the notion of the ‘entrepreneur of the self’, this kind of commodified self is increasingly too thin and too instrumental to be self-sustaining. The commodification of people and of private spaces result in shifts of subjectivity as a response to the production of surplus-meaning and surplus-enjoyment and indicates capture of a new sphere for capitalist activities at the expense of social reproduction. This research explores the construction of Airbnb hosts’ subjectivities across four tourist towns in New Zealand (Picton, Wanaka, Paihia and Whitianga). Placed within the context of global capitalism, tourism is a major economic contributor to the New Zealand economy, estimated at $24 billion annually. Concurrently, regional areas of New Zealand are experiencing challenges relating to economic stagnation, ageing populations and changes to population numbers. Common across people living in these regional towns is a political imperative to commodify their life-worlds for the tourist market. Increasingly, the mechanisms that are synonymous with platform capitalist ventures, of Airbnb in this instance, are becoming significant means through which, the realization of this political imperative occurs. Using a qualitative research framework, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 Airbnb hosts, then analyzed using an inductive and iterative thematic analysis. The emerging themes presented here are commodification, biopolitics and the intensification of time and space. Collectively, the themes demonstrate how the contradictions of surplus and of social reproduction manifest within the digital platform of Airbnb. The research informs issues and debates in contemporary theory on capital’s tendency towards crises of social reproduction.