Tourism in the Network Society, Amsterdam, 5-6 April 2013
Tourism in the Network Society: Computer-Mediated Hospitality and the Transformation of Urban Tourism and Travel Practice
University of Amsterdam, 5-6 April 2013
About
Since the mid-2000s, the emergence of computer-mediated communication and online community platforms has generated new forms of touristic hospitality as well as tourist behaviour. Instead of booking packaged tours and accommodation through professional tourism agents, travelers have started to use sites such as CouchSurfing, Hospitality Club, SabbaticalHomes or AirBnB to create direct contact with possible hosts, travel companions or local guides. The principle of these new sites is that hosts and guests initially interact within the online environment, and then meet up, hang out and even host each other in the offline context of actual travel. Computer-mediated hospitality platforms cut out traditional intermediaries such as travel agents and create a new type of tourism, in which private people are enabled to open their homes to tourists from around the world and to mediate personalised narratives about culture, heritage and everyday life. These platforms create new forms of relationships between hosts and tourists and promote what users often claim as a cosmopolitan atmosphere.
Aim
The aim of the workshop is to explore the societal transformations induced by such computer-mediated hospitality and tourism, to analyze the ideological underpinnings of different online communities, and to assess their potentials and limits in generating new forms of cosmopolitanism in practice. The focus on computer-mediated hospitality also offers a privileged entrance to a broader study on the emergence and organization of computer-mediated communication, online communities and contemporary network society.
Topics
Topic 1 — Methodologies to study trans-cultural mobilities
Which methodologies can be used to approach network society through the specific prism of computer mediated hospitality platforms?
Topic 2 — Hospitality and society
How do computer-mediated hospitality transform actual travel and hospitality practice, in particular the means by which hosts and guest get in contact, generate trust and manage their interactions?
Topic 3 — Policy and management
From a practitioner’s perspective, what are the practical and technological aspects of developing, managing and also policing tourism and hospitality websites and related online communities (e.g. issues of netiquette, trust, net knowledge and community motivation; use of new technologies, software, Smartphone apps)?
Topic 4 — Self, other and place
How do computer-mediated hospitality platforms enable different actors to participate in the processes of cultural representation and the (re-)production of social identities at various scales?
Keynote Address
Jennie Germann Molz, Assistant Professor at Holy Cross in Worcester, MA (USA)
Organisation
The workshop is jointly organized by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network (TOCUCO). It is convened by De-Jung Chen and David Picard.
Academic Committee
Abram, Simone (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK)
Bialski, Paula (Hafen University Hamburg, Germany)
Buchberger, Sonja (SOAS, University of London, UK)
Chen, De-Jung (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Picard, David (New University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Salazar, Noël(Leuven University, Belgium)
Terhorst, Pieter (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Zuev, Dennis (ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal)
Call for Papers
If you wish to present research relevant to any of the topics of this workshop, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words at https://sites.google.com/site/tourismnetworksociety2013/home .
All abstracts will be anonymously reviewed and assessed by the workshop academic committee. The Call for Papers will close on 15 February 2013.
Contact : tourism.networksociety.2013@gmail.com
