Faculty from the School Hospitality and Tourism Management used an on-campus event marking World Tourism Day to announce an international initiative to advance tourism research.  Its launch may have occurred on campus, but School of Hospitality and Tourism Management faculty are hoping a new international initiative will have a global impact on their ability to conduct research.

HTM used an on-campus presentation for World Tourism Day to announce the Tourism Research Collaborative, which will see faculty from the University of Guelph collaborating with Canadian, American and international researchers to further tourism research.

“The Tourism Research Collaborative consists of a core of faculty from the School of HTM who work in partnership with researcher in other departments on campus, other universities in Canada and visiting scholars from China, Korea and the States,” said Marion Joppe, HTM Professor and the University Research Chair in Tourism. “We also have a special relationship with the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute.”

Joppe said that TRC will focus on two major themes in research: destination management and marketing, and understanding consumer behaviour. While the former will assess tourism opportunities such as health and wellness tourism, culinary tourism and pro-poor tourism, the latter seeks to clarify how and why people make travel, food and beverage purchase decisions.

Joppe said the timing of World Tourism Day couldn’t have worked out better from a TRC launch perspective.

"TRC has been around for awhile now, but we thought it fitting to officially announce it on World Tourism Day," she said.

 World Tourism Day stems from a UN initiative to promote sustainable tourism, with a different UN-member nation acting as host each year. China is the 2010 host of World Tourism Day, with this year’s official theme being Tourism and Biodiversity.

For more information on the Tourism Research Collaborative, contact Professor Marion Joppe at 519-824-4120  ext. 58552 or mjoppe@uoguelph.ca [1].