The international journal of tourism research tập 13, số 04, 2011 07 + 08

Received 16 September 2010; Revised 4 January 2011; Accepted 10 January 2011 Keywords: country image; destination image; information sources; experimental design; Turkey.. 2007 in order

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Marketing Innovations for

Sustainable Destinations

The genesis of this special issue arose from

papers presented at the third Advances in

Tourism Marketing conference held in

Bourne-mouth, UK, in September 2009 This conference,

which built on the previous successes of theﬁrst

and second conferences held in Mugla, Turkey,

and Valencia, Spain, in 2005 and 2007

respect-ively, set out to explore, analyse and evaluate the

state of the art in tourism marketing from an

international perspective and bring together

academic researchers, policy‐makers and

practi-tioners from around the world This was

achieved with over 160 delegates present at the

conference including representation from the

private and governmental sectors as well as a

number of leading publishers in the ﬁeld of

tourism With papers submitted to the

confer-ence covering a considerable breadth of thematic

areas, this special issue seeks to bring together a

select number of papers that offer speciﬁc insight

into innovative aspects of marketing and the

means by which such activity leads to the greater

sustainability of destinations It is hoped that the

papers selected for inclusion in this special issue,

and that successfully navigated a second round

of blind peer reviews, help raise levels of

awareness of issues not traditionally associated

with the management and marketing of

destina-tions and evoke critical insight into what we

consider to be innovative marketing themes

In view of the above, the ﬁrst paper by

Alvarez and Campo focuses on Turkey as a

destination and the determination of the effect

of controllable and uncontrollable sources ofinformation on the country and destinationimage as two separate constructs Their paperestablishes the greater inﬂuence of the control-lable sources (promotional video) as opposed

to the uncontrollable ones (news video) via theselection of a pre‐post experimental design,with a control group Therefore, the studyﬁndings demonstrate that tourism promotionalinformation improves Turkey’s destinationimage and its preference in terms of visitation,

in contrast to the news, which does not affectthe image in any signiﬁcant manner

The second paper by Kimbu offers manyinteresting insights into the development oftourism in the Central African sub‐regiongenerally and the particular issues and chal-lenges being faced by those trying to developtourism in Cameroon more speciﬁcally Al-though sub‐Saharan Africa has performed well

of late vis‐à‐vis tourism growth during the lastﬁve years, with average growth rates of +12% in

2006 and +6% between 2007 and 2010, thereremains considerable diversity in the rates ofgrowth of the individual countries with anumber falling well behind the rates of growthbeing experienced by countries located inEastern and Southern Africa Many of theproblems attributed to the likes of Cameroonhave been put down to an inability to position,promote and market the wider destination in amanner commensurate with the demands of theinternational marketplace and the consequent

Int J Tourism Res 13, 307–309 (2011)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.858

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expectations of tourists Finding resources to

properly fund the development of tourism has

been challenging, whereas the overall political

commitment to tourism more broadly has been

inconsistent at best By drawing on an in‐depth

knowledge of the country and its particular

context, Kimbu offers an insightful paper, which

brings home the considerable challenges that

exist for those wishing to successfully market

such destinations and for the myriad of public

and private sector stakeholders that are eager to

move the destination forward and so reach its

potential in what clearly is a very challenging

and difﬁcult marketplace

Coles and Fenclova offer a very different

paper in that they focus their attention on the

means by which low‐fares airlines contribute to

the development of destinations where they

exercise their rights toﬂy By taking a very novel

and innovative stance, Coles and Fenclova

examine the charity component of corporate

social responsibility activity among low‐fares

airlinesﬂying to and from the UK rather than

focusing on the well‐trodden path of the actual

business model itself As a concept,

responsi-bility is now an accepted dimension in the

governance and management of tourism

desti-nations In an increasingly neoliberal political

context where the state is either unwilling or

unable to regulate and fund travel and tourism,

voluntary relationships among stakeholders are

viewed as more important than ever in serving

to mediate the sustainable development of

destinations As a key destination ‘citizen’,

low‐fares airlines have a crucial and

increasing-ly responsible role to play in the development of

destinations As such, this engaging paper

offers some very valid insights into how low‐

fares airlines interact with local ‘destination’

communities and citizens in this regard and

how they are embedded in tourism business

models and functions The paper examines

critically the means by which low‐fares airlines

understand their socio‐cultural responsibilities

and, in particular, how these are manifested

through their charitable activities The paper

begins by outlining the relationship between

corporate philanthropy and contemporary

cor-porate social responsibility before offering a

conceptual framework upon which the

subse-quent empirical analysis is based Interestingly,

although the lean production model of low‐fares

airlines do not naturally suggest a positiveinclination towards charity and philanthropy,the paper concludes that their scope and spreadare in fact far more widespread than one wouldhave imagined

The fourth paper by Lee and Arcodia againtakes a very different direction in that itinvestigates the role of regional food festivalsfor destination branding and the characteristics

of regional food festivals that contribute tobuilding a destination brand Food festivals havegrown exponentially in number in recent years

in many countries, whereas interest in foodtourism has become an increasingly recognizedform of recreation and tourist attraction Al-though previous studies have explored the roleregional food festivals can play in economicdevelopment more broadly and the develop-ment of regional tourism more speciﬁcally, thisstudy explicitly looks at its impact on brandingand attempts to migrate the research focus awayfrom similar studies that have focused on sportevents and large events in metropolitan areas tofood generally and food in regional destinationsmore explicitly With vastly different structuresand levels of community involvement andcommitment required than the previous types

of events, food festivals are a worthy source ofresearch scrutiny with their contribution to thedevelopment of destination brands most appro-priate Due to the increased number of regionalfood festivals and the paucity of knowledge inexistence as to their organization and contribu-tion to the destination, Lee and Arcodia arecorrect to highlight the need for such research onthe role of regional food festivals for destinationbranding to respond to the increasing interests

on regional development and on the festivalmanagement techniques to maximize its role inbuilding a destination brand

The next paper, by Ene and Schoﬁeld, lights the extent to which the short‐break markethas been under investigation from the perspec-tive of consumer decision‐making research,despite its considerable economic importancefor so many destinations The paper adopts astrong theoretical stance in that it examines con-sumer decision making in the budget short‐breakcity market and adopts an integrated approach tothe problem domain by adapting and extendingHansen’s (2005) consumer decision‐makingframework to include cognitive, affective andCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 307–309 (2011)

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high-conative dimensions Although a number of

consumer decision‐making models have featured

motivation, supply, demand, value, price, quality,

cues, information and emotions in an attempt to

improve understanding of the process, frequently

in the tourism domain, such models have

assumed a vacation scenario and its associated

criteria such as extensive information search and

high levels of risk and insecurity, items not always

apparent in the context of short breaks Hence,

despite the growth in demand for breaks of a

short duration, and their obvious economic

importance to so many destinations, Ene and

Schoﬁeld justly argue the case for more research

in this domain and the need to question the lower

risk, lower involvement and more limited

infor-mation search behaviour often attributed to such

patterns of consumption Therefore, this paper

responds to these challenges and sets out three

clear objectives, namely, the need to identify the

dimensions of budget city break consumer

decision making; examine the role of emotions

in budget city break decision making; and,

analyse the characteristics of dimension‐based a

posteriori budget city break market segments

The sixth andﬁnal paper in this special issue

by Schmallegger analyses the case of the Flinders

Ranges, a rural‐remote destination in South

Australia; documents the strategies that the

regional tourism system has used to diversify

its market base; and identiﬁes the factors that

have allowed the system to develop internal

systems‐of‐innovation dynamics Schmallegger

highlights the considerable decline in visitors to

Australia’s Outback since the late 1990s, with

much of this decline attributed to traditional

loyal markets such as organized coach tours,

backpackers and the long‐distance self‐drive

transit market and the inability of Outback

destinations to adapt to changing market

trends over the past decade and diversify their

destination experiences to attract new

alterna-tive origin markets This paper does, in fact,

strike at the very core of the purpose of this

special issue because what appears to be lacking

in the Outback of Australia are the very

market-ing innovations destinations require to ensure

longer‐term sustainability, most notably in the

arena of product development and destinationmarketing to redeﬁne their image and marketposition However, for such activity to occur,Schmallegger argues that destinations need to

be able to operate as ‘systems of innovation’,which engage the whole range of public andprivate sector organizations involved intourism in processes of collective change.Interestingly, the paper concludes that theFlinders Ranges tourism system has onlybeen able to overcome internal structural weak-nesses by the importation of externally trainedentrepreneurs and public sector leaders withquestions remaining over the efﬁcacy of centra-lized state and regional tourism organizations

in supporting such change

In bringing this introduction to a close, theeditors hope that the diversity of the papersincluded in this special issue offer some genuineinsight into the multitude of issues, challengesand opportunities that face those responsiblefor the management and marketing of destina-tions Finally, the editors would like to extendtheir thanks to the many colleagues who kindlyreviewed papers for this special issue and thetimely and professional manner with which allreviews were undertaken

REFERENCESHansen T 2005 Perspectives on consumer decisionmaking: an integrative approach Journal of

JUERGENGNOTHOtago University, New Zealand

SONJASIBILALEBEMaribor University, Slovenia

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The study aims to determine the effect of

controllable and uncontrollable sources of

information on the country and destination

image as two separate constructs The

research is carried out in the context of

Turkey as a developing country through the

use of a pre- and post-experimental design

with a control group The study establishes

the greater infl uence of the controllable

sources (promotional video) as opposed to

the uncontrollable ones (news video) The

fi ndings show that tourism promotional

information improves Turkey’s destination

image and its preference in terms of

visitation in contrast to the news, which do

not signifi cantly affect the image Copyright

Received 16 September 2010; Revised 4 January 2011; Accepted

10 January 2011

Keywords: country image; destination image;

information sources; experimental design;

Turkey

INTRODUCTION

The concept of country image has been

studied extensively from various

per-spectives including tourism and

interna-tional marketing Country image has mainly

been investigated in relation to the country of origin effect, which determines that the image

of a country may infl uence the perceptions of the products that are manufactured there (Lee

and Ganesh, 1999; Laroche et al., 2005) In

con-trast, the tourism literature has primarily focused on the image of countries as tourism destinations, which has been found to affect satisfaction, loyalty and perceptions of quality

(Chon, 1990; Baloglu, 2000; Bigné et al., 2001)

Although these two constructs have been analyzed under different viewpoints, more recently, researchers have called for the need

to investigate the impact of tourism activities

on both country and destination image as two different albeit related constructs (Mossberg and Kleppe, 2005; Campo and Alvarez, 2010).Image is a dynamic concept (Gartner and Hunt, 1987; Chon, 1991; Fakeye and Cromp-ton, 1991; Gartner, 1993) that may change due

to previous experience (Dann, 1996) or when the individual is exposed to various sources of information (Martin and Eroglu, 1993) In this sense, several studies have been used to deter-mine how this additional information infl u-ences the image formation process (Baloglu

and McCleary, 1999; McCartney et al., 2008),

and researchers have distinguished between those sources that originate from marketing activities and which are managed, and those that cannot be controlled for such as news, movies and other media However, there is insuffi cient research regarding the effect of uncontrollable sources of information on the image of a country (Sönmez and Sirakaya, 2002) as well as a lack of comparative studies

of controllable versus uncontrollable sources Additionally, recent research that investigates

Int J Tourism Res 13, 310–323 (2011)

Published online 21 February 2011 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.838

Controllable versus Uncontrollable

Information Sources: Effects on

the Image of Turkey

Maria D Alvarez1,* and Sara Campo2

1 Department of Tourism Administration, Bog˘ aziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

2 Marketing Department, Autónoma University, Madrid, Spain

*Correspondence to: Dr Maria D Alvarez, Department

of Tourism Administration, Bog˘ aziçi University, Hisar

Kampüs, Bebek, Istanbul 34342, Turkey.

E-mail: alvarezm@boun.edu.tr

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the difference between country image and

des-tination image (Mossberg and Kleppe, 2005;

Nadeau et al., 2008; Campo and Alvarez, 2010)

indicates that there is a need to separate both

concepts when analyzing the effect of

commu-nication strategies on the image of a country It

is therefore important to establish to what

extent marketing communications and other

information related to the country has a varied

infl uence on the general country image and the

destination image

Thus, the main objective of the research is to

determine the effect of controllable versus

uncontrollable sources of information on the

country and destination image as two separate

constructs The research specifi cally compares

the infl uence of audiovisual information, using

a promotional video as the controllable source

and a news video as the uncontrollable one

This effect is investigated in the context of

Turkey as a developing country In order to

assess the varied infl uence of these sources of

information on the two image concepts

ana-lyzed and to provide a better comprehension

of their infl uence through a separate analysis

of perceptual changes (Sönmez and Sirakaya,

2002), an experimental design is used

PREVIOUS RESEARCH

The image of a place has been defi ned as ‘the

sum of beliefs and impressions people hold

about places Images represent a simplifi cation

of large number of associations and pieces of

information connected with a place They are

a product of the mind trying to process and

pick out essential information from huge

amounts of data about a place’ (Kotler et al.,

1993, p 141, as cited in Kotler and Gertner,

2002, p 251) In parallel, destination image is

determined as ‘a totality of impressions, beliefs,

ideas, expectations and feelings accumulated

towards a place over time’ (Kim and

Richard-son, 2003, p 218) Image is thus defi ned as a

complex construct that includes cognitive

eval-uations related to beliefs, as well as affective

ones, including feelings and emotions (Baloglu

and McCleary, 1999) Several studies have also

advocated the existence of a third component

of image, the conative one, which refers to the

behavior of the individual following the

evalu-ation of the place (Gartner, 1993; Parameswaran

and Pisharodi, 1994; Dann, 1996; Choi et al.,

2007)

Image is also generally considered as being multidimensional in nature, and including the individual’s evaluation of various aspects

regarding the place (Baloglu, 1997; Gallarza et al., 2002) Nonetheless, authors such as Echtner

and Ritchie (1991) and Stepchenkova and rison (2006) stress the need to include a holistic

Mor-as well Mor-as an attribute-bMor-ased evaluation Thus,

a common conceptualization of image lishes that the cognitive and affective compo-nents contribute to the formation of the overall

estab-image construct (Lin et al., 2007; San Martín

and Rodríguez del Bosque, 2008)

Despite the similarity of these two tualizations of image, recent studies propose that, when applied to the context of countries, the general image of the country, and that of the place as a tourism destination need to be distinguished From a theoretical perspective, Mossberg and Kleppe (2005) determine that country image refers to a combination of generic associations that are unrelated to a spe-cifi c context, while destination image encom-passes the tourists’ view of the place and its tourism attractiveness In the case of develop-ing countries, the destination image may be signifi cantly more positive than the more general country image as shown by studies

concep-relating to Nepal (Nadeau et al., 2008) and

Turkey (Campo and Alvarez, 2010)

The process by which image is formed may also be different for the country in general and the destination Image formation may be defi ned as ‘a construction of a mental represen-tation of a destination on the basis of informa-tion cues delivered by the image formation agents and selected by a person’ (Tasci and Gartner, 2007, p 414) Thus, information regarding the place may be obtained from varied sources, and the individual may rely on different information when considering the country from a tourism perspective or from an economic, political or sociological point of view For example, diverse sources of informa-tion, including historical events, culture and traditions, the level of industrialization and the products commercialized as ‘made in’ (Roth and Diamantopoulos, 2009) may lead to a com-posite or stereotyped evaluation of country image In contrast, the destination image may

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be affected to a greater extent by other different

kinds of sources such as photographs, articles

written about the destination and promotional

activities carried out by various tourism

stake-holders Thus, it is paramount that research is

carried out to establish to what extent country

and destination image may be infl uenced by

various information sources

The literature on the image formation process

has been signifi cantly infl uenced by Gunn

(1972) and his pioneering dual theory that

establishes that image is developed both

inter-nally, through experience and visitation, and

externally, through information sources

received Gunn also distinguishes between the

induced image, created through promotional

efforts, and the organic one, resulting from

news items and other non-paid for sources

Based on this distinction, Gartner (1993) states

that the image formation process is based on a

continuum in which sources (or agents, using

Gartner’s terminology) can be classifi ed into

eight different levels according to their degree

of autonomy from and control by marketers

The fi rst type of induced agents includes

tra-ditional paid sources such as TV and print ads

Information from tour operators, product

endorsements and other more autonomous

sources follow News, information received

from friends and relatives, and fi nally

visita-tion are at the other end of this continuum

Following this literature, several studies

differentiate between the controllable and

un-controllable sources of information and

deter-mine that the less controllable sources may

be more effective due to their higher credibility

(McCartney et al., 2008) Specifi cally, Butler

(1990, cited in Kim and Richardson, 2003)

states that the information transmitted through

news and movies has a greater effect on the

destination image formation due to its more

trustworthy nature News items and popular

culture may portray places and have a signifi

-cant impact on how these destinations are

viewed, especially due to their often high level

of accessibility and reach (Kim and

Richard-son, 2003) Similarly, mass media is also seen

as an important information source, as it not

only transmits but also interprets the

informa-tion, thus having a strong infl uence in the

for-mation of perceptions (Hall, 2002), including

destinations A signifi cant relationship between

the affective destination image and the type of information source has also been found in pre-vious research (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999)

In lieu of previous experience at the tion, visual information regarding the place is thought to be particularly effective in project-ing images as it provides a vicarious experi-ence of tourism services that are intangible in nature As image is formed by cues, visual pro-motional material is important to communi-cate the dimensions of the destination to an individual who has not visited the place before (Tasci and Gartner, 2007) Thus, advertising and other ways of conveying visual informa-tion are important for marketers as these sources allow them to select various attributes and aspects of the place in order to induce a particular image (Tasci, 2009) However, these promotional efforts may be undermined by autonomous sources such as movies or TV news items that may also portray visual infor-mation and transmit aspects of the destination out of the control of the marketer (Tasci, 2009).Particularly in the case of Turkey, the inter-national press has contributed to create a nega-tive image through its coverage of the political problems in the country, especially those related to the Kurdish and Armenian minori-ties (Manço, 1999) Historical, geographic and political factors have also infl uenced the views regarding this country For example, Boria (2006) states that the predominantly unfavor-able image that the Europeans hold of Turkey

destina-is based on hdestina-istorical reasons, which include the crusades and the incursions of the Otto-mans in European territory On the other hand, Turkey’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East has resulted in its fre-quently being perceived as similar to neigh-boring countries such as Iran, Iraq and Syria (Öztürkmen, 2005) Wars and terrorism in the region have also contributed to the poor perceptions regarding Turkey (Sönmez and Sirakaya, 2002) Thus, studies carried out from the tourism perspective (Sönmez and Sirakaya,

2002; Tasci et al., 2007) or within the political

and historical context (Manço, 1999; Fuller, 2004; Boria, 2006; Hülsse, 2006) have remarked

on the mainly negative image of Turkey

Despite these unfavorable results regarding Turkey’s image obtained in previous studies, its tourism destination image may be very

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different Recent studies have determined that

initial negative perceptions of Turkey are

changed through the tourists’ visitation of the

country (Alvarez et al., 2009) Its wealth of

his-torical, cultural and natural resources, which

are important attractions for tourists, may

explain this fi nding Furthermore, in relation

to Turkey, there seems to exist a signifi cant

dif-ference between its negative image from the

political point of view and its tourism

destina-tion image (Öztürkmen, 2005; Alvarez and

Korzay, 2008) Therefore, the case of Turkey

represents an interesting area of investigation

to evaluate the differences between country

image and destination image

Following these studies, the present research

aims to analyze the infl uence of audio-visual

sources of information that are used for

pro-motional objectives and are controllable by the

marketer versus that of the uncontrollable

mass media information broadcasted by the

international press within the context of Turkey

The effect of the information received is

assessed for both the country and the

destina-tion image as two separate constructs

Further-more, the impact of these sources on the

intention to visit and preference for the

desti-nation is also considered

METHODS

The research is based on the use of an

experi-ment in line with the studies of Kim and

Rich-ardson (2003) and Tasci et al (2007) in order to

compare the infl uence of controllable versus

uncontrollable sources of information on the

image of Turkey as a country and as a tourism

destination The use of experimental

metho-dology was deemed to be appropriate in

order to establish causal relationships and to

obtain a more comprehensive understanding

of the image formation process (Sönmez and

Sirakaya, 2002) With this in mind, the data

were collected at two points in time, using

a pre- and post-experimental design with a

control group

In order to obtain a relatively homogeneous

sample and eliminate random sources of error,

the research was conducted using

undergradu-ate tourism students in one of the main

univer-sities in Spain as subjects Homogeneous

samples, such as those supplied by students,

have been found to be suitable for theory building studies as random sources of error

may be eliminated (Calder et al., 1981; Burnett

and Dunne, 1986) Therefore, the input of the students was obtained in class during both phases of the research, and the participants were offered a small academic incentive to increase the response rate In addition, in order

to further reduce the heterogeneity of the sample, only students of Spanish nationality and those who had not previously visited Turkey were included as subjects in the research, thus increasing the internal validity

of the experiment

The data were collected through a survey in which the respondents were required to evalu-ate the image of Turkey as a country and as a tourism destination and to determine their intention to visit it In the fi rst phase of the research carried out in the spring of 2008, a total of 198 questionnaires were obtained from the undergraduate tourism students, repre-senting approximately 70% of all those enrolled

in the three-year tourism program at the versity where the investigation was completed The other 30% includes those students who are either not Spanish nationals or who have visited Turkey in the past In the second stage, which was carried out six weeks after the fi rst one to minimize recollection, the same subjects were assigned to three different groups While two of the groups were exposed to the research stimuli before being requested to complete the same questionnaire again, the third one was used for control purposes and only fi lled in the survey In this second phase, 180 question-naires were obtained, of which 157 were fi lled

uni-by those students who had also participated in the fi rst stage At both points in time, the stu-dents were identifi ed in the surveys to compare the responses before and after the exposure to the stimuli

Two stimuli were selected in order to include both controllable and uncontrollable sources of information for comparison purposes As part

of the marketing communication sources that can be controlled for, a promotional video of Turkey as a tourism destination produced by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism was used This audio-visual material was being utilized at the time of the research to promote Turkey in Spanish and other foreign television

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channels and had successfully been used in the

study of Tasci et al (2007) It included an

over-view of the natural and cultural attractions of

Turkey and its tourism resources On the other

hand, as part of the uncontrollable information

sources, the researchers selected a news item

about Turkey that had previously been emitted

on Spanish television The news video was

chosen after reviewing the audio-visual items

on Turkey available on the websites of the

main Spanish press channels on the month

before the research The chosen piece explained

in a neutral and objective tone the political

situation of Turkey and the polarization of the

Turkish society due to the ban to use

heads-carves in universities Both of the videos used

as stimuli were of comparable length in order

to ensure that all the respondents were required

similar processing effort.1 Similarly, the

employment of a single audio-visual format to

convey two different sources, controllable and

uncontrollable, was based on the need to use a

comparable medium Therefore, instead of

contrasting different sources in varied formats

(see Gartner, 1993, for a list and a detailed

description of the characteristics of diverse

sources), a single one was preferred Further

research may build on the fi ndings of the

current study by comparing several

controlla-ble and uncontrollacontrolla-ble sources that use

differ-ent media in a more comprehensive fashion

Given the dynamic nature of images, and the

fact that tourists may review their opinions

regarding the country and the destination after visitation or when exposed to further informa-tion (Martin and Eroglu, 1993; Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Kim and Richardson, 2003;

Alvarez et al., 2009), only those respondents

who had not previously visited Turkey were kept as study subjects Furthermore, the researchers attempted to control the level of knowledge through the inclusion of questions

in the survey in which the respondents were asked to evaluate their knowledge regarding historical, cultural, political, economic and general aspects of the country together with their level of information regarding tourism resources Table 1 summarizes the descriptive statistics on these questions, and determines that the level of knowledge of the respondents about Turkey is quite low, especially concern-ing economic and political issues

Measurement and scales

The country image and destination image constructs were measured using a multi-dimensional perspective to include cognitive, affective and overall dimensions The research-ers went through an extensive scale develop-ment process where a comprehensive listing

of items from existing scales (Han, 1989, 1990; Martin and Eroglu, 1993; Baloglu and Brinberg, 1997; Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Altınbas¸ ak, 2004; Beerli and Martín, 2004;

Passow et al., 2005; Lin et al., 2007; Tasci et al.,

2007) were collected, tested and refi ned through the use of exploratory and confi rmatory factor analysis into more parsimonious measures.2

1 The videos used can be accessed through the following

links: news item — http://www.elpais.com/videos/

internacional/Turquia/levanta/prohibicion/velo/

universidades/elpvidint/20080207elpepuint_5/Ves/;

and promotional video — http://www.kultur.gov.tr/

EN/belge/2-21524/eski2yeni.html.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics on the level of knowledge regarding Turkey

a 1 = completely unknowledgeable; 7 = completely knowledgeable.

2 These analyses are not included in the current paper, but can be provided to those interested in greater detail upon request.

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These analyses yielded a cognitive country

and destination image component measured

through 12 and 9 items respectively and

represented by four different dimensions (refer

to Table 2) The cognitive country image is

measured by the factors ‘notoriety and

reputa-tion’, ‘security’, ‘level of development’ and

‘respect for liberties’ The cognitive destination

image also encompasses four dimensions:

‘notoriety of the destination’, ‘cultural tions’, ‘tourism services’ and ‘entertainment and leisure’ Similarly, the affective country and destination image measures include a single dimension with six and fi ve items respectively In order to measure the stability

attrac-of the scales, the data were collected in two

Table 2 Scales used in the research

Cognitive country image: indicate the level of your

agreement to the following statements

agreement level)

Cognitive destination image: indicate the level of

your agreement to the following statements

agreement level)Notoriety and reputation (alpha fi rst period = 0.56;

period = 0.79)

second period = 0.81)

Turkey is an economically developed country

Turkey is a technologically developed country

second period = 0.84)

Turkey is a country that respects human rights

Turkey is a country that respects international

Notoriety of the destination (alpha fi rst

Entertainment and leisure (alpha fi rst

In Turkey, there are a variety of leisure and

There are good shopping alternatives in Turkey

Affective country image: seven-point semantic

differential scale (alpha fi rst period = 0.87;

Affective destination image: seven-point semantic

differential scale (alpha fi rst period = 0.86;

Does not inspire me confi dence — inspires me

Overall country image: in general, my opinion of

Turkey as a country is totally negative — totally

positive (seven-point scale)

Overall destination image: in general, my opinion of

Turkey as a destination is totally negative — totally positive (seven-point scale)

CC, cognitive country image; DC, cognitive destination image; CA, affective country image; DA, affective destination image.

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points in time referred to as fi rst period and

second period in which the factor analyses

obtained similar results and dimensions The

internal consistency of the scales was

determined through the Cronbach’s alpha coeffi

-cient, which yielded fi gures greater or equal to

0.70 for all the factors except country and

des-tination notoriety A description of the factors

and Cronbach’s alpha for both periods is

pro-vided in Table 2

Although the cognitive dimensions of

country image and destination image were

measured through the use of 7-point

Likert-type scales for the affective components, a

semantic differential format attempting to

evaluate the respondents’ opinion on

oppos-ing attributes of the country/destination was

preferred The use of semantic differential

scales is suggested to be more appropriate to

measure feelings and emotions (Han, 1989;

Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Beerli and

Martín, 2004) In addition, facial expressions

ranging from anger to happiness ☺ were

used instead of traditional numerical anchors

in order to better capture emotions following

the suggestion of Guodenough et al (1999)

Overall evaluations of the country and

desti-nation image were captured through a 7-point

semantic differential scale by means of the

following question: ‘In general, my opinion

about Turkey as a country (as a tourism

desti-nation) is negative positive’

Finally, the research also encompassed a

conative component to assess the intention of

the respondents to visit Turkey Three

ques-tions were used and measured using a

seven-point Likert-type scale: ‘I intend to visit Turkey

in the near future’, ‘I would choose Turkey

as the destination for my next holiday’ and

‘I would prefer to visit Turkey as opposed

to other similar destinations’

FINDINGS

To analyze the impact of controllable and

uncontrollable information sources on the

image of Turkey as a country and as a tourism

destination, paired samples t-tests were

per-formed Through these analyses, the means

obtained in the fi rst period (before the

provi-sion of the stimuli) were compared with those

of the second phase of the research (after the

administration of the stimuli) For comparison purposes, the respondents were divided into three different segments in the second stage of the study; group A was exposed to the uncon-trollable information source (TV news item), group B viewed the promotional tourism video (controllable information source) and group C did not receive any stimuli, and thus acted as the control group

The results determine that the respondent’s evaluation of their level of knowledge regard-ing Turkey increases after their exposure to the information provided (Table 3), although the change is different depending on the stimuli administered Those individuals who watched the promotional video consider themselves

better informed about the country (p = 0.01)

and its tourism attractions (p = 0.001) However,

those respondents who were exposed to the TV news item believe themselves to be more

knowledgeable about the country (p = 0.02) but

not about its tourism aspects No signifi cant differences were observed in the control group.For the country and destination image analyses, the assessment of the means was performed for each factor separately after obtaining the average of all the items included under each dimension Table 4 shows the results of the comparison between the pre- and post-stimuli exposure for each of the segments Independently of the group, Turkey is evalu-ated more positively as a tourism destination than as a country For those who were exposed

to the TV news item, the evaluations of the second period regarding Turkey’s country image (cognitive, affective and overall) do not change signifi cantly In relation to the destina-tion image, despite the fact that the percep-tions regarding the notoriety of Turkey as a tourism destination, the affective destination image and the overall destination image become slightly less positive, the signifi cance

of this change is low (p < 0.10) In contrast, the

evaluation of the tourism services in the country signifi cantly diminishes after expo-

sure to the news stimulus (p = 0.03) Similarly,

the intention to visit and the preference for the destination are not signifi cantly affected by the news stimulus

For those respondents who viewed the motional video (group B), the country image becomes signifi cantly more positive after being

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= 0.00) Interestingly, the promotional video stimulus does not signifi cantly infl uence the destination image including its cognitive and affective components However, for this group, the preference for Turkey as opposed to other similar tourism destinations increases after

viewing the promotional video (p = 0.01).

There is no signifi cant change between the evaluations of the control group in the second stage of the research in comparison to those made during the fi rst period, except for the entertainment and leisure factor which

decreases slightly (p = 0.01), and the intention

to choose Turkey for the next holidays

signifi cance level is low at p = 0.08), ment’ dimension of the destination (p = 0.03),

‘entertain-affective destination image (p = 0.04) and

pref-erence for Turkey as opposed to other similar

tourism destinations (p = 0.07).

Similarly, those respondents who have viewed the promotional video show more pos-itive perceptions regarding Turkey as a desti-nation, both in its cognitive (including all dimensions of ‘notoriety of the destination’,

‘cultural attractions’, ‘tourism services’ and

‘entertainment’), affective and overall nents than those individuals belonging to the control group These disparities are signifi cant

compo-at the 95% confi dence level (p < 0.05) tionally, there are signifi cant differences between these two groups in relation to the preference for Turkey as a tourism destination

Addi-(p = 0.01), with the evaluation of those exposed

to the promotional stimulus more positive than those in the control group In contrast, no differences regarding the country image (cog-nitive, affective and overall components) are

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observed between those respondents who

watched the promotional video and those who

were included in the control group

Finally, the analysis of the differences

between the two experimental groups, A and

B, show that the assessments of those who

viewed the promotional video are signifi cantly

higher than those of group A (exposed to the

news item), especially in relation to the overall

country image (p = 0.09), notoriety of the

des-tination (p = 0.00) and the perception regarding

cultural attractions (p = 0.02) No signifi cant

differences were observed between these two

groups in the other variables

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

This study investigates the effect of

controlla-ble and uncontrollacontrolla-ble stimuli on the country

and destination image of Turkey as a

develop-ing country Accorddevelop-ing to the fi nddevelop-ings, the

respondents evaluate Turkey as a tourism

des-tination more positively than as a country

These results support the conclusions of

Echtner (2002) and Öztürkmen (2005) who

state that individuals may perceive developing

countries more negatively in a general,

eco-nomic, political and social context as opposed

to a tourism destination viewpoint Therefore,

from an academic perspective, the research

establishes the need to consider the concept of

country image as different from that of

desti-nation image in future investigations This is

also the conclusion of Campo and Alvarez

(2010) who advocate for the need to carry out

more comprehensive studies to fully

under-stand these two constructs, and to determine

which factors affect each of these varied images

Furthermore, the research examines the

dif-ference between controllable and

uncontrolla-ble sources of information in terms of their

infl uence on the country and destination

image The investigation is based on an

experi-ment in which the subjects were either exposed

to two different stimuli, namely a promotional

tourism video and a TV news audiovisual

item, or part of the control group The fi ndings

differ from those obtained by Butler (1990,

cited in Kim and Richardson, 2003) and Martin

and Eroglu (1993) regarding the greater infl

u-ence of uncontrollable sources of information

on the tourism destination In the current

study, the audio-visual promotional tion shows a greater infl uence both on the country and on the destination image in com-parison with the uncontrollable TV news item Specifi cally, the promotional information posi-tively and signifi cantly affects the perceptions regarding the notoriety of the country, its level

informa-of security and its respect for liberties In tion, the tourism video stimulus is found to change the country’s affective image, that is, the feelings and emotions that the individual bears toward Turkey as well as the conative image represented by the preference for Turkey

addi-as opposed to other competing tourism nations Similarly, the comparisons between the groups also establish that the controllable information has a strong positive effect on the tourism destination image Thus, for those exposed to the promotional video, the knowl-edge, opinions, feelings and preference for Turkey as a tourism destination improve sig-nifi cantly In contrast, the uncontrollable infor-mation is observed to negatively affect the perceptions of Turkey as a tourism destination, especially in relation to tourism services, although this infl uence is weaker

desti-The results of the study also confi rm that image formation is a dynamic process that is affected by the information received by the consumer From the perspective of destination management, the research establishes the importance of audio-visual information as a way of promoting the country and the tourism destination This promotional medium is the key since it increases the information level of potential tourists regarding the country and the destination’s attractions, and positively infl uences the country image and destination preference On the other hand, the uncontrol-lable sources of information are found to have

a lower impact, which is positive for countries such as Turkey that are often negatively refl ected in the international news

However, the lower effect of the lable source, represented by the news item, in contrast to the promotional information, may

uncontrol-be explained by the choice of the stimuli in the research The news piece was selected in the study to be relatively neutral, describing the situation in Turkey and the Turkish society

On the other hand, the literature has mined that the portrayal of dramatic events

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such as terrorism, natural disasters and other

violent occurrences may have a much greater

impact on the formation of the image of a place

(Tasci and Gartner, 2007) Therefore, to

ascer-tain the infl uence of news and other

uncontrol-lable sources of information on the image of a

destination or a country, more detailed

inves-tigations need to be carried out that establish

how the nature of the news communicated

may affect the perceptions about the place

The research uses an experimental design

where the variability of the sample and other

infl uencing factors were controlled for

Espe-cially, the knowledge of the respondents

regarding Turkey was measured, as image can

be infl uenced by access to information In this

way, the results obtained are more conclusive

and have a greater internal validity However,

in order to generalize the fi ndings to other

countries and contexts with different value

systems, further investigations are required

Furthermore, future research could analyze the

impact of previous knowledge on the effect of

the exposure to additional information about

the country or the destination

The study is based on audio-visual mass

media to convey information to a sample of

young people The recent dramatic increase of

other information vehicles, such as social

media, which is also very powerful as a way

of transmitting electronic word of mouth,

could be an interesting area of investigation

Therefore, future research could analyze the

impact of information provided through these

media on the two image concepts, country and

destination

For a successful management of the

coun-try’s image, it is important to distinguish

between the destination and the country image

as stated by Stepchenkova and Morrison (2008)

who remark on the need to determine ‘whether

these two images (destination and country)

can be separated in the minds of potential

trav-elers’ (p 559) The current study establishes

the varied effect of the information sources

analyzed on the two image constructs

Addi-tionally, the research concludes that

promo-tional audio-visual information may be used to

positively infl uence not only the perceptions

regarding the place as a tourism destination,

but also those related to other more general

aspects of the country Further research needs

to investigate in more detail the extent to which marketing efforts aimed at creating a more positive destination image may also affect the general image of the country, thus bringing additional potential benefi ts in terms of trade, international politics and foreign invest-ment Therefore, future studies should address the question of how the tourists’ experience and the use of tourism promotional material may improve the general perceptions that indi-viduals hold about that country This is a potential area of research that may combine the tourism and international marketing literature

Lastly, the study concludes that the tion received infl uences in the short term the knowledge, beliefs and feelings that a person holds about a country However, in order for the information obtained to be assimilated and

informa-to affect the individual’s behavior, the edge received through the stimuli needs to be retained and stored in the memory (Ajzen and Seyton, 1999) Consequently, future research should take a more long-term perspective and investigate how different types of information provided in a continuous fashion may result in more stable country and destination image changes

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The Challenges of Marketing Tourism

Destinations in the Central African

Subregion: the Cameroon Example

Albert Nsom Kimbu*

University of Surrey, School of Hospitality and Tourism, Faculty of Management and Law, Guildford,Surrey, UK

ABSTRACT

During the last decade, sub‐Saharan Africa

has consistently posted one of the highest

tourism growth rates averaging

approximately 6% per annum between 2007

and 2010 However, not all countries have

proﬁted from this growth Countries in the

Central African subregion, even though

recognized internationally as potential hot

spots for sustainable ecotourism

development, are still lagging behind those

located in Western, Eastern and Southern

Africa This paper identiﬁes some challenges

inhibiting the development and marketing

tourism destinations in the Central African

subregion in general and Cameroon in

particular and proposes some concise

measures whose implementation would help

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Received 26 August 2010; Revised 7 February 2011; Accepted

17 April 2011

Keywords:Cameroon; tourism industry

prioritization; destination marketing;

destination branding

INTRODUCTION

Although sub‐Saharan Africa has been

faring better than many other regions in

terms of tourism growth during the

last ﬁve years, with average growth rates of+12% in 2006 and +6% between 2007 and 2010(UNWTO,2008a, 2010a, 2011), not all countries inthe region have proﬁted from this growth.Countries in the Central African subregion,although experiencing increased visitor numbers,are still lagging behind countries located inEastern and Southern Africa This is mainly due

to their inability to position, properly promoteand market themselves as interesting cultural andnature/ecotourism destinations in the tourist‐generating countries (Shackley, 2006) It is onlyvery recently that the governments of somecountries in the Central African subregion begancommitting considerable ﬁnancial resources to-wards developing the sector, with the govern-ments of Cameroon and Gabon going as far asemploying specialists in destination marketingand branding to come up with blueprints for themarketing and branding of these destinations.Tourism marketing and development have to bedone in a sustainable manner and accompanied

by developments in other sectors of the economyand the general infrastructure base of the desti-nation environments This, combined with thenecessary service infrastructure or enabling en-vironment of tourism, guarantees the touristdestination experience (Murphy et al., 2000;Khadaroo and Seetanah, 2007) Both have to beavailable before the countries of the CentralAfrican subregion (Cameroon, Chad, CentralAfrican Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic

of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and SaoTome and Principe) could market themselves

as attractive and interesting sustainable nature(and cultural) tourism destinations However,the successful marketing of destinations in thesubregion poses a serious challenge to public andprivate sector stakeholders

*Correspondence to: A N Kimbu, University of Surrey,

School of Hospitality and Tourism, Faculty of

Manage-ment and Law, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK.

E‐mail: a.kimbu@surrey.ac.uk

Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

Published online 24 May 2011 in Wiley Online Library

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The main aim of this paper is to identify

and examine the challenges presently faced

in the marketing of little‐known,

underdevel-oped and underexploited but potentially rich

nature and cultural tourism destinations in

developing countries located in the Central

African subregion in general and Cameroon

in particular, with a view to proffering some

concise measures aimed at addressing and

redressing them

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT AND TOURISM

IN CAMEROON

Whereas West Africa draws travellers because

of its rich historical and cultural heritage and

Eastern and Southern Africa because of its

fascinating wildlife and incomparable

topog-raphy, Central Africa is not only a combination

of both but also goes a step further in that it

adds another dimension, i.e the equatorial

experience, to its portfolio (Kimbu, 2010a) The

central and southern parts of Cameroon and

the Central African Republic as well as Congo,

Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and

Principe and the Democratic Republic of

Congo are all in the heart of the equatorial

rainforest (Congo Basin) and contain some of

the highest concentrations of biological and

endemic species found worldwide (WWF,

2010) This region is also home to some of

the ﬁrst inhabitants of the Congo Basin, the

Pygmies, whose unique culture, customs

and tradition face the threat of extinction

(WWF, 2010)

Located at the crossroads between West

and Central Africa in the Gulf of Guinea

with English and French as the ofﬁcial

lan-guages, Cameroon has a total surface area of

475 442 km2 and had a population of about

19.4 million inhabitants in 2010 (NIS, 2010)

It is just six hours away from continental

Europe and one of Africa’s most peaceful

countries The country has been described as

‘all of Africa in one country’ because of its

geographical, topographical and multicultural

diversity (Figure 1) (Neba, 1999; Government

of Cameroon, 2004; Molua and Lambi, 2007)

Cameroon is home to 300 mammalian species,

849 bird species, 143 reptilian species, close to

200 amphibian species, 542 ﬁsh species and

an estimated 9000 plant species (Stuart et al.,

1990; Vivien, 1991; MINEF et al., 1999) It is inthis regard that in 1997, the World Bank andthe WWF classiﬁed Cameroon as one of the 13countries worldwide with the highest amount

of biological diversity (Graf, 1997) In addition,the 2008 Travel and Tourism CompetitivenessReport (TTCR) ranked Cameroon 15th out of

130 countries in terms of the concentrationand number of total known faunal species butonly 38th in terms of the current level ofecologically sustainable tourism developmentand opportunities (Blanke and Chiesa, 2008)

As of 2005, only 14% of Cameroonian territorywas actually under some form of protection onpaper in the form of national parks, UNESCO‐MAB biosphere reserves, wildlife reserves,wildlife sanctuaries, forest reserves and pro-tected areas (Table 1) In addition, the countryhas a 402‐km coastline with pristine beachesnear the foot of Mount Cameroon in Limbe(South West Region) and at the entrance ofthe equatorial forest around Kribi and Campo

in the South Region (MINTOUR, 2007)

The rich biodiversity and varied topographycoupled with its relative peace and politicalstability when compared with those of itsneighbours makes Cameroon a potential andemerging hot spot for ecologically sustainablenature tourism development (Shackley, 2006).The country’s bilingual character and richand diverse cultural heritage manifested in ablend of colonial and traditional architecture,clothing, masks and statues, cuisine, music,song and dance (Lauber, 1988; Chilver andRöschenthaler, 2002), together with the friend-liness of the people, are primary factors thatcould facilitate the development of a culturaltourism industry Unfortunately, this is pres-ently not the case Available data clearlyindicate that before 2010, tourists’ arrivals intothe country had been virtually stagnating oreven declining (Figure 2)

In 2006, about 40% of visitors to Cameroonundertook business, conferences, meetings andevent‐related trips, with about 50% statingvisiting the country for recreational and leisurepurposes, such as game hunting, safaris andecotourism/nature tourism trips (EMG, 2008).More than 50% of the visitors came fromthe Central African Economic and MonetaryCommunity countries followed by Frenchvisitors (Figure 2)

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Figure 1 Transport and tourism map of Cameroon Source: Cameroon Tourism Information Corporation, 2007.

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The low positions occupied by Cameroon

and other neighbouring countries in the 2008

TTCR clearly indicated that Cameroon and

the subregion’s full potentials as interesting

nature and cultural tourism destinations still

have to be tapped, harnessed and developed in

conjunction with other accompanying service

infrastructure like transport, accommodation

and human resources (Blanke and Chiesa,

2008) It clearly elucidated the fact that there

were many obstacles hindering the industry’s

development and growth in Cameroon One of

these was the inexistence of a sustainable

tourism marketing framework aimed at

pro-moting and marketing tourism in the country

and in the tourist‐generating markets

METHODS

With Cameroon as a case study, the main

objective of this study was to determine the

principal challenges of marketing destinations

in the Central African subregion

Cameroon is used as a case study in this

paper because, with the exception of Gabon, it

is the only other country in Central Africa that

has made some advances in developing its

tourism industry and presently receives the

highest number of international visitors to the

subregion when compared with the other

countries (Expansion Strategies Inc., 2002;

EMG, 2008; UNWTO, 2010b) That

notwith-standing, Cameroon still receives 50% less

visitors (572 728 visitors in 2010), and tourism

contributes less than 2% to its gross domestic

product (GDP) when compared with Kenya or

Botswana, for example, where tourism is thesecond highest foreign exchange earner con-tributing as much as +6% (MINTOUR, 2010;UNWTO, 2010b) A key contributor to suc-cessful tourism growth in Botswana or Kenya,for example, can be attributed to the existence

of a tourism destination marketing frameworkthat ensures that regular promotion andmarketing campaigns are carried out in thetourist‐generating markets (Blanke and Chiesa,2009) However, Cameroon’s tourism industryvirtually had no coordinated tourism promo-tion and marketing strategy in place, and therewas a dearth of academic research on this topic(Kimbu, 2010a)

The existence of very limited published datacoupled with the desire to fully comprehendthe situation in Cameroon meant that a mixedresearch strategy was adopted for this study.This enabled the researcher to get answers toboth conﬁrmatory and exploratory questionsand to verify and generate theory in the samestudy (Teddlie and Tashakori, 1998) Datacollection was by way of a questionnaire survey,semi‐structured interviews and observation.Primary data were collected during aﬁeld trip

to Cameroon in 2009

A tourist satisfaction survey (in the form of aquestionnaire) was conducted with 100 visitorswho had come to the end of their stay in thecountry between the months of January andFebruary 2009 The aim was to obtain informa-tion from a representative selection of touristsabout what they thought about tourism market-ing and management in Cameroon These werethen analysed (with the aid of theSPSSsoftware,SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and patternsextracted These then formed the basis of thequestions for semi‐structured interviews Ofthe 100 respondents, 53% were men, and 47%were women, and the average age was 49 years;67% of the survey respondents were fromWestern Europe, 22% from North America, 6%from Eastern Europe, 3% from Asia and 2%from Africa and the Middle East

A purposive, quota‐based snowball pling method, i.e non‐probability sampling,was used to select interviewees Consequently,the sample number was small It is worthnoting that, although it could be erroneous

sam-to claim that non‐probability sampling resultsare representative of a wider population,

Table 1 National parks, reserves and protected

Source: Ministry of Tourism (MINTOUR, 2007).

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their use in this study was not to achieve

representativeness but to gain a deeper insight

into the interviewees’ views about tourism

destination marketing in Cameroon Fifteen

semi‐structured interviews were therefore

con-ducted with ten resident tour operators and

ﬁve ofﬁcials of Cameroon’s tourism ministry

who were directly responsible for tourism

promotion and marketing in the country All

interviews were conducted at their

conveni-ence and in their ofﬁces

Observation, which is widely used to studypeople’s behaviour, involves ‘the researcherimmersing herself or himself in a researchsetting and systematically observing dimen-sions of that setting, interactions, relationships,actions, events and so on, within it’ (Mason,

2002, p 60) Observation permitted the tion of contextual information about thedimensions of tourism promotion and market-ing presently being undertaken in Cameroon(such as the existence and quality of visitor

collec-0 50 100 150 200 250 300

a

b

Figure 2 (a) Arrival of non‐resident visitors in hotels and similar establishment to Cameroon from 2000 to

2006 Source: UNWTO, 2005; UNWTO, 2008b (b) Arrival of international visitors to Cameroon by country ofresidence in 2005 Source: MINTOUR, 2007

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information centres in existing and potential

tourism attractions) as these play an important

role in determining the quality of the holiday

experience

Although the main focus of the

question-naire survey and interviews was related to

subjects dealing with tourism promotion and

marketing, other issues that could have an

impact on the overall development and

indi-rectly contribute to successful marketing of

Cameroon were also addressed Consequently,

the results of a thematic content analysis of the

interview data combined with the

question-naire survey results andﬁeld observation notes

revealed some major challenges that were

hampering the marketing of Cameroon as an

attractive tourism destination

CHALLENGES TO SUCCESSFUL TOURISM

MARKETING IN CAMEROON

The adoption of new marketing strategies,

combined with hard and soft infrastructural

developments, political, socio‐economic and

environmental changes, and constantly

addres-sing stakeholders concerns are some of the

factors inﬂuencing the successful marketing

of destinations In Cameroon, some of the

main challenges faced in marketing the country

as a tourism destination include the non‐

prioritization of the tourism industry by the

government, which has led to the absence of

a destination management/marketing

orga-nization or a National Tourism Ofﬁce (NTO)

to draw up appropriate and practically

imple-mentable marketing plans, develop a branding

and positioning strategy and strategize the role

of information and communication technology

(ICT) in tourism marketing

NON‐PRIORITIZATION OF THE TRAVEL

AND TOURISM INDUSTRY BY

THE GOVERNMENT

The travel and tourism industry in Cameroon

is ‘electorally weak’, with no clearly deﬁned

industry leadership, and lacks any form of

patronage Until very recently, the tourism

industry was not considered as a very important

income‐generating sector This is substantiated

by the low 122nd position it occupied in the

2008 TTCR in terms of prioritization of the

travel and tourism industry, 98th position interms of travel and tourism trade fair atten-dance, 118th position in terms of the effec-tiveness of marketing and branding and 103rdout of 133 countries examined with regard togovernment expenditure in the travel andtourism industry (Blanke and Chiesa, 2008)

In 2009, the direct travel and tourism try contribution to Cameroon’s GDP wasonly 1.6% and 1.3% respectively of directindustry employment (WTTC, 2008) Thenon‐prioritization of the tourism industry bythe government, in particular, means thatsince its upgrade into a full‐ﬂedged ministry

indus-in 1989, Cameroon’s tourism mindus-inistry to datestill has one of the smallest budgets whencompared with all other ministries in thecountry (MINTOUR, 2010) Due to the limitedﬁnancial resources, neither the Ministry ofTourism nor independent travel operators until

2008 were able to regularly attend internationaltourism fairs that have proven to be veryeffective avenues for networking, destinationmarketing and acquisition of distribution chan-nels This is in stark contrast to other Africancountries with well‐established and developedtourism industries like Kenya, Tanzania,Botswana and Senegal (where the tourismeconomy contributes between 6% and 10% tothe GDP and also employs close to 10% of theworkforce) who have made it a priority to bepresent in the world‐famous travel and tourismfairs of Berlin, London, Paris and Johannesburg

to say the least (Mintel Report, 2007a, 2007b;Blanke and Chiesa, 2009) However, according

to the tourism ministry ofﬁcials interviewed,the ministry’s budget has been steadily increas-ing since the appointment of a new ministerand some qualiﬁed tourism professionals dur-ing the last three years Consequentially, someeffort is now being done towards attendingrenowned travel and tourism trade fairs and,very recently (2008), towards creating aneffective destination brand image of the country(EMG, 2008) The effects are already starting

to be felt as Cameroon received more than half

a million visitors in 2010 and could thus beconsidered as a tourism destination if theUNWTO criteria (of +500 000 visitors) weretaken into consideration (MINTOUR, 2010).According to public and private sector opera-tors, it is hoped that these positive ﬁguresCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

Trang 25

would spur the government into committing

more resources towards developing the

indus-try and addressing important marketing

con-straints The issue of absence of distribution

channels, which was already cited in the 2002

Marketing Plan (Expansion Strategies Inc.,

2002) and reafﬁrmed by private sector

stake-holders during the interviews as a major

handicap, will have to be addressed and

resolved as soon as possible The government

could support this by fully or partially

sponsor-ing local tour operators and travel agents to

international tourism fairs where they can

network and create partnerships with foreign

tour operators in the tourist‐generating regions

Since 2004, Cameroon’s government has

re-peatedly stated its desire to move away from its

overdependence on oil and other extractive

industries by prioritizing the development of

other sectors among which is tourism

(Govern-ment of Cameroon, 2004) However, if the

industry’s development and marketing are not

sped up, Cameroon, in the future, will be

visited mostly by conference participants and

specialist travellers, with the holiday tourists

preferring to go to other destinations like

Gabon, which during the last ﬁve years has

installed an efﬁcient tourism development,

promotion and marketing machinery in place

(Gabontour, 2010)

ABSENCE OF AN NTO AND NON‐

IMPLEMENTATION OF MARKETING PLANS

The creation of an NTO responsible among

others for destination promotion and

market-ing, which tourism ministry ofﬁcials revealed

has been in gestation for the past ﬁve years,

will have to be sped up (Kendemeh, 2009) In

addition, the now defunct regional and

divi-sional tourism boards, which were in existence

up until the late 1980s and were responsible for

coordinating tourism activities in the different

regions, would have to be revamped When

eventually established, the NTO together with

the regional ofﬁces and assisted by local

community stakeholders should be

empow-ered and provided with the necessaryﬁnancial

and technical resources necessary for tourism

destination management and marketing This

will permit the different stakeholders to ‘…

carry out their individual and organisational

responsibilities on a daily basis in efforts torealise the macro‐level vision contained inpolicy, planning and development’ (Ritchieand Crouch, 2003, p 111) The NTO willassume full responsibility for strategy planningand policy and product development, en-gaging in a diverse range of inbound tourismpromotional and marketing activities overseas,

a representation of interests and creation of astrong and uniﬁed voice for the industry TheNTO will also be responsible for setting upinformation collection systems and betterresearch organization, development of infra-structure and support services for home andoverseas visitors (Fyall and Wanhill, 2008)through the construction of visitor informationcentres in the various regions, towns and sites

of interest, as well as overseas in key targetmarkets However, the Ministry of Tourismwould remain the supervisory authority.One of the key tasks of the NTO would be

to come up with a tourism marketing plan forCameroon In this regard, a point of referencecould be the Cameroon Tourism MarketingPlan drawn up and adopted in 2002 (Expan-sion Strategies Inc., 2002), which to dateremains only a theoretical framework Itsrecommendations were never fully implemen-ted,financial constraints being the main factoraccording to officials of the tourism ministry.The plan identified key priority markets inEurope, North America and Asia, which were

to be targeted with public relations andreassurance campaigns under the supervision

of marketing agencies in those markets whoseappointment was envisaged in the plan Italso envisaged the creation of a nationaltourism website as well as the creation ofnew partnerships and the solidiﬁcation ofexisting ones with foreign tour operators Thisplan should be reviewed and revised wherenecessary, and steps should be taken to ensurethat the recommendations made therein beprioritized and implemented in a phase‐by‐phase approach

Decentralization and devolution of powerstogether with empowerment would also en-courage local community participation in allaspects of tourism development (Tosun, 2000;Tosun and Timothy, 2001) Local communitymembers would have a feeling of ownershipand a sense of pride, and this in turn wouldCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

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make them actively participate in developing

and marketing their different regions both

nationally and internationally (Tosun, 2000)

A case in point where active and proﬁtable

community participation in tourism

promo-tion is presently being experienced and that

has drawn the attention of the government is

the biennale Nguon cultural and religious

festival that takes place in the sultanate of

Foumban in the Western region of Cameroon

The festival, which was revived in 1992 after

almost a hundred‐year break, was initially

sponsored and promoted only by the

indi-genes of the sultanate (Mbohou, 2010)

How-ever, due to networking, ﬁnancial and

technical support started coming from private

sector individuals and economic operators

who also used it as a medium to promote

their activities The festival has now become

one of the most recognized cultural festivals in

Cameroon, attracting both a national and

international audience Its popularity

eventu-ally drew the government’s attention, and

according to the organizers, since 2005, the

government has regularly provided some

ﬁnancial assistance towards the organization

of the festival, which has also become one of

the main employment‐generating and income‐

generating avenues to the inhabitants of

Foumban (Yufeh, 2004) In addition, the

government now helps in publicizing the

festival through its embassies abroad and, in

turn, uses the festival to promote Cameroon’s

multicultural richness and diversity It is

hoped that the success of such national

examples would encourage the government

to commit more efforts towards the promotion

and development of the industry

PLACING STRATEGIC EMPHASIS ON THE

ROLE OF ICT IN TOURISM MARKETING

The 2002 Tourism Marketing Plan clearly

emphasized the need to create a national

tourism website as well as take advantage

of ICTs, especially the Internet, in promoting

and marketing Cameroon’s tourism industry

This is because ICTs, especially the Internet,

through its ever‐increasing globally

distrib-uted infrastructure, have proven to be a

very effective tool for the delivery of

inex-pensive multimedia information, marketing,

promotion, distribution and coordination oftourism (Buhalis, 2008) Many developingcountries, such as Botswana, Kenya andGambia, have recognized this potential anddeveloped a strong Internet presence (at boththe public and private sector levels) to promotetheir tourism products and increase their share

of the competitive international tourism ket (BTO, 2008; KTB, 2011; GTA, 2011).However, this is not the case with Cameroonand other countries in the Central Africansubregion with the exception of Gabon, which,

mar-in 2008, established an NTO and an up‐to‐dateWeb portal for tourism (Gabontour, 2010) Amajority of the survey respondents (75%)deplored the absence of an NTO and Webportal, lack of well‐developed websites by localtour operators and the general absence of up‐to‐date and concise information about Cameroon

on the World Wide Web This is a serioussetback when consideration is given to the factthat according to IPK International’s EuropeanTravel Monitor for 2006, 45% of Europeanoutbound travellers used the Internet as theirmain source of information, whereas only 20%used travel agencies and 17% used friends/relatives

Considering the relatively inexpensive nature

of setting up and delivering multimedia mation through the Internet and mindful of thecountry’s level of ICT developments, priority

infor-in the short term would be to maximize the use

of the Internet as a tourism promotion andeducational tool that will provide up‐to‐dateinformation about the country The creation of anational website and Internet portal (that isnowadays widely acknowledged as a veryimportant requirement for any country want-ing to develop its tourism industry), which is

in the development stage, should be itized in Cameroon This site/portal willenable a much wider audience and potentialvisitors to be reached, which otherwise would

prior-be difﬁcult to reach through public relationscampaigns and trade fair attendances alone

It will also provide information about thecountry’s tourism products and serve as anavenue to counter and respond to anynegative discussions and publicity about thecountry that might arise In addition, touroperators should be encouraged to upgradeand/or create qualitative content‐rich websitesCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

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for their companies An examination of some

of the websites of some operators with an

Internet presence revealed that they were still

at the very elementary stage of ICT

develop-ment if the model of Internet Commerce

Adoption (eMICA) frequently used to

deter-mine the level of ICT development in the

tourism industry was taken into consideration

(Burgess and Cooper, 2000) Services provided

on the sites examined were still very

elemen-tary, and only basic company information was

displayed In some cases, basic in‐country

travel and tourism information was lacking,

and existing information was found to be out

of date and displayed on pages whose content,

presentation and graphics left much to be

desired That notwithstanding, there was a

general agreement among public and private

sector stakeholders on the urgency and need

to adopt ICTs especially the Internet as a

tourism promotion and sensitization tool

Meetings and workshops that are being

organized now by the government, albeit

irregularly, would have to become a regular

feature for public and private sector tourism

operators The focus of these workshops

would be to educate participants on the

necessity, effects and advantages of

incorpo-rating ICT in tourism marketing, with

refer-ences being drawn from other African

countries that have successfully applied it to

their tourism industries Their Web pages

could all be linked to the portal of the NTO

when it eventually goes online A strong

Internet presence will help in making them

remain competitive in this highly demanding

and competitive industry

CAMEROON BRAND STRATEGY

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

In sub‐Saharan Africa, safari tourism

immedi-ately comes to mind when Tanzania or Kenya

are mentioned In the same vein, winter sun

and white sandy beaches come to mind at the

mention of Senegal and Gambia (Kimbu,

2010b) This is what makes them unique Apart

from football, almost no particularly poignant

image(s) is conjured in people’s minds at the

mention of Cameroon In spite of its almost

unique advantage of being‘all of Africa in one

country’ in terms of landscape, biodiversity

and culture (Kimbu, 2010b), Cameroon, until

2008, had not done anything to project itself onthe international market by creating andfostering its own familiar, distinct and uniquebrand This was in spite of Aaker’s (1991)salient observation that‘people will often buy

a familiar brand because they are comfortablewith the familiar’ (p 19)

Nation branding is a complex procedureinvolving many stages and various stake-holders from government through tour opera-tors to local communities whose views all have

to be taken into consideration when coming upwith the concept of national identity (Hall,2004) In the case of Cameroon, the processshould begin with identifying what makes itunique preceded by the sensitization of allstakeholders on the raison d’être and impor-tance of creating this brand and what theirinvolvement will be This uniqueness will formthe basis of the brand, and it will berepresented by a logo to be created This logoshould encapsulate some of the main qualities

of the country

Parallel to the designation of a logo should

be the appointment of an ofﬁcial(s) sible for developing and managing the brandand coordinating relations with all thestakeholders as well as the designationbrand guardians/promoters Brand promot-ers should be respected members of societywith enough political clout and leveragewhose main role will be to encourage thevarious stakeholders to adopt and use thisnewly created brand in the various sectors

respon-of the economy and at the internationalstage The institution of brand promoterswill provide the industry with the neces-sary patronage that it presently lacks Atthe same time, brand associates (whichcould be government ministries, embassiesand corporations) with strong national andinternational presence would have to besorted They will be encouraged to incorpo-rate the value of the Cameroon brand intheir marketing and publicity programmes(Kotler and Gertner, 2004) Since branding isabout promising that the industry’s offer-ings will create and deliver a certain level

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(Kotler and Pfoertsch, 2006) Therefore, so

that the quality and the effective utilization

of the brand can be guaranteed as well as

the misuse of the Cameroon brand name

be avoided, it will be advisable to outline

some basic guidelines to the various

stake-holders on how to use the brand Emphasis

here will be placed on its role and

applica-tion in marketing and communicaapplica-tions, as

well as on technical design speciﬁcations on

how to use the brand in, e.g advertisements,

Internet portals and publications

Conclu-sively, all stakeholders will be called upon

to ensure and guarantee that visitors to

Cameroon actually live the brand experience,

for failure to live this experience will lead

to negative publicity from the visitors and

hence destroy the image of the country To

constantly guarantee this unique experience,

resource sustainability and visitor

satisfac-tion, all stakeholders dealing directly and

indirectly with visitors from travel agents

and operators through embassy staff;

immi-gration, police and custom ofﬁcials to nature

park conservators and tour guides; front

ofﬁce staff in hotels; taxi/cab drivers and

local communities with tourists attractions

will have to be sensitized, conscientized and

constantly monitored in workshops,

semi-nars and conferences on the importance of

maintaining the standards prescribed in the

Cameroon brand The fact that Cameroon’s

government, with the ﬁnancial support of

the Commonwealth Secretariat,

commis-sioned the production of a Cameroon

brand-ing strategy document in 2007 shows that

efforts are currently being made to develop

the industry That notwithstanding, since

the draft report was submitted in 2008, the

implementation of its recommendations has

been slow However, tourism trade fair

attendance (a key recommendation) has been

regular since 2009 Public and private

sec-tor tourism stakeholders now hope that with

the tourism growth witnessed during the

last year, the government (and other

stake-holders) would speed up the

implementa-tion of all the other recommendaimplementa-tions

proposed in the brand strategy as well as

adopt a Tourism Investment Code and devote

more resources towards professionalizing

to their friends only if such ills were redressedand rectified Considering the fact that 90% ofthe questionnaire respondents visited Camer-oon upon recommendation from others, this is aserious issue that has to be addressed by theauthorities responsible if ‘mouth‐to‐mouth’marketing has to continue The presence ofvery few professional institutions dealing withtourism and visitor management meant thatless than 50% of those employed in the traveland tourism sector had any formal training.Most trainings if at all were done in‐houseespecially in the classified hotels It was thusobserved that in classified three‐star and four‐star hotels, the staff were well trained, whereas

in the non‐classified hotels, which actuallyformed the bulk of the accommodation sector,the staff were not properly trained or not eventrained at all As a result, their professionalconduct was bound to cause dissatisfactionamong the visitors This was evident in theresponses of 65% of tourists who lodged inlower‐class and non‐classified hotels Theywere not satisfied with the quality of servicesoffered In addition, it became evident from thediscussions with the tour operators and tourismministry officials that, with the exception of ahandful, more than 80% of the tour operators inthe country were actually ticketing agents whohad strayed into the tourism operation busi-ness As such, they lacked the necessary pro-fessional skills needed in running, coordinatingand managing such operations in an inter-national scale In addition, they also lacked thenecessary collateral security needed beforegoing into partnerships with international touroperators This led to an atmosphere of mistrustbetween the local tour operators and potentialinternational operators who doubted the abilityCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

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of many local operators to manage clients as

well as handleﬁnances following international

norms and standards It is thus no wonder why

in the 2009 TTCR, Cameroon was classed 94th

in terms of the availability of local research and

training facilities and 104th of 134 countries in

terms of the extent of staff training in the

tourism sector, which clearly shows that a lot of

improvements need to be done in this domain

before the country can become competitive

(Blanke and Chiesa, 2009)

With regard to the behaviour of customs and

immigration ofﬁcials and other members of the

public (airport staff, taxi/bus drivers, park

ofﬁcials and hotel staff) who come into direct

contact with tourists, it would be advisable for

the government to institute sensitization

cam-paigns with these groups on how to deal with

foreign visitors In addition, the establishment

of professional training centres for those

work-ing permanently in the travel and tourism

industry should be prioritized A Tourism

Department was opened at the University of

Yaoundé 1 in 2009, and a few other institutions

are already in existence, being managed by

private sector individuals, but lack the

neces-sary technical and ﬁnancial resources for

effective training and management especially

in tourism studies The focus in the curriculum

in most of these establishments is hospitality

management oriented These curricula would

have to be expanded to include other

pro-grammes, such as tourism development,

man-agement and marketing Success in any national

and international marketing campaigns can

only be guaranteed if they are conceived and

run by well‐trained professionals in tourism

marketing and if the feedback from departing

tourists with regard to service quality is

positive If instituted, these measures will

certainly help in attracting more tourists as they

will visit the country knowing that the quality

is in conformity with international standards

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recently, the governments of the subregion in

general and Cameroon in particular have

started realizing the important role the

sustain-able development of tourism resources can play

in the development of their countries as well

as in the attainment of some of the millennium

development goals Consequently, there is now

a gradual investment of capital and humanresources not only aimed to develop theinfrastructure base (transport, security, healthand accommodation) but also geared towardsincreasing the quality and quantity of tourismpromotion and marketing All these elementsdirectly and indirectly contribute in making adestination attractive and, in so doing, generate

a positive tourist experience

Cameroon’s participation in important ism trade fairs of Berlin, Paris, London andJohannesburg has been regular especially since

tour-2009, and the results are already being felt Thisclearly demonstrates that progress is beingmade, albeit slowly For meaningful and effect-ive change that will be beneﬁcial to all stake-holders to be witnessed in Cameroon’s tourismindustry, the government will have to inscribetourism as a key developmental item in itsnational development agenda This prior-itization will be manifested by the creation of

an NTO (that, among others, will assumeresponsibility for destination marketing) andthe institution of a Tourism Development Fund,which have already been proposed but havenot yet been created The NTO, with resourcesfrom the fund, will then assume responsibilityfor the development and implementation of aneffective marketing and branding strategyinvolving the assimilation and use of the latestmethods of marketing and communication likethe World Wide Web in a phase‐by‐phaseapproach, taking into consideration the coun-try’s level of ICT development

In the same vein, the construction andupgrading of hard and soft infrastructurewould have to be promoted and encouraged.Also, employee training and the profession-alization of services in the tourism andhospitality industry and related services wouldhave to be encouraged through the creation ofinstitutions for the training of industry work-ers, improving quality standards and expand-ing the portfolio of courses in already existinginstitutions to cover other important segments

of tourism education However, these changeswill not occur overnight For guaranteed suc-cess, a carefully planned phase‐by‐phase ap-proach will have to be adopted, taking intoconsideration the ﬁnancial and technical re-sources available at any given moment.Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 324–336 (2011)

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It is therefore important to understand the

reasons for this void in Cameroon with a view

to proffering some recommendations

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WTTC 2008 The 2008 Travel and Tourism EconomicResearch: Cameroon World Travel and TourismCouncil: London

WWF 2010 Congo Basin: the green heart of Africa.Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/congo_basin_forests/ (accessed 1February 2011)

Available at: http://www.royaumebamoun.com/fr/bnnews.php?nid=346&vip=0&sites=0&seite=5 (accessed 2 February 2011)

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Charitable Partnerships among Travel

and Tourism Businesses: Perspectives

Emily Fenclova* and Tim Coles

Centre for Sport, Leisure and Tourism Research, University of Exeter Business School, Streatham Court,Rennes Drive, Exeter, UK

ABSTRACT

Responsibility has been advocated as vital

for the future management and governance

of the sustainable tourism destinations,

yet extensive empirical research of speciﬁc

stakeholders is lacking This paper addresses

this knowledge gap by examining corporate

philanthropy practices among low‐fares

airlines An analytical framework is

developed and applied Corporate

philanthropy is practised more widely

than may have been anticipated by the

frills‐adverse, low‐fares business model

For studies of tourism, the paper points to

the need for greater theoretical and

conceptual urgency in research on corporate

social responsibility and corporate

philanthropy if future practical action

at the destination level is to match current

& Sons, Ltd

Received 26 April 2010; Revised 10 February 2011; Accepted

17 April 2011

Keywords:low‐fares airlines; corporate

social responsibility; corporate philanthropy;

cause‐related marketing; tourism

and transport

INTRODUCTION: TOURISM,RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABLEDESTINATIONS

Responsibility has recently emerged as a key

concept in the governance and ment of tourism destinations In an increas-ingly neoliberal world where the state is unwillingand/or unable to regulate travel and tourism,voluntary relationships among stakeholders areconsidered to be vital in mediating sustainabledevelopment in destinations (Mowforthet al., 2007;Frey and George, 2010) Stakeholders play basiccitizenship roles (Coles, 2008), such that their rights

manage-to engage in particular activities are followed by theexpectation that they will behave in a responsiblemanner towards the destination and other stake-holders The beneﬁts of responsibility extendbeyond contributing to the vitality of destinationsand associated product offers For instance, as recentwork on poverty alleviation and empowermentargues (Hall, 2007; Timothy, 2007), through theactivities of various stakeholders acting eitheralone or collaboratively, tourism can be a signiﬁ-cant force in social change It is therefore somewhatsurprising that there has been little extensiveresearch on charity and philanthropy in thetourism sector, how tourism businesses interactwith local communities and citizens in this regard,and how they are embedded in tourism businessmodels and functions

Charitable partnerships can be one of themost positively perceived and most visiblebusiness activities in the society and thecommunity (Brønn and Vrioni, 2001) Commer-cially, corporate philanthropy and cause‐relatedmarketing have become effective means toimprove public image, create better brandvisibility and increase sales (File and Prince,

*Correspondence to: E Fenclova, Centre for Sport, Leisure

and Tourism Research, University of Exeter, Business

School, Streatham Court, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4

4PU, UK.

E ‐mail: e.fenclova@exeter.ac.uk

Int J Tourism Res 13, 337–354 (2011)

Published online 9 June 2011 in Wiley Online Library

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1998; Porter and Kramer, 2002; Pracejus et al.,

2003) For corporations involved with charities,

motives and expectations can vary markedly

both between and within sectors (Jenkins, 2004;

Kotler and Lee, 2004) Individual businesses

may have quite different goals in mind from

their philanthropic activities and diverse

under-standings of how they should be implemented

(Varadarajan and Menon, 1988) The purpose of

this paper is to make theﬁrst examination of the

charity component of corporate social

respon-sibility (CSR) activity among low‐fares airlines

(LFAs) ﬂying to and from the UK The

pro-liferation of the low‐cost, low‐fares business

model in aviation has been one of the most

radical and extensive innovations within travel

and tourism (Franke, 2004; Groß and Schröder,

2007) Not surprisingly, LFAs have divided

opinion regarding the extent to which they

contribute to the sustainable development of

destinations where they exercise their rights to

ﬂy (ELFAA, 2004; Graham and Shaw, 2008)

Missing within this dominant discourse is a

more substantial and nuanced examination of

how LFAs understand their socio‐cultural

re-sponsibilities and, in particular, how these are

manifested through their charitable activities

This paper makes a ﬁrst attempt to ﬁll these

gaps, and it begins by outlining the relationship

between corporate philanthropy and

contem-porary CSR Although philanthropy and CSR

are regularly misperceived as the same thing

(Crane et al., 2008), this is not the case, and there

are several different ways in which businesses

engage in philanthropic activity and with

charities A conceptual framework is

estab-lished on which the subsequent empirical

analysis is based Background on LFAs and

the methodological approach are discussed

prior to the presentation of the mainﬁndings

Although the lean production model of LFAs

may imply a probable difﬁdence towards

charity and philanthropy, its scope and

cover-age are more widespread than may have been

anticipated

CONTEMPORARY CSR AND CORPORATE

PHILANTHROPY

There are almost as many deﬁnitions of CSR as

authors working in the ﬁeld (cf Dahlsrud,

2008) However, in general terms, the concept

of CSR recognizes that corporations have awider range of responsibilities than merely togenerate proﬁts for their investors; rather, theyhave responsibilities to the numerous stake-holders they impact, and they have to acknowl-edge their position in society and localcommunities and on the environment (e.g.Brammer and Pavelin, 2004; CEC, 2006;Freeman and Velamuri, 2008) Likewise, corpo-rate philanthropy is a contested term with itsown debated and sometimes questionably de-ﬁned terminology (e.g Lafferty and Goldsmith,2005; Henderson and Malani, 2008) Corporate–charity partnerships take many forms fromone‐off donations to long‐standing supportand from corporate monetary gifts to dona-tions of staff time and expertise, marketingplatforms and business resources (Varadarajanand Menon, 1988; Campbell et al., 2002;Henderson and Malani, 2008; Peloza et al.,2009) Much like debates about CSR, both pastand current discourse on corporate philan-thropy revolves around whether an ethicalmandate for corporate philanthropy exists andwhat differentiates strategic philanthropy fromaltruistic philanthropy (cf Varadarajan andMenon, 1988; Campbell et al., 2002; Porterand Kramer, 2002; Peloza et al., 2009) Somecommentators (e.g Wright, 2001; Friedmanand McGarvie, 2003) have argued that thereare subtle etymological differences between

‘philanthropy’ and ‘charity’; however, themajority of commentators use these termsinterchangeably (e.g Varadarajan and Menon,1998; Moon, 2004; Henderson and Malani,2008; Patten, 2008; Peloza et al., 2009) In thispaper,‘corporate philanthropy’ and ‘corporatecharitable giving’ are used as umbrella termsthat encompass all forms of corporate–charitypartnerships and take the view that ‘strategicphilanthropy’ includes any charitable activitiesthat are motivated or partially motivated bybusiness goals

Historical perspectivesBoth the concepts of CSR and corporatephilanthropy often are traced to the IndustrialRevolution, when individual business ownersinvested in the well‐being of their staff toimprove productivity and achieve greater socialgoals (Searle, 1993; Lee, 2008) Such strategiesCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 337–354 (2011)

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were uncommon, and early attempts to

engen-der CSR were viewed as incompatible with

capitalism by shareholders, courts, and

com-mentators (Cochran, 2007) Suspicion of CSR

and charitable donations persisted well into the

20th century (Fry et al., 1982) Friedman (1970,

p 126) famously attacked the idea that managers

should be responsible to anyone other than the

company’s shareholders, claiming that ‘there is

one and only one socially [sic] responsibility of

business – to use its resources and engage in

activities designed to increase its proﬁts’

Carroll (1991), among others (e.g Cochran,

2007; Carroll, 2008), famously countered

Friedman’s proﬁt‐only view by pointing out

that businesses have legal and ethical

respon-sibilities as well In parallel, government

leg-islation and public opinion shifted during

the mid‐20th century to recognize the wider

social and environmental impacts of business

(Carroll, 1991) As a result, CSR began to make

more sense for business organizations as means

of safeguarding proﬁt against negative public

relations and corporate image (Werther and

Chandler, 2005; Weber, 2008) By the end of the

1970s, the debate shifted from whether CSR was

necessary to how it could best be implemented

(Cochran, 2007)

The charity component of CSR

The development of discourse on CSR since the

publication of Friedman’s remarks is important

here in two respects First, as the issue domain

of CSR has widened to include a fuller range of

social and environmental considerations, the

importance of corporate philanthropy as a

major manifestation of CSR has been contested

For several commentators (e.g Werther and

Chandler, 2005; Blowﬁeld and Murray, 2008),

CSR had to progress beyond corporate

philan-thropy, not least to be able to demonstrate that

businesses could indeed be a much wider force

for change as critics of Friedman maintained

Second, in parallel to the downgrading in

importance of corporate philanthropy, there

was a de facto relegation because academic

thinking on CSR progressed into new areas of

enquiry Innovations in CSR practices in the

1970s and 1980s, combined with different speeds

of implementation, created the need to be able

to benchmark progress within businesses and

across sectors For instance, several frameworkswere devised that allowed analysts to locate thecurrent level of implementation across a range ofCSR‐related activities (philanthropy included) aswell as across historical trajectories The devel-opment and importance of such schemes persiststoday (Mirvis and Googins, 2006; Blowﬁeld andMurray, 2008)

However, in practice, philanthropic activitieshave remained a signiﬁcant part of CSR activitywithin businesses, with charitable giving andcharity involvement often making up most ofthe‘social’ component of the ‘triple bottom line’(Philips, 2006) Thus, as counter‐current, somecommentators have continued to develop con-ceptual frameworks to facilitate understanding

of corporate philanthropy In one of the moreversatile and enduring frameworks, Varadarajanand Menon (1988, pp 58–59) have, for instance,recognized that the motivation for, and expecta-tions of, corporate charitable involvement arecomplex and varied For them, cause‐relatedmarketing was originally the next step on anevolutionary model of corporate charitableinvolvement ranging from ‘voluntarily doinggood’ to ‘doing better by doing good’

The charity component of CSR in traveland tourism

Corporate philanthropy and CSR are ing key issues in the management of traveland tourism (Travel Foundation, n.d.; Mowforth

becom-et al., 2007) A recent survey demonstratedthat 27% of corporate travel executives wouldprefer to source from organizations that have

a CSR policy (ACTE, 2009) Yet, despite thisapparent interest, there has been relativelylimited research on CSR in travel and tourism–less still on corporate philanthropy – whencompared with the burgeoning body ofknowledge stemming from other sectors ofeconomic activity (cf Blowﬁeld and Murray,2008; Crane et al., 2008) Studies of CSR intravel and tourism have examined touroperators (Gurney and Humphreys, 2006;Van Wijk and Persoon, 2006), hotels (GarciaRodriguez and del Mar Armas Cruz, 2007;Henderson, 2007; Holcomb et al., 2007; Smithand Henderson, 2008; Tsai et al., 2010), cruisecompanies (Weaver and Duval, 2008) andairlines (Gupta and Saxena, 2006; Philips,Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 337–354 (2011)

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2006; Lynes and Andrachuk, 2008; Tsai and

Hsu, 2008) The majority of these present

detailed, in several instances single, case

studies of responsibility in practice In only

a few instances (e.g Dodds and Joppe, 2005;

Kim and Miller, 2008; Goodwin et al., 2009)

have there been attempts to make

compar-isons among different types of businesses

With one notable exception (Holcomb et al.,

2007), these have been made on the basis of

thick descriptions, and there has been a

general failure to engage with theory and

method from the mainstream body of

knowl-edge For instance, although the intention of

these studies would appear to be to

bench-mark progress moving forward, this is done

without reference to rigorous analytical

frameworks of the type developed from

con-ceptual and empirical work in other sectors

(e.g Porter and Kramer, 2002; Mirvis and

Googins, 2006; Blowﬁeld and Murray, 2008)

The question therefore arises of the manner in

which corporate philanthropy is practiced by

businesses in the tourism sector and how to

examine and interpret the type of activities As

noted above, thick description and case studies

offer one inductive means by which to develop

greater (initial) understanding However, such

approaches present static snapshots of progress,

and they say little about the relative level of

philanthropic activity or the prospects for the

future A more powerful alternative is to adopt

a comparative conceptual framework, and wepropose a visualisation with updated character-isations based on the categories of practicalcorporate philanthropy of Varadarajan andMenon (1988) (Figure 1)

The scale sets out to capture the degree towhich a corporation expects to beneﬁt ﬁnan-cially from philanthropy based on the typeand range of activities it conducts and therelationships it maintains As with the originalmodel, corporate philanthropy is understood

as encompassing a range of activities frompure altruism to profit focused, and these broadbehavioural types are defined by the strategies,intentions and expectations inherent in thecorporate charitable involvement (Figure 1).First on the scale, corporate giving could beconsidered the most altruistic form In thiscase, a business – possibly motivated by aconscientious chief executive officer (CEO) orboard member (Szekely and Knirsch, 2005;Henderson and Malani, 2008) or by a prece-dent of‘we’ve always done this’ – voluntarilydonates money or services to a charity‘just to

do good’ No underlying commercial beneﬁt issought, and although the charitable givingmay be tied to strategic goals for the charity orsociety at large, no strategic links are madebetween business and beneﬁciary The custom-

er base may be intended recipients of thecharitable beneﬁt; however, a strong connec-tion between charitable engagement and public

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relations is not made This form of charitable

partnership, divorced from beneﬁts for the

corporation, was what concerned Friedman

(1970) the most

Strategic philanthropy, in contrast, is tied to

strategic business beneﬁts, albeit

predominate-ly of secondary importance Organizations that

engage in strategic philanthropy expect to

receive at least a minimal degree of positive

return on investment, ranging from increased

brand reputation and visibility to greater

employee morale and motivation These

ben-eﬁts may be difﬁcult to quantify in monetary

terms, although the tax beneﬁts of corporate

donations could be considered a primary,

bottom‐line beneﬁt Strategic philanthropy

might form part of a CSR, public relations or

public affairs policy, although a company may

expect its philanthropy to fulﬁl its CSR

obliga-tions, public relations or public affairs goals

even without a formalized policy

Finally, cause‐related marketing has the

clear-est direct link to bottom‐line beneﬁts Although

occasionally used to describe long‐standing

relationship marketing through a charity (File

and Prince, 1998), the term also refers to a portion

of a speciﬁc product’s revenue being donated to

a charitable organization (Varadarajan and

Menon, 1988; Pracejus et al., 2003; Lafferty

and Goldsmith, 2005) Cause‐related

market-ing often is traced back to the American

Express Company’s promotional programme

in 1983, when the company promised to donate

a penny for every transaction and a dollar for

every newly issued credit card to the Statue of

Liberty restoration fund (Varadarajan and

Menon, 1988; Pracejus et al., 2003) As

chari-table giving is directly linked to sales and

product marketing, the primary anticipated

beneﬁt to the business is an increase in sales of

a speciﬁc product – although secondary

ben-eﬁts, such as improved corporate image, also

could be a strong motivating factor The

business beneﬁts also are easier to quantify

and observable in performance of the business

(although, of course, this may overlook

sec-ondary beneﬁts)

The categories developed by Varadarajan

and Menon (1988) were presented as an

evolutionary model: from voluntarily doing good

to stakeholder‐driven mandated CSR to what

they viewed as a modern, business‐focused

trend of doing better by doing good The finalcategory was divided into two parts: effortstied directly to marketing and those that werestrategic but not tied to a specific marketingstrategy Our research, and other recent stud-ies, suggested that mandated CSR – i.e CSRactivities‘forced’ upon businesses – often waspracticed strategically to have positive busi-ness benefits As a result, the concept ofmandated CSR has been combined with thenon‐specific marketing subcategory of doingbetter by doing good Furthermore, whereasVaradarajan and Menon (1988) present theircategories as broadly evolutionary, the modelpresented here is not necessarily intended as alinear progression Corporations may begintheir corporate philanthropy with a cause‐related marketing effort, whereas others mayhave comprehensive and well‐developed stra-tegic philanthropic partnerships without de-ciding to embark on any cause‐relatedmarketing This model offers a means tocompare businesses or organizations cross‐sectorally at a given point or to monitor changeover time It is broadly indicative of the currentstate and is more useful to assess generalcategorisations of corporate philanthropic ac-tivity like so many diagnostic models

LFAS AND CORPORATE PHILANTHROPYThe low‐fares model pioneered by Southwest

in the USA is based on a desire to streamlineprocesses and have ‘minimal complexity inproducts’ (Alves and Barbot, 2007, p 116),resulting in cost savings that can then bereflected in ticket prices (Hansson et al., 2002;Groß and Schröder, 2007) The biggest simpli-fications in the business model, sometimesreferred to as the‘no‐frills’ or ‘low‐cost’ model,are in procurement and supply chain manage-ment (e.g standardizing aircraft types, usingsecondary airports), process management(e.g point‐to‐point service instead of thetradition ‘hub’, minimizing ground staff) andmarketing (e.g primarily online, simplifiedpricing strategy, ancillary revenue) (Franke,2004; Dobruszkes, 2006; Groß and Schröder,2007) As the skies around the world have beenprogressively deregulated, LFAs have prolifer-ated (ELFAA, 2009) Their rise has sparked muchcontroversy and advocacy Detractors haveCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 337–354 (2011)

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claimed that LFAs are a major driver behind

increased glasshouse gas emissions, encourage

‘trivial travel’ and create unsustainable inﬂuxes

of seasonal tourists (Mann, 2004; Sinclair, 2007;

Gibbons, 2008) Supporters have welcomed the

new affordability of air travel, claiming it

increases quality of life by allowing even the

less privileged to experience new destinations,

and they have applauded the LFAs’ focus on

regional and traditionally underserviced areas

(ELFAA, 2004; York Aviation, 2007; Oxford

Economics, 2009)

LFAs clearly divide opinion, but they

com-prised an estimated 35% of all scheduled intra‐

European air travel in 2008 (ELFAA, 2009)

Despite soaring fuel prices (Walker, 2009), the

25 largest LFAs in the EU offered 14% more

seats than in 2007 (DLR, 2009) However, the

growth was not universal across the sector,

with the four largest airlines (Ryanair, easyJet,

Air Berlin and Flybe) expanding their market

share (DLR, 2009), whereas many of the

smaller airlines were facing problems Between

August 2008 and July 2009, Sterling collapsed

(BBC, 2008), Clickair and Vueling merged

(Reuters, 2009a), SkyEurope ﬁled for creditor

protection (Reuters, 2009b) and Myair

sus-pendedﬂights (ENAC, 2009) Turbulence in the

sector has therefore led some critics to question

the extent to which LFAs are able to contribute

consistently in the long term to sustainable

development in the destinations to and from

which they ﬂy (Graham and Shaw, 2008) As

we have noted above, discussion of the

contribution has much issues of emphasized

regional economic development and

environ-mental impacts, i.e just two aspects of the

‘triple bottom line’ In other words, assessment

has been stilted without a fuller consideration

of the social pillar of sustainable development,

a gap which this paper seeks toﬁll through the

critical analysis of just aspect, corporate

phi-lanthropy, in what follows In particular, the

paper explored countervailing views around

the contention that, at ﬁrst inspection, LFAs

may not appear to be fertile ground for

corporate philanthropy Monetary or in‐kind

(i.e staff) contributions to charitable activities

may appear inconsistent with business models

based on cost reduction and resource

utilization and hence difﬁcult to justify to their

investors in the form of both shareholders and

customers Notwithstanding these dominantoperating characteristics, they are well posi-tioned potentially to practice corporate philan-thropy, like other travel and tourismbusinesses, because they have high contactwith customers, and there often is a largepotential income difference between hosts andtravellers (Goodwin et al., 2009) Moreover,airlines may be ideal partners for charitiesbecause they have static audiences, and mes-sages can be conveyed in a number of mediasuch as their lounges, in‐ﬂight magazines andannouncements and websites

METHODSThe empirical research on which this paper isbased was part of a wider programme onsocial responsibility among LFAs flying toand from the UK (Coles et al., 2009) A layeredsampling strategy was employed to filtereligible airlines First, all aircraft operatorswho have permission to fly in the EuropeanUnion were identified (CEC, 2009) As thisresearch was only concerned with airlinesflying to and from the UK, airlines without a

UK destination were excluded Second, lines that were selected were those thatdescribed themselves as LFAs or low‐costcarriers or those that used the language ofthe low‐fares business model in their externalcommunications: e.g Germanwings used themarketing strapline that it is‘Germany’s mostsuccessful Low‐Cost Carrier [sic]’, whereasFlybe was a member of the European LowFares Airline Association (ELFAA), although ithas recently started to describe itself as a

air-‘Regional Airline’ There has been muchdebate as to what precisely constitutes anLFA There are some notable variations in theapplication of the principles of the businessmodel (Dobruszkes, 2006; Francis et al., 2006;Mason and Miyoshi, 2009), although someLFAs do not provide the lowest fare oncertain routes (Oliveira and Huse, 2009) So,ﬁnally, airlines were deemed to be ‘low fare’

or ‘low cost’ if they applied most of the keyindicators of the business model describedabove Adherence was verified through sec-ondary data sources In total, 22 airlines wereidentified through this filtering for furtherinspection (Table 1)

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Data were collected in two overlapping and

connected stages between September 2008 and

July 2009 In the ﬁrst stage, an audit was

undertaken of LFA websites, press releases,

annual reports and CSR strategies and policies

for mentions of CSR and, more speciﬁcally in

this respect, charitable involvement

Second-ary sources have been routinely used to

document and provide an initial benchmark

of the type and extent of CSR activity among

tourism businesses and those in many other

sectors A content analysis of CSR activities

among LFAs was conducted based on aframework developed by Holcomb et al.(2007), the detailed results of which are pre-sented elsewhere (Coles et al., 2009) A particu-lar task within this analysis was to identifyphilanthropic activities to inform the secondstage, a programme of semi‐structured inter-views with top level managers In fact, thedocumentary analysis detected signiﬁcantopportunities for investigation in the inter-views For instance, during the period ofstudy, Flybe changed its corporate charity

Airline

Fleet size(2008) Headquarters

Communicatedcharity support Communicated CSR‐related policy

sustainable development strategy

policy, ethical code

corporate environmental policy

NIKI 12 Austria X No

TUIﬂy 44 Germany Yes TUI Group’s environmental policy

*ELFAA member.

† Flights suspended as of 21 July 2009.

‡ Merged late in the research and were analysed separately.

Sources: Air Baltic Corporation (n.d.), Air Berlin (2008, 2009), Air France–KLM (2008, 2009), Air Southwest (n.d.), Aurigny Air Services (n.d.), Blue1 (2008), bmibaby (2008, 2009a, 2009b), Clickair (2008), DLR (2009), easyJet (n.d., 2008, 2009a, 2009b), ELFAA (2009), ENAC (2009), Flybe (2008, 2009), FFC (2006), germanwings (n.d a, n.d b), Jet2.com (2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d, 2009e, 2009f), Lufthansa (2008a, 2008b), Myair.com (2008a, 2008b), Niki (n.d.), Norwegian Air Shuttle (2007, 2008, 2009), Reuters (2009a, 2009b), Ryanair (2008, 2009), SkyEurope (2008), SPPV (n.d.), transavia.com (2008, 2009), TUI Group (2008), TUIﬂy (n.d.), Vueling (2009).

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after a three‐year association with Make a Wish

to Cancer Research UK

There are limitations associated with the

exclusive use of secondary sources as a means

by which to develop detailed understandings

of CSR and charitable activities in the tourism

sector (Bohdanowicz and Zientara, 2008; Coles

et al., 2009; Dodds and Kuehnel, 2010) These

secondary sources, published for speciﬁc

audi-ences and constituencies, often present partial

representations of the full extent of activities

being conducted within and by businesses As

a result, interviews with key actors inside

tourism businesses are necessary to establish

and ﬁll any gaps and to illicit fuller

explana-tions of how and why CSR is practised Eleven

interviews, each lasting 58 minutes on average,

were conducted with LFA managers with CSR

in their remit Frequently, CSR was one among

several responsibilities (most often marketing,

public affairs and public relations) for these

relatively senior managers The interviews

were designed to reveal explanations for CSR

activity and to triangulate the information

provided in the publicly available texts (Coles

et al., 2009) Speciﬁcally with respect to

corporate philanthropy (n.b the interviews

also covered other aspects of LFA CSR), the

interviews offered the scope to explore such

issues as which charity or charities the airline

was currently supporting, the reasons for their

support, how the relationship between airline

and charity arose, how the airline selects

particular charities and how important the

relationship was in terms of the airlines overall

CSR activity For reasons of ethics and, in

particular, conﬁdentiality in a small

commu-nity of practice, their responses are

anony-mously presented below

Within the wider research programme, the

principles of grounded theory (Strauss and

Corbin, 1990) were employed to inform and

verify the content analysis of the texts (Hall

and Valentin, 2005) as well as the semi‐

structured interviews For this paper and its

particular focus, a further round of thematic,

coded analysis of content was performed on

the documents, whereas selected narrative

responses have been drawn from the

inter-view transcripts to exemplify the analysis

and interpretation presented in the next

section

CHARITY, PHILANTHROPY ANDCAUSE‐RELATED MARKETINGAMONG LFAS

Of the 22 LFAs in the sample, 13 reported someengagement with a charitable organization(Table 2) Many of the charity‐active LFAssupported more than one charity, and inter-views revealed that not all charity relationshipswere reported publicly Interviews also re-vealed that single departments within anairline might choose to support a charity orcharities, and ad hoc charitable involvementwas common rather than strategic selection

So, it is hardly surprising therefore that LFAssupport a wide range of charitable organizations(Table 2) These organizations fall into threemain groups: environmental charities, charitiesintended to raise awareness and support for aspecific sickness or disease and charities aimed athelping children who are afflicted by povertyand/or unspecified illnesses In the case of thelatter, the emphasis would appear to be onthe children, such as the Stichting Peter PanVakantieclub (the Peter Pan Holiday Club), whichprovides holidays to chronically ill children.Supported charities included local, nationaland international organizations Charity part-ners ranged from globally recognized charities(e.g United Nations Children’s Fund) to localcharities (e.g Más Árboles, Children’s HospiceAssociation Scotland) and even company‐specific charities (e.g The Stichting Peter PanVakantieclub) The length of partnerships rangedfrom one‐off promotions, such as Ryanair’sdonation of the proceeds from its char-ity calendar to the Dublin Simon Community(Ryanair, 2008), to extended partnerships, such

as Air Berlin’s 14‐year‐long relationship with theChristiane Herzog Foundation (Air Berlin, 2009).Only three airlines claimed to have supported anindividual charity forﬁve years or longer.Brammer and Pavelin (2004) found that themost successful corporate philanthropy (from apublic relations perspective) addressed thenegative impacts of the corporation’s opera-tions, (e.g environmentally damaging corpora-tions investing in environmental charities) andthat consumers were more likely to havenegative perceptions of organizations whosecharitable partner seemed far divorced fromtheir business operations Considering that theCopyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 13, 337–354 (2011)

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critics of LFAs most often point to their

negative environmental impacts (Mann, 2004;

Sinclair, 2007; Gibbons, 2008), it would seem

that LFAs may be able to reap most beneﬁt

through partnering with an environmentally

focused charity However, only two airlines

(Clickair and TUIﬂy) claimed to support

environmental charities Five airlines partnered

with charities deemed to focus on sickness or

disease A further ﬁve airlines supported

children‐focused charities Finally, one airline

(Ryanair) reported partnering with a wide

range of charities without denoting a primary

charity None of the charities with which

Ryanair had a relationship focused on the

environment Thus, social issues dominated

the types of charities chosen at a rate of 11 to 2

Few airlines publicly explained in any depth

why their particular charity partnership was

formed Instead, communications focused on

the importance of the charitable cause in

general, such as easyJet’s support for the

Anthony Nolan Trust because Alzheimer’s is

‘a devastating condition that robs people oftheir lives’ (easyJet, 2009a) and Flybe’s part-nership with Cancer Research UK becausecancer is ‘a disease that touches almost all ofus’ (Flybe, 2009) A few commented on notonly the importance of the cause but also thecharity itself, particularly bmibaby, who re-marked, ‘we feel [BBC Children in Need] issuch a [sic] amazing charity’ (bmibaby, 2008).Slightly more information was provided by thecharities themselves In a press release announc-ing their partnership with Myair, the Fondazioneper la Ricerca sulla Fibrosi Cistica (Foundation forCystic Fibrosis Research) noted that the CEO ofMyair has supported cystic ﬁbrosis charitiespersonally for three decades (FFC, 2006) Sim-ilarly, the Stichting Peter Pan Vakantieclubdetailed on its website that it was founded

by transavia.com employees – a fact that wasonly brieﬂy touched upon by transavia.comtexts (SPPV, n.d.; transavia.com, 2008) The link

Table 2 Primary LFA–charity partnerships, 2008–2009

Herzog Foundation

Sickness/disease 14 years

Association Scotland

Children Less than one year

sulla Fibrosi Cistica(Foundation for CysticFibrosis Research)

Sickness/disease 1.5 years

Fund

Children Two years

orphanages and playschools’ Children Not stated

Vakantieclub (Peter PanHoliday Club)

Children 12 years

TUIﬂy Various environmental Environment Not stated

Sources: Air Berlin (2008, 2009), bmibaby (2008, 2009a, 2009b), Clickair (2008), easyJet (Undated, 2008, 2009a, 2009b), ENAC (2009), Flybe (2008, 2009), FFC (2006), Jet2.com (2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d, 2009e, 2009f), Myair.com (2008a, 2008b), Norwegian Air Shuttle (2007, 2008, 2009), Ryanair (2008, 2009), SkyEurope (2008), SPPV (n.d.), transavia.com (2008, 2009), TUI Group (2008), TUI ﬂy (n.d.), Vueling (2009).

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