Today's podcast is the last of my recordings from the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, held in San Francisco, CA in April 2007.  

I also talk about changing the name of the Geography for Travelers Podcast to the Travel Geography Podcast.

And I talk about my new Travelography 2.0 Podcast for NaPodPoMo on Utterz.com.

Length: 36min 03sec

Abstract Title from the AAG.org website:
Tourism Geographies: a Renaissance in the 21st Centurytrave

Author: D'Arcy J. Dornan, Ph.D. - Central Connecticut State University

Abstract:
Geography departments are seemingly well positioned to take advantage of the growth in the popularity of tourism as a field of study. The ever-growing international reputation of the journal Tourism Geographies is a good case in point if we can use this journal's success as an indicator of this trend. This paper aims to evaluate and discuss the impacts of academic managerialism and capitalism and related processes to the development of programs, both academic and professional, relating to the geography of tourism, the geography of tourism and hospitality, and to the professional development of tourism. Concrete and recent examples of the aforementioned program types will be drawn from program development efforts in both California and Connecticut. These 'case studies' will be examined and used to illustrate their significant impacts on the growth of this field within geography. Additional comments and conclusions will be taken from one of last year's panel discussions on a different but related topic entitled: 'Tourism geography: lost realities and prospective opportunities,' which sought to assess the current situation and future trends in the academic tourism geographer community in its ability to meet the needs and challenges of the tourism and hospitality industry and of academia.

Keywords:
tourism, geography, impacts, California, Connecticut

Today's podcast is a presentation that I gave at the NAU eLearning Institute in May, 2007.  I gave a 1 hour presentation on how I used social media, especially blogs, podcasts and wikis, to teach an online class in Spring 2007.  The class was titled "Planning for Sustainable Tourism."

Total Length: 54m 48sec

Here are some links related to this presentation:
- Course outline posted on Web20Teach blog
- Elluminate.com
- InnerToob.com
- My Slideshare.net page - Powerpoint slides and forthcoming Slidecast for this podcast
--- Slides for this presentation
--- Bicycle Touring slidecast (from the 30 June 2007 G4T podcast)
- My Twitter

This is the discussion that followed Professor David Fennell's presentation on Tourism and Ethics at the AAG Annual Meeting in April 2007. 

To hear the presentation, go to show #57 at http://TravelGeography.info - where you can find the full show notes for Geography for Travellers.

AND to both Hear and See his presentation as a Slidecast, go to http://Slideshare.net/alew

Today's Geography for Travelers Podcast is a recording of a presentation by Prof. David Fennell of Brock University at the annual meeting of the Assocaiation of American Geographers, 17-22 April 2007.  The title of his presentation is:

Ethics: We're Stuck With It [in Tourism]...Whether We Like It Or Not!
This was a 45 minute plenary presentation sponsored by my journal, Tourism Geographies, and funded by the journal's publisher, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Ltd.

Part 1 of this podcast is the actual presentation.  Part 2 of this podcast will is the questions and answers that followed the presentation.  I will post that in about 1 to 2 weeks as a separate podcast.

ALSO - This podcast will be linked to David's Powerpoint slides on Slideshare.net in what they call a Slidecast.  You can find this Slidecast at: http://www.slideshare.net/alew.

Here is ht abstract of David Fennell's presentation from the conference program:

Original Show Notes for this podcast are at: http://TravelGeography.info

Danxiashan is a sandstone mountain region adjacent to the city of Shaoguan in northern Guangdong Province in China (north of Hong Kong).  The landform is similar to the sandstone regions of northern Arizona (Sedona) and southern Utah, but in a subtropical vegetation zone.

I was at the Danxiashan World Geopark last week and recorded this week's Geography for Travelers Podcast while hiking around on the top of one of the more visited peaks.

My photos of Danxiashan and the surrounding area can be found here:
- http://flickr.com/photos/alew/tags/danxiashan/

The Geography for Travelers Podcast is found at http://travelgeography.info

This is another presentation from the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in San Francisco, California, April 12-21, 2007. Here is the abstract from the AAG.org website:

Author: Michael W. Pesses - California State University, Northridge

Abstract:
In the past thirty years, bicycle touring has become a legitimate form of tourism. This paper serves as an attempt to examine bicycle touring as an "authentic" form of tourism as well as to examine how the trip affects the bicycle tourist's sense of identity. Through a qualitative analysis of the journals of bicycle tourists, this paper will look into how authentic space and authentic experiences affect the individual's concept of identity and self. The authenticity of the toured space is in constant tension with existential authenticity; one cannot exist without the other in bicycle touring. To find meaning in one's travels, and consequently in one's life, both forms of authenticity are constantly being challenged by the experience and the landscape.

Three NAU students podcast on Maui, New York's Hudson Valley, Tourism News, and and Yosemite National Park.

Show notes at http://TravelGeography.info

Length: 25min 57sec

Today's Geography for Travelers Podcast is a recording of a presentation made at April's Association of American Geographers Conference in San Francisco.  Dr. Braden points out the pressures to develop ecotourism for economic purposes, challenges of corruption, and concern over policies of international organizations such as WWF.  Below is the abstract from her paper as posted in the conference program.

(Length: 26min 33sec)

The Impact of Nature Tourism on Biodiversity Change in the Russian Federation
scheduled on Tuesday, 4/17/07 at 16:00 PM.

Author: Kathleen E. Braden, Ph.D. Geography - Seattle Pacific University

Abstract:
With more than twelve percent of the earth's land area, the Russian Federation's situation for species conservation will inevitably impact the biodiversity of the planet. Since the devolution of the Soviet state, biodiversity has been poorly maintained in Russia, with an increasing number of species under threat of extinction. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, international environmental NGOs, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank Global Environmental Facility have all earmarked the tourism sector to provide alternative incomes and alleviate some of the stress on biological resources. These plans are examined, particularly related to nature tourism, the Russian system of zapovedniki (reserves), the ability of the Russian state to attract foreign tourists, and the role of the wealthy tourist class emerging within the Russian elite.
Keywords: tourism, Russia, biodiversity, nature reserve

FYI - I state in the podcast that it is Tuesday, May 15th, which is when I planned to post this.  Life got in the way, however, and so it is actually May 17th that this is going up.

COMMENT - To leave comments on this podcast, please go to: http://TravelGeography.info

Cheers, Alan

Today's Geography for Travelers podcast is a recording that I made a few days ago when I was driving back to Arizona after the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in San Francisco.  My two travel companions were Prof. Victor Teye and Prof. Dallen Timothy, both of who are geographers who teach tourism classes at Arizona State University. 

The three of us discuss how we personally perceive the relationship between Tourism and the discipline of Geography.  I removed some of the background noise using Soundsoap, and while not perfect, it is listenable.

Length: 35min, 05sec

Full show notes are at http://TravelGeography.info

Released under a Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution, share-alike Copyright.

In today's podcast I give an overview of the 115 (updated number) tourism-related presentations that will be part of the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, 17-21 April 2007, in San Francisco.

- Regular show notes can be found at http://TravelGeography.info
- Email Me at: TravelGeographer @ gmail.com
- Blubbery Jam for Cystic Fibrosis - Please Donate
- Checkout the IndieTravelPodcast.com

25min, 27 sec
Creative Commons Copyright: non-commercial, attribution, share-alike

PAPER TITLES WITH THE KEYWORDS: TOUR, TOURIST & TOURISM - at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, 17-21 April 2007

1. Regional Development Through Tourism in the Republic of Georgia
2. Viewing Historical Sites through the Gaze of the "Other"
3. Locating Queer Key West: Between the Closet, the Resort, and the Bridge
4. Moose head guaranteed: 'Indian' guides, white tourists, and the politics of race and nature in Temagami, Ontario
5. The Impact of Nature Tourism on Biodiversity Change in the Russian Federation
6. An Economic Analysis of Florida Beach Tourism
7. Commerce and Cruises: a comparative study of Caribbean waterfront transformations
8. Out of Globalizing Taipei: Cultural Imagination, Local Identity, and the Case of The Festival of Austronesian Cultures in Taitung
9. Just wasting away on vacation: using environmental justice theory to frame ecotourism-related waste management crises
10. Fish, Floatboats and Feds: "Directions and disparities in policy surrounding the Endangered Species Act and listed Snake River Chinook salmon on the Sawtooth National Recreation Area."
11. The Visual Landscape in British West Indies Travel Narratives, 1815-1914
12. Local effects of ecotourism: a case study of the Nono-Mindo Road in Ecuador
13. Spillover Effects of Recreation-Led Growth in Rural America
14. Are We "Natural" Enough? The Ecological Tourism and Social Development in Taroko National Park Area and San-Chan Tribe, Taiwan
15. Au Bon Endroit: surrealism, creative play and passion
16. Accommodating Green?: Overcoming Barriers to Sustainability in China's Tourism Industry.
17. Do we really need more tourism in Jamaica? Exploring the highs and lows of merging tourism with agriculture in the bid to create alternative livelihoods
18. Management of Protected Areas in Mexico
19. Seeking Shangri-La: Domestic Tourism in Yunnan, China
20. Weaving stories in Taiwan: Japanese colonialism and Atayal culture
21. Spacial Patterns of Touring Circuses Within Europe
22. Spring Mill Pioneer Village as Symbolic Landscape
23. Developing a fall foliage observation route through New England during peak season
24. The Battle of Richmond Re-enactment: An Examination of an Emerging Living History tourist destination in Madison Co., Kentucky
25. Environmentalism in Jiangxi's Tourism Development
26. Do we need them Clustered? Competition, Cooperation and Innovation between Tourist attractions
27. Landscapes of Silk Road Tourism: on the Road to Samarkand
28. Delivering urban renaissance through the revitalization of ethnic neighborhoods as places of leisure and consumption
29. The Largest Industry! Myths and Realities about the Tourist Industry
30. Tracing Irish Ancestors within Diverse Tourism Spaces: A Proactive Approach to Developing New Models of Genealogical Tourism Promotion and Management
31. Gender of Work: A regional study of employees' perceptions of ecotourism jobs
32. Developing America's Playgrounds: National Parks and the Evolving Vision of Outdoor Recreation 1916-1939
33. Many homes for tourism: engaging with embodied spaces and virtual places within second home mobilities
34. On Surfari: Surf Tourism Flows from California
35. Competing carrying capacities and sustainabilities: Setting the limits of growth in tourism
36. Spatial Analysis of Tourism versus Mining in Yunnan, China: Comparing economic and environmental impacts
37. The Shophouse Hotel: Vernacular Heritage in Creative Singapore
38. Good-bye Humboldt, welcome McKinsey - Tourism and Leisure Geography in Germany in the context of current educational policy changes and the complex challenge of globalised educational structures
39. Forging New Linkages in a Changing Global Economy? The Case of Cooperatives and their Link with the Negril Tourism Industry, Jamaica.
40. Displacing Destinations, Becoming Tourists
41. An Evaluation of the Potential and Limitations of Ecotourism as a Vehicle for Conservation and Sustainable Development in India
42. A Defense Against Tourism: The formation of a cooperative system in Smangus, Taiwan
43. Authentic Spaces of Bicycle Tourism
44. Setting the Stage: Guanajuato's Historic Center
45. Ecotourism in Protected Areas: The Case of Kakum National Park in Ghana
46. Canada's emerging wine culture and conflicts in the new countryside
47. Is domestic tourism a domestic phenomenon? Development, the state, and global connections in the mountains of Western Sichuan, China.
48. "Going Global: Ecotourism and globalization in the Niti Valley, Garhwal Himalaya, India"
49. Actor-Oriented Management of Protected Areas and Tourism in Mexico
50. Tourism in Austria - Growing Tourism Centers and Suffering Peripheries
51. Welcome to Paradise! Domestic Tourism and the Myth of the Frontier in China
52. Returning the Gaze: Exploring the Possibility for a Dialogical Tourism
53. Myths of Beirut: The Politics of History and the Seeds of Memory
54. Organics-Aesthetics: Authenticity as a Regional Development Instrument
55. Image, Advertising and Medical Tourism in India
56. Boating on the Sea of Grass: Western Development, Tourism, Resistance, and Local Empowerment
57. Eyes Wide Open: Post-Jacobean Infrastructure Projects
58. Constructing Alterity? The Walt Disney Company and urban landscapes in the Paris Basin
59. The Geography of Medical Tourism
60. Tourism in China—an industry undertaking capitalism and individualism
61. Baltoro glacier - a victim of high mountain mass-tourism?
62. Black Rocks and the Big Bend - Energy Production, Wilderness, and Development on the U.S.-Mexican Border
63. Sustainable tourism on commonages as an alternative to traditional agricultural-based land reform in Namaqualand, South Africa
64. Mountain Shepherds Inaugural Women's Trek: Evaluation of a community initiated and operated tourism project in the Uttarakhand Himalayas
65. Conserving tropical rainforest: a role for ecological education?
66. Driven to the margins: neoliberalism, taxi drivers, and tourism in the Caribbean
67. An Interactive Information System as a Tourism Marketing Tool - The Example of Two Austrian Communities
68. Cruise Ships and Regional Development in Coastal Alaska: A Political Ecology Approach
69. D-Day Tourism: Sites and Paths of Memory
70. "Gay Camp": Analysis of Outdoor Recreation in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Culture and the Economic Impacts in the Ozarks.
71. Journey to the west: tourist traps, Tibet and the independent tourist in contemporary China
72. Neighborhood Revitalization in the Historic District of San Felipe de Neri, Panama
73. Safari Tourism, Technology, and Local Resistance: The Socio-ecological Significance of CB Radios and Mini-vans in an East African Park
74. Reconstructing Disaster Areas through Development Aid: The case of Phang Nga, Thailand
75. Community-based ecotourism in Ghana
76. "Get Back to Where You Once Belonged": Okinawa's Pursuit of Increased Substate Autonomy through Return-Visit Tourism
77. Commodity Chains and the Mobility Turn in Tourism
78. Tourism and the Mormon Culture Region Periphery: Heritage Tourism and the LDS Colonies of Mexico
79. Nature based tourism - some economic linkages revisited
80. Destinations and places seen as part of an innovation system
81. The relevance or irrelevance of environmental ethics? Do they matter in tourism
82. Reviving Tourism in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India: a Challenge for the Crisis and Disaster Management Planners
83. Tourism development in the national periphery: Discourses of the Finnish-Russian border in the process of region-building
84. Isoepa: Polynesian Heritage Site in the Utah Desert
85. Integrating GIS with Database Systems to Identify and Analyze Feeder Market Places of Second-Home Based Tourism
86. The Early Development of Cover Design of Foldout-Maps
87. Consumption of Place: Exploring the Sociospatial Implications of the Coffee Trail and Agrotourism in North Central Nicaragua
88. The New Space Tourism: The Privatization of Space Travel
89. Environmental Regionalism as Discipline: The Northern Forest of New England and New York
90. Processes and tendencies of the residential tourism in the Balearic Islands (Spain): ¿ Immigrants of luxury or tourists of long stay?
91. Medical tourism in India; who benefits and who pays
92. Tourism and Recreation in the Emirate of Dubai
93. Gendered Aspects of Ecotourism
94. Representations of Waikiki: An analysis of tourism through hotel brochures
95. The Marketable Identities of Major American Cities
96. Tourism and Portering Labour in Shimshal, Northern Areas, Pakistan
97. 'Workers' paradise' or entrepreneur's dream? Communist heritage tourism in Nowa Huta, Poland
98. Where you want to go to get away from it all: Theoretical Models of Cruise Tourist Behavior
99. Economic and Ecological Factors Influencing Tourism Operations in Southern Africa's KAZA Region
100. Introducing National Park Reserves into Rural Tourism Industries: Assessing the potentials for integrated, sustainable tourism in the South Okanagan and Lower Similkameen areas, British Columbia, Canada.
101. A New Map to Promote Tourism in Virginia's Wine Region
102. Island Ecotourism - Iriomote Island Case Studies
103. WE Riders of Oakland: Urban Geography as Performance Art
104. Staying Afloat: State agencies, local communities, and international involvement in marine protected area management in Zanzibar, Tanzania
105. "Tubin and Groovin along a Texas River: Contested Spaces and Conflict over the Comal River in New Braunfels, Texas"
106. International Involvement in Tourism Development in a Peripheral Region: Lessons from Ghana
107. Web 2.0 Virtual Travel-escapes
108. Evaluating tourism geographies in the United Kingdom: will moving the goal posts make any difference?
109. Cartography, GIS, and Teaching the Geography of Wine
110. Tourism Geographies: a Renaissance in the 21st Century
111. Identity Shift in a Post-Military Society: A Case Study of Quemoy
112. Much Ado About Nothing: A Geographical Analysis of Industrial Clusters
113. Tourism, power, culture and the creative industries in the core's periphery
114. Tourism User Fees: A Tool for Protected Area Management
115. Development of Tourist Information System Based on 3-D Satellite Image Maps

This month's podcast is one of the interviews from our recent trip to Nepal.  We administered the inteview to Ben Ayers, the founder of Porter's Progress, an NGO devoted to supporting the porter who carry heavy loads on their backs up the Khumbu Valley of Nepal.  Today he works for the dZi Foundation, a community development NGO that works throughout the Himalaya region.

Please support these worthwhile organizations:

1. Porter's Progress
2. dZi Foundation

Today's podcast talks about my activities since arriving in Nepal on January 1, 2007.  It is basically divided into three parts:

Part 1 - I discuss the administration of our photograph survey in Nepal and some of he challenges and adjustments made in doing that

Part 2 - I talk about trekking in the Khumbu (Everest) region of Nepal, where about half of the interviews took place

Part 3 - There is a short soundseeing clip from the Durba (Castle) Square of Patan, a city just south of Kathmandu

Full travel blog entries that cover what I have been up to and how our research project is evolving can be found at:

http://SEAsiaTourism.blogspot.com

As susuall, show notes for this podcast are also found at:

http://TravelGeography.info

Enjoy....
Alan

Today's podcast is part two of my discussion of a research project that I am undertaking in Nepal.  This first podcast in this series discussed the "problem statement" -- the environmental and social change issues and how we framed them.  In today's podcast I discuss our research methodology and the theoretical rational for the methodology.  We will be using photographs to elicit responses from residents Kathmandu and the Khumbu region.  Theoretically, the methodology is focussed on Social Exchange Theory. 

Full show notes are also found at: http://travelgeography.blogspot.com/2006/12/environmental-social-change-in-nepal_28.html

In today's podcast I discuss a research project that I will be undertaking in Nepal.  This is the first in a series of podcasts that will take you through my experience in initiating and doing this field research.  This first podcast discusses the "problem statement" -- the issues and how we framed them.
It is based on a proposal that I wrote with two colleagues this past summer to the US National Science Foundation.  The proposed research was to examine the perceptions of Nepalis in the Khumbu region of Nepal (near Mt Everest) of environmental and social changes over the past 40 years.  As a major trekking region, tourism is one of the key elements that we identify as affecting change in the Khumbu.

Links to items cited in this podcast:

1. InnerToob.com
2. Tourism, Recreation, And Climate Change, edited by C. Michael Hall and James E. S. Higham
3. PL376 - Planning for Sustainable Tourism - Northern Arizona University