Blog Updates

Dear Readers
Thanks for visiting my blog! Apologies for not updating it more frequently, but these have been very busy times. I've just 'survived' the beginning of another academic year. I am now trying to catch up. I have finished posting my 'Going East' journey (III- New Zealand; IV The Cook Islands) and will in the next few days post about other topics, including the Cancer Research UK 10k Run and the beginning of the new academic year. I've also got two sets of good news, but I will not spoil the surprise. You'l have to wait a few more days! Ok, one involves travelling East again :-)!
Cheers
M

Going East IV - The Cook Islands

Two years ago, after attending the Event Research Conference in Melbourne, I travelled to Fiji for a holiday. The Pacific Islands are beautiful and an excellent location to relax as well as to have some fun. This time I wanted to change location and after much consideration I decided to go to the Cook Islands (the initial plan was Tonga). I’ll never know if Tonga would have been better, but the CI choice was certainly a good one! I loved my week there J.

First, I travelled through the time line. That means departing from AKL on a Wednesday and arriving in Rarotonga on Tuesday! Confused? I was too...

I decided to stay in basic accommodation – as I was travelling alone the last thing I wanted was to end up in a luxury hotel full of honeymooners! (with me holding the candle J). So I joined the backpackers lot and stayed at Vara’s Beach Resort after reading good reviews on tripadvisor. The accommodation is very basic, but the crowd was fantastic! Sharing a room might be unimaginable for some, but if you want to meet people and socialise it is the best thing. In Fiji I had stayed in a dorm with 114 beds at Beachcomber Island!! This one was much smaller – 5 beds only and thus more private. While I was there, I had four girls as roomies (lucky me!): One Scottish, one Irish and two English (so long for me having a few days away from ‘Britishness’). They were good fun and we laughed a lot.

Arriving in Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

View of Muri Lagoon

View of Muri Lagoon from Vara's Resort Deck

Roomies Jenn, Mandy and Hannah, plus Stephen (in black)

The hostel was right in from of Muri Lagoon, in the most beautiful part of the Island. To wake up to this view for 7 days is an amazing experience. Nor surprisingly there was a lot of partying going on. There were two organised parties, one was a fancy dress party and the other a ‘pub crawl’. Mind that there are only 3 or 4 bars/nightclubs in Rarotonga, so you know where you’ve to go... The first party was the fancy dress party. Matt is an Australian who runs Vara’s Shack. He organises deep sea fishing trips (he’s also the skipper of a boat) as well as many other types of entertainment (including the organised parties). There’s a theme for every week – a letter of the alphabet. The week I was there the letter was G (some people were lucky enought to be there for the E, F, G and H parties!!!). The rule is that you need to produce your own costume – you cannot buy one (but you can buy some ‘ingredients’ to design yours). I dressed up as Global Warming (and the proof that it exists). There was a geek, a gladiator, two gipsies, guns & roses, just to name a few. The interesting thing is that the experience of the event starts much earlier, the day before the event Matt and others (including me) sat down and brainstormed ‘things’ starting with G. Needless to say that some people were very ‘inspired’... The other party was a pub crawl (on the Friday). Both parties were very good I (alcohol is not expensive there, which helped!), though I’ll refrain from making comments about the next day...

Fancy Dress Party

The crowd was so entertaining and sociable that I spent most days around Muri Beach. On Sunday I attended a religious service (mass), which is something unique and recommended to anyone who visits the island. The natives sing (both in English and Maori) and the whole experience is quite interesting. They even offer you biscuits and coffee at the end! Hannah (Irish) and Jenn (Scottish), two of my roomies, were my fellow churchgoers.

Before I left, I had the chance to dedicate one day to water activities. In the morning I went deep sea fishing and in the afternoon scuba diving. The deep sea fishing was very good. We caught to yellow fin tuna (part of one tuna was my dinner that day! Had half a kilo of tuna sashimi...)! But the best part was that the fishing trip turned in to a whale watching trip. Humpback whales hang around the island during the winter in south pole, and we were lucky to see 7 or 8 of them, a couple of which were very close to the boat!

The two yellow fin tunas that we caught (I pulled one... hard work and these are small fish, around 5/6kg each)

Humpback Whale, very close to the boat (no zoom used!)

Needless to say, the Scuba diving was also amazing. Lots of colourful fish! It is so peaceful down there! I am becoming a big fan of scuba diving and am looking forward to get PADI accreditation soon so that I can dive up to 20/30 meters.

I spent an amazing week in the Cook Islands, and when I look back what made it, most of all, was the people I met! The island is beautiful, the locals friendly, but it was the group of people who were at Vara’s Resort that made is an amazing week. I shall go back one day!

Going East III – New Zealand

My next stop was New Zealand. I flew to Auckland (the biggest city) before travelling down to Wellington (the capital city) where I met my friend Eli. I took an early flight, the day was bright and luckily I also got a window seat. To my surprise, we flew over mount Taranaki (whichI had never heard of) and the view from the plane was just amazing. The above picture is not mine, but it give an idea of what I am talking about! Not bad for a first sight of New Zealand! Mt Taranaki is a 2518-metre-high mountain and one of the most symmetrical volcanic cones in the world. There is a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak, on the south side.

Mount Taranaki

Arrived in Wellignton, I met Eli. I know Eli from Bournemouth since she did her PhD here (back in 2003) and then got a job at Massey University in Palmerston North (2 hours north of Wellington). Meanwhile she got married to Shane (a Kiwi) and they have now got to beautiful daughters: Viana and Alexia.

Alexia (left) and Viana (right). This picture was taken at 7.30am... hence our faces!

We spent the night in Wellington and the next day they showed me the main tourist spots. Wellington is a nice city, though I would not want to land there when it’s windy! The airport runaway is surrounded by mountains! We were lucky with the weather (at least I was told so!) as the morning was quite sunny (albeit very cold!). The day started with a very nice English type breakfast at Smith the Grocer a café located in a boutique shopping centre – The Old Bank Arcade. The place is really well done, the food and coffee were great, I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast.

Next, we visited some of the key tourist areas, including the top entrance of Wellington Botanic Garden and the Museum of New Zealand. You access the Botanic Garden by Cable Car, which takes from the lower area near the waterfront to the top of one of the Mountains that made up Wellington. From the top you can appreciate part of the city, including the bay. After a short walk through the beautiful Botanic Garden, we returned to lower grounds and visited the national museum. This is a very interesting museum and we were lucky because there was a performance of traditional Maori singing inside.

Cable car

View from the Botanic Gardens

Canoe - Museum of New Zealand

Because they had to pick up the kids from Shane’s parents (half way through Wellington and Palmertson North), we left Wellington mid afternoon. The next day was dedicated to visiting Palmerston North and surrounding areas. The city itself has little to see, but the landscape around the city is quite interesting. We visited a giant wind farm, and had lunch at a local farm where we enjoyed local food. I left Palmertson North the next day, travelling to Auckland with a short stop in Rotorua. It was great to see Eli again and meet her family.

The journey to Rotorua was quite interesting, albeit a bit long (nearly 5 hours). We travelled through Lake Taupo. Unfortunately, it was raining with low clouds and we could not see much of the volcanos around the Lake. The 24 hours spent in Rotorua were intense. The city is known for its geothermal activity, with a number of geysers and hot mud pools located in the city. Rotorua city is renowned for its unique "rotten eggs" aroma, which is caused by the geothermal activity releasing sulphur coumponds into the atmosphere. These can be seen throughout the city. I attended a Maori show which included dinner. It was not a very pleasant experience at the beginning because I had the worst head ache! Fortunately I sat next to a doctor (from England) and as a good doctor she had paracetamol with her! The show itself was interesting and the food was cooked according to the Maori Tradition (Called Hangi).

Maori Show

The next day I just walked around town and before taking the bus to Auckland I paid a visit to the Polynesian Spa for an hour of pure relaxation! This spa has been considered one of the best 10 Spas in the world. The setting is really amazing! There are four pools at different temperatures. Not surprisingly without knowing this I entered the hottest one first which was a little unpleasant... It was cold outside (10ºC), but it felt great to be in warm water just chilling out. I think the picture talks for itself :-)

Polynesian Spa

I was time continue my journey towards Auckland and after a night there, it was time to fly to warmer waters – the Cook Islands!!! After a week in the CI (see next post for a report), I returned to Auckland, where I spent two nights before returning to the UK. I did this stop to talk at the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute and meet colleagues from Auckland University of Technology. This was possible because Professor Nigel Hemmington, who was the Dean of the School of Services Management @ BU for nearly 10 years (that is, my boss!) is now the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at AUT (the school of tourism and hospitality and the NZTRI are part of this faculty). On Thursday I caught up with Nigel, who showed me a bit of Auckland downtown before our lunch in the university’s practice restaurant (where hospitality students practice). I was impressed with the food and services. I was given really different things to try: a starter in a shot glass with a mussel inside! as well as an ice cream made of a stinky (and I mean STINKY) Asian fruit. The next day I talked to a NZTRI audience about the gastronomic experience of European tourists in Portugal. During my visit I also had the chance to meet some of their staff, including Simon Milne (Director of the NZTRI) and Jane Legget. The presentation was very well received by the audience made up of around 25 PhD students, practitioners and academics.

With Simon Milne and Jane Legget from the NZTRI

New Zealand is a very beautiful country and I am looking forward to go back and spend more time travelling around. Though I’ve learned the lesson! Visit the Country in the summer, because winters are very cold (and we’ve got enough cold in the UK)

Going East II – Australia

The second leg the journey took place in the Gold Coast, Australia, where I attended the International Event Management Summit, which incorporated the ACEM 5th International Event Management Research Conference (6-7 July) and the 3rd Event Education and Research Network (8 July). I presented two papers, one on event stakeholders and another on festival satisfaction. Below you can find the titles and the abstracts of both papers:


THE FUTURE OF A MARATHON AS PERCEIVED BY ITS STAKEHOLDERS

Caroline Jackson, Miguel Moital and Jenna Le Couillard

This paper is a result of Jenna’s undergraduate dissertation that I supervised. Jenna did very well (she got a first!) and me and Caroline picked up on her work and improved it in order to submit it to the conference. I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach some bright students who are able to do research that is good enough for publication. In addition to Jenna’s dissertation, I’ve got two other dissertations that could lead to papers (one definitely will). Not only Jenna’s chosen research topic is very relevant, but she did a very good job developing a creative methodology and collecting good quality primary data.

The aim of her research was to identify if the continuation of the event was supported by its stakeholders and what their objectives were for its future. The research attempted to understand if the stakeholders desired event growth, and if so, in which areas and to what level. Jenna adapted Shoemaker’s (1995) scenario planning process to suit the research. She developed three scenarios that were presented to the stakeholders: a small scale event, medium scale event and large scale event and within these scenarios a range of event features were covered. The overall finding was that the stakeholders wanted to maintain the event and to support its growth. They viewed the Marathon as currently being a small scale event with elements of a medium scale event and saw it growing to become a medium scale with elements of a large scale event. A key finding was that the stakeholders had conflicting views throughout and this was due to their varying backgrounds and objectives for the event. These potential differences will need to be carefully managed by the event organisers if the future development of the event is to be successful.

EXAMINING THE CONTRIBUTION OF EMOTIONS TO FESTIVAL SATISFACTION USING LOGISTIC REGRESSION

Miguel Moital, Caroline Jackson, Mary-Beth Gouthro

This paper is based on a study focusing on festival satisfaction that I am doing together with the two co-authors (and colleagues at BU) of the paper. The reason to write this paper came from the conclusion that past studies on consumer satisfaction have tended to focus on ‘cognitive’ determinants of satisfaction. In other words, they seek explanation to festival satisfaction on a range of specific (more or less tangible) attributes of the festival. Yet, in experience-based products, such as festivals, this may not be sufficient to fully understand the determinants of satisfaction. Emotions are at the centre of experiences and therefore we argue that these should also be incorporated in satisfaction models.

Therefore, in this paper we sought to examine the determinants of festival satisfaction and to understand the extent to which emotion is a determinant of festival satisfaction. Using the Beach Break Live Festival (UK) as a case study and logistic regression as the analytical technique, the results show that emotions do contribute to explaining festival satisfaction in addition to cognition. Moreover, positive emotions were the single most important determinant of overall satisfaction. Satisfaction with Food & Drink, Staff, Facilities and Information & Organisation were also found to influence participants’ satisfaction. We conclude by discussion implications for theory and practice.

If you wish to receive a copy of any of these papers, send me an email to mmoital@bournemouth.ac.uk

My colleagues Dorothy Fox, Debbie Sadd and Richard Shipway also presented papers at this conference (Yes, BU was the foreign university with the largest representation at the conference).

Dorothy presented a paper on The contribution of an events programme to sustainable heritage conservation: a study of the National Trust in England. The paper, co-authored with Nicola Johnson, explores the various ways in which the National Trust’s programme of events has been developed to contribute to sustainable heritage conservation. The method they used for this case study consisted of the collection and analysis of both primary and secondary data. The former obtained through in-depth interviews with key personnel within the National Trust, with secondary data from the National Trust and other sources used in support. The findings show the Trust’s events play a vital role in educating the public in sustainability, in respect of both natural and cultural heritage. The interview participants revealed that the events are conceived in two main ways – first, a topdown approach whereby events relate to a national organisational campaign and secondly, events which develop from the bottom-up and reflect the uniqueness of each of the Trust’s properties. This study therefore extends the prevailing approach to events and sustainable development by considering the very positive contribution of an events programme to heritage conservation, which has implications for other conservation bodies throughout the world.

Dorothy

Debbie’s presentation, entitled London 2012 – Will it be regeneration or renaissance in times of financial crisis? (co-authored with Ian Jones), focussed on the ‘regeneration’ that is proposed for the residents in the area of the Olympic Park developments in the Lower Lea Valley in London. The study (undertaken as part of her PhD) is based upon the detailed examination of two past Games and their impacts upon the local residents of the Olympic venues, in Sydney, 2000 and Barcelona 1992. The study evaluates the impacts of the planning for London 2012 to date on the local residents through in-depth, semi-structured interviews. This study also examines the impact of the global credit crisis upon the legacy planning and highlights some of the impacts already being seen with regard to the changes being made by the Olympic Delivery Authority to the original bid documentation.

Debbie

Richard presented a paper entitled Sporting events, distance running and the ‘third place’. His paper, based on his doctoral studies, adds to the limited body of knowledge on sports events by exploring the social world of active sports event participants. In his paper, the experiences of active sports event participants are explored at a selection of international distance running events. Preliminary results suggest that a key aspect of the sports event experience is that the event provides access to a social environment of like-minded people, especially within the event setting. Within these research results, the key emerging theme and direction of this study is to explore the role of sporting events as a ‘third place’ outside of the home and work environment.

Richard :-)

On the last day of the conference, the BU team met a number of academics from Victoria University. Professor Leo Jago is a visiting professor at BU, and we took this opportunity to discuss possible projects between academics of the two institutions.

Academic staff from Victoria University and Bournemouth University

After the conference, I stayed in the area for a two week holiday. My first stop was New Zealand. I will post about it over the next few days.

Going East I – Singapore

Apologies to all readers for not posting recently, but I was away most of July and the first two weeks in August and then I was catching up with some work. Undergraduate students are not around, but the work does not stop...

On the 2nd of July, a day after the Events Management exam board, I took off to ‘the other side of the world’ to attend the Event Research Conference in Australia. I went with three colleagues (Caroline Jackson, Dorothy Fox and Debbie Sadd). Travelling to Australia involves a very long flight. Two years ago, when I went to the same conference (in Melbourne), I flew to Australia directly and closer to the conference. This was a mistake... I struggled to be fully awake at the conference due to the jet leg! I can barely remember my presentation of two years ago as I was so sleepy. This time I did not do the same mistake. We flew a couple of days earlier, to have enough time to acclimatise and get used to the different time.

Instead of travelling directly to Australia, we decided to stop in Singapore (there are only 2 hours difference between Singapore and Queensland). For the first time I flew with Singapore Airlines and the flight from London to Singapore was on the… A380! Beautiful plane, very comfortable seat, outstanding entertainment system, excellent service and delicious food! I guess by now you have realised that I loved flying with SingaporeAir. From now on, I will fly with them if I can – having a good airline when flying long haul makes a difference.

The A380

We took this opportunity to visit Singapore and to make some contacts with local educational institutions. We visited Temasek Poytechnic and a private further education institute. We were very well received by Sandra, our host at Temasek Poly. The Poly offers culinary arts courses and the students work on some of the cafes and restaurants with their premises. We had a ‘comfort stop’ at one of these and the food was simply delicious. Look at the picture below! Mouth watering indeed.

Delicious food. OK, a third of the table contains my food! Greedy Miguel! Just could not resist trying the food. I had the soup on the left, the japanese style food next to it and the yellow cake at the bottom of the picture.

Starting on my right: Caroline, Sandra, Dorothy and Debbie

Needless to say that we also used our free time to visit some of the hotspots in Singapore. The Youth Asian Games were on and on Saturday we went to Sentosa Island to attend the Beach Voleyball tournament.

Sentosa Island, with the event taking place in the background

On the only night we spent in Singapore we did the famous ‘night safari’. It was an interesting experience. Basically it is a zoo, with the animals spread over a large area (unlike city zoos), but you have the chance to see the animals at night.

At the night safari

Just before resuming our journey to Australia, we had time to taste one of the symbols of Singapore – the Singapore Sling Cocktail. Of course, we did it where it should be: at the Raffles Hotel. The cocktail was invented by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon between 1910 and 1915. It is very tasty but you should not drink too many… the recipe includes Gin, Cherry Brandy, Cointreau and Dom Benedictine. We had only one as we were a few hours away from flying to Brisbane...

Cheers! Enjoying the Singapore Sling Cocktail at the Raffles Hotel

Australia, NZ and more

I am currently on the other side of the world. Earlier this week I attended the 5th Event Research Conference in the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. On my way to Australia, I stopped in Singapore for 36h. This was quite an interesting experience. Singapore is worth visiting. I am now in New Zealand. I will spend the night in Wellington, before travelling to Palmerston North (visit a friend) and then to Rotorua. It is quite cold in NZ. The sky was clear and on my way from Auckland to Wellington the plane went through an old volcano covered in snow. The view was amazing and I regret not having my camera at hand to take pictures. This was a taster of what NZ has to offer... so I am looking forward to see more beautiful spots. As I am writting this post from an Internet cafe in Wellington, the background music just started playing a Portuguese song!!! Marisa is the singer's name and she sings fado. A little weird...

Next week I will be travelling to one of the (paradisiac) south pacific islands for a holiday - I will tell you later which one! I will then come back to Auckland, where I will be talking at the New Zealand Travel Research Institute, as well as visiting Auckland University of Technology. Then it is time to fly back to the UK...

I already have lots of pictures and stories to tell, but I don't think I will be able to post them before arriving in the UK at the end of the month (but I will try...). Stay tuned!

M

Presentation at AEME's Forum

On the 18-19 June I travelled to Huddersfield (Northern England) to attend the 7th AEME Events Management Educators Forum. AEME (Association of Event Management Educators) is an association of educational institutions set up to advance the education of the public in the subject of events and events management. More specifically, it aims to support and raise the profile of the events discipline through the sharing of education and best practice.

This year’s theme was “Continuing Professional Development or Continuing to Develop the Professionals?”. The aim of the forum was to explore the roles, in partnership, that industry and educators have in continuing to develop current and future events professionals, including through continuing professional development. One of the teaching innovations I introduced this academic year was a closer link between the student work and the ‘real’ world and therefore this experience could provide a valuable contribution to the forum’s theme.

The unit is called Leisure Product (Event Innovation from October) and a piece of coursework was designed to meet the objectives of the unit, which revolve around exploring innovation and new product development theory and apply this knowledge to a real organisation. At the same time, the coursework had to give students the opportunity to reflect on their current knowledge of innovation and new product development, with a view to reflect on the key areas of the unit that they think are important with regard to their academic development and future employment.

The coursework involves developing a new event, for which students have to follow a step by-step process, divided in two stages:

• Consultancy report (first term) - The aim of the consultancy report is to identify the company’s current market situation and to identify the gap in the market place.
• Group presentation - The group presentation resembles an executive briefing to the management of the company. This presentation is for students to make a ‘business case’ for the new event they have developed for the company. The presentation follows a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style, where students present the business case in front of ‘dragons’, with a view to obtain their support for its development and launch.

The coursework has now run for 4 years, and over this period many changes have been made following an analysis of student performance. Until last year, groups were free to select the company they wished to employ as their case study. This caused a number of problems. For example, most groups selected companies for which incomplete information was available, hindering their ability to undertake a thorough internal and external analysis of the organisation. From an assessor’s point of view, it also made it difficult to compare student performance given the diversity of organisations and products that resulted from such flexible approach. In one seminar, I could go from wakes at the Golden Hinde (an old boat located in London), to a event at Swizzels Matlow (a candy factory) for former employees, to environmentally friendly weddings at the Eden Project! It is not surprising that at times it was difficult to keep track of all students’ proposals (there were around 25 groups)…

While what we were doing was already interesting and relevant for the students, for 08-09 a number of changes were implemented. One of the most relevant was the allocation of a specific organisation to each seminar group (there were 5 seminar groups of around 30 students each). This change in particular had a tremendous impact on student performance and engagement. Overall, we (me and my colleague Pearl Morrison, who is a co-tutor of the unit) feel that the right ‘formula’ was found. The allocation of an organisation to each seminar group allowed students to visit the organisation’s premises (we selected local companies) at the beginning of the academic year, while accessing detailed information via information packs provided by each organisation (e.g. strategic plans, marketing plans, financial data). In addition, managers of the organisations attended the presentations at the end of the year (they were one of the ‘dragons’). These changes led to students working in a much more ‘real’ context: working with a real organisation, real information and to real dragons.

In order to establish whether the coursework was perceived as an appropriate method for the unit, notably after the implementation of the changes, an evaluation of the experience was made that involved:

• discussions with each of the seminar groups at the end of stage 1.
• An online questionnaire at the end of stage 2
• A brief email interview with the managers of the organisation allocated to each of the five groups

My session at the AEME Forum shared the experience of this unit with participants. The results of the evaluation process were presented at the forum. The main points emerging from the focus group were:

• A sense of satisfaction of completing a consultancy report
• A feeling of relief/satisfaction/pride
• The opportunity to learning some of the theories/models (applicable in the real world)
• More motivated by a real organisation than an ‘imaginary one’
• ‘A chance to be creative’

In summary, the consultancy report was deemed ‘Challenging, interesting & worthwhile’ as well as ‘Useful, stressful & educational’

As far as the questionnaire is concerned (answered by 52% of the students who did the unit):

• 95% said that having a real organisation was very or extremely useful
• Around 80% of students indicated that the coursework has improved their communication & presentation skills, as well as their ability to work in groups.
• The same proportion (80%) said they learnt a lot from the dragons’ feedback (tutors and managers)

Overall students were very pleased with the nature of the work – around 4 out of 5 were satisfied or very satisfied, with the remaining 10% neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. Only 7% were dissatisfied with the coursework.

All managers expressed that they were impressed with students’ effort and found it worth the investment in time. Several managers volunteered to do it again in the future. Some of the business cases were very good. Managers showed excitement about some of the business proposals and some expressed an intention to take some of the ideas forward with the help of students (on a voluntary basis).

Taken together, these results are quite positive. Yet, I am still not happy that 7% of students were unhappy (and a further 10% were not happy). Our own experience and the feedback allowed us to identify areas that need to be addressed and we are hopeful that once implemented they will improve the level of student (and our!) satisfaction with the coursework and the unit.

The experience was deemed relevant enough by the university, which organised a press release covering the dragon’s den presentations. We believe this experience could be relevant to others teaching events (or other business related courses), and therefore we are planning to write a paper about it. I will keep you updated about any developments in this front. Thank you for reading this post till the end!