We take pride in recognising those individuals who make an outstanding contribution to the practice and/or study of tourism.  These are the Champions, who develop networks, create communities, and exemplify our motto of Engage, Enhance, and Enable.

 

 

Our first Tourism Champion is Professor Pauline Sheldon, President of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, and the winner of the UNWTO Ulysses Award for 2008.  Pauline introduced me to both the BEST project and the TEFI summit, two initiatives which continue to strongly influence my work.

 

Her inspiring acceptance speech as posted to TRINET by Dimitrios Buhalis, is reproduced below.  It is an example of the profound impact one individual can have upon a discipline and a planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNWTO Ulysses Acceptance Speech

Professor Pauline Sheldon

Connections and Collaborations in Tourism

May 28, 2008

Madrid, Spain

 

Director General for Tourism in Spain

Secretary General of UNWTO

Honored Ambassadors and Diplomats

Chair, UNWTO Education and Science Council

Executive Secretary of UNWTO Education and Science Council

Distinguished members of the UNWTO Education and Science Council

Members of the press

Honored Guests

 

Buenos tardes a todos!

Good Evening!

 

I would like to sincerely thank the UNWTO and the Ulysses award committee for the honor you have bestowed on me by selecting me for this award.  It is unexpected and very humbling to be recognized in this way and follow in the footsteps of tourism giants such as:  Professor Jafar Jafari, Professor Donald Hawkins, Professor Brent Ritchie, Professor David Airey and Professor Bernard Morruci.  Thank you very much.

 

In thinking about my remarks for this evening, it is clear to me that I have done nothing alone to deserve this award. So I dedicate my acceptance speech to the many and varied collaborators that have created the opportunity to stand before you tonight.  As I weaved my way through my professional and personal life, arriving at this special moment, I reflect with deep appreciation and wonder on these talented academics and professionals and the fruitful connections I have enjoyed with them. I shall not be able to mention all of them in the time we have, but I sincerely thank you all.

Taking a bird’s eye view of my life – I see a web or net – the nodes in the net are the people and institutions, and the colourful threads are the projects that have linked us together.   This net has supported and nourished me, has opened me to ideas and horizons that I otherwise would not have experienced. I have been energized and lifted by connecting with some of the finest people and organizations in tourism.  

I see tourism as a unique modality of connection -  creating connections between governments, organizations, and of course human beings.  These connections are of a kind and magnitude that have never happened before in human history. Tourism is a facilitator of networks, collaborations and interactions that can enrich human lives. Each visit I make to this wonderful country of Spain and city of Madrid enriches me, uplifts me, teaches me and always provides new colleagues or friends to connect with.  I know you have all had similar experiences in the places you visit.

What is the meta effect of these increasing connections?   I see them empowering us as a human race to drop our divisions and unite in common purpose to achieve the greater good.  I see connections as important to evolution and progress.  I see networks however large or small, energizing the players and firing neurons in their brains that would never fire alone.  Successful collaborative networks are expansive. The Nobel Laureate in economics, Myron Scholes makes the case that increasing complexity in the world requires more collaboration for wise decision-making.  Individuals alone can no longer do it – as part of networks and groups we can.   He suggests that the maximization of personal utility as the driver behind economic decision making, be replaced by maximization of group utility to successfully navigate our increasingly uncertain future. This is so true in the field of tourism with its complexity of issues and multitude of stakeholders.

Let me now ground these ideas into my personal and professional life.  As an academic and an islander, collaboration and connectivity have been especially important to me. Born on an island in the North Sea and spending most of my adult life on an island in the Pacific, reaching out and creating connections took on special meaning.  Staying on the rock was too limiting. I was fortunate to experience the benefits of reaching out at an early age.  From age ten onwards, each summer my parents gave my three siblings and I the experience of jumelage: each of us twinned with a child in a different country for the first part of each summer. One in Sweden, another in France, yet another in Austria, or the fourth in Germany for example. Then eight youngsters descended on our home in Cheshire for a very chaotic second part of the summer where we learned to appreciate each others’ cultures, find tolerance and harmony in diversity, and be flexible. This was my first brush with tourism – it was delightful and meaningful. Thank you to my parents!

A few years later, living in the seaside resort of Llandudno, North Wales – a tourism destination predominantly for industrial workers, I took my first summer job as a bar maid at the Billy Butlins holiday camp in the region. There I experienced a different kind of tourism that did not set so well with me. Tourism there seemed to have no connection with the surrounding culture, people or environment, but seemed instead to be an isolated search for amusement and distractions. With mixed feelings from this experience, that Autumn I embarked on my bachelors degree in mathematics and never expected tourism to enter my professional life again. We will come full circle back to Butlin’s holiday camp in a few minutes.

It was not until I moved half way round the world to Honolulu to study economics under Professor James Mak at the University of Hawaii, that tourism entered my professional life again. I saw one of the finest destinations in the world that, despite its huge success and incredible environment and culture, suffered from aging infrastructure, lack of authentic cultural experiences for tourists, and a product that catered mostly to the mass market. Since then much progress has been made and Hawaii is an outstanding destination. On completion of my PhD I joined the faculty of the Travel Industry Management School at the University of Hawaii and made tourism my field of inquiry.  My experiences with the destinations mentioned above created in me a strong desire to learn and teach the methods and policies that nurture quality, sustainability and responsibility in tourism.  My collaborations with Dean Chuck Gee, Professor Juanita Liu, Professor Fred Collison and others led to various research projects, and I continued to be fascinated with ‘improving’ tourism. Thank you to Jim, Chuck, Juanita, Fred and other University of Hawaii colleagues.

At that time connectivity with international colleagues to discuss the issues in  tourism was difficult on an island.  This spurred a turning point conversation with Jafar Jafari at the TTRA conference in Honolulu in 1988 leading to the creation of TRINET.  TRINET is a network for researchers all over the world to exchange information and ideas to further the understanding of tourism.  Over the last 20 years it has grown to connect 1,200 tourism researchers.  Voila – with a simple technology I was connected to the world of tourism academics and I was happy. Thank you – Jafar and the TIM School which houses this network.

As tourism matured over the last 20 years, organizations and institutions have proliferated – some may say too much – I say not.  The more chances we have to network the better.    A turning point in my career was becoming Interim Dean of the School of Travel Industry Management, and through that position, my connection with UNWTO was born.  I knew of the aura around UNWTO, but until I came to Madrid headquarters in 2000 I did not truly understand the scope and reach of this fine organization.  I was inspired by its global connections and broad and relevant programs, its concerns and hard work for the wellbeing of all destinations and the quality of life of their host communities. It was a delight and an honor to collaborate with the Education and Science Council and its members - many of you in this room today - and of course with Eduardo Fayos Sola and his team: Roz Deming, Lourdes de Aguila and others. Eduardo’s drive to make change through UNWTO programs is admirable and inspiring.  The various conferences, seminars and think tanks of UNWTO over the last eight years have given me a deeper understanding of the need to meld academic research with political savvy to accomplish change.  Collaborations on issues relating to sustainable tourism policy with Eduardo Fayos-Sola in Sri Lanka, Don Hawkins and Doug Frechtling in Washington DC, Brent Ritchie, Kaye Chon and others in Beijing have added very strong nodes and vibrant colored strings to my net of collaboration. Thank you UNWTO!

Information technology creates powerful links between minds  – and my interest in this area wove a new section of my net.  Colleagues such as Dan Fesenmaier, Andy Frew,  Karl Woeber, Hannes Werthner, Anna Pollock, Dimitrios Buhalis, and others created this field through the International Federation for Information Technology and Tourism. I was honored to be a part of that beginning and its subsequent development into an important area of study in tourism. The information richness of tourism and the power of knowledge to transform the policy process and its outcomes continue to fascinate me.  Tourism is one of the largest domain areas on the Internet and the potentiality for IT to enhance tourism is barely tapped. Thank you to all my IT collaborators! 

Another network that has been an important part of my academic life is the Business Enterprises for Sustainable Tourism Education Network (BESTEN). With colleagues such as Janne Liburd, Larry Dwyer, Graham Miller, Leo Jago, Deborah Edwards, Claudia Jurowski, and others we have created a dynamic consortium of educators and researchers passionate about understanding and promoting sustainability. Through annual think tanks we develop research agenda and curricula on various aspects of sustainable tourism.  BESTEN is eight years old this year – and the lesson I have learned by collaborating with these fine colleagues is 1) that small organizations can be particularly effective – particularly when networked with others - and 2) that working with passionate people is fun.  

In 2006 another turning point conversation occurred at TTRA in Dublin – this time with my good colleague Professor Daniel Fesenmaier from Temple University, USA.  This conversation birthed an initiative called TEFI – Tourism Education Futures Initiative, now part of BESTEN, which seeks to address the seismic changes that are happening in society. We are crafting an educational framework to respond to those that we hope will be relevant 20-30 years from now.  We envision a values-based framework committed to produce real leaders and stewards for whatever tourism futures may unfold. I would never have done this alone – thank you Dan and other colleagues such as John Tribe for your vision and collaboration. And thank you to all my colleagues at BESTEN and TEFI.

More recently my acceptance into and Presidency of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism has stitched a surprising new section into my web – one which humbles me greatly.   In my short time with the Academy many rich conversations have arisen with its members - the founders of our field – such as Jafar Jafari, Erik Cohen, Dennison Nash, Richard Butler, Graham Dann and others. They have injected me with renewed appreciation for the theoretical and inter-disciplinary nature of tourism studies and the richness of insight yet to unfold on how to improve tourism and its impacts. And it is here that we revisit Butlin’s Holiday camp.  At the last Academy meeting, to my surprise and delight I found out that Professor Alan Williams, one of the top tourism geographers in the world, was also at Butlin’s holiday camp in North Wales the same summer I was – the summer that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon! I was a barmaid and he was a red coat (tour guide). Was there any causality between our time at Billy Butlin’s and our future lives of academic study of tourism?  Mmmmm…I wonder.  I look forward to working with the Academy and its fine members.  Thank you particularly to Jafar for your vision in creating this group and steering it forward, and to Dr. Chuck Goeldner and Dr. Rick Perdue for their support of my membership.

As I reflect on my career, I feel the incredible privilege of being an academic and an educator. To influence the minds of future generations and to inspire them is indeed an honour and a blessing. One outstanding educator and academic in this room I know shares with me that sense of privilege.  He has been my mentor and supporter and life companion, and I owe him huge gratitude for my success. My husband Professor Bill Remus taught me the nuances of academic life and continues to be a sounding board for my projects as well as a role model and loving husband and friend. Thank you Bill!  

There are also a few people in the audience tonight who have also been important nodes in my net: co-author Esteban Bardolet from University of the Balearic Islands, Darko Prebezac from University of Zagreb who just spent a semester with us in Hawaii, and Amaparo Sancho from University of Valencia.  Thank you all!

Allow me revisit the title of my talk: Connections and Collaborations in Tourism – and focus on an important group of collaborators that I have barely mentioned – my students.  And I would like to make a commitment to them.   In almost every class I teach  – whether in Hawaii, Mallorca or Vietnam – I notice a core of students who are on fire. They are passionate about sustainable tourism and want desperately to make a difference in world.  They see the potential of tourism as an agent of change. I have wanted to do something for these powerful future leaders for a while – I have wanted to connect them and mobilize their passion to bring tourism to a new level in the way that only networking can.  This acceptance speech concludes with a commitment to create a mechanism of collaboration for these students to extend the net of tourism connections into the future. And I invite anyone in the audience to collaborate with me on this.

 

Before I close I would like to share with you one of my favourite quotes on success from Ralph Waldo Emmerson:

 

 

 

“The definition of success–to laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one’s self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived–this is to have succeeded.”

I celebrate tonight the success of all of you and particularly all of my collaborators and colleagues - the nodes and strings in my precious and colorful net.

In closing, I humbly accept this prestigious award from UNWTO – one of the finest networks in tourism on the planet. I would like to say a big thank you for all the rich collaboration you have provided to me. I take away with me a renewed desire to network with others on this incredible journey to understand and inform tourism and hopefully leave it better than any of us could alone.

 

THANK YOU VERY MUCH