Ben Iaquinto | The University of Hong Kong (original) (raw)

Talks by Ben Iaquinto

The purpose of this symposium is to highlight emerging themes in contemporary tourism research an... more The purpose of this symposium is to highlight emerging themes in contemporary tourism research and in particular to welcome Professor Dimitri Ioannides from the Department of Tourism Studies and Geography (TUG) at Mid Sweden University. The multi and cross disciplinary nature of tourism research will be in evidence, as will the globalised nature of the academic discipline and sector. According to the most recent UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourist arrivals increased by 4.4% in 2015 to a total of 1,184 million for 2015 and marks the 6th consecutive year of above-average growth, with international arrivals increasing by 4% or more every year since the post-crisis year of 2010 (UNWTO, 2016). The prominence of tourism in developed and less developed contexts is clear and thus gives rise to a growing body of academic research that seeks to understand its impacts and how it can be deployed for more positive encounters for both hosts and guests alike.

Speakers include:

Prof. Dimitri Ioannides - Mid-Sweden University
Exploring special interest tourism from a resilience perspective:
The case of the Greek wine tourism sector

Prof. Keir Reeves – Federation University
Discussant

Dr. Vicki Peel – Monash University
The guidebook is dead. Long live e-tourism?

Dr. Joseph Cheer - Monash University
Pan Asia-Pacific Perspectives of Tourism and Traditional Culture: Sustainable and Beneficial or Profane and Incongruous?

Dr. Gary Lacey - Monash University & La Trobe University
The role of the domestic philanthropic tourist in providing sexual health education in rural Kenya: Joyce's story.

Dr. Jennifer Laing and Associate Professor Warwick Frost - La Trobe University
Religious Tourism and Regional Development in Penola, South Australia

Dr. Ben Iaquinto – Independent Researcher
Backpacker Mobilities: Slowing down for sustainability?

Ms. Salma Thani, PhD candidate, Monash University
UAE recreating a tourist destination in the Middle East and a Disneyland in the desert.

Ms. Sandra G. Cherro-Osorio - PhD candidate, La Trobe University
Gastronomy as a tool for development in Peru: the role of culinary brokers

Papers by Ben Iaquinto

Tourism Geographies, 2024

in this introduction to the special issue, The new tourism geopolitics, we call on scholars to br... more in this introduction to the special issue, The new tourism geopolitics, we call on scholars to bridge tourism geographies and political geography through the framework of tourism geopolitics. the issue offers novel conceptualizations that extend beyond the study of material borders, passports, and nation-state discourses. Rather, the authors of this issue home in on the entanglements between tourism and geopolitics in the form of events, everyday interactions, ideologies, political economies, and celebritized people and places.the introduction outlines several increasingly pressing questions around the geopolitics of tourism, ones that for too long have been marginal in tourism geography and relatively ignored in political geography. we further identify how political maneuvers at international and domestic, state and non-state, and macro and micro levels trigger the proliferation of geopolitical dilemmas for tourism practices, policies, and flows. the eleven papers in this curated collection offer critical points of departure for bringing tourism and political geographies together to reveal discordant relations of power and oppression in tourism. in doing so, the introduction and papers that follow compel us to account for the significance of tourism in the intimate and extraordinary geopolitical structures of power that shape our lives and our world.

Journal of Rural Studies, 2024

Although there is notable scholarship on backpackers and their part in tourism cultures, there ha... more Although there is notable scholarship on backpackers and their part in tourism cultures, there has been little reflection on their status as long term essential workers in rural areas and what this means for the communities who receive them. We address this gap by investigating the evolution of Australia's Working Holiday Maker program and how it has shaped the presence of backpackers in farming communities. Contemporary backpacking in Australia now involves a culturally and ethnically diverse cohort, which has become essential for farming communities' economic and cultural livelihoods. We argue that the ongoing modifications to the visa program have transformed the presence of backpackers in farming towns, from highly transient tourists to essential workers who may stay for longer periods as temporary migrants, and this has transformed the people and places that host them. Through the lens of mobilities, we outline useful lessons and insights from this example of a backpacker visa, which are relevant for future research and debates around rural livelihoods, labour migration, and farming communities.

Tourism Geographies, 2024

This commentary explains how backpacker research has been developed within and beyond tourism geo... more This commentary explains how backpacker research has been developed within and beyond tourism geography in the past 25 years. Based on a selective review of the backpacker literature, it identifies three enduring issues to form the basis for a future research agenda. Firstly, the question of how to define backpackers. secondly, the methods used to understand backpacking. thirdly, the debate regarding whether or not backpackers and working holiday makers are synonymous. the paper argues the lack of a shared definition of backpackers distorts perceptions of their impacts, particularly around the question of economic benefits. there are implications here for the tourism industry, the agriculture industry, the academy, and all who depend upon backpackers and/or working holiday makers for their livelihoods.

Current Issues in Tourism, 2024

This study explains how negative emotions enable tourism resilience as readily as positive ones, ... more This study explains how negative emotions enable tourism resilience as readily as positive ones, and it advances tourism resilience theory using second-wave positive psychology (SWPP). SWPP argues negative emotions can have positive effects, providing an alternative to mainstream positive psychology that prioritises positive emotions. A qualitative research design involving eleven interviews with nine tourism workers in China who survived the COVID-era restrictions was applied. Findings revealed negative emotions including resentment and bitterness helped tourism workers survive the shutdown of the tourism industry by providing alternatives to more damaging emotions like fear, sadness and anger. The paper argues negative emotions generate resilience and it advances tourism resilience theory by applying SWPP. For tourism managers and policymakers, efforts to instil a positive outlook among tourism workers during crises might be unnecessary.

Australian Geographer, 2023

In this Thinking Space essay, we explain why the COVID-19 pandemic makes mobilities research more... more In this Thinking Space essay, we explain why the COVID-19 pandemic makes mobilities research more important than ever. In a time when mobilities have been reconfigured so dramatically, perhaps even leading people to value mobility differently, we need concepts and theories that can help us to attend to and navigate this new situation. Our contention is that mobilities research must recentre the region. Building on earlier work in the mobilities paradigm, we suggest ways that regionality can be conceptualised, and argue that mobilities in our part of the world take distinctive manifestations that warrant our attention. Our essay concludes by pointing to new directions for mobilities research from our region.

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER: SERIES B, HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2023

Scholarly attention to China’s domestic experimentation and control measures applied to its popul... more Scholarly attention to China’s domestic experimentation and control
measures applied to its population (e.g. the Family Planning Policy and
Zero-Covid) has expanded. So, too, has the popularity of the
Foucauldian concept of biopolitics, which refers to political strategies of
governing based on a population’s biological features. However, China’s
biopolitical rationales for its growing participation in global governance
(全球治理quanqiu zhili) beyond its borders have received less
attention. This research focuses on the Arctic, a region where China
does not claim territorial sovereignty but has significant involvement, to
examine the Chinese state’s exertion of biopolitical control over its
outbound tourist population. Drawing on a review of policy texts and
media reports, complemented by observations at an Arctic conference
held in China and three field visits to the Arctic in 2018–2019, we show
how China’s interventions in Arctic tourism seek to transform Chinese
tourists into a productive, self-disciplining population who practice and
promote state logics of social and environmental responsibility. The
paper contributes to the understanding of tourism governance in
frontier regions with geopolitical significance, as well as the modern
state’s exterritorial power over its own citizens even when they are
beyond its sovereign territory.

Backpacking Culture and Mobilities: Independent and Nomadic Travel, 2023

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023

Protest immobilities have political potential because of the affective atmospheres they produce. ... more Protest immobilities have political potential because of the affective atmospheres they produce. In 2019, the Hong Kong protest movement targeted Hong Kong International Airport in a series of sit-ins resulting in a two-day shutdown and cancellation of more than 1,000 flights. This article is based on participant observation and interviews with thirty-two people aviation workers, tourists, expatriates, and demonstrators—who were present at one or more of the sit-ins, and it uses a perspective informed by work on affective atmospheres and social movements in geography. We demonstrate the political potential of four forms of embodied mobility– arrival, friction, waiting, and departing from the airport on foot. Arriving to unexpected scenes produced micropolitical change among passengers, as the fatigue of air travel heightened the emotional impact of the sit-ins. Frictions were politically generative because they forced passengers to slow down and notice the assembly. Waiting produced solidarities between different factions of the protest movement and generated animosity from previously apathetic passengers who were stuck. Walking was an anxious ordeal for those forced to depart the airport on foot after public transport was suspended. The article shows how demonstrators can resist, alter, and transmit affective atmospheres through the grounding of aeromobilities.

Mobilities, 2023

This article focuses on the ‘frictions’ felt by international backpackers who have been stuck and... more This article focuses on the ‘frictions’ felt by international backpackers
who have been stuck and locked-down while they were living and
working in regional Australian hostels. Backpackers play a central role as
both tourists and migrant workers in Australia, where they undertake
significant periods of required farm work in order to extend their visas.
They are a highly visible and long-standing mobile population in
Australia and are relatively under-studied given their significance to
tourism cultures and economies. Based on forty semi-structured interviews
with backpackers living and working in Bundaberg, Australia, we
explore how experiences of immobilities prior to and during the pandemic
restrictions manifest as experiences of escalating and alleviating
frictions. Friction is understood as an embodied and relational feeling of
tension produced by a shortage of space. Friction has always been a
feature of hostel living but prolonged lockdowns and inconsistent
health messaging escalated frictions into open conflict. We propose that
the concept of friction sits between mobilities and immobilities, and
that particular mobility contexts exacerbate such frictions. The article
contributes to ongoing discussions on pandemic immobilities and the
interwoven concerns of tourism, migration, and labour mobilities.

Geography Compass, 2022

Pro-environmental vernacular practices are embodied, place-specific, ordinary actions that are pa... more Pro-environmental vernacular practices are embodied, place-specific, ordinary actions that are part of people's daily lives. They result in lower levels of resource consumption without necessarily being grounded in an explicit pro-environmental agenda. A growing body of cultural geographical scholarship has explored a range of vernacular practices, predominantly among households in Western countries. This paper argues such capacities can be found in a more diverse array of cultural contexts, namely tourism. This is demonstrated by evaluating the literature on tourist practices and entering it into a dialog with the literature on pro-environmental vernacular practices. The paper shows how tourism is an important site through which such pro-environmental
practices can emerge. Backpacking, nature tourism, foraging tourism, camping, and craft tourism can provide the knowledge and skills for living enjoyable low resource intensive lifestyles, and indicate how relations of hospitality may persist despite scarcity. The paper advances geographical
knowledge in three areas. First, it expands and clarifies what the ‘vernacular’ actually constitutes. Second, it shows how a greater understanding of the vernacular beyond the household can advance cultural geographical scholarship on the environment. Third, it argues that a deeper engagement with practice theory would boost research in this area by connecting vernacular responses performed at the individual level with broader postcapitalist social movements.

Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism , 2022

The shifting nature of backpacking and its increasing heterogeneity hinder attempts at deeper und... more The shifting nature of backpacking and its increasing heterogeneity hinder attempts at deeper understandings required to keep pace with this dynamic phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to understand what is distinctive about the backpacker experience via a review of the backpacker literature and outline an agenda for future research. The unique contribution of the review is the insight into the backpacker experience, characterised by the pursuit of existential authenticity and freedom and manifested through social interactions within the backpacker culture. The review provided a meta-perspective of backpacking in which the search for experiences enabling existential authenticity and freedom remain consistent despite significant demographic, social, cultural and behavioural variation among backpackers. This relationship with experiences distinguishes backpacking from other forms of tourism. The paper highlights backpacker understandings of freedom to mean being free of temporal, spatial and social limitations imposed by their home societies. Backpackers experienced existential authenticity as involvement in the pursuit of self-development and self-identity. Heidegger’s “spielraum” (“playspace”) was applied to explain the ability of backpackers to experience this authenticity and to engage with the “other” including other backpackers in a safe manner.

Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 2022

While the notion of external referencing has been undertaken across a range of disciplines, its a... more While the notion of external referencing has been undertaken across a range of disciplines, its adoption in a tourism setting remains largely fragmented. This project applies a ‘floating classroom’ as part of a virtual Community of Practice (CoP) to enable tourism policy and planning educators to perform a benchmarking exercise for maintaining teaching quality despite geographical separation and social distancing mandates. Virtual CoPs can help maintain teaching quality at a time when universities are increasingly required to uphold international standards of excellence and as the coronavirus continues to make face-to-face interactions risky. The CoP enabled mutual support and knowledge sharing for the design of teaching approaches, materials, and authentic assessments. The paper was limited to three educators teaching similar courses in Anglophone institutions and reports the results of a one-off study. But findings will assist educators interested in maintaining or enhancing teaching quality over the course of the pandemic and post-COVID-19 futures.

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2021

Chinese outbound tourism is extending into new frontiers, including the Arctic. In this region, w... more Chinese outbound tourism is extending into new frontiers, including the Arctic. In this region, where the Chinese state does not claim territorial sovereignty, it seeks to exert its influence by other means. One strategy involves the development of ‘tourism resources’, which the government’s 2018 Arctic Policy promotes. In line with recent work interrogating the geopolitics of tourism, we draw on a review of policy and media documents complemented by field observations to interrogate how the Chinese state and enterprises seek to envision, regulate and extract value from three key forms of tourism resources: individuals, infrastructure and data. Empirically, we advance knowledge of the politics and processes underlying Chinese tourism in a new region. Theoretically, we contribute to a critical geopolitics that reflects upon how governments can develop resources and exercise authority in spaces where they lack territorial sovereignty and where physical territory may be altogether absent, as in the high seas or cyberspace. This study is particularly timely in light of the Chinese state’s expanding governance of areas and issues experiencing calls for international cooperation, including not only the Arctic but also the global commons, the internet and climate change.

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2023

Tourist mobilities helped COVID-19 become a global pandemic. This commentary argues that mobiliti... more Tourist mobilities helped COVID-19 become a global pandemic. This commentary argues that mobilities perspectives are vital to understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on global tourism. It assists scholars and policy-makers in two ways: by demonstrating how tourism is implicated in political issues heightened by the pandemic, and by advancing research on low carbon tourist mobilities.

Tourist Studies, 2020

The place-making practices of tourists have long captured the attention of tourism researchers. T... more The place-making practices of tourists have long captured the attention of tourism researchers. This article examines how the everyday practices of backpackers contribute to place-making in the enclave and the hostel-two places common to backpacker destinations. Using participant observation supplemented by interviews, the research revealed these places to be characterised by a range of extraordinary and mundane backpacker practices and mobility rhythms. Places inhabited by backpackers were in constant flux and 'co-created' via practices in conjunction with an array of other phenomena. As backpackers interacted with one another, other people and the various materials, temporalities and environments that were present, they inadvertently contributed to place-making processes. The research shows how mobile people make place and extends understandings of how backpacker lives are lived. It demonstrates the centrality of practices to both place and mobility, highlighting the importance of tourist actions-rather than industry directives-to place-making in tourism.

Efforts to address sustainability at the individual level commonly overlook the actions of touris... more Efforts to address sustainability at the individual level commonly overlook the actions of tourists. Using qualitative research among backpackers, this paper examines relations between mobility and sustainability-related practices. Backpackers have a reputation for hedonism but they performed sustainable practices inadvertently via their fluctuating pace of travel. Pace is understood here as speed plus rhythm and it is this combination that is expressed in the intermittent mobilities of backpackers. Attending to pace shows how the performance of sustainability depends on the dynamic relations between movement and practice, highlighting the role of mobility in determining the tenuousness and durability of sustainable practices.

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015

As holidays merge more intimately with the everyday lives of an increasing number of people, que... more As holidays merge more intimately with the everyday lives of an increasing number of
people, questions of sustainability in tourism contexts become ever more urgent.
Using the concept of everyday practices, in which sustainability is thought to emerge
in the routines of people going about their day-to-day lives, this mixed-method study
aimed to understand how sustainability figures in the practices, of backpackers.
Findings revealed sustainability to be of minimal concern to most backpackers
who nevertheless performed a range of sustainable practices but unintentionally.
Environmental sustainability was practised via reduced resource consumption and
waste, economic sustainability by working and spending more money overall than
other tourist types, and social sustainability through demonstrating cultural respect
and community participation. The main factors encouraging sustainable practices
amongst backpackers were their low-budget focus and their use as a labour source by
industries that require temporary and flexible workers. When backpackers were
employed, each facet of sustainability became mutually reinforcing. The results of this
study are in contrast to usual perceptions of tourism as a time in which norms of
sustainable behaviour are suspended, as backpacking was found to provide
opportunities for the performance of more sustainable practices compared to home.

This commentary considers an often overlooked contribution to food security in Australia—the labo... more This commentary considers an often overlooked contribution to food security in Australia—the labour of working holiday makers. Their ability to act as a flexible and mobile temporary workforce is essential to the maintenance of the Australian agricultural industry. Previously, no tax was payable on income below $18,200, but a 2015 proposal to increase their tax rate sparked a vigorous political debate and so revealed their importance to the agricultural industry. A decline in backpacker numbers would cause agriculture to shrink to cope with smaller workforces. But the effects of climate change are expected to further shrink agricultural areas as extreme events and hotter temperatures impact crops, livestock , and the productivity of agricultural workers. Issues that appear manageable when viewed in isolation, such as increases in the tax rate on working holiday makers, become more problematic when viewed in conjunction with other impacts affecting agriculture. Thus, the 'backpacker tax' risks making food security harder to maintain at a time when Australia's agricultural system is already vulnerable to climate change.

Speakers include:

Prof. Dimitri Ioannides - Mid-Sweden University
Exploring special interest tourism from a resilience perspective:
The case of the Greek wine tourism sector

Prof. Keir Reeves – Federation University
Discussant

Dr. Vicki Peel – Monash University
The guidebook is dead. Long live e-tourism?

Dr. Joseph Cheer - Monash University
Pan Asia-Pacific Perspectives of Tourism and Traditional Culture: Sustainable and Beneficial or Profane and Incongruous?

Dr. Gary Lacey - Monash University & La Trobe University
The role of the domestic philanthropic tourist in providing sexual health education in rural Kenya: Joyce's story.

Dr. Jennifer Laing and Associate Professor Warwick Frost - La Trobe University
Religious Tourism and Regional Development in Penola, South Australia

Dr. Ben Iaquinto – Independent Researcher
Backpacker Mobilities: Slowing down for sustainability?

Ms. Salma Thani, PhD candidate, Monash University
UAE recreating a tourist destination in the Middle East and a Disneyland in the desert.

Ms. Sandra G. Cherro-Osorio - PhD candidate, La Trobe University
Gastronomy as a tool for development in Peru: the role of culinary brokers

Tourism Geographies, 2024

Journal of Rural Studies, 2024

Tourism Geographies, 2024

Current Issues in Tourism, 2024

Australian Geographer, 2023

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER: SERIES B, HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2023

Backpacking Culture and Mobilities: Independent and Nomadic Travel, 2023

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023

Mobilities, 2023

Geography Compass, 2022

Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism , 2022

Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 2022

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2021

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2023

Tourist Studies, 2020

Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015

The aim of this paper is to explore how influential Lonely Planet (LP) guidebooks are to backpack... more The aim of this paper is to explore how influential Lonely Planet (LP) guidebooks are to backpackers. Findings revealed LP to be of moderate influence, acting in a supplementary role to word of mouth information. The most important information source was word of mouth information amongst backpackers, followed by word of mouth information from locals, LP guidebooks and the Internet. Due to the difficulties of isolating LP guidebook use from these other information sources, systems thinking was applied in which these four most influential sources of information were conceptualized as subsystems which combined to comprise a larger backpacker information system. LP was then used as the starting point for a wider exploration of information usage amongst backpackers, incorporating the influence of the Internet and word of mouth information. Recent studies reveal that Internet usage amongst tourists has substantially increased during the past few years, demonstrating the speed with which the guidebook industry and backpacking is changing.