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This year the GW School of Business welcomed Dr. Hannah Messerli as its newest Chair of the International Institute of Tourism Studies, as well as an endowed professor of tourism policy. Dr. Messerli has in short time become an excellent resource for graduate students in the Master of Tourism program, bringing years of global experience as a tourism development specialist at the World Bank.

Recently, Dr. Messerli invited graduate students from her Tourism Policy and Planning course to join her at a World Bank presentation on Singapore’s urban transformation. Students have been examining case studies in tourism from Barcelona, Bali, and the Caribbean, and just spent a week poring over Singapore’s successes in tourism and its applicability in other destinations. Dr. Messerli’s invitation was a special opportunity for her students, many of whom had never been to the World Bank despite its proximity to GW.

At the event, students found a lively exchange of ideas among World Bank specialists in urban planning, urban sustainability, transport and other fields. Presenter Michael Koh, a Fellow with the Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore, helped plan, design and lead the city-state’s urban revitalization. His presentation traced Singapore’s journey from slum to global financial hub. Through strategic urban planning and a whole-of-government commitment to housing and employing every citizen, Singapore inarguably surmounted the challenges it faced 50 years ago: limited natural resources, poverty, unemployment, and a high-density population. It also recognized and harnessed the power of tourism to drive development, paying special attention to growing the sector. Singapore now welcomes 15 million international tourists a year who enjoy the same bustling commercial centers, green spaces, riverfront, and historical heritage that residents do.

The presentation was great exposure for GW students to career paths in tourism planning, urban development, and other disciplines that contribute to thriving, liveable cities. Stay updated on our IITS staff and faculty at our Facebook page.

By Wendy Li, MTA '17

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Namibian President Hage Geingob was in the US last week to attend the 71st session of the UN General Assembly.  While in the States, he addressed the Africa Policy Forum at GW's Elliott School of International Relations, where he posed for a photo with Master's of Tourism student Martha Mulokoshi. In addition to her studies, Martha is contributing to a variety of sustainable tourism projects for the International Institute of Tourism Studies. After graduating in May, she plans to return to her native country to support its laudable efforts to advancing environmentally, economically and socially responsible tourism.   “I look forward to working with the Ministry of Tourism and with the National Tourism Board to contribute positively to socio economic development and to help Namibia grow as a destination for tourism, employment and investment.”

Namibia is a global success story that for nearly twenty years has been taking significant steps to protect its cultural and natural heritage through well-planned conservation. In fact Namibia is one of the only countries in the world to cite habitat and natural resource protection in its constitution. In 1996, the government gave communities the authority to create their own conservancies, allowing them to benefit from conservation. Today, nearly 190,000 people in 82 conservancies responsibly manage their natural and cultural resources. As a result, lions, cheetahs, black rhinos, zebras and other native wildlife populations have been restored and communities are deriving significant income from the steadily increasing numbers of visitors drawn to the country's natural and cultural wealth.

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As we gear up for the United Nations-designated 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development—and tourism becomes increasingly recognized as a significant tool to drive responsible economic, social and environmental development—our team is gearing up for speaking engagements at a number of key conferences around the world:

Visiting Research Scholar Jeremy Sampson will be representing the International Institute of Tourism Studies at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, Hawai'i on September 3rd from 8:30AM to10:30AM. The IUCN is a global conservation organization focused on the sustainable use of natural resources. Sampson’s presentation on Regional Sustainable Tourism Initiatives as Conservation Change Agents is jointly organized by the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation and the International Institute of Tourism Studies at The George Washington University School of Business.

Executive Director Seleni Matus will be teaching a course on cultural heritage tourism at the 18th Annual American Indian Native Alaskan Tourism Alliance conference at the Tulalip Resort & Casino on Monday, September 12th. Click here for details.

Dr. Hannah Messerli, our newly appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower Research Professor and Tourism Policy Chair (and GWU alumna) will be at the Adventure Travel and Trade Association Conference on September 22nd in Anchorage Alaska, where she’ll be presenting the 2016 Annual Adventure Travel Scorecard, a publication of the ATTA and the International Institute of Tourism Studies. The scorecard assesses the readiness of countries around the world to host adventure travelers using ten different criteria.

Seleni Matus will also be delivering a keynote address at The Summer School in Leadership and Governance for Sustainable Development, which will take place in Akureyri, Iceland - October 5th to 9th. Co-organized by the Foundation for European Sustainable Tourism (FEST) and the European Travel Commission (ETC), the conference aims to address the role of transformative tourism projects in generating a sustainable visitor economy.

Learn more about how the International Institute of Tourism Studies is helping to shape thinking behind tourism as a tool for sustainable development. Follow the activities of our team on Facebook.

 

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When you think of the U.S. National Parks, do the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Everglades immediately spring to mind? What most people don’t realize is that the National Park Service (NPS) actually protects over 400 sites including monuments, heritage trails and, of course, parks and is a pioneer in conservation.

As students of tourism management learn, wild, public lands rank among our country’s top treasures, attracting more than 300 million visits a year and creating billions of dollars in economic benefits for surrounding communities. But the NPS faces a backlog of $12 billion for maintenance of infrastructure including roads, bridges and pipes.

At a recent event hosted by the travel marketing group Brand USA, panelists stressed that the future of our parks rests on us. That means promoting parks—and especially lesser-known sites—to new visitors, including young people and international travelers.

For many years the International Institute of Tourism Studies has partnered with the NPS on a variety of research and tourism projects. This year, as the NPS celebrates its 100th anniversary, we’ve been helping to promote a trail right in GW’s backyard: The Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, which crosses through three states and Washington, D.C., and includes hundreds of miles of natural paths and waterways.

Our work included a brand survey. We talked to tourism marketers and managers along the Potomac Heritage Trail to understand how the NPS can better promote the trail so that it resonates with visitors. One of the challenges is positioning a heritage trail in a way that makes its unique characteristics compelling. Unlike the world-famous Pacific Crest and Appalachian Trails, which can be hiked from end to end, a heritage trail is not necessarily one long route, but is conceptually connected by history, culture and nature.

We hope you’ll mark the centennial of the National Park Service by visiting our country’s parks and heritage sites this year and sharing your experiences—and this post—with your social networks.  

 

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Students enrolled in the new course A Journey Through the Sharing Economy taught by associate professor Stuart Levy were recently in San Francisco, where they met with leaders from companies revolutionizing the travel industry through peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms. AirBnB and Uber for example, are not only improving the user experience, they’re gaining enormous competitive advantage over traditional travel and tourism companies.

Chip Conley, AirBnB’s Head of Global Hospitality & Strategy explained how the eight year-old company—which in July alone saw 2 million guests and is now valued at $30 billion—is striving to become the “global super brand of travel.” AirBnB's future success will be based on its ability to collect and analyze data on its users and then to use that information to offer curated travel experiences. So, for example, based on a customer’s recent stay, AirBnB may be able to assemble an individually-tailored set of recommendations that goes beyond accommodations to include dining and activity options.

The George Washington University’s International Institute of Tourism Studies is working with destinations to access and analyze data on their partners by facilitating collaborations with P2P tech companies. Join us to learn more at the Development & Management of Tourist-Oriented Walkable Urban Places seminar September 21st through the 23rd at George Washington University.  This executive seminar will introduce participants to the use of AirBnB data in analyzing the role of walkable urban places in tourism performance. Metropolitan Washington, DC will be used as the prototype for designing a model for a walkable city tourism strategy.  Through these partnerships, even destinations with traditionally limited marketing capacity have the ability to reach new customers and to improve the visitor experience. To learn how the International Institute of Tourism Studies can help your destination to join the growing trend of P2P engagement, please contact us at iits@gwu.edu.

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For Natasha Gourd, tourism provides a way to preserve and share her tribe’s cultural traditions, so that today’s visitors and future generations—“the children we cannot yet see"—can better appreciate and understand her people’s way of life.  In July, IITS researchers met Gourd on a tour of North Dakota Indian Country, where five tribal nations are working to develop their tourism offerings. The five nations— including the Sisseton Wahpeton, Standing Rock, Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake —have recently formed the North Dakota Native Tourism Alliance in an effort to design tourism opportunities together. Each tribe is also developing its own strategy around cultural tourism. For example, Gourd and other members of the Spirit Lake tribe are hoping to attract visitors to their reservation from Devil’s Lake, which is a fishing destination 20 minutes away.

For the IITS researchers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs-sponsored trip provided an opportunity to better understand the challenges that these nations face and to help them develop strategies around cultural tourism, which can provide tribes with a means of generating badly needed income. We listened to tribal elders share the oral histories of their people, watched as a traditional teepee was built and attended a wacipi or powwow, which you can see on our Facebook page. Please be sure to like and share this post with your friends.

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For the Republican National Convention, the City of Cleveland welcomed some 50,000 visitors. Most of these delegates never had the opportunity to see the real Cleveland—the city’s neighborhoods; it’s heart and soul. And these neighborhoods, home to thousands of struggling families, received virtually no financial benefit from the thousands of dollars that each and every delegate spent during their visit to the city.

Too often city leaders downplay the reality of how mega-events fail to provide economic benefits for much of the population and particularly for marginalized communities located beyond the bubble—the walkable urban core of the city.

As we watch our two major political conventions this month and the Olympics in Brazil, students of tourism administration, event management, hospitality and sports management may want to consider how we can ensure a wider distribution of economic benefits for local communities hosting mega-events and the role of destination managers in a cities like Cleveland or Philadelphia.

What do you think? As you’re watching this week’s Democratic National Convention, you may want to ponder how visitors can experience the city beyond the protected security zone of the event bubble.

Published on Leave a comment on MTA Students Consult on Geopark Project in Mexico

We've just returned from Mexico, where fifteen students from The George Washington University School of Business spent two weeks working on a tourism consulting project with the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí. The course, offered every year, is a unique and intensive opportunity to experience an international consulting project first-hand.

Check out the slideshow for photos from our trip and see more on Facebook!

 

Photo credits: Jill Christmas, Wendy Li, Zi Li, Michelle Wang

Published on Leave a comment on GW Scholars to Present Research and Applied Methodologies on Urban Planning During 3-Day Exec Institute

Did you know that Washington, D.C. is a national model for good urban planning, thanks to the proliferation of its Walkable Urban Places (WalkUPs)? Ranked higher than New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, the country’s capital boasts dozens of pedestrian-friendly zones, extending from the district’s downtown to its outlying suburbs. Given current problems in places like Barcelona and Venice, where the influx of tourists is undermining the cities’ livability, visitor-friendly urban planning is becoming increasingly important and of particular interest to GW scholars along with city planners, real estate developers, hotel owners, and others interested in city planning.

GW’s International Institute for Tourism Studies (IITS) and its Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis (CREUA)—which have been conducting cutting-edge research on urban walkability and tourism—will be offering a three-day Executive Leadership Institute on September 21 to 23 at the GW School of Business.

The program will cover GW’s current research findings, research methodologies, and practical strategies and tools for enhancing a city’s appeal and quality of life. It’s particularly designed for real estate developers, government officials, nonprofits and place-based institutions, such as business improvement districts, neighborhood associations, historic preservation districts, and cultural heritage routes.

Professors Don Hawkins and Salvador Anton Clavé are two of the program presenters. Dr. Anton Clavé, a Visiting Research Scholar at the IITS and a Full Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis at the Rovira i Virgili University in Catalonia, Spain, has been studying new models for WalkUPs that can promote economic development and create positive relationships between locals and visitors. His work dovetails with that of Dr. Hawkins, founder of the IITS, who has been collaborating with the CREUA on the development of a methodology that analyzes the particular advantages of WalkUps.

For more information and to register for the program, click here. You can download the program’s PDF brochure here.

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Published on 1 Comment on GW Celebrates Dr. Don Hawkins’ Retirement

After 44 years of teaching and conducting groundbreaking research at GW, Dr. Don Hawkins is retiring. His legacy in the field of tourism is outstanding. Not only is Dr. Hawkins the founder of the IITS, he has been instrumental in shaping the MTA program into an internationally renowned institution. He has also been a mentor, leader, and friend to countless numbers of students and colleagues.

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This week, 120 guests gathered to celebrate Dr. Hawkins' extraordinary achievements and the path he's blazed for tourism students and professionals.

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We encourage you to be part of that celebration. In Dr. Hawkins' honor, the IITS is establishing the GW Tourism Innovation Lab, which will develop tourism-related solutions to some of the world's most urgent social and environmental problems and help to achieve key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

But we need your support. All financial contributions will be matched by an anonymous donor and help us design and launch the first Tourism Innovation Challenge this fall. Contributions can be made here.

None of this would be possible without the visionary leadership of Dr. Hawkins. Congratulations and warm wishes for the next stage of your journey! We hope it will bring you back often to your GW family.

International Institute of Tourism Studies The George Washington University School of Business Funger Hall, Suite 301 2201 G St. NW Washington, D.C. 20052
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