Award of a Santander Research Grant

In January I received the good news that I was awarded a Santander Research Grant. The £5000 grant will support my research project on "The internationalisation of the Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events (THE) research: Barriers and opportunities to publishing in international (English language) journals". As part of the project, I will travel to Brazil to collect data in April and in July. In the April trip, the plan is to visit the following universities:

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2 & 3 April - Univ. Federal de Juiz de Fora (Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais)

9 & 10 April - Univ. Federal Fluminente (Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro)

11 & 12 April - Univ. Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Natal, Rio Grande do Norte)

16, 17 & 18 April - Univ. de São Paulo & Univ. Anhembi Morumbi (São Paulo)

19 & 20 April - UNIVALI - Univ. do Vale do Itajai (Balneario Camboriu, Santa Catarina)

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In addition to interviewing tourism researchers, I will also be delivering guest lectures at some of these universities. As you can see, a pretty busy schedule!

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Below you can find more information about the research project: rationale, aim + objectives and methods.

"The internationalisation of the Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events research: Barriers and opportunities to publishing in international (English language) journals"

The economic growth of the past 15 years in Brazil has had a profound impact on the country’s tourism industry, further establishing tourism as an important economic activity. While Brazil attracted only just over five million international tourists in 2010, (Ministério do Turismo do Brazil 2011), the country has a substantial tourism industry which is driven by a buoyant domestic market. The Tourism Ministry estimates that in 2009 there were 175 million domestic trips (Ministério do Turismo do Brazil 2010). Economic growth and the strengths of the Brazilian Real are also having a substantial positive effect on the Brazilian outbound market, with 6.2 million outbound trips being recorded in 2010 (VisitBritain 2012).

As the tourist industry matures, so does the need to develop a more in-depth understanding of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the tourism phenomenon. The substantial growth of the tourism sector created the need for more trained professionals. Initially, this growth was supported by an increase in tourism education provision by private universities. However, with the ascension of a labour President in 2002, which resulted in more sustained funding for public universities, the past decade as witnessed an unprecedented growth in tourism education provision by public universities, whether at state of federal level. The net result is greater focus on tourism research within the Brazilian academia, reflected both in the growing number of active researchers and the number of articles they produce. Much of this production is directed to the growing number of Brazilian tourism journals. A small, but growing part of this research production has been published in foreign journals, whether Portuguese or Spanish language journals (mainly South American, but also Spanish). Very few have been published in English language journals. The end result is that Brazilian research and researchers are little known by the International community, notably non-Portuguese/Spanish speaking researchers (Leal, 2011). In his study, Leal concluded that international tourism researchers view research produced by Brazilian tourism academics as of low quality, both in terms of theoretical underpinning/development and of methodological rigour.

The author of this research has visited many Brazilian universities since 2008, some of them regularly, and has had informal conversations with dozens tourism academics about researching and publishing. From these conversations it is clear that many Brazilian tourism academics are enthusiastic about their research and publications and many aspire to broaden their careers to an international level. This enthusiasm is also evident in the growing number of initiatives aiming at supporting the internationalisation of the Brazilian tourism research. ANPTUR, the Brazilian Association of Tourism Post-Graduate Studies and Research, has been discussing internationalisation for a number of years, with the topic regularly featuring in the programme of their annual conference. The author of this research participated in the 2010 conference, where a group of academics from Spain, Portugal, Finland and the UK shared their experiences of internationalisation. More recently, ABRATUR, the International Academy for the Development of Tourism Research in Brazil, was launched with the specific purpose of advancing the internationalisation of tourism research in Brazil. The association, on which the author of this research serves a member of the management committee, is made up of both Brazilian researchers with, or aiming to develop an international career, and foreign researchers with an interest in tourism research in Brazil.

Internationalisation has recently became a ‘hot’ topic within the Brazilian tourism academia and consequently the Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events research has yet to gain any significant presence among the English language tourism research. To Leal (2011) “in order to gain some visibility in the international tourism research arena, Brazilian tourism researchers should strengthen their theoretical and methodological skills, undertake innovative research and, more importantly, make their voice heard within the dominant language [English]. Thus, researchers should produce higher quality research and papers in English”. The study of Leal (2011), and recent discussions within the ABRATUR community provide some clues as to the problems underlying, and solutions for, the lack of internationalisation of the Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events research. However, the unique research and educational context in which Brazilian tourism researchers operate suggests that a more in-depth analysis is required. Therefore the aim of this research is to examine the barriers and opportunities to, and solutions for the internationalisation of Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events (THE) research. This will be achieved through the following objectives:

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1) To examine the barriers and opportunities to publishing in international (English language) tourism, hospitality and events journals
2) To investigate possible solutions to the barriers identified
3) Design a research skills training plan that could contribute to promote the internationalisation of the Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events research

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METHODS

Given the current state of Brazilian tourism, hospitality and events research (mainly national publications, or internationally in Portuguese or Spanish language publications), it can be argued that, in the eyes of Brazilian tourism researchers, publishing in international (English language) journals is an innovative behaviour. Thus, adoption of innovations model (Rogers, 1995) will be used as the theoretical underpinning for the research. The research will also draw on previous studies in the field of academic research and publication, organisational studies and human resources.

The research follows a qualitative/quantitative approach. Initially, face-to-face interviews with Brazilian tourism academics are used to explore the dimensions of the topic. The interviews will take place during April 2012 with researchers from various Brazilian universities. Besides the geographical spread, a mixture of academics from public and private universities and of universities with approved and under proposal tourism masters programmes will be interviewed. It is expected that a total of 20 interviews will be made.

The results of the interviews stage, together with a review of previous studies in the area, will be used as the basis for designing a questionnaire to be distributed (online) among tourism researchers affiliated to Brazilian universities. The questionnaire will focus on the main barriers, opportunities and solutions and will be promoted through email (e.g. ANPTUR and ABRATUR mailing lists; snowball sampling). Depending on the number of questionnaires collected, the data will be analysed through univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistics.