8 – A SURVEY THE ECONOMICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP STATUS OF WOMEN IN ATTRACTING TOURISM CASE STUDY: HANDICRAFT AND PRODUCTION OF TEXTILES IN BEIDOKHT CITY (PDF)

Rahil Mardani, Ali Akbar Nazary

This study was conducted to investigate tourism potentiality of Beidokht, a city in Iran. The data form 120 questionnaires, questions in Likert scale about tourist’s previous awareness and satisfaction from Beidokht, effective success factors of Beidokht tourism, handicrafts, textiles and traditional architecture were collected. The data were analyzed using SPSS19.0 software by various statistical analyses, both descriptive and inferential correlation coefficients. The results showed that there is a significant correlation between awareness and satisfaction from Beidokht, handicrafts, textiles from one side, and tourism attraction on the other hand. In addition, it can be concluded that the handicrafts of Beidokht was attractive for tourist. Among the reasons presented in the questionnaire for attracting people to Beidokht, the architectural and historical monuments with the rate of 37.7%, have the greatest effect on tourist’s attraction, while 24.6% of the people mentioned the rest of the time (such as visiting acquaintances, resting, and relaxing) as agents of visiting the city. Besides, 7.7% of the people believed that the factors of monuments and other items were effective in their trip to the city of Beidokh, and the first three factors (natural attractions, handicrafts, architecture and monuments), were the same (7.7%).these elements cuase that some passangers have gone there. The factors of natural attractions and handicrafts have been effective in attracting people to the city by an average of 3.3%.

16 – ENHANCING PLACES’ IDENTITIES WITH AUGMENTED REALITY AND NOVELS (PDF)

Dimitrios Makris, Maria Moira

We provide an overview of a new way of augmenting experiencing urban tourist places. Our effort is based on two areas, novels and digital medium, augmented reality. Novels could unveil hidden relationships and varied perspectives based on historical, social, cultural, political, and architectural identities of urban places. The, location-based Augmented Reality could improve the engagement with real places by experiencing the visiting place in different ways through the perspective of novels’ imaginary worlds. We address the integration of novels within an AR digital environment. We present a framework based on four approaches for AR, reinforcing, remembering, recontextualization and re-embodiment, by interwoven them with narrative analysis content extracted from novels. Such content express the city’s substance (buildings, roads, squares); the ordered paths that reveal the oscillated motion of characters and events between city’s sites; and the plot’s situations that disclose the narrative city’s geographies. Our tree-fold endeavor comprises the location of various real places associated with the novel; characters and events are expressed as paths between sites; the spatio-temporal implementation of the emotional-psychological situations of the novel’s plot is overlaid. Two cases are presented; a single urban region, that of Heraklion, Crete, as unveiled from different authors’ novels and second, three cities Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria under the gaze of a single writer. We emphasize the increasing potential of novels-based AR medium for a creative and fruitful engagement when visiting urban places, and encompassing a more multifaceted social and spiritual involvement of tourists – visitors with urban realities.

24 – TRADITIONAL PERFORMING ARTS AS A REGIONAL RESOURCE: EXAMINING JAPAN’S KAGURA DANCE FORM (PDF)

Kenta Yamamoto

This article focuses on Kagura, a traditional Japanese dance form mainly practiced in rural Japan. This article throws light on how each community in the peripheral regions of Japan views this dance form. By doing so, we also focus on how regional cultural resources contribute to regional sustainability in these areas. Regional cultural resources are often viewed as tourism resources—that is, they are used to boost tourism. However, some of the cases considered in this paper show that regional cultural resources can be used in other manners. In other words, these cases show that tourism is not the only way to sustain regional cultures. The findings presented in this article pertain to the broader question of how to properly implement a culturebased sustainable regional development plan. The findings and suggestions presented in this article can be applied to other contexts also.

41 – PASSIVE SPORT TOURISM: BUILDING AN AUTONOMOUS PROFILE (PDF)

Ourania P. Vrondou

There have been a significant number of attempts to define sport tourism as well as to categorize its different expressions produced since the two massive leisure phenomena have collided in the early ‘80s. ‘Passive’ sport tourism has early been identified as one of the main pylons of the phenomenon examining travelling produced due to events’ attending but literature has failed to produce concrete assumption on its size, nature and operation. Further confusion is produced when linking events organization with sport tourism, generating thus, the need to produce clear guiding theoretical guidance to facilitate organizers and policy makers to design effective developmental plans. The paper focuses on passive sport tourism revisiting the initial conceptual paths and building on the specific features that separate this specific tourism form. Concluding suggestions aim to produce distinct types of sport tourism operation, tourist behavior and map the dimensions for developing effective passive sport tourism developments.

49 – THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN THE TOURISM SECTOR CASE STUDY: VOCATIONAL TRAINING INSTITUTES (IEK) SPECIALIZATION: TOURISM & HOSPITALITY SPECIALIST (PDF)

Panagiota Dionysopoulou, Chara Kovousi

Education and training are important parameters required to face economic and social challenges especially in the tourism business. In order for them to remain competitive they need high quality human resources. Quality in tourism is definedby two factors. The first one is infrastructure and the second one lies in the services that are provided. The primary role and the most competitive advantage for tourism, a laborintensive sector, is the services offered, since they involve face to face interaction and will either satisfy or dissatisfy tourists (domestic or foreign). Depending on the quality of the services offered, tourists will both become loyal customers and attract other tourists, or they will leave from the tourist establishment and even from the tourist destination. The questions that emerge are whether modern education programs provide education that reflects the qualitative dimension of services offered to the tourist and whether the learning outcome makes it easier for the trainees to work in the tourist sector. This article aims to identify the level of learners’ satisfaction as a whole, as well as by the “categories” of education services received, at highlighting the weaknesses and strengths of the specialized syllabus, so that by recording the perceptions of graduates, to identify directions and future goals – proposals to improve the syllabus of VTI (IEK) for Tourism and Hospitality Specialist.