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Considering the diversity of literary sites, various needs and motivations of literary visitors, and the limited research on literary tourists’ experiences, this study aims to explore the literary gaze at Hafez Tomb in Shiraz, Iran. As the visitor gaze encompasses various dimensions of experience, this study connected the two notions to identify the components of the literary gaze and determine the attributes that best describe it.

Data sources include semi-structured interviews with visitors and user-generated content on Tripadvisor. The deductive thematic analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used.

The findings revealed the multidimensionality of the literary gaze. The dominant factors that best describe the literary gaze at Hafez’s tomb were the sensory component of the experience, including “seeing”, “smelling”, “hearing”; affective including “anticipation”, “joy”, “trust”; cognitive including “perceiving”, “thinking”, “learning”; behavioural including “literary related”, “general”; and relationship including “tourist-companion”, “tourist-tourist”.

Understanding the literary gaze can assist site managers and destination marketers in designing the literary experience and developing promotional strategies that reflect the multifaceted nature of the literary experience. Tourism authorities should identify and shape tourists’ perceptions of literary sites to build the city’s image and brand as a literary city.

This paper used the orchestra model of experience to analyse the literary tourist’s gaze. This modification could explain that the literary gaze has multiple dimensions and studying all the dimensions gives the literary experience greater significance.

This paper charts the development of diversity research in hospitality and tourism (H&T) as a field of study. The authors are interested in how diversity has been studied, where diversity scholarship has been published, who are the leading diversity scholars and whether the scholars work has been influential. In addition, the authors identified the institutions and countries that contribute significantly to diversity scholarship in H&T.

The authors draw from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, Scopus and Australian Business Dean's Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List covering 109 journals to identify the relevant articles on workplace diversity in H&T. The authors conducted evaluative and relational bibliometric techniques to assess the prominence of diversity scholarship in the field.

Diversity research in H&T did not gain traction until 2005. Using Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal as a benchmark, the authors found that diversity research in H&T closely tracked the diversity topics in general organization and management literature. However, H&T lagged in race and ethnic, as well as gender identity research. A majority of diversity research is published in leading (top-ranked) journals, signifying the value of diversity scholarship in H&T. Hospitality journals published the most articles, while tourism journals reported the highest impact. Scholars based in the USA, China and the United Kingdom (UK) contributed the most diversity articles, but one researcher, Osman M. Karatepe (Turkey), stood out as the most productive and influential diversity scholar in H&T.

The insights from this study aid H&T scholars in identifying trends and opportunities in diversity research, assessing the productivity and impact of various journals and databases, locating collaborative opportunities (through co-citations and highly productive and influential institutions and scholars) and benchmarking the scholars’ own work.

Given an absence of prior review and diversity research has only gained ground in the H&T literature since 2005, this bibliometric study offers a fossil record and documents the trajectory of diversity scholarship in H&T, identifies the scholars who are active in this area of research and highlights institutions and countries where diversity research is conducted.

In recent years, research on children's tourism experiences has gained prominence, as children are becoming an increasingly vital market for the tourism industry. While events are a main sector of the industry and host millions of children every year, there is a lack of research specifically focussed on children's experiences in events. This chapter focusses on children's entertainment events which can provide children with a satisfying, memorable and educational experience. This study has developed a framework to facilitate deeper mixed studies on children's experiences in event tourism. The framework is composed of four pillars based on various social, tourism and event theories and models, including the Cognition–Affect–Behaviour (CAB) theoretical framework, the Orchestra Model of Experience, the Event Experience Scales (EES), the Theory of Child Well-being and the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change (TTM). The framework can be used by future researchers as an analytical evaluation tool to study children's experiences in different types of events and understand the mechanisms of behaviour change in this context.

Children have the ability to contribute to sustainable tourism research. A great deal of research on nature holiday has been conducted. However, it is unclear how this travel might serve as a good motivator for children to engage in environmentally responsible behaviour. To address this research gap, 72 drawings of children aged nine to 12 from Tehran, Iran, accompanied with the stories of their holiday were collected. Thematic analysis was done to assess their experience in nature and their cognitive state of environmental responsible behaviour. According to the finding, children are significantly concerned about nature, and they mostly perceived their best holidays in the natural environment. Children displayed a profound awareness of environmental responsible behaviour themes through their encounters with nature. Their experiences are classified into five levels: sensory, emotive, cognitive, behavioural and relationship. Each of these stages of experience may be used as a guideline for encouraging and training youngsters to be responsible.

Building on key ideas about the value of savoring in understanding the importance of vacation memories, a sample of Iranians were asked to write a long paragraph (one page) which described a particularly important, happy, and enjoyable vacation occasion. The answers were coded using five categories developed from savoring studies. By benchmarking the scores with data from well-matched samples from other countries (specifically a European sample from Austria, and Chinese and Japanese respondents), the Iranian tourists were shown to be especially appreciative of vacations being grateful, marveling, luxuriating, and having a strong sense of the status value of their time. For Iranians, vacations provide powerful, evocative highlights for their lives.

In Verona, Italy, one site attracts global tourist interest: the courtyard and balcony made famous in Shakespeare’s tragic play Romeo and Juliet. There is a collision of fact and fantasy in declaring this site to be the one in the famous play. More importantly, the contemporary space labeled as Juliet’s balcony is a commercial tourism hub, attracting a truly diverse international audience who are arguably at least intrigued by the potential for contact with a site embodying love and a tragic romance. Using the time tourists spent at the site as an organizer, combined with TripAdvisor ratings, the researchers revealed how authenticity was variously rejected, redefined, and constructed through the tourists’ behavior.