Any Snow on the Horizon? Envisioning Future Ski Tourism

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Serena Volo is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Free University of Bozen (Italy). Her research interests include tourists´ behavior, experience and emotions in tourism, visual research methods, tourism innovation and competitiveness.

Anna Irimiás is Associate Professor of Tourism at the Marketing Institute, of the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. Her research interests include media and tourism, film-induced tourism, social media, consumer behavior.

Abstract (150 Words)

The future of winter tourism is at risk due to climate change effects. Most studies use scenarios to interrogate tourists about their future skiing and travel intentions. Ski resorts at lower altitude are particularly vulnerable and are likely to be unviable in the 2030s (Dannevig et al. 2020). Steiger et al. (2019) suggested investigating Millennials’ judgements on the topic. A critical post-modern approach is herein used to shed light on young adults’ visions of future winter tourism. This research explores university students’ vision of the near future. Collage -a projective technique- was used to access young adults’ feelings and attitudes which otherwise would be withheld Students with skiing experience were asked to collaboratively create collages in a virtual environment. Students were asked to convey their vision of ski tourism in 2030 and were allowed to use any online material -not protected by copyright- to make the collages. Visual analysis of collages (Belk et al., 2003) and focused mostly on the compositional aspects, on the relationship between the different visual objects used in the collage construction and on the new meanings that collages -as new entity- conveyed (Rose, 2016). The results reveal positive and negative aspects of climate change and future ski tourism. The methodological challenges and the practical benefits of using collages as projective techniques will be presented. Collages allowed students´ free associations on issues and concepts related to the future of winter tourism, offered a creative approach to understanding their concerns and hopes and allowed the creation of new and complex meanings.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 

Any Snow on the Horizon? Envisioning Future Ski Tourism

The future of winter tourism is at risk due to climate change effects. Most studies use scenarios to interrogate tourists about their future skiing and travel intentions. Ski resorts at lower altitude are particularly vulnerable and are likely to be unviable in the 2030s (Dannevig et al. 2020). Steiger et al. (2019) suggested investigating Millennials’ judgements on the topic. A critical post-modern approach is herein used to shed light on young adults’ visions of future winter tourism. This research explores university students’ vision of the near future. Collage -a projective technique- was used to access young adults’ feelings and attitudes which otherwise would be withheld Students with skiing experience were asked to collaboratively create collages in a virtual environment. Students were asked to convey their vision of ski tourism in 2030 and were allowed to use any online material -not protected by copyright- to make the collages. Visual analysis of collages (Belk et al., 2003) and focused mostly on the compositional aspects, on the relationship between the different visual objects used in the collage construction and on the new meanings that collages -as new entity- conveyed (Rose, 2016). The results reveal positive and negative aspects of climate change and future ski tourism. The methodological challenges and the practical benefits of using collages as projective techniques will be presented. Collages allowed students´ free associations on issues and concepts related to the future of winter tourism, offered a creative approach to understanding their concerns and hopes and allowed the creation of new and complex meanings.