The New Zealand family holiday: Exploring gender, generation, and group dynamics
Abstract:
The individualisation of tourism research has led to limited and fragmented research on families. This presentation extends previous concerns about conceptual and methodological shortcomings within tourism research on families by exploring a triangular framework that is inclusive of group sociality, gender and generation. A whole-family methodology was used with 10 families (10 fathers, 10 mothers and 20 children aged 6-16) within different holiday situations in New Zealand as a more critical and holistic approach to tourism concepts. This resulted in findings that include the gendered perspective of fatherhood and motherhood, the generational perspective of children and parents along with group dynamic perspectives.
Biography:
Heike is a lecturer in tourism studies at AUT University in Auckland. Heike has previously worked at Victoria University of Wellington as a Teaching and Research Fellow in Tourism Management. Her doctoral thesis examined family holiday experiences for the whole family group from a New Zealand perspective which won her a Dean’s Award in 2010 from Victoria University of Wellington. Heike has a particular interest in families and children in tourism, tourist behaviour, innovative research methodologies and critical theory development in tourism and hospitality. She has an edited book forthcoming on Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives with Ian Yeoman and Elisa Backer.
