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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Jack Carlsen & Alison Morrison
School/Work Place : Curtin University, Australia (Jack Carlsen), University of Strathclyde, UK (Alison Morrison)
Contact : j.carlsen@curtin.edu.au
Year : 2008

Lifestyle has been oft cited in the literature as the main motivation for those establishing or acquiring tourism related businesses in attractive destinations. However, the term has many different dimensions and connotations, both positive and negative, that have emerged in the tourism literature since the 1980s. Furthermore, the trend towards increased migration, reinforced
by the baby boomer generation pursuing new opportunities for enhanced quality of life has given rise to the phenomena variously referred to as 'lifestyle migration' in Europe (Vaugeois and Rollins, 2007), 'amenity migration' in North America (Moss 2006) and 'sea- change' in Australia (Stehlik 2007) that underwrites the growth of lifestyle firms in tourism and hospitality. Demographers have noted the internal migration of urban dwellers to rural areas of Australia since the 1970s and refer to this as 'population turnaround' because it has arrested the decline of rural communities that had occurred in previous decades (Burnley and Murphy 2004). Coastal and mountain locations are also popular destinations that receive this flow of migration, creating significant impacts in resident communities, land use and economic activity, both positive and negative. In light of these trends and impacts, the need to understand this phenomenon and those that pursue an ideal lifestyle through tourism and hospitality related business endeavors has never been more acute.

This understanding is premised on the assumption that lifestyle is a socially constructed phenomenon (Russell and Faulkner 2001) which, when applied to a tourism and hospitality business context, creates a degree of complexity in motivations, meanings and values that sets it apart from other business models. However, lifestyle oriented small tourism [LOST] firms have significant influence in tourism destinations through the quality of the experiences they provide, service standards, investment decisions and environmental performance so the business dimensions of lifestyle firms are also important.

There is an obvious connection between LOST firms in a destination and the promotion of a desired lifestyle to their potential customers, the lifestyle-led consumer groups. It has long been recognised in marketing that consumers do not only purchase physical products and services, they also buy concepts and associated images attached to those products and services. For example, Kamman et al (1998) has suggested that rural life could be conceptualized as meaning quietness, space, physical activities, feeling of belonging to a community, small and human scale, sparsely populated, low density building, fresh air, healthy and peaceful. Kamman et al (1998) suggest that these lifestyle concepts and associated products can be 'reverse network engineered' in certain geographical locations to provide a blue print for policy and planning and encourage and stimulate certain forms of activities while excluding others that conflict with the lifestyle concept.

Walmsley (2003) contends that there will be winners and losers in the emergent lifestyle-led consumption oriented society, citing places such as Denmark, on the south coast of Western Australia as having an image that "can accommodate a lifestyle oriented tourism industry" (2003:68). In this way, tourism is critical to the changing nature of rural locales that are the target of lifestyle consumers as well as those small tourism firms that seek to exploit the locational and lifestyle benefits that are vested in these places. Potentially all 'post-rural' places could offer the 'otherness' that urbanized Australians are increasingly demanding and thereby capitalize on the centrality of lifestyle in the consumer society, increasing mobility and prosperity of lifestyle oriented groups, such as retired baby boomers and advances in technology for place promotion. The need to generate an income during the transition from farming to tourism, or from salaried to selfemployment or retirement is also a significant driver of change in rural areas. Thus, opportunity and necessity is evident in many rural areas, including the Ferguson Valley in Western Australia that forms the case study in this paper. Descriptions of the valley in the words of the LOST firms designed to appeal to lifestyle oriented consumers provide insights into the multiple dimensions of lifestyle firms as depicted in a systemic model of LOST firms proposed in this paper.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
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112 Think Tank V Political Instability and its Effects on Tourism file 6687 Oct 13, 2013

Tourism today is second only to oil as the world’s leading export commodity, accounting for global earnings of more than $300 billion, or nearly 25 per cent of total world GNP (Poirier 2000, p30, cited in Dieke, 2000). Over the last two deca...

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111 Think Tank XIII Assessing the Impact of Rural Tourism Development on t... file 6696 Nov 06, 2013

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110 Think Tank XII Employee Work Attitudes, Mobility and Promotional Oppo... file 6767 Nov 06, 2013

The issue of employee mobility is brought into sharp focus in times of economic and social uncertainty. Previous studies into the causes of employee mobility have investigated, among other determinants, the link between the promotional oppor...

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109 Think Tank VII The Practical Application of Sustainable Tourism Devel... file 6810 Oct 13, 2013

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108 Think Tank VIII Destination Competitiveness and Policy Making for Pove... file 6830 Oct 13, 2013

This paper has five aims. First, to discuss the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) and the method of its construction. If the TTCI is to have policy significance it is essential that its components be identified and analysed as ...

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107 Think Tank XII Are We Moving Towards Education for Sustainability? A ... file 6833 Nov 06, 2013

It is nearing the end of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) (United Nations, 2011), an awareness raising campaign which “seeks to mobilize the educational resources of the world to help create a mo...

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Year: 2012 

106 Think Tank VI Sustainable tourist accommodation management: The role... file 6844 Oct 13, 2013

The integration of sustainability within the domain of tourism has recently made considerable progress. For instance, in the UK and the Netherlands, the most important federations of tour operators, the FTO and the ANVR, have introduced obli...

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Year: 2006 

105 Think Tank IX Labour Justice and Sustainable Tourism: The Centrality... file 6990 Oct 13, 2013

What we value is intricately linked to our morality and our ethics, whether personal or corporate. Sustainability is essentially a statement of morality, embedding as it does the notion of inter- and intra-generational equity. This includes,...

Author: Stephanie Chok & Jim Macbeth 

Year: 2009 

104 Think Tank V Tourism Education for Cambodia: A Case Study of its Fi... file 7030 Oct 13, 2013

This paper details the development, delivery and outcomes of a Masters course in Tourism Development that was delivered by the Royal University of Phnom Penh, with the assistance and support of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and t...

Author: Ravi Ravinder 

Year: 2005 

103 Think Tank VIII Shared Playgrounds: Contrasting Visitor Perspectives o... file 7051 Oct 13, 2013

Tourism is forming an increasingly significant component of the social and economic fabric of many major cities around the world. The quality of life for the residents of a city can be both degraded and enhanced by tourism and its associated...

Author: Tony Griffin, Deborah Edwards, Katie Schlenker & Bruce Hayllar 

Year: 2008 

102 Think Tank XIV A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Sustainab... file 7202 Jun 26, 2014

Emerging tourist destinations can challenge ecological, economic, social, and quality of life barriers. These issues draw attention towards the consequences of increasing complexity that are often found as a tourist marketing system grows an...

Author: Sarah Duffy & Larry Dwyer 

Year: 2014 

OPA: 2014 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

101 Think Tank VI Stakeholder involvement, culture and accountability in... file 7215 Oct 13, 2013

Following its historical rise and fall, America’s first industrialized polluted landscape garnered federal and local support to remedy its near destruction. Today, the Blackstone Valley is a pragmatic example of translating theory into pract...

Author: Robert Billington, Veronica Cadoppi & Natalie Carter 

Year: 2006 

OPA: 2006 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

100 Think Tank XV Perceptions of the business community on the sustainab... file 7227 Jul 27, 2015

The holiday property market has seen a genuine boom in the last years with second homes being an integral part of today’s tourism and an important pillar in the accommodation sector. Today second homes are seen as an enabler for destination ...

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99 OPA award Crisis Communications and Tourism Recovery Strategies ... file 7241 Oct 13, 2013

This paper describes the application of lessons and processes gleaned from previous crises and disasters to the tourism recovery process for the Maldives following the tsunami of December 26 th , 2004. An assessment of existing literature as...

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OPA: 2005 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

98 Think Tank XIV A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective on Sustainable Tourism... file 7326 Jun 26, 2014

In this study, I take up the task to work towards a theoretical and methodological framework that allows using sustainability as a threshold concept for critically evaluating the assumptions embedded in both tourism management theory and pra...

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97 Think Tank IX What do sustainable tourism researchers value? An anal... file 7404 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable Tourism has emerged as a major field of specialisation within tourism and has been so pervasive that some have suggested that the field represents a fifth platform of tourism research, while others have argued that the field has...

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96 Think Tank X Cultural-Touristic Network Altenkirchen – Perspective ... file 7461 Oct 13, 2013

Altenkirchen is situated in Westerwald/Raiffeisen region of Germany (between the cities of Bonn, Cologne, Mainz and Wiesbaden) and in addition to the 7,000 city inhabitants includes 42 municipalities with a further 24,000 people. It is a ci...

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95 Think Tank IX How to create superior value in sustainable tourism: ... file 7469 Oct 13, 2013

Extensive research and practical implementation concerning the value of natural resources has thus far been conducted when one considers for example wildlife-, eco- and cultural tourism, however many of these values originate from industry ...

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