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Academic Research

The Academy is a major contributor to the economic growth and development of tourism and rural development practice in Ireland through practice minded research committed to the creation and diffusion of new tourism knowledge by promoting teaching, research and industry interaction.

Core researchers have published in a wide variety of international conferences, books and refereed journals such as Journal of Tourism Management, Journal of Tourism Research, Progress in Tourism Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Services Industries Journal, Managing Service Quality Journal, Journal of Small Business & Enterprise Development, European Journal of Marketing.

Within the context of Tourism and Rural Development, the Academy has a number of key research areas:

Networks and Relationship Management

Networks and the relationships within them are recognised and promoted by academics and policy makers as a means to create sustainable competitive advantage in small firms by facilitating collaboration among members. For this reason, Academy members have developed pioneering research acumen in the area of networks (inter and intra) and relationship management. The impetus behind this research focus is to enhance the relational processes that underlie the formation and maintenance of networks.

Within this thematic area Academy researchers have and continue to develop academic and applied research projects in the following areas:

  • social roles, infrastructures and interpersonal dynamics in various network contexts;
  • relational variables and norms surrounding and underpinning network development, maintenance and management;
  • the development, maintenance and management of relationships and structures;
  • customer relationship management and culture;
  • mapping the factors supporting and impeding individual and collective exchange and learning; developing and refining network management and interpersonal relationship models

Place & Destination Management

People travel for a variety of reasons: to escape, explore, understand, and participate. But at the core of the experience lies the destination. Managing tourism destinations is a multifaceted phenomenon due to the fragmented nature of the industry, where stakeholders such as private enterprises, public agencies and community groups operate in a relatively autonomous way. These diverse stakeholder groups generally collaborate through marketing initiatives to promote the tourism destination offering. However, the complexity of managing tourism destinations is frequently highlighted in tourism policy documents and also echoed by academic scholars.

Within this thematic area Academy researchers have and continue to develop academic and applied research projects in the following areas:

  • Destination Management focusing on issues such as roles, and activities of the Destination Management Organisation as well as examining organizational structure, legitimacy and relationships necessary for governance.
  • Destination planning examining issues such as structures, relationships and partnerships between public and private stakeholders to plan strategically for the future of the destination.
  • Destination marketing, place branding, identity, and visioneering research addressing the collaborative approach between public and private stakeholders in destination marketing encompassing nation branding, region branding and city branding.
  • Examining tourism destinations through a network lens has become more popular. These studies typically focus on the relationships between actors so that issues such as trust, commitment, reciprocity, knowledge sharing and network governance of partnerships, collaboration, cooperation and stakeholder engagement in the destination.
  • Examining how destinations emerge, grow and evolve from a lifecycle perspective and how destination resources are managed and orchestrated to ensure the destination reaches maturity.
  • Dynamic capabilities, recognising the core competencies can be developed through relationships in the network as well as examining the capabilities required for value creation and integrated destination marketing initiatives.
  • Competitiveness and sustainability: There are numerous studies examining destination competitiveness and sustainability research focusing on models and indicators of both objective and subjective measures.

Experiential Tourism

The core goal of tourism is to develop and deliver distinctive, authentic and memorable experiences that stimulate increased visits, longer stays and higher expenditure and the quality of the tourism experience is the key. Research endeavours to understand tourism, hospitality and leisure experiences have been international in scope and broad ranging in topical coverage.  Much of the work has been guided by theories related to experience design and understanding the dynamics capabilities required for developing experiences.  The interdisciplinary appeal of this theme is reflected in publications that have appeared in a range of management and tourism journals.

Within this thematic area Academy researchers have and continue to develop academic and applied research projects in the following areas:

  • The nature of customer experiences, customer experience journeys
  • New service development, new experience development, process of innovation.
  • Maximising the niche potential of Senior tourism experience
  • Building Customer loyalty from a customer experience approach,
  • Cultural tourism experience development

Smart Tourism, Travel & Hospitality

Smart tourism with its focus on data to enhance and capture consumer connectivity with the tourism experience through digital touchpoints, and the emphasis on sustainability of the destination is a key research thematic within the Academy.

Within this thematic area Academy researchers have and continue to develop academic and applied research projects in the following areas:

  • Harnessing Tourism data for real time decision making and innovation
  • Tourism digital transformation – The influence of the Web on tourism has been immense from enabling the tourist to co-create, narrate and review the tourist experience via social networks and review sites to the use of virtual reality, touch points and digital media to market, navigate and interpret this experience.
  • Leadership and managerial capabilities underpinning the emergence and maintenance of smart innovation.
  • Merging of research from smart cities and smart tourism has resulted in considerable research interest in smart destinations and the requirement to better understand the processes underpinning the emergence of smart destinations at more regional level and at the level of the smaller town.

Rural Development & Agriculture.

One of the major characteristics of economic growth is that national prosperity has been at the expense of rural regions. Essentially, economies of scale and scope and the resulting reduction in transaction costs are identified as the main reasons why organisations will tend to locate in centres of large populations and government investment tends to follow; this creates a cycle in which areas of large population will continue to grow and become economical viable, while areas of lower population will continue to decline and become more dependent on lower skilled jobs and lower levels of market activity. European Union (EU) and National policies seek to diversify and develop the non-agriculture economy in order to arrest the socio-economic decay of many these rural communities.  In recognition of these challenges, tourism has been identified as a critical growth vehicle for disadvantaged rural regions and Academy researchers have conducted valuable research funded work under previous Interreg programmes which has been effective in introducing enterprises within rural areas to the concept of networking and the role of collaborative positioning and marketing – critical to foster joint and effective activity. There has also been quite substantial effort in various projects to facilitate networks.

Outside of the tourism research domain, Academy researchers have been actively involved in agriculture projects exploring farmer-led business models and new market models for the agriculture industry.

Within this thematic area Academy researchers have and continue to develop academic and applied research projects in the following areas:

  • Funded work under previous Interreg programmes which has been effective in introducing enterprises within rural areas to the concept of networking and the role of collaborative positioning and marketing critical to foster joint and effective activity.
  • Facilitating rural enterprise and innovation networks
  • Data driven business models for rural farmers
  • Food networks
  • Rural policy and planning through the development and delivery of tourism seminars, workshops, conferences and publications which ensures that communities benefit from research.