Invisible Cities
Download 352.16 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- 3.5 Case studies
- 3.5.1 Case 1: SARS in Singapore
- 3.5.2 Case 2: Street Crime in New Orleans
- 3.5.3 Case 3: Street Crime in Johannesburg
- 3.5.4 Conclusions on case studies
3.4 Typology of incidentsMillions of cases of tourism have occurred, covering a wide range, but not every of them are relevant to this research. As mentioned before, air pollution is an incident a destination trying to avoid, so it is logical to predetermine it as a quasi- negative factor that influences tourism demand. Another reason to set up this typology is that the scarce of literature studying about direct of impact of air pollution on tourism compels us to seek for the similar cases, in order to have expectation to formulate the hypothesis. Consequently, the cases with an obvious positive factor will be excluded in the following analysis. In the literatures studied management of negative incidents (Faulkner, 2001) (Ritchie W. , 2004) (Hystad & Keller, 2008), two concepts – “disaster” and crisis” are distinguished. “Crisis” is agreed to refer that the cases caused by the failure of management or practice in an organization for adapting the changes, while “disaster” is conceptualized as an unpredictable catastrophe and the individuals or organizations can hardly control (Ritchie W. , 2004). The principle of differentiating these two concepts, is that the organizations where human beings act in, is the origin of the root of causes of the incident or not (Faulkner, 2001). In order to adapt to the analysis of this dissertation, they can be simplified to the terms “natural” and “anthropogenic”, in line with the causes of air pollution – disasters and crises are caused by natural and anthropogenic reasons, respectively. Along with the direction of disaster and crises management, Burnett (1998) identified the level of threat also has critical relevance, because it leads to different strategies to confront with the incidents. Therefore the same method is inherited in this analysis, the cases will be categorized according to their intensity, which are “high” and “low”. A natural catastrophe, directly caused hundreds of deaths, surely has higher intensity than a robbery happened on the street, which might just resulted a loss of some property or non-vital bodily harm. In addition, the frequency of occurrence is also important. Some incidents rarely occur, especially natural catastrophe, while some incidents like crimes always exist. Various frequency influences the time pressure and strategies of response (Burnett, 1998), so it is set up as another dimension of typology, again to simply, they are named “once” and “continue”. As a result, a matrix of case classification can be built up. Some examples are also filled in in order to serve a better understanding of this method of categorization. Table 3: typology of incidents
Source: own elaboration Back to the topic of air pollution in Chinese cities, it is easier to identify the category it belongs to. Several characteristics help – It is caused mainly by fuel incineration and construction activities by human beings, threats health but not causes death directly, and is criticized many times. It is a type of incident that continuously occurs, caused by anthropogenic reasons with low intensity, falling into the same category with “street crime”. Due to the lack of literature about the impact of pollution on tourism directly, the other health crises will be focused alternatively, since air pollution has a close linkage with health problem of human beings. This kind of concern has been manifested to affect the evaluation of the traveling experience, that an adverse health condition for tourists will significantly maculate the satisfaction of a destination (Lawton & Page, 1997). Therefore, the destinations with two types incidents in Table 3 – the breakout of an epidemic disease and the street crime – will be continued to focus in the next section. 3.5 Case studiesIn Section 3.4, it has been remarked that two types of cases initiated by negative factors will be investigated: break out of epidemic disease and high crime rate. Therefore, three representative cases are selected in order to expound how those negative factors have driven changes of tourism demand. For measuring the tourism demand, due to the availability of data access, certain quantitative information will be presented in Case 1 – SARS in Singapore, such as tourism arrivals and hotel occupancy rate. When there is an absence of causal relationship between tourist demand and the negative factor, in Case 2 – Street Crime in New Orleans, perception of destination image will attempt to fill in this gap, since it has been demonstrated in the above sections that negative perception of destination will lead to a deduction of tourism demand. Case 3 – Street Crime in Johannesburg, some research results will be presented in both perception and actual number perspective. Singapore, New Orleans and Johannesburg were selected for some common reasons. They are popular tourism destinations as attractive metropolitan cities, and SARS and street crime in these places are respectively well known by the public. The case studies in these two cities may give guidance to Chinese cities, especially for the three hotspots, since the central cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – are similar metropolitans to these three cities. 3.5.1 Case 1: SARS in SingaporeDescription Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a fatal epidemic disease first discovered in Guangdong (China) in late 2002, and occurred a rampant outbreak in Asia in 2003. It spread by close person-to-person contact; respiratory droplets can transmit the virus when infected person coughs or sneeze, and airborne spread is another way to infect larger population (Department of Health and Human Services, 2004). The last post of global alert and response by WHO was in April 2004, indicated that the disappearance of the pervasion. At early time (spring 2003) it caused a fear in the public because of a high fatal rate of 14 to 15 percent, (Henderson, 2004), as controlled gradually, it has an average fatal rate of 9.6 percent. As Table 4 displayed, 238 Singapore citizens were infected, with 34 dead. Table 4: Accumulative numbers of SARS cases in the main affected regions
Source: WHO (2004) Singapore as a tourism destination Singapore is famous for its cosmopolitan atmosphere for its international visitors. Although there is limited land area, it has great prosperity of both natural landscape and cultural life. The combination of gorgeous gardens and spectacular skyscrapers offers great living environment. For tourists, more than 10 million hotel rooms were available in 2005, and this number increased to 11 million by the year 2010, over 80% of them were occupied (Singapore Tourism Board, 2005; Singapore Tourism Board, 2010). Changi airport serves 42 million of inbound tourists with more than 100 airlines flying to over 300 destinations (Changi Airport Group, 2014). The strategic location in Southeast Asia and long historical relation with civilization of ancient China has brought it mixed cultures with both Chinese and Malay characteristics. While it has a history of being a colony, the self-defense heritage site and Eurasian heritages are also worth to explore for tourists. In addition, both Chinese and Malay heritages exist and traditional festivals are celebrated. Regarding to market ties, Singapore has always been attractive to business travellers. Its GDP reached more than 360 million dollars in 2010, and has been keeping growth for 2 to 5 per cent on average in each year (Department of Statistics Singapore, 2013). Impact of SARS on tourism SARS made a devastation of inbound tourism in Singapore in the year 2003. This dangerous diseases called an alert from WHO, that people are warned to avoid visiting the rampant regions. Many events were cancelled in order to prevent spreading the disease. SARS significantly discouraged consumers’ confidence and international tourism, especially during the first half year of 2003. Tourism industry in Singapore did not obviate this depression as well. The tourist arrivals dropped by 61.7 and 70.7 percent in April and May comparing with the same months of the previous year, resulting in the hotel room occupancy rate declined below 30 percent in these two months (Henderson, 2004). Furthermore, there are statistical significant results, confirmed that one additional infected person in Singapore would lead to 580 less inbound tourists, and one additional death caused by SARS would drive down inbound tourists by 8,942 (McAleer, Huang, Kuo, Chen, & Chang, 2010). This drop is mostly due to the plunge of outbound tourists from the main origins of tourists to Singapore, because they were also struggling with preventing the spread of SARS. For example, the tourist arrivals from Hong Kong decreased more than 90 percent in April (Pine & McKercher, 2004). Tourism industry got recovered primarily until the last quarter of 2003, back to more than 70 percent of room occupancy rate, almost the same as the level of pre-SARS time (Henderson & Ng, 2004). 3.5.2 Case 2: Street Crime in New OrleansDescription New Orleans has been always blamed by its high crime rate. The street crime harms on person and property, Table 5 shows the statistical number of crime rate in New Orleans. These violence on the streets includes murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, auto thefts, and thefts, resulting in all levels of severity – loss of property, bodily harm, loss of life and mass destruction of life and property (Pizam, 1999). It was found that in the past decade, the crime rate has been two to three folds higher comparing with the average number in the U.S. The data was missing in 2005, because a wave of crimes generated after Hurricane Katrina, caused a mass disorder and chaos in this city. Now the situation keeps still, since New Orleans has ranked top three of the deadliest city, with a high probability of being murdered – 53.5 murders for every 100,000 citizens (Galik, 2013), this is 20% more than Detroit and 9 times more than other normal metropolitans like New York and San Francisco (Christie, 2013). Table 5: Crime Rate in New Orleans
Source: City-data.com (2014) New Orleans as a tourism destination With a nickname “Big Easy”, one of the oldest cities in the U.S., New Orleans impressed its guests by blossoming Creole culture and the original root of jazz music. It is an ideal place for people enjoying urban life – famous music festival like “Mardi Graz”, abundant alcohol and delicious food, on the beautiful street of architecture built in 18 and 19 centuries. There are 202 attractions showed on the official website1 of New Orleans Tourism Marketing Cooperation, which will cram colorful travel experiences into their tourists’ mind. Louis Armstrong International Airport guarantees the accessibility of New Orleans for international tourists. They directly connect to destinations in Canada and Mexico by three international airline operating in the airport, receiving more than 10,000 passenger arrivals. The international tourists also choose flights transferring in the U.S., with 10 airline companies and 4 million passenger arrivals in 2010 (Airport data & Statistics, 2011). Moreover, regarding to accommodation, according to Tourism Marketing Cooperation of New Orleans, there are 209 hotels and B&B registered providing 31,888 rooms in stock (Sinclair & Wilson, 2008). In the end, business opportunities, New Orleans is not in an optimistic situation. Due to the attack of Hurricane Katrina, the real GDP has decreased 4.6 percent in 2005, and continued by 1.2 percent in 2006 (Malagon, Mclnerney, & Panek, 2008). Impact of street crime on tourism Under the normal situation, the local newspapers more frequently report street crimes, but since the issue of street crimes in New Orleans is really problematic, it attracted the attention of international media, like The Economist, exposed the dangerous cases happened in the city (Dimanche & Lepetic, 1999). However, before the year of 2000, the local survey found that there was not a significant impact of crime on tourism, which indicated that tourism industry in New Orleans was not affected by this negative publicity. To some extent, it can be explained by the attribute, or the personality of the tourists themselves, evidenced by the research showed that street crime influences local residence more than the tourists, who perceived less danger and even some are totally not afraid of it, called risk-seekers (Peck, 2006). However, tourism industry had destructed by hurricane and crimes together, reflected by over half deduction of tourism employment in 2005 comparing with 2000 (Dolfman, Wasser, & Bergman, 2007). Many articles investigated the natural disaster, and figured out a negative impact on both tourism demand and destination image (Chacko & Marcell, 2008; Pearlman & Melnik, 2008; Ryu, Bordelon, & Pealman, 2013). Table 6 shows that the tourist arrivals in New Orleans from 2003 to 2010, it can be discovered that Hurricane Katrina devastated tourism deeply, a significant drop appeared in 2006, then it bounced back gradually. However, its tarnished image as a holiday destination will take long time to recover, because as presented, the tourism arrivals had not bounced back to level prior to hurricane even 5 years later. Table 6: Tourist arrivals in New Orleans from 2003 to 2010
Source: (New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2011) For crime itself, a research of New Orleans’ destination image showed that it has made tourists perceive New Orleans as city of danger, which jeopardized marketing promotion of its famous event “Mardi Graz” (Gotham, 2002). However, high crime rate has not raised a concern for either supply or demand side of tourism, and there have been no specific actions tackling street crime carried out. Furthermore, the risk-taker tourists might also be a reason for lack of evidences of the impact of crime. In fact, this is a paradox of tourism marketing, called perverse place marketing by Medway and Warnaby (2008), which accentuating the negative incidences sometimes increases tourism demand. Since street crimes keep taking place, it leaves a doubt that whether tourist demand would increase when there is a lower crime rate. Theoretically, assuming that there was less crime in New Orleans, which promotes positive image such as safety and comfort, tourism demand would also increase as an expectation. But at the moment it can only be a castle in the air, and its impacts would be known only after the crime rate was reduced, maybe someday in the future. 3.5.3 Case 3: Street Crime in JohannesburgDescription In general, the Republic of South Africa has been suffering from street crime. Crime rate increased by 9% between 1990 and 1995 (Glanz, 1995), in fact, there were not crimes in large scales going on, this increased crime rate could be mostly resulted by property-related street crime cases, and some are serious violent cases, which is similar with what happened in New Orleans. Tourists are the easy targets of such type of crimes, which Johannesburg is a typical example. The most popular destinations for international tourists are the major crime areas (Ferreira S. , 1999). It has been pointed out that the socio-political structure, which formed by income inequality, social segregation and racist policy implemented in 19th century due to historical reasons, is the vital causation of high crime rate in Johannesburg (Allen, 2002). Johannesburg as a tourism destination It is the powerhouse of African economy, as one of the most modern and prosperity city in Africa, therefore it receives majority of business visitors because of its commercial potential. Naturally, the urban areas are not known for a traditional sightseeing tourism destination, but it still absorbs large number of tourist inflows because of O R Tembo International Airport, the gateway of entering South Africa, which makes it become a leading bed-night destination for international tourists (Rogerson, 2002). It is still a good destination or urban tourism because of its multi-cultural cosmopolitan life vibes, which is composed by interesting museums, emotive monuments, high-class restaurants, and colorful nightlife places. Meanwhile, famous heritages are not far away from the city, the Cradle of Humankind is only 25 kilometers to the northwest, the Sterkfontein fossil, the richest hominid site, is also in Province Gauteng area. Moreover, tourists have wide range of variety of accommodation to choose, there are 53 qualified hotels, 22 B&Bs, and 11 Lodges officially registered at the moment (Joburg Tourism, 2014). There also a well-known mega event, World Cup 2010, was held in South Africa, which makes Johannesburg a more attractive place worth to go. It was one of the most critical cities of matches, because of the opening matches in FNB Stadium, which was an important flagship project specialized for World Cup upgrading of infrastructure. Impact of street crime on Tourism Firstly, the image of Johannesburg as a tourism destination has been adversely affected by perception of being unsafe. In a research conducted by Ferreira and Harmse (2000), South Africa in general was evaluated less safe than the other countries by tourists, which scored only 4.8 on average in a 7-scale of survey. Higher score indicates a safer destination, while Holland was 5.9, UK was 6.1 and Germany was 6.4; and overall average was 5.8. In particular, Gauteng in Johannesburg was even worse in the evaluation of personal safety comparing with other major cities of South Africa, which was 3.4 in 1995, while Cape Town (western Cape) was 6.8 and KwaZulu-Natal was 5.9 (Ferreira & Harmse, 2000).
Moreover, the influence of disease and crime has been investigated respectively. SARS was a sudden hit of tourism, while crime is continuous problem. Regarding negative publicity, in Singapore, the negative information was an explosion while the SARS broken out, and was completely disappeared one year after the disease being controlled. In New Orleans, the media exposure of street crimes always exists, but there has been a lack of evidence of impact on tourism. In Johannesburg, media publicity clearly scared international tourists, supported by statistical evidence. In the perspective of tourism, under the influence of the rampant disease, during the first half-year of 2003, Singapore rarely received international tourists. Along with the vanishing of the disease, negative publicity also decreased gradually, and finally tourism got primarily recovered in the last quarter. For New Orleans, tourism has not been influenced by its high crime rate, because of the absence of statistical evidence. Although there was a devastation of tourism in 2005, its major causation standing behind was natural disaster. Tourism in New Orleans renounced one year later, indicated a primary recovery as well. Different from non-impact of New Orleans’ experience, Johannesburg has always been criticized by high crime rate, and international tourists declined because of the perception of unsafe and fear. But similarly, it is difficult for Johannesburg to limit its crime, although there was a positive perception of safety-crime during World Cup 2010, the real recovery from high crime rate has not been realized yet. As a consequence, as the majority of them (2 out of 3) showed negative impacts on international tourism, the same influence of air pollution in Chinese cities can be expected in the following parts of this dissertation. Table 7: Comparisons of cases in Singapore, New Orleans and Johannesburg
Source: own elaboration Directory: pub pub -> Project Scoring Template Pre-Construction Phase New Core/Branch Campus Projects pub -> Acm word Template for sig site pub -> The german unification, 1815-1870 pub -> Baltic Olympiads in Informatics: Challenges for Training Together pub -> Preparation of Papers for ieee transactions on medical imaging pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Asilomar Conference on Circuits, Systems & Computers, Pacific Grove, ca, November 1978, pp. 55 58 pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Harmonised compatibility and sharing conditions for video pmse in the 7 9 ghz frequency band, taking into account radar use Download 352.16 Kb. Share with your friends:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||