1,720,978 research outputs found
Festival Gap : Comparing Organizers' Perceptions of Visitors to a Survey of Visitors at the Carolina Renaissance Festival, 2005
No full textIn many cases, festival organizers simply "guess" at the characteristics and motivations of their visitors. The organization, planning and marketing of festivals can greatly benefit from an analysis of visitors. This particularly the case with specialty or niche type events such as Renaissance Festivals. Bridging the gap between festival organizers' perceptions of visitors and the actual patterns in visitation is essential for marketing. This thesis seeks to explore what festival organizers really know about the characteristics and motivations of their visitors, using the Carolina Renaissance Festival in Huntersville North Carolina as a case study. Renaissance-themed festivals are a style of (cultural) heritage tourism festival that has been under analyzed in scholarly research. Interviews were conducted with the Carolina Renaissance Festival organizers and a survey was used to collect data from visitors. Using chi-square test and a t-test statistics, gaps were for various variables related to visitor demographics, motivation, the level of intensity of visit, and general opinions. Results indicate that organizers of the Carolina Renaissance Festival generally did well in estimating the demographic characteristics of visitors but did less well in predicting motivations
Analyzing Resident Place Satisfaction in a Tourist Destination through Auto-Photography : The Case of Southern Shores, North Carolina
No full textResident place satisfaction in tourist destinations lies at the heart of the movement toward more socially sustainable development. Addressing the place-based views and concerns of residents is necessary for maintaining public support for tourism. This project analyzes place satisfaction among full-time residents living in Southern Shores, North Carolina. The qualitative methods of auto-photography and photo-elicitation interview are used with thirteen residents of varying lengths of residence in the Outer Banks community. Participants were supplied with disposable cameras and asked to photograph what they like and dislike about Southern Shores. In reacting to their photographs, participants communicated views, feelings, and a sense of place that allowed researchers to identify positive and negative aspects of the community and tourism development. For some participating residents, the very act of photographing Southern Shores and choosing what to represent visually made them more cognizant of place satisfaction, thus pointing to the method's potential as a public education and extension tool. M.A
Evaluating the Sustainability of Heritage Tourism and Historic Preservation in New Bern, North Carolina
No full textAfter nearly a half century of suburbanization, economic development specialists and urban planners have begun to appreciate the unique aesthetic and heritage landscapes of underutilized downtown areas as potential geographic spaces for economic growth. Consequently, fostering heritage tourism and recreation industries that take advantage of these unique spaces has become a cornerstone of many downtown redevelopment plans. A growing pool of literature on the subject of sustainable tourism has noted that heritage tourism is ideologically and institutionally different from other forms of the industry, as concepts of long term planning, cultural awareness and resource conservation are important to both tourism sustainability and heritage management. While there is an increasingly diverse collection of literature available on the subject of sustainable urban heritage tourism, there is greater need for more studies of this unique type of tourism in a market environment, and to assess the degree to which heritage tourism and historic preservation are sustainable as a viable industry according to information gathered through chiefly qualitative methods. This thesis focuses specifically on the socio-cultural sustainability of heritage tourism and historic preservation in the area of downtown New Bern, North Carolina. Interpretation and presentation of preservation and heritage are applied selectively, and there is dissonance and disagreement amongst certain groups concerning the role of tourism in New Bern. Nevertheless, qualitative research shows that community support, economic diversity, long term management, and conservation of the built and natural environment qualify New Bern's urban heritage tourism industry as more sustainable than tourism industries elsewhere. M.A
The Coast As A Vernacular Region
No full textThe study of regions and regional identity is one of the cornerstones of the field of geography. Historically within regionally-based research, there has been interest in vernacular regions and the use of business names as a data source for mapping patterns in regional identity. However, few studies of regional identity and names have taken full advantage of digital methods and the use of powerful online databases and GIS/mapping software. ReferenceUSA, an electronic database was used to collect all business names in the United States that contain the term coast(al). Once data were collected and cleaned, two distinctive avenues of analysis were conducted. The first was a quantitative mapping of coast(al) business name patterns, finding that even inland establishments identify themselves with the coast. Several maps were produced to visualize the distribution and frequency of coast(al) named businesses and to better understand the spatial patterns of people's identification with the coast as a vernacular region. The second avenue is more of a qualitative image analysis of place naming and branding. Analysis has been done to examine how the physical environment is incorporated into a people's sense of place and why the coast is such a popular and powerful symbol. M.A
Automobility, Hospitality, African American Tourism, and Mapping Victor H. Green's Negro Motorist Green Book
No full textVictor Green's travel guide stands as one illustration of tools used by African Americans to survive in the contested and disputed landscape of Jim Crow segregation. The Green Book as a symbol of the civil rights movement further represents the discourses and politics of automobility that both limit and empower resistance. The Green Book is an under-utilized source available to historical geographers for researching the numerous barriers to tourism. Racial discrimination is one that is especially under-analyzed. This research advances the field of digital humanities and historical GIS as well as pushing close the epistemological qualitative-quantitative discord over using geographic information systems to support geo-analytic approaches in human geography. M.A
LOST IN MAYBERRY/MOUNT AIRY : IMPORTANCE OF TOURIST PROFILES IN SUSTAINABLE TOURISM PLANNING
No full textIn sustainable tourism planning it is essential to understand the type of tourist attending and determine the temporal sustainability or longevity of pop-culture festivals, especially those focused around film and television. Mount Airy, North Carolina, was physically transformed in the 1980s to mirror Mayberry, the fictional town of television's The Andy Griffith Show and is currently home to the Mayberry Days Festival. This thesis examines the Mayberry Days Festival to develop a typology of festival visitors and the influence of The Andy Griffith Show on the attendee's motivations. Online survey invitation cards were distributed during the 2010 Mayberry Days Festival in order to gather data on the socio-demographic characteristics, motivations, perceptions, and economic impact of the attendee. Additionally, a framework was developed to identify and analyze the different tourist profiles based on the attendee's behaviors and characteristics to comprehend how sustainable the Mayberry Days Festival will be for Mount Airy in the future. Results suggest that visitors are drawn to Mount Airy for a variety of reasons and that The Andy Griffith Show is not necessarily the main motivator. Long term success of Mount Airy tourism is perhaps linked to building upon it's small town nostalgic image which can be independent of it's association of television. M.S
Keynote Speaker 2
No full textMapping Memory, Spatial Justice, and the Living Black AtlasDerek H. Alderman, Chancellor\u27s Professor, Department of Geography and Sustainability, University of Tennessee Author of Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory (2008
The power of photography :measuring levels of gender and racial/ethnic representation in North Carolina's travel brochures
No full textThe effect of travel patterns on geographic literacy :using the World Wide Web to survey U.S college students
No full textCan you hear the voices on the walls? :how graffiti is known in punitive and tolerant public spaces
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