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Understanding Family Tourism: A Perspective of Bibliometric Review

Guanghui qiao.

1 School of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning, Zheshang Research Institute, Academy of Zhejiang Culture Industry Innovation and Development, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

Qingwen Chen

Qiaoran jia.

2 Zheshang Research Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

3 School of International Tourism and Management, City University of Macau, Macao SAR, China

The study performed bibliometric visual analyses of family tourism research literature from 2008 to 2021, revealing the knowledge evolution process, research focuses, and future trends in this field. A total of 132 articles on family tourism were collated from the SSCI database of the Web of Sciences core collection and analyzed by CiteSpace. The results show that the number of research studies on family tourism has increased from 2008 to 2021, however, the overall base is small. Purdue University has the highest number of publications and citations. Inter-country cooperation occurs between the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Recently, “motivation” and “benefit” have become hot topics in family tourism research, and “social tourism” has received widespread attention, revealing future research directions. Lehto and Wu are the core figures in the family tourism field, and their achievements have been highly cited and peer-recognized. This study focuses on family tourism research in different cultural situations, enriching the knowledge system of family tourism research, and encouraging future family tourism research focus more on seniors and disadvantaged families.

Introduction

With the continuous growth of disposable family income and tourism promotion for family functions, the family tourism market has developed rapidly and has become the most important segment of the global tourism industry ( Schänzel and Yeoman, 2015 ). For families, tourism has become a necessity rather than a luxury. It enables family members to spend unforgettable time together and create collective memories, thereby forming an effective connection ( Lehto et al., 2009 ; Carr, 2011 ).

With the expansion of the family tourism market, tourism scholars have gradually paid attention to research on family tourism. The content of studies includes family tourism decision-making ( Barlés-Arizón et al., 2013 ; Yang et al., 2020 ; Wang and Li, 2021 ), family tourism motivation ( Kim and Lehto, 2013 ; Wang et al., 2018 ), family tourism benefit ( Shaw et al., 2008 ; Lehto et al., 2009 ), and family tourism experience ( Rhoden et al., 2016 ; Wu et al., 2019 ). From the perspective of research objects, some studies focus on the roles of couples in the family ( Rojas-de-Gracia and Alarcón-Urbistondo, 2017 ). Others compare the perspectives of parents and children ( Fu et al., 2014 ), and more studies have begun to focus on the voice of children in family tourism ( Khoo-Lattimore, 2015 ; Rhoden et al., 2016 ). Previous studies on family tourism have mainly focused on western nuclear families. With the complexity of social structure, numerous changes have taken place in family structure. Many special types of families have emerged, such as families with disabled children ( Kim and Lehto, 2013 ; Sedgley et al., 2017 ) and immigrant families ( Yankholmes et al., 2021 ). In addition, in family tourism research, Chinese families influenced by traditional Confucian cultural values and one-child policy differ from western nuclear families ( Wu and Wall, 2016a ). Chinese family tourism reflects this view insofar as tourists pay more attention to children’s learning experiences ( Wu and Wall, 2016b ; Lehto et al., 2017 ) and the tourism preferences and needs of elderly parents ( Wang et al., 2018 ). Therefore, there is a need to conduct a bibliometric study of family tourism research. Bibliometric studies identify the contribution to the knowledge and the development process of relevant fields by combing and reviewing the existing research literature, revealing the current research focuses and future research trends ( Denyer and Tranfield, 2006 ).

Visualization tools can generate figures and tables to help in clarifying the complex relationship between a large numbers of research samples. Visualization is crucial in the field of knowledge. It can help researchers to quickly understand the development of relevant research fields ( Speel et al., 1999 ). This method has not been fully used in tourism research. When used effectively, it can explore the network structure of different tourism environments ( Scott et al., 2008 ).

This study aims to conduct a detailed search of family tourism research literature in the SSCI database of the Web of Sciences core collection from 2008 to 2021 and to analyze with CiteSpace, a popular knowledge domain visualization tool ( Chen et al., 2010 ). This will provide a better direction for the follow-up research and improve the knowledge structure of international family tourism. This study also attempts to highlight seniors, a neglected voice in family tourism. The extension of the average life expectancy and of social development make the intergenerational relationship between grandparents and grandchildren increasingly important in family life, and the number of “multi-generational holidays” and “grandtravel” groups is increasing ( Gram et al., 2019 ). This situation is particularly prominent in family tourism with Chinese cultural context, in which most adult children maintain close ties with their parents, grandparents help to take care of their grandchildren, and adult children provide care and spiritual comfort for their parents ( Gruijters, 2017 ; Wang et al., 2018 ). Older people need a sense of security, family affection, and belonging. Adult children take filial piety as a natural responsibility. Taking parents on trips has become a way of showing their gratitude and filial piety ( Wang et al., 2018 ). There is also growing research attention on disadvantaged families, such as families with disabled family members. Continuous improvements in social welfare offer disadvantaged family groups more opportunities to participate in tourism activities, thereby forming a potentially important niche market.

Methodology

Data collection.

This study uses the SSCI database of the Web of Sciences core collection as the data source. The first search is by topic, (TS) = “family tourism” or “family travel,” in which “topic” covers the title, summary, and keywords of an article. Then, there are 10 searches for “family,” “parents,” “children,” “grandparents,” and “couples,” each combined with “tourism” and “travel.” The searches yielded 3,759 records (on November 20, 2021). Through reading the titles, keywords, and abstracts of each of these outputs, out-of-scope literature (e.g., transport and school travel, n = 1,343, family tourism enterprises, n = 272, medical and birth tourism, n = 654, etc.) was eliminated. Finally, a sample of 132 articles spanning 2008–2021 was retained.

Data Analysis

CiteSpace is a bibliometric visualization software package developed with Java language, which is used as a tool for scientific and technical text mining and analysis. It can reveal the knowledge evolution process of a specific field by drawing a series of visualization maps. CiteSpace helps to analyze pioneering and iconic literature in a research field, hot topics in the field, and the evolution of research frontiers.

CiteSpace calculates several indicators, including betweenness centrality, modularity (Q), and mean silhouette (S). Research literature with betweenness centrality greater than 0.1 is located at the center of the network, connecting different knowledge subfields ( Chen et al., 2014 ). CiteSpace provides two indicators, modularity (Q) and silhouette (S), to judge the mapping effect. Q is generally within the range of 0–1. Q > 0.3 means that the clustering structure is significant, and clustering with S above 0.5 is usually considered reasonable ( Chen et al., 2014 ). Modularity and contour values should be considered simultaneously to ensure a reasonable explanation for the clustering characteristics of networks in CiteSpace ( Chen et al., 2010 ). CiteSpace provides researchers with various bibliometric networks, including cooperation, keyword co-occurrence, and co-citation networks ( Li and Chen, 2017 ). In tandem with the network structure and content, CiteSpace’s burst detection function helps us find special points and identify keywords or articles repeatedly mentioned by scholars in a certain period ( Chen, 2006 ).

These maps can show the development status and changes in scientific structure, and they are used for frontier analysis, field analysis, and scientific research evaluation. This study adopts the following analysis methods: co-citation analysis of the research literature, journals, and authors; network of coauthors’ institutions and countries; and co-occurrence analysis of keywords.

Results and Discussion

Network of journals.

Figure 1 shows that the average annual publication volume on family tourism from 2008 to 2012 was small. The number of studies increased significantly from 2012 to 2013, reaching a small peak, falling back in 2014 to the 2012 level. Since then, the number of studies has grown slowly, with a sharp increase from 2018 to 2019, reaching 28. From 2019 to 2021, the level was relatively high at 15 articles. It seems that more and more scholars pay attention to family tourism, but the overall number of studies remains small, and there is extensive untapped scale and scope for future research.

Year-wise publication from Web of Sciences.

The number of citations of journals reflect the influence of journals ( Garfield, 1972 ). Therefore, the journals were ranked based on careful consideration of the total number of citations and articles ( Table 1 ), and the top 10 journals were analyzed. Annals of Tourism Research published nine articles, with 72 citations and an average citation score of 8.00. Although only one article each was published by Leisure Science and the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management , the number of citations was high. Tourism Review currently has one relevant article, indicating that the journal has begun to pay attention to research on family tourism. Of the analyzed studies, 45.1% were published in the top 10 journals, accounting for 84.9% of the total citations of all the analyzed literature, indicating that these journals are influential in family tourism research.

Top Journals in family tourism research.

Source: Self complied.

The index of emergent citations shows the active degree of journals. Figure 2 shows the most frequently cited journals in the same year. At present, Leisure Studies has the most citations, followed by Geoforum . The longest citation bursts were for the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing and Leisure Studies , which lasted for 6 years. In recent years, the citation frequency of Thesis , Journal of Tourism Futures , and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management has become more significant, showing that more journals are involved in family tourism research.

Citation bursts of the top 13 journals.

Collaborations Between Institutions

From Table 2 , the co-operation network among institutions has a high modularity and mean silhouette, and the network graph is of good quality. As time goes by, there are more nodes and links between them in the network, but the overall density value is low, which indicates that institutions increasingly have paid attention to family tourism as a research field, however, a central institution has not been formed to guide other institutions, and the collaboration between institutions in family tourism is scattered.

CiteSpace metrics by co-operation institutions network.

As Table 3 shows, Purdue University has the most achievements in family tourism research, with the highest number of papers and citations. It is also the institution that publishes the most papers in the first unit, followed by Zhejiang University. Although the number of papers published by Texas A&M University and Griffith University is not large, the average citation scores rank toward the top, indicating that the research results of these institutions are of high quality. Overall, the United States has the largest number of institutions, followed by China and the United Kingdom.

Top institutions in family tourism research.

Source: Author made.

Collaborations Between Countries

This study analyzes the author’s national network to explore whether family tourism research forms a stable cooperative relationship between different countries or regions. From Table 4 , there are more nodes in the network and the connections between them. Over time, researchers from more countries participate in family tourism research, and the international collaboration between them is more complex. The density of the network shows an upward trend, and the number of clusters have also decreased from 15 to 10, indicating that the countries network structure is more concentrated.

CiteSpace metrics by co-operation countries network.

The time-zone view of the country/region collaboration network ( Figure 3 ) shows that the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia have laid the foundation for cooperation with other countries and regions. Emerging cooperation networks include the United States and France; China and South Korea; Japan, Poland, Russia, and Spain; Turkey, and Serbia, illustrating the increasing frequency of cooperation among some emerging market countries. However, in general, international collaboration in family tourism research needs to be improved, especially between European and Asian countries, so as to facilitate differentiated research within different cultural backgrounds.

A time-zone view of the country/region collaboration network.

Research Themes

The co-occurrence analysis of keywords and keyword expansion allows us to see the knowledge structure of the subject ( Ding et al., 2001 ). From 2008 to 2021, there were 225 keywords and keyword expansions, and 20% of them were used more than three times. This shows that the area where family tourism research is concentrated is relatively small.

Figure 4 shows that the keyword with the highest frequency is “tourism,” followed by “leisure,” “parent,” “perception,” “experience,” “family,” and “children.” From the time-zone view, we can see that the research topic has changed over time. From 2008 to 2012, the research topics covered family travel decision-making, participation, and experience, mainly from the perspectives of parents and children. Family leisure became the focus, and tourism became an important part of leisure activities. Since then, new research topics have emerged, such as family tourism destinations. Due to different motivations of family members, studies on family tourism types have gradually diversified, as in adventure tourism, heritage tourism, and ecological tourism, which, respectively, involve 6, 3 and 4 sample literatures. Among them, the main research directions of family adventure tourism are motivation and the impact of adventure on hedonic and well-being; heritage tourism mainly involves children’s experiential learning experience; ecological tourism mainly involves children’s nature conservation. This development is related to parents’ expectation that tourism will have educational significance for children. Tourism is considered to be the best education ( Yang and Lau, 2019 ). As an informal learning method, tourism is more active, interactive and experiential ( Shaw and Dawson, 2001 ). Therefore, learning experience has become one of the important motivations of family tourism.

A time-zone view of keywords with high frequencies from 2008–2021.

In the past 5 years, “motivation” and “benefit” have gradually become research hotspots. Academia began to pay attention to the travel motives of disadvantaged family groups and the broader significance of family travel. It is worth noting that “social tourism” has become a new keyword in recent years, 17 sample literatures were involved, and the research objects included families with autistic children, low-income families, and families with the visually impaired, etc. As an emerging form of tourism and social policy, social tourism targets low-income families, enabling them to participate in tourism activities ( Minnaert et al., 2011 ). This is consistent with the research on families of disabled children mentioned above. Disadvantaged families have been highlighted and have gradually been included in family tourism research.

Figure 5 shows ten burst keywords that appeared from 2008 to 2021. This burst of keywords indicates an emerging trend ( Chen et al., 2014 ). Since 2008, “impact” has become a burst keyword. This has continued up to 2013, indicating that family tourism has been of broad interest. During this time, “recreation,” “children,” and “pattern” have been mentioned frequently. Family tourism studies are focusing on children’s voices, and the influence of children’s tourism is increasingly influential. The focus on children also mainly around tourism decision, experience, benefit, etc. Relevant studies have proved that children have an increasing impact on family tourism decisions ( Kozak, 2010 ). They do not passively obey the decisions made by their parents and play an important role in tourism product purchase and on-site decision-making ( Blichfeldt et al., 2011 ). In addition, family tourism pays more attention to children’s experience ( Rhoden et al., 2016 ), especially the pursuit of learning experience. And in the recent study of family tourism value, it has become a trend to pay attention to the eudaimonic wellbeing that breaks through challenges and realizes self-development, and the role of intergenerational tourism in promoting personal and intergenerational wellbeing. Subsequently, “attitude” and “participation” became burst keywords. “Travel” and “constraint” were often mentioned. Among them, the vacation tourism constraints of aging parents and families with disabilities have been paid frequently attention ( Kong and Loi, 2017 ; Heimtun, 2019 ). In recent years (2019–2021), “motivation” and “vacation” have become breakout themes.

Top 10 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.

Co-citation Analysis by Thematic Clusters

Co-citation clustering reflects the core themes and knowledge foundation of family tourism research. Figure 6 is a reference clustering diagram constructed using CiteSpace. In our study, six major clusters were identified and featured according to the title of the articles. The modularity (Q) of co-citation clusters in this study is 0.8622, and the mean silhouette (S) is 0.9275, which shows a significant visualization effect.

Cluster analysis of the reference co-citation network.

The most cited papers provide a historical perspective on and reveal the recognition of scientific progress ( Chen, 2006 ). The more obvious the label is in front of the cluster block, the more articles are cited. There are 42 articles in the “#0 family functioning” cluster, and one article with a high citation level ( Lehto et al., 2009 ) discusses the unique interaction among family vacation tourism, family cohesion, and family communication, showing that family vacations play a positive role in promoting family relations, communication, and unity. A study ( Shaw et al., 2008 ) based on semi-structured interviews with family members in Ontario, Canada, discussed the cultural significance and experience of school-age children’s family vacations and proposed that the important aspect in family tourism is the creation of a long-term memory, which will strengthen family cohesion and establish and support positive family awareness. It can be seen that family tourism research from the functional perspective has laid a sound research foundation for family relations and children’s informal learning. There are 41 articles in the “#1 family travel” cluster, among which the two articles with the highest citation rates are from Wu and Wall (2016a) and Wu et al. (2019) . In addition, an article on the family tourism motivation of Chinese adult children and parents ( Wang et al., 2018 ) was completed by Wu and his colleagues. It can be seen that Wu holds a core position in this field, and that research on family tourism in the Chinese context has attracted extensive attention in the academic community. The articles in the “#2 mixed emotion” cluster mainly include the motivation, activities, and obstacles of families of disabled individuals. “#3 neo-Confucian values” has a distinct cultural background, and the research objects in the article are mainly Asian families. The articles contained in “#4 phenomenological study” mainly discuss the accommodation constraints and needs of European parents with children on vacation based on qualitative research and use innovative programming to measure the role of children in parents’ tourism decision-making. The articles in the “#5 couple role” cluster mainly discuss the role of the couple in tourism decisions and indicate that women are increasingly influencing family travel decisions.

Articles With Citation Bursts

The burst of a cited paper reflects the dynamic evolution of research hotspots ( Chen et al., 2014 ). Figure 7 shows the 13 most frequently cited studies in the same year, and Figure 8 shows the annual citation count for these top 13 cited reference from the publication to 2021. The burst of citations began in 2012, and the strongest outbreaks were led by Shaw et al. (2008) ; Lehto et al. (2009) , and Carr (2011) . Carr (2011) offered important opinions on the experience of family tourism, which guided follow-up research scholars and tourism managers. Shaw et al. (2008) and Lehto et al. (2009) mainly discussed the significance of family tourism in family unity, cohesion, and communication. The strongest burst in 2014 was a theoretical article by Obrador (2012) , which focused on the position of the family in tourism research.

Top references with the strongest citations bursts.

The annual citation count for top 13 references from publication year to 2021.

During the 2 years between 2017 and 2019, there was a continuous wave of citations about family tourism. The most prominent citations in 2017 were related to Barlés-Arizón et al. (2013) and Kim and Lehto (2013) . The first one focused on the motivation and travel activities of families with disabled children. The second one analyzed the impact on family tourism decisions in couples on the woman side. The most flame-up research in 2018 came from Schänzel and Smith (2014) . The article provided new insights into family tourism functions according to the multidisciplinary of group dynamics. In a full-family approach to 10 families in New Zealand, Fu et al. (2014) analyzed the impact of family tourism by comparing generational differences between parents and children. Five articles were especially noted in 2019. Two articles, published by Khoo-Lattimore in 2015 ( Khoo-Lattimore, 2015 ; Khoo-Lattimore et al., 2015 ), emphasized the role of children in family tourism. Rhoden et al. (2016) also focused on the travel experience of children. Schänzel and Yeoman (2015) proposed the significance of ten changing trends for family tourism. Wu and Wall (2016a) reviewed the literature on family tourism in the Chinese cultural contest. It is noteworthy that three of the 13 articles are from Lehto and her colleagues. Lehto’s achievements in the field of family tourism are outstanding and have been widely recognized by peers.

The family unit is the center of social activities. The most intimate and most important emotional bonds are formed with individuals’ children and families. Family tourism promotes the family system development and the harmony of society ( Yeoman, 2008 ; Schänzel and Smith, 2014 ). Family tourism plays a vital role in the tourism market.

CiteSpace is a visualizing knowledge graph analysis software package, with more advantages than other bibliometric analysis tools. First, by measuring and visualizing the network of different nodes, the nuances of knowledge can be better revealed ( Chen, 2006 ). Second, CiteSpace can decompose a variety of networks into automatically labeled clusters with terms from citing articles, enabling researchers to identify turning and pivotal points of knowledge domains. Third, the scientific cooperation network can be visualized. More collaborative connections indicate a very high rate of collaboration between research groups. Finally, the burst detection and co-occurrence analysis of high frequency and high betweenness centrality keywords can be used to identify research hotspots and trends. This research gives readers a clear picture of family tourism research topics and their evolution patterns in the past 14 years, finds research hotspots, and predicts trends by conducting collaboration network analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and co-citation analysis.

Through collaboration network analysis, the study provides an understanding and interpretation of the most cited authors and the active citation journals, including identifying the institutions and countries at the forefront of family tourism research. Through the co-occurrence analysis of keywords, we found that “motivation” and “benefit” had been popular keywords in the past 5 years. Related articles put significant attention on children, and some new viewpoints have been proposed, such as the travel motivation of senior parents and of families with disabled children. The co-citation analysis of the literature shows the dynamic evolution of family tourism research hotspots and helps readers to quickly interpret the basic and outstanding studies.

Family tourism research is affected by different cultural contests, social conditions, and economic development. Therefore, family tourism research scenarios need to be diversified to enrich their knowledge systems. The results of this study encourage future research to pay attention to the voices of elderly family members and the influence of family tourism on the physical and mental health, subjective well-being, and self-value realization of elderly family members. This research aims to fill the gap in the “parents-oriented” travel motivation study and give support to the promotion of active aging. In practice, this study offers tourism managers the ability to effectively understand current and future family tourism market needs and restrictions in order to propose more targeted products.

This study’s limitations are as follows. First, due to the constraints of CiteSpace, the sample literatures are limited to the SSCI from the WoS Core Collection, and the authors only selected articles and reviews in the collections, excluding other published works and there are some tourism journals and related articles missing. In order to alleviate this limitation, we discussed highly cited literatures in co-citation analysis. Besides, the language limitations of the research team confine this study to journals published in English. However, many literature on family tourism have been published in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and other languages.

In future studies, it is necessary to further study family tourism in different family types, and pay attention to the travel preferences and needs of different family members, especially the seniors. In order to promote active aging, it is necessary to discuss the benefits of family tourism from the perspective of the seniors and help them achieve intergenerational happiness.

Author Contributions

GQ: conceptualization, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing – original draft preparation, and funding acquisition. YC: writing – original draft preparation, methodology, and data curation. QC: conceptualization, methodology, and data curation. QJ: data curation and review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

This work was supported by the Scientific Research and Creation Project of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism (No. 2021KYY025); National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 21BGL282).

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Trends in family tourism

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 16 March 2015

Families represent a large and growing market for the tourism industry. Family tourism is driven by the increasing importance placed on promoting family togetherness, keeping family bonds alive and creating family memories. Predictions for the future of family travel are shaped by changes in demography and social structures. With global mobility families are increasingly geographically dispersed and new family markets are emerging. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the trends that shape the understanding of families and family tourism.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper examines ten trends that the authors as experts in the field identify of importance and significance for the future of family tourism.

What emerges is that the future of family tourism lies in capturing the increasing heterogeneity, fluidity and mobility of the family market.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the understanding about the changes taking place in family tourism and what it means to the tourism industry in the future.

Schänzel, H.A. and Yeoman, I. (2015), "Trends in family tourism", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 141-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-12-2014-0006

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Heike A. Schänzel and Ian Yeoman

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Family travel is predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other forms of leisure travel, partly because it represents a way to reunite the family and for family members to spend time with each other, away from the demands of work ( Schänzel et al. , 2012 ). At the same time family tourism is phenomena shaped by changes in demography and social structures which are slow moving. These include higher rates of female participation in the labour market, higher divorce rates, rising and longer enrolment in tertiary education, growing numbers of elderly people, more foreign‐born members of the population, and so forth. As a consequence of demographic changes, the concept of the family unit might be in question. However from another perspective, family relations may in the future be reconfigured on new, more sustainable foundations. We may increasingly see networks of loosely connected family members from different marriages, partnerships and generations emerging, who devise fresh approaches to cohesion and solidarity. Growing better‐integrated ethnic communities may help to instil more positive family values (old and new) into mainstream society. Children and families form the closest and most important emotional bond in humans. This relationship is what drives humanity and society, and as such the family is the centre of human activity ( Yeoman, 2008 ). Families include single parents, blended families, involved fathers and same sex parentage. Families, like other market segments, seek travel destinations that offer relaxation, novelty, outdoor activities and arts and heritage sites. However, families are less likely than other segments to indulge in the local culture. Seeking destinations for relaxation is the largest differentiator for families compared to non‐families in Australia, the UK and the USA, whereas, shopping was the top holiday activity for families in China and Columbia ( Euromonitor, 2013 ). Then there are families without children.

Family tourism is one of the most important sectors of the tourism industry around the world and accounting for about 30 per cent of the leisure travel market ( Schänzel et al. , 2012 ). Looking to the future, what are the trends that will shape the future? This paper examines ten trends that the authors, who are experts in the field, identify of importance and significance for the future.

1. Changing family structures

Longevity and smaller core families have led to the family becoming more vertical rather than statically horizontal in form. Grandparents are enjoying more time with their grandchildren as they live longer. Consider the following; in 1960 the life expectancy of a UK woman was 73 and the mean age for giving birth was 27. Presently, the life expectancy for a woman is 81.9 and the age for giving birth is increasingly in their 30s. Present day grandparents can expect to enjoy several more years with their grandchildren than those of the 1960s ( Yeoman, 2012 ). The verticalisation of the family is apparent through more grandparents becoming involved in caring for their grandchildren. Where siblings within a larger family would have previously been responsible for baby – sitting duties, grandparents in the vertical family are now taking their place. As Briggs (2001) points out the prominence of these inter – generational relationships play a central role in the family network due to this verticalisation. Indeed, as people live to a greater age and childcare becomes more expensive we expect grandparents to continue to play an active role in their grandchildren's life.

2. Immigration

According to the World Bank, in 2010, more than 200 million people (or 3 per cent of the world's population) lived outside their country of birth. Of these, two out every five immigrants had moved from emerging and developing countries to developed countries. The growth in the number of residents living abroad has been beneficial to travel and tourism as people tend to return home to visit friends and family and vice versa. From the USA with 23 million foreigners to Saudi Arabia where 30 per cent of residents are non‐Saudis, there is no corner in the world that remains untouched by migration.

In 2009, 20% of Spanish departures were made to visit friends and relatives, according to the Institute of Tourism Studies. Roughly 7% of the Spanish population is of foreign origin, with Moroccans accounting for 19% of foreign citizens in the country. Germans, French and British are the next largest source countries, accounting for 8.7%, 7.0% and 6.6% of foreign citizens in 2010 .

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics, departures to visit friends and family accounted for 19.8% of UK departures in 2009, but only 13.9% of spending. In 2010, the percentage of outbound trips made to visit friends and relatives dropped to 19.4% due to the ongoing economic recession in the UK. Residents from India and Poland are the largest groups, with around 650,000 foreign citizens from each country living in the UK in 2010.

As we can see from these European statistics, Europe is a place without migration boundaries. As European Union citizens, people in the UK can take advantage of free movement and are resettling, often in the preferred destinations of Spain and France. Indeed, the landscape of the UK is changing as inbound migration has made London, for example, a melting pot of international inhabitants from a multitude of countries, anywhere from Poland to Somalia. Simply put, people no longer live next door to many of their family members.

3. Multi‐generational travel

Increasingly re‐connection holidays across generations become a way for extended families to spend valuable time together ( Butlins, 2012 ). A survey in the USA by Trip Advisor (2011) reveals that 37 per cent of respondents plan to take a multi‐generational family trip in that year. Today, an estimated 75 per cent of travellers plan their holiday around a milestone event such as a birthday, reunion, wedding or anniversary, and even a holiday, to bring family members together. Several demographic trends are behind this growth: migration, longevity and lower birth rates. Today most extended families live geographically apart and increasing longevity has led to stronger multi‐generational ties combined with smaller families ( OECD, 2008 ). Fewer children in society mean they become more important and the focus across generations. More baby boomers are becoming grandparents who are typically healthier, mobile and want to spend quality, fun time with their grandchildren. The trend is that with increased mobility inter‐generational re‐connection holidays allow geographically dispersed family members to bond and create lasting memories. It, thus, achieves multiple goals.

4. Social capital and creating memories

The social benefits of tourism for its participants have been identified for some time within family tourism as opportunities for bonding, communication and strengthening of relationships ( Carr, 2011 ; Shaw et al. , 2008 ). Holidays are often the only time the whole family spends together for an extended period without the distractions of work and school. Holidays then are considered a symbolic time out of the normal that warrants remembering and are used for generating social identities in family members. (Re)connecting social relations on holiday is behind the meaning of social capital construction here which make a valuable part in the social identity formation. Photographic images capturing these intimate and meaningful family interactions help in the creation of social identities through producing rather than reflecting family life ( Larsen, 2005 ). Family holidays then increasingly serve a purpose of integrating people through tourism and can be seen as a social practice that involves social capital formation and memory creation that becomes integral to social life.

5. Helicopter parents

The phenomenon known as helicopter parenting has become well and truly entrenched in the US cultural lexicon. Appearing first in the 1990s, the term is used to describe how some parents “hover” above the lives of their children, ready to swoop at a moment's notice to either intervene in their child's interest or contribute to key life – decisions traditionally taken independently by the young adult ( Yeoman, 2008 ; Fingerman et al. , 2012 ). From a business perspective, parents’ anxiousness means a level of reassurance, particularly from sources that can relate first‐hand experiences before they make the final decision. Parents will search different channels for recommendations, for example from www.tripadvisor.com or from friends and family. As the internet is an important source of information, tour operators and travel agents need to host online forums (where consumers exchange ideas and have a source of truthful information) and virtual tours of properties. All of this provides parents with reassurance in making a decision.

6. Experiential family holidays

The core product of tourism are the experiences gained ( Prentice et al. , 1998 ). For families the holiday experiences centre on spending time “with” the family doing fun activities that are different to normal and which create positive memories ( Schänzel et al. , 2012 ; Shaw et al. , 2008 ). International holidays are perceived as offering more novel or grander experiences than those closer to home. The propensity for overseas holidays generally increases with the age of the children, as families with older children seek more exotic or grander experiences ( Blichfeldt, 2007 ). In affluent societies about 90 per cent of people agreed in a survey that luxury for them meant time for themselves and with their family, and family holidays topped the list ( Visa, 2013 ). Life is then about sharing great experiences for those who can afford it. Families are also increasingly seeking adventure travel experiences. There is a trend towards families looking to be active together and having more authentic experiences on holiday.

7. Children as sophisticated consumers

Eager to grow up, today's children, like youngsters before them, are zealously trying to emulate the consumer habits of those older than them. Businesses have been quick to recognise that the growing distinction between children's ages is pronounced enough to warrant products and services specifically focused on those tweens who are aspiring to become more like teenagers and adults ( Yeoman et al. , 2012 ). Children have always had specific consumer needs. The difference today compared with earlier is perhaps that more and more products are targeting these tween needs from an earlier age. Whether we think this a blameworthy development or whether children are just evolving faster than before, something of a shrinking of childhood seems to have taken place. This phenomenon is often referred to as “age compression” or “children growing older younger”. In the 1960s, childhood was a distinct stage and it had been only roughly a decade since the world had discovered or invented the “teenager”. Today, children seem to adopt the habits and attitudes of what has so far been considered the teen domain at an earlier age than previously – hence the emergence of the “tween” (preadolescence, that is, the stage between middle childhood and adolescence in human development, in the range of 8‐12 years old). There can be no doubt that the concepts of both “childhood” and “youth” are being redefined and that, as consumers, today's kids are very different and do not hesitate to use “pester power” if needed ( Euromonitor, 2014a, b ).

8. Blended families

There is recognition that the definition of family has changed, to the effect that most refer to “families” rather than the “family”, in that different family members are likely to perceive the composition of their families in different ways ( Dumon, 1997 ). This is reflective of the decline of the nuclear family, increasing divorce rates and the rise of reconstituted or blended families. While families are separating through divorce, people are forming new families, while often still being networked to their old ones through their children. Social, as opposed to biological, parenting is an increasing phenomenon in family life. More and more men and women raise children who are not biologically their own. This has implications on family holiday behaviour with more complicated travel arrangements needed and presenting different family group dynamics. There is also a trend towards children from divorced households getting extra and more enticing holidays with their respective blended families as each parent tries to out trump the other.

9. New family markets

As world travel continues to grow, fundamentally driven by the increased wealth from markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). New tourists see new places, whether travelling as individuals, groups or families. In China, family tourism in 2013 represented 23.9 per cent of all international arrivals. With rising disposable incomes and the improving living standards of Chinese consumers, domestic leisure tourism was welcomed by Chinese consumers and registered healthy growth of 12 per cent in 2013 in terms of the number of trips ( Euromonitor, 2014a ). India, like other countries is seeing the emergence of a wealthy middle class who see travel as the new luxury shaped by a desire for new experiences and new destinations. Due to the relative low price package, holidays are very popular amongst Indian families with domestic destinations such as Kerala, Puri and Madhya Mahal the most popular holiday spots. Yeoman (2012) points out that as wealth increases the families of India and China become the new family markets for the Disneylands of Paris, Los Angeles and Toyko. The future of world tourism will be shaped by these and other emerging markets.

The continuing change in gender roles and parenting behaviour can have significant influences on family holiday experiences. In contemporary society, both mothers and fathers are expected to embrace more equal responsibilities at home and with childcare. These societal changes have led to intensive mothering ( Arendell, 2000 ) and involved fathering ( Kay, 2009 ), implying a more concerted and time consuming effort in raising fewer children than in previous generations. This implies that the traditional roles of parents are extended to encompass a wider variety of parental behaviour towards children on holidays. Increasingly this involves resistance to traditional parental discourses, such as snowboarding mums ( Spowart et al. , 2008 ) and shopping tour dads. Fathers become more actively involved with their children in sport, leisure and on holiday, as entertainers and educators ( Schänzel and Smith, 2011 ). Females represent the fastest growing demographic participating in physically demanding leisure pursuits which are typically viewed as male‐dominated domains ( Roster, 2007 ). In the future, gender constructs will become more diversified not just for parents but also for the children and centre more on having active fun together no matter what the activity.

Conclusions

Families play an important role for the tourism industry despite the demise of traditional family models. There is a myth of the decline of the family when in fact families today are just differently connected than previously. Families can range from a minimum of two (single parent with one child) to multi‐generational families (any number of adults and children) and increasingly move away from traditional family sizes and gender orientations (two heterosexual parents and two children). Holidays can play an important role in strengthening family relationships and building of social and family capital within the immediate and extended family by overcoming increasing mobility issues. Family travel and visiting of friends and relatives (VFR) travel then are more resilient than other forms of tourism, as people will always travel to reconnect. There are new family tourism markets emerging and traditional family markets are venturing further and becoming more adventurous. This means that the tourism industry needs to better cater to this increasing diversity of the family market in the future.

The tourism industry also requires better understandings of the complex purchasing decisions as families are becoming more democratic and destination choice and holiday activities are discussed among all family members, including children. However, children cannot be considered as a homogenous group and age can be a big differentiator as toddlers have very different requirements to teenagers. This should lead to more creative and innovative marketing campaigns that engage the young tourists at their appropriate ages, especially as they are the next generation of tourists. Investing into the travelling children of today then will shape the future of tourism. If the tourism industry gets it right and minimises inconveniences and conflicts for families through better planning, success will follow as the family market is economically substantial and predicted to grow in the future. Increased life expectancy, shifting grandparent and parental roles and more emphasis placed on fewer children will fuel that demand. While the focus on holiday is on relaxation and engaging in novel family activities to create happy memories, it is just as important to ensure children can have fun in safe environments while the rest of the family can pursue their own interests. The future of family tourism then lies in capturing the diverse needs of children and adults of different ages, from diverse ethnic backgrounds and with diverse family structures. The trends then point towards increasing heterogeneity, fluidity and mobility in families who travel in the future.

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About the authors

Dr Heike A. Schänzel is an expert in family tourism having completed a PhD on this topic at the Victoria University of Wellington and now resides at the Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand).

Dr Ian Yeoman is a Specialist Tourism Futurologist who believes in Star Trek, an eternal optimist, is Sunderland AFC mad and enjoys cooking. Ian is a Trainee Professor at the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) who is studying towards a higher Doctorate.

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Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Aspects of Tourism, 56) Paperback – July 20, 2012

Purchase options and add-ons.

The family remains at the emotional heart of society, and makes up a significant proportion of the tourism market. However, the concept of family has changed over the decades and there are now different types of families that have their own unique attributes and needs. Families may have one parent or two, who may or may not be of different genders. This cutting-edge book constructs a multidisciplinary perspective on family tourism by discussing various types of families; how parents and children influence travel behaviours now and in the future and how family holidays may also be linked to stress. Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives provides a compilation of issues from academic writers around the globe, to provide a range of perspectives linked by a common theme of family tourism with a futures perspective.

• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Channel View Publications
• Publication date July 20, 2012
• Dimensions 6.15 x 0.47 x 9.21 inches
• ISBN-10 1845413261
• ISBN-13 978-1845413262
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

The family, in many countries, is in a state of flux and their vacation patterns have changed significantly in recent years. This book provides a comprehensive picture of the family on holiday, past, present and future. The authors fill a gaping hole in the academic and practitioner literature and this book will be an invaluable resource for students and professionals alike.

This book addresses a much under-researched aspect of contemporary life. Family tourism represents a major aspect of all leisure travel, yet little systematic research has, until now, been undertaken on the various forms of the family and their experiences of tourism. This book represents a systematic approach to the subject and is written in an accessible and interesting manner. I heartily recommend it to all those interested in tourism and in the family.

This book breaks new ground by bringing together a range of well-respected researchers from around the world to delve into the concept of family tourism from their individual knowledge base, so as to develop a multiple disciplinary focus to the study of family tourism. I am sure in a short time this book will be required reading, not only for students of tourism, but also for those who work in tourism marketing and want to better understand their markets.

This book on family tourism is a welcome contribution to tourism studies through its discussion of this hitherto forgotten, but significant market. The interesting collection highlights the pleasures and stresses of family travel, the social exclusion of some groups, and the creativity required by the industry to provide for the family whose structure and requirements are ever changing.

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives provides a concise look at timely and important topics related largely to tourism studies, but also brings in ideas and research from family leisure, sociology, gender studies, and marketing. Professors, graduate students, and researchers looking to update their knowledge of specific or niche tourism topics, or to better understand the interdisciplinary nature of their field, will find this to be a useful text...Overall, the editors have crafted a book of well-written and sourced, timely, and interesting chapters on topics not often addressed in the tourism literature, but that are important issues and trends in the field.

This is probably the first book dedicated to addressing family tourism issues. As such, it is an appropriate contribution to tourism education and research...this book offers an informative introduction for postgraduates and new researchers who are interested in investigating issues in family and tourism.

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives gives a welcome stage on which to examine some of the aspects of the family tourism experience. This is clearly a book that provides a grounding in families and their tourism experiences and highlights a wide array of potential and important future research avenues. As such, the book represents a text that should be read by all those researchers (from Professors to Honours students and everyone in-between) looking at the family in the context of tourism and hospitality. While the book is clearly primarily aimed at the academic research market, the ideas set out within it still represent something that should appeal to the leaders and innovators of the tourism and hospitality industries.

This book is an essential read for all in the tourism industry, the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs. Family tourism continues to shape and impact our travel behaviours, decisions, and purchasing patterns. Therefore, understanding and appreciating these ever changing dynamics will allow us to better actively engage with, meet, and respond to the needs of family tourism.

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives is a solid starting point in redefining families and family tourism for the 21st century. It provides a workable frame for conducting research into the topic and demonstrates the potential for family tourism studies to inform and influence research in sociology and family studies, thereby improving the status and acceptance of tourism studies in general. It seems well poised to meet its aim of stimulating debate and research into the broad field of family tourism and stands, therefore, as a timely and welcome contribution to the literature.

About the Author

Heike A. Schänzel is Associate Professor and Programme Leader Postgraduate in International Tourism Management at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Her research interests include tourist behaviour, families in tourism, sociality in tourism and gender issues.

Ian Yeoman is Associate Professor of Tourism Futures at Te Herenga Waka―Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Tourism Futures .

Elisa Backer is Associate Professor at Federation University Australia and is on the editorial board of nine journals. Her main research interests are VFR travel, destination marketing, partial industrialisation in tourism, family tourism and social media.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Family tourism, multidisciplinary perspectives, multilingual matters.

Introduction: Families in Tourism Research

Why Study Families in Tourism?

Families with dependent children account for just under half of the population and comprise 29% of all households in the UK (Beioley, 2004), which is comparable to other Western countries. In New Zealand, about 26% of the population are under 18 years old and most children are nurtured within the context of the family (Statistics New Zealand, 2006). Families with dependent children (who encompass adolescents as well as babies) thus represent a significant proportion of the population and an important current and future market for the tourism industry. For example, families generate about one in four of all holiday trips made in the UK (Mintel, 2004) and account for 30% of leisure travellers in the USA (Travelhorizons, 2009). Consequently, it is not surprising that the family holiday market has been identified as constituting a major portion of leisure travel around the world (Shaw et al., 2008). Peter Yesawich predicted that family travel (defined as that undertaken by adults, including grandparents, with children) will continue to grow at a faster rate than all other forms of leisure travel, partly because it represents a way to reunite the family and for family members to spend time with each other, away from the demands of work (Yesawich, 2007). Families seem to put a high priority on taking holidays. For many families in the UK an annual holiday is now seen as essential rather than a luxury (Beioley, 2004). The importance placed on the family market within the tourism industry is, however, not reflected in tourism research.

The American humourist Nathaniel Benchley (2001) stated that 'there are two classes of travel – first class, and with children', referring to the burdens associated with travelling with children. While research that addresses travel has focused on the 'first class' holiday, very little is known about holidays with children, which are deemed to be a more 'mundane' and trivial type of tourism (Bærenholdt et al., 2004). In tourism research, the family holiday has been awarded far less attention than it deserves for its overall market share and size. One area of family tourism in which the invisibility of the family is especially disconcerting is coastal mass tourism (Obrador, 2012); the invisibility results partly from the general vilification of mass tourism. Another area where family tourism has been ignored is domestic tourism, despite the predominance of families with children travelling within their own countries. In New Zealand, for example, domestic tourism has generally been the neglected cousin of international tourism (Pearce, 2001) because of the emphasis placed on export earnings. Both of these shortcomings can be linked back to the perception of ordinariness and the taken-for-granted nature of family travel. It is the purpose of this multidisciplinary book to expand in a comprehensive manner our understanding of families who travel with children. It results from the collaboration of international tourism experts and is the first book to disseminate original thinking and research on family tourism from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The chapters in Part 1 of the book provide some context by looking at the social, demographic and historical trends affecting families and their holiday behaviour before Parts 2 and 3 respectively provide a comprehensive reflection on family holiday experiences now and into the future, from a range of perspectives. A more holistic, multidisciplinary, global and future-orientated approach is taken here to understand family tourism by acknowledging its underlying social dynamics, fluidity and multidimensionality. What emerges is that family tourism is far more complex and noteworthy than has been appreciated.

Definition of Families and Family Holidays

This is a pertinent time for a comprehensive consideration of families in tourism. The concept of the 'family' is itself in question. There is recognition of the plurality of family forms, to the effect that many would refer to families rather than to 'the family', in that different family members are likely to perceive the composition of their families in different ways (Dumon, 1997; Shaw, 1997). Nevertheless, despite the diversity of family forms, a common denominator is that 'they all serve as person-supporting networks ' (Dumon, 1997: 181, original emphasis). Defining 'family' is not only a complex undertaking for researchers but also a problem that confronts society with new challenges. The concept of relationships and interaction between family members is essential to any notion of family and underlies most literature on family leisure and family tourism. Researching the family holiday must be considered within the context of changing family structures and values, and wider societal trends. In the UK, a family holiday is most commonly defined in the literature and policy as a recreational break of four or more nights away from home (Hazel, 2005). A more widely accepted definition of family holidays is that it involves leisure travel away from home for more than one day undertaken by a family group, itself defined as at least one child and one adult (Schänzel et al., 2005).The adult here can be a parent, legal guardian or caregiver (although in the present work the term 'parent' will be used throughout, for the sake of simplicity). These definitions are fairly narrow, in that they are based merely on length of stay and minimum size of the travelling group, and do not take into account the different experiences of children and parents.

Holidays are commonly defined around push motivations that are orientated either towards escape (Iso-Ahola, 1982) or towards a break from routine (Crompton, 1979) but this does not necessarily apply to family holidays. According to Shaw et al. (2008) parents with children differ from other tourists in their strong focus on social values, such as family togetherness, creating family memories and generativity. This indicates a purposive element to family holidaying that involves connections with, rather than escape from, social relations (Larsen et al., 2007). While parents seek togetherness on holiday they may also desire personal space, which can be a source of conflict and requires compromise. Gram (2005) identified an inherent dilemma in family holidays: because parents seek relaxation and children seek activities, the ideal of togetherness is hard to achieve. Gram's study, however, was largely based on the parental perspective rather than being informed by the individual members of the family. According to Schänzel (2008), who included the voices of all family members, family holidays are primarily about doing activities that are different to normal routines and that involve spending time together 'with' the family (including extended family) rather than being an escape or break 'from' home routines. They serve a purpose of (re)connecting people, through tourism, and can be seen as a social practice that involves networking, family capital formation and social obligations. Because Schänzel included the voices of children it became evident that fun was an important factor, as evidenced by the comments of an eight-year-old boy: 'It is not a holiday if it is not fun. If it is fun then it is a holiday' (Schänzel, 2008). As a result, the following definition of 'family holidays', based on the experiences of all family members, was adopted for this book:

A purposive time spent together as a family group (which may include extended family) doing activities different from normal routines that are fun but that may involve compromise and conflict at times.

The Under-representation of Families in Tourism Research

Despite the economic significance of family tourism for the tourism industry, holidays with children have largely been marginalised in academic research (Schänzel et al., 2005). Most tourism research focuses on the individual and emphasises detachment, and so has effectively de-socialised tourist subjects, rendering such approaches unsuitable for research into families (Obrador, 2012). Research has also not kept pace with the change in family forms and structures. This has led to limited, fragmented and individualised research on family holiday experiences. Most family tourism research is market and consumer driven and focused on the themes of decision processes and roles (Lehto et al., 2009), and even here relatively few studies have included children (Blichfeldt et al., 2011; Nickerson & Jurowski, 2001). Some research has been carried out at family-centred tourist attractions (Hallman et al., 2007; Johns & Gyimothy, 2003) and there are historical accounts of family holidaying (Inglis, 2000; Rugh, 2008). A historical development of family tourism in the UK is given in Chapter 4. Specialised studies on the benefits of social tourism coming out of Europe (Hughes, 1991; McCabe et al., 2011; Minnaert et al., 2009) are increasingly identifying the link between tourism for disadvantaged families and increases in family social capital, as discussed in Chapter 7. Families also form an important part of travel for visiting friends and relatives (VFR), which is perpetually underestimated in tourism research (Backer, 2012) and is discussed in Chapter 6.

Also evident is a lack of research into the broader experiential dimensions of family holidays that takes into account the perspectives of all family members and the increasing diversity of family groups. There have been studies of family holiday experiences that are mainly informed by feminist perspectives and thus focused on mothers' family holiday experiences (Deem, 1996; Small, 2005). There is little published on the holiday experience of fathers, apart from their joint parenting voice (Schänzel & Smith, 2011) and, again, few studies have investigated the family holiday experiences of children (Carr, 2006, 2011; Cullingford, 1995; Hilbrecht et al., 2008; Small, 2008). This is in contrast to a research tradition that is inclusive of children and fathers in related social sciences such as family studies and leisure studies (Daly, 1996b; Jeanes, 2010; Kay, 2009). This means that little is known about children as family tourists and how they can be better attended to. Children are the consumers of tomorrow and their influence on travel decisions and tourism experiences should not be underestimated. This is discussed with regard to marketing to young tourists in Chapter 10. Relatively little attention has been paid to the meaning of family holiday experiences to parents (Blichfeldt, 2006; Shaw et al., 2008). The dearth of research on the family group (Gram, 2005) and on family group dynamics on holiday (Schänzel, 2010) has resulted in a poor understanding of how group dynamics can inflame or heighten the individual holiday experience (Pritchard & Havitz, 2006). This is despite the fact that potentially different generational and gender needs and desires can lead to social tensions and conflicts on holiday, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

As mentioned above, holidays with children are different from other holidays and can involve family group conflicts (Gram, 2005; Schänzel, 2010) and added stresses that require careful family organisation. There is scant literature on the work involved in and the difficulties with facilitating positive family experiences (Shaw, 2008). Even less is known about the stress factors in family holidays, despite the significant influence these can have on overall satisfaction with the holiday experience, as discussed in Chapter 8. Instead, the notion of families spending happy times together on holiday is a persistent marketing image that has long been part of the 'mythology of tourism' (Seaton & Tagg, 1995). The image of the happy family on holiday is also largely based on white, middle-class and nuclear families, and does not reflect the growing diversity of family forms. According to Carr (2011), it can be construed that the non-nuclear family is an unhappy family who cannot be together because it does not fit within conceptualisations of the tourism experience as a time of family togetherness. Yet this is clearly erroneous, as demonstrated by the discussion in Chapter 9 of the significant potential of tourism to strengthen and consolidate sexual identities and family relationships for gay and lesbian families. The increasing proportion of people who exist outside the traditional family life cycle in tourism (Bojanic, 1992; Lawson, 1991), such as families with different sexual orientations, is discussed in Chapter 11. It debates whether a model of set stages that people are expected to go through during their life needs updating to reflect societal changes.

Apart from the under-representation of families in tourism research there is also a disconnection between tourism studies and other social sciences concerned with families. This is despite the significant influence that society and dominant ideologies of parenting and childhood can exert on family holiday experiences. Much can be gained from the literature in sociology, family studies and leisure studies (Daly, 2004; Handel et al., 2007; Shaw, 2010) for the deeper understanding of trends and behaviours shaping family tourism experiences, as discussed in Chapter 2. The idealisation of family time in Western societies (Daly, 1996a) and changing gender roles (Harrington, 2006; Shaw, 2008) can then be traced from the home and leisure realms to the holiday realm. While tourism has some unique qualities that may not be found in everyday leisure activities or in the home, such as the 'notion of departure' from what is routine (Urry, 1990), this neglects the concept that family tourists' behaviour is influenced by a combination of socio-cultural and personal values that are present in both the home and holiday environment (Carr, 2002). In fact, family holidays are also about the supporting experiences and interactions that are intrinsic to everyday life (McCabe, 2002). The implication here is that changes in domestic family life and family leisure also affect family behaviours on holiday, and this needs wider recognition in tourism research. The prominence of families with children in tourism contrasts with the neglect within academic research of the relations between tourism and domesticity, sociality, broader experiential dimensions, diversity and ideologies.

It would be a huge undertaking to try to fill the apparent gaps in our knowledge on family tourism. This book, though, is a first coming together of different perspectives and disciplines to provide better understandings of what holidays for families entail. It provides a broad ideological context, societal trends and historical background as well as discussions and empirical findings on a variety of topics concerning family tourism behaviours; the future implications are also considered. In this way, experts in the incongruent field of family tourism are brought together for the first time to disseminate to a wider audience their knowledge of aspects such as: social and demographic trends; historical developments; fathers, children and family groups; gay and lesbian families; VFR travel; social tourism; stress on holiday; consumer kids; and the life cycle models. Much of this breaks new ground and addresses some of the gaps in the research literature highlighted above. It also emphasises that more research is needed to keep pace with the increasingly changing and diversifying tourism market that is made up of families in all their shapes and forms. The concluding chapter suggests research topics in order to capture the fluid and dynamic nature of modern families. Families make up a substantial and robust market segment for the tourism industry, generating about 30% of tourism receipts (Mintel, 2004) and warrant much more attention in research than they are currently awarded. What is needed is a better conceptualisation of the family in tourism that takes account of its unique social qualities, multiple dimensions and idiosyncrasies.

Conceptualisation of Families in Tourism

The fragmented and limited research on family tourism might explain why there is no conceptual framework for it in the literature. Instead, most studies that deal with tourism experiences discuss representations of the self (tourist) and the other (host), usually in an international (exotic) holiday environment (e.g. Wearing & Wearing, 2006), or external factors such as the weather (e.g. Pritchard & Havitz, 2006). Yet the host–guest structure that is applied to international tourism is not well suited to family group travel because it neglects issues of group dynamics and sociality with 'significant others' (i.e. within the family group) (Larsen et al., 2007), and simply grafting theories about individual tourist behaviour onto group contexts may not work (Yarnal & Kerstetter, 2005). This has led to a de-socialisation of tourism subjects, which makes such research approaches unsuitable for families (Obrador, 2012). One way to 'deexoticise' and 're-socialise' tourism theory is by placing family and friendship relations at the centre of tourism research through the social turn (Larsen, 2008). What is needed, then, is a familial perspective (Smith & Hughes, 1999) which puts the social into travel and is inclusive of the views of all family members.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Channel View Publications (July 20, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1845413261
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1845413262
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.15 x 0.47 x 9.21 inches

About the author

Dr. Ian Yeoman - Futurist

Ian is probably the world's only professional futurologist dedicated to specializing in travel and tourism. Ian learned his trade as the scenario planner for VisitScotland, where he established the process of futures thinking within the organisation using a variety of techniques including economic modelling, trends analysis and scenario construction. Today he is a leading academic researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, where he is science leader on a project commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development to examine and position the future of tourism in the country along a timeline to 2050. As a Visiting Professor at Stenden University's European Tourism Futures Institute he is a team member of a €7m futures research programme examining tourism in the Friesland province of the Netherlands.

Ian has published extensively within the field of tourism futures, with articles published in leading academic journals such as Futures, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research and Journal of Vacation Marketing on a variety of topics from climate change, artificial intelligence and consumer trends - all within the context of travel and tourism. He is a popular keynote speaker at conferences such as ITB, Travel and Tourism Research Association, UNWTO Logic, New Zealand Commerce Commission and Failte Ireland on topics including sleep, digital behaviour, technology, future timelines, food tourism and consumers.

Ian has a PhD in Management Science from Edinburgh Napier University, BSc (Hons) in Catering Systems from Sheffield Hallam University and presently completing a postgraduate teaching certificate. Previously, Ian was Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality Management at Edinburgh Napier University and University College, Birmingham. He has extensive experience within the hospitality industry, for which he was a hotel manager with Trusthouse Forte.

Ian has received a number of awards in recognition of his research including his appointment as an Honorary Professor of Tourism Management at Stirling University, Visiting Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, Charles Forte Foundation Scholarship and the Mike Simpson Award from the Operational Research Society.

Ian is the founding editor of the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Globalisation Studies and Research in Hospitality Management. Ian is also a member of a number of industry expert panels including Techcast and UNWTO.

He is the author/editor of 12 books including Demography, Revenue Management, Family Tourism and Festivals & Events Management. Forthcoming books include The Future of Events and Festivals, The Future of Food Tourism and the Future of European Tourism. Within New Zealand, Ian serves as a committee member on the Futures Trust and is Vice Chair of the Millennium Project.

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The Fantasy of Heritage Tourism

The first generation of immigrants wants to survive, the second wants to assimilate, and the third wants to remember, the sociologist Marcus Lee Hansen wrote in 1938. The fourth, fifth, and sixth? Apparently they now want to go on a luxury vacation to visit the Welsh coal mines their ancestors crossed an ocean to escape.

So-called heritage tourism has grown into its own travel category, like skiing and whale watching. In 2019, an Airbnb survey found that the share of people traveling to “trace their roots” worldwide had increased by 500 percent since 2014; the company announced that it was teaming up with 23andMe, the DNA-testing service, to meet this demand, offering trips to clients’ ancestral homelands. Ancestry, the company behind the family-search website, has partnered with a travel agency. The governments of Germany and Scotland have websites devoted to heritage tourism. Conde Nast Traveller is all over this trend . In Dublin, the Shelbourne Hotel’s “genealogy butler” can research your Irish side, if you so please. The Conte Club, a boutique travel service known for its focus on privacy and members-only jet rentals, will take you and your partner on a week-long “ DNA-mapped journey ” starting at $35,000 (flights not included). Should you wish to go very far back in time, the agency can make that happen. Rebecca Fielding, the CEO, told me about one client who was obsessed with the idea that he had descended from Genghis Khan. DNA tests can’t possibly prove a connection that old, Fielding said, but the Conte Club was happy to arrange his trip to Mongolia.

Kyle Betit, the genealogist who runs Ancestry’s travel business, told me that his clients experience something much more “personal” and “deep” than what’s available to “the typical tourist.” Ancestry genealogists can create bespoke itineraries tailored to a family’s history, down to the villages or even the streets where they once lived. The company’s most popular destinations were Italy and Ireland. In 2023, it took 44 individual clients or groups on such voyages. This year, it’s offering two genealogy cruises .

[ Read: What can you do with the world’s largest family tree? ]

Who takes such a trip? According to the Airbnb survey, Americans top the list, followed by Canadians and Australians. Those most likely to go are between the ages of 60 and 90—mainly retirees with cash to spare. Dave Richard Meyrick, whom Ancestry put me in touch with, is a representative example.

Meyrick is 73 and lives in Las Vegas, where he worked at the MGM Grand hotel and casino until his retirement. He recently came into a small fortune—not at the poker table, but after winning a lawsuit against the U.S. military. The Agent Orange that the Army sprayed over Vietnam when he was fighting there caused Meyrick to lose most of his eyesight years after he returned. The newly enriched man has no wife and no kids—“that I know of,” he told me, with a chuckle—so indulging in a decadent vacation was the logical course of action. The question was where to go.

He had recently been on an unremarkable cruise through the Gulf of Mexico when a free trial for Ancestry.com appeared on his screen in spring 2020. He learned that he was ninth in a line of Richard Meyricks. He found his paternal grandfather—who was born in Wales and fought for Canada in World War I—in mustard-gas records that might explain his grandpa’s weird cough. Meyrick had always assumed that his paternal grandmother’s ancestors were also from Wales; actually, they were German, from the medieval city of Heidelberg and the Alpine region of Bavaria.

Soon he got a promotional email from Ancestry: If he wanted to see where his father’s parents came from, the company was there to help. He replied, intrigued. Betit scheduled a video call. The team helped him book a trip to Germany, where his father’s ancestors were innkeepers on the grounds of a princely castle. The inn has been renovated, and is now the chic office of a finance firm. During a stop in Munich, Meyrick drank beer at Oktoberfest. He then went to Wales, where another branch of his father’s ancestors worked the mines and steel mills in a village that dates back to the 1600s.

He told me that the deterioration of his eyesight had changed his perception of traveling. He couldn’t see the sites or landscapes very well, but his genealogy helped him feel connected to the places he visited. At the Welsh church where his ancestors had been baptized, married, and buried, Meyrick met a local history buff, who told him a story. In the early 1700s, a villager with a habit of hiding behind stagecoaches to rob the wealthy messed with the wrong rich man, a big landowner, and was hanged. The historian was convinced that the unfortunate thief was among Meyrick’s ancestors. Could this fabulous connection be true? Ancestry’s genealogists weren’t able to confirm it, and Meyrick said that his source had seemed a little senile. Still, he assured me, the $50,000 trip was “money well spent.”

This year, he plans to do his mother’s side.

Heritage tourism may only be catching on among Americans now, but governments have been pushing it for decades.

After World War II, tourism was considered a major component of diplomacy. Marshall Plan funds were earmarked to build not just roads and city centers but also ski slopes and airports. The Eisenhower administration created the People-to-People Program, promoting international pen-pal networks and sporting events in hopes of uniting countries against the Soviet Union.

Europe welcomed America’s tourists, and tried to encourage more to come. Some hosted “homecomings”—festivals meant to lure the children and grandchildren of emigrants back to visit. Greece held one in 1951; Lebanon, in 1955; Sweden, in 1965–66. Ireland hosted annual homecomings starting in 1953. These campaigns were, in the words of the Swedish historian Adam Hjorthén, “the earliest coordinated attempts at adopting ancestry in the promotion of mass tourism.”

They were also a failure, as people didn’t go. The Irish homecoming— called An Tóstal , or “a gathering,” and sponsored by the founder of Pan Am Airways—went on for six years before a tourist-board report admitted that the word fiasco didn’t sufficiently convey how badly the effort had flopped.   

For heritage tourism to take off, a few changes had to occur. First, plane tickets needed to get a lot cheaper. As the Pan Am founder, of all people, should have known, transatlantic flights then cost a lot of money—airfare from New York to London in 1950 was about $8,700 in today’s dollars . That year, only about one in 250 Americans went overseas at all. In 2019, at the pre-pandemic peak of traveling, this number was one in three .   

Even if they had the money, travelers might not have chosen to spend it on connecting with their homelands. For a long time, genealogy struck many people in the United States as elitist. Most European settlers, the historian Russell Bidlack wrote , “had escaped from a society where the traditions of inheritance and caste had denied them opportunity for a better life.” Genealogy was for people obsessed with nobility, or for WASPs living off borrowed glory.  

This began to change in the 1970s and ’80s, when genealogy became cool. The publication of Roots , Alex Haley’s 1976 novel about a seven-generation lineage, starting with a man sold into slavery in Gambia and ending with an American descendant not unlike the author, was a turning point. The book topped the New York Times best-seller list for more than five months and inspired two TV adaptations and eventually a whole genre of trace-your-ancestry reality shows. Genealogy was no longer just a hobby for pedigree-loving Europeans but became a tool for everyone, including marginalized groups, to understand their past.

Still, genealogy was hard work, at least until the advent of the internet in the 1990s made public records accessible and searchable. Infobases, a seller of floppy disks with genealogy databases catering to Mormons, who have a particular interest in the subject for theological reasons, purchased Ancestry, then a local publisher and magazine specializing in genealogy. Ancestry.com went online in 1996. By the mid-2010s, DNA testing was mainstream—packaged, commoditized. The tests convinced people that the connection they felt to the place of their ancestors was “really real,” as Naomi Leite, an anthropologist at SOAS University of London, put it to me. An American could now possess hard evidence that he was 12.5 percent Greek.

But when that American goes on a vacation to Santorini, what exactly is he hoping to find?

[ From the June 2016 issue: The false promise of DNA testing ]

Heritage is the name Americans give to the past when they realize they’ve already lost it. They want to claim it back. And when they finally go to these places where they had never been, travelers say they are “returning.”

This mode of traveling across space and time is ultimately a journey into the self—the reconstruction of a grand story that started long ago and ends with you. It provides order and meaning to travel that might otherwise seem arbitrary, while still providing plenty of choices: After all, the further you go into your family tree, the more branches you may have to pick from. Solène Prince, who studies heritage travel in Sweden, told me that people tend to focus on the lineage that they view as most “socially desirable”: “Americans and Canadians like to be Swedish,” she said. “It’s progressive.”

A segment of this industry targets Black Americans. Ghana, from which many enslaved Africans were sent to the New World, had its own homecoming— a “Year of Return”— for Africans in the diaspora in 2019. One and a half million people visited the continent that year, Ghana’s tourism department reported. But most heritage tourism tacitly serves white Americans. (Ancestry mentions Ghana in a list of possible Personal Heritage Journeys, but when I asked if anyone had taken advantage of that trip, a company spokesperson said not yet.)

Genealogy may be the product of painstaking research, but it’s also a fantasy, about who we are and who we’d like to be. Many Americans want to be something else: “Time and again, I have heard genealogists be very disappointed to learn that, in fact, they’re all white,” Jackie Hogan, the author of Roots Quest: Inside America’s Genealogy Boom , noted once in an interview . “If America is a melting pot, this is people wanting to unmelt it and find what makes them special,” Leite, the anthropologist, told me.

[ From the July/August 2018 issue: The weird, ever-evolving story of DNA ]

But even if white Americans think they want to be something other than white, when it comes time to travel, they mostly want to go to Europe. Fielding, of the Conte Club, told me that the top destinations for its DNA trips were all in Europe. Even when a DNA test uncovers ancestry outside this part of the world, clients tend to ignore it and “put their money where their comfort zone is”—meaning travel to the places they might have gone to anyway.

Reading testimonials from Ancestry travelers online, I got the impression that a big appeal of a heritage trip is marveling at how bad struggles were in remote places compared with the safety and comfort of present-day America. “I am grateful for them leaving and everything they went through, so we could have the life we have,” one traveler said after visiting the Italian sulfur mines where their grandparents once worked. “I think it made me appreciate not only them, but the sacrifices they had to go through so I could live comfortably here in the United States,” said another one who went to Ireland. There’s a hint of smug pride behind this gratitude exercise.

But at least one traveler came away with a more disquieting narrative, according to Joe Buggy, one of Ancestry’s genealogists. He had an American client who learned, while visiting his ancestors’ quaint little village, that everyone in town believed his grandfather had committed a murder there. They all thought he’d fled to Australia. Maybe that’s why Grandpa never talked about Ireland.

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Out of the Centre

Savvino-storozhevsky monastery and museum.

Zvenigorod's most famous sight is the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, which was founded in 1398 by the monk Savva from the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, at the invitation and with the support of Prince Yury Dmitrievich of Zvenigorod. Savva was later canonised as St Sabbas (Savva) of Storozhev. The monastery late flourished under the reign of Tsar Alexis, who chose the monastery as his family church and often went on pilgrimage there and made lots of donations to it. Most of the monastery’s buildings date from this time. The monastery is heavily fortified with thick walls and six towers, the most impressive of which is the Krasny Tower which also serves as the eastern entrance. The monastery was closed in 1918 and only reopened in 1995. In 1998 Patriarch Alexius II took part in a service to return the relics of St Sabbas to the monastery. Today the monastery has the status of a stauropegic monastery, which is second in status to a lavra. In addition to being a working monastery, it also holds the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum.

Belfry and Neighbouring Churches

Located near the main entrance is the monastery's belfry which is perhaps the calling card of the monastery due to its uniqueness. It was built in the 1650s and the St Sergius of Radonezh’s Church was opened on the middle tier in the mid-17th century, although it was originally dedicated to the Trinity. The belfry's 35-tonne Great Bladgovestny Bell fell in 1941 and was only restored and returned in 2003. Attached to the belfry is a large refectory and the Transfiguration Church, both of which were built on the orders of Tsar Alexis in the 1650s.  

To the left of the belfry is another, smaller, refectory which is attached to the Trinity Gate-Church, which was also constructed in the 1650s on the orders of Tsar Alexis who made it his own family church. The church is elaborately decorated with colourful trims and underneath the archway is a beautiful 19th century fresco.

Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is the oldest building in the monastery and among the oldest buildings in the Moscow Region. It was built between 1404 and 1405 during the lifetime of St Sabbas and using the funds of Prince Yury of Zvenigorod. The white-stone cathedral is a standard four-pillar design with a single golden dome. After the death of St Sabbas he was interred in the cathedral and a new altar dedicated to him was added.

Under the reign of Tsar Alexis the cathedral was decorated with frescoes by Stepan Ryazanets, some of which remain today. Tsar Alexis also presented the cathedral with a five-tier iconostasis, the top row of icons have been preserved.

Tsaritsa's Chambers

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is located between the Tsaritsa's Chambers of the left and the Palace of Tsar Alexis on the right. The Tsaritsa's Chambers were built in the mid-17th century for the wife of Tsar Alexey - Tsaritsa Maria Ilinichna Miloskavskaya. The design of the building is influenced by the ancient Russian architectural style. Is prettier than the Tsar's chambers opposite, being red in colour with elaborately decorated window frames and entrance.

At present the Tsaritsa's Chambers houses the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum. Among its displays is an accurate recreation of the interior of a noble lady's chambers including furniture, decorations and a decorated tiled oven, and an exhibition on the history of Zvenigorod and the monastery.

Palace of Tsar Alexis

The Palace of Tsar Alexis was built in the 1650s and is now one of the best surviving examples of non-religious architecture of that era. It was built especially for Tsar Alexis who often visited the monastery on religious pilgrimages. Its most striking feature is its pretty row of nine chimney spouts which resemble towers.

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Americans detained in Turks and Caicos after ammunition was found in their luggage describe "nightmare" situation: "Just so unreal"

By Kris Van Cleave , Kelsie Hoffman

Updated on: May 22, 2024 / 9:12 PM EDT / CBS News

A Florida grandmother was headed home with her daughter from a surprise Mother's Day dream vacation to Turks and Caicos when it turned into a nightmare. Airport security say they spotted two bullets lodged under a flap in Sharitta Grier's carry-on bag.

"I never experienced nothing like that," Grier, of Orlando, said in an interview on "CBS Mornings." "It was just so unreal to me. And all they kept saying was like, 'This is a serious, um, charge, 12 years mandatory to prison.' 12 years?"

Grier, a grandmother, said she spent a few nights in jail.

"They chained me to a chair by my leg," she said. "It's cold. Scared. It was awful. It was so awful. I couldn't sleep, no peace. A nightmare."

Grier is one of  five Americans  facing a potential 12-year mandatory prison sentence after being detained in the British territory over ammunition allegedly found in their luggage. All five of the Americans said they did not realize the ammunition was in their bag.

When asked how she thought the bullets ended up in her luggage, Grier said she locks the box that stores her ammunition and puts it in the top of her closet when her grandchildren visit. She thinks it could have fallen out and into her luggage when she put it away.

"Only thing that I can think of was me putting it up in the top of my closet, the ammunition fell out the box inside of the, out the box inside of the suitcase, I'm gonna say carry-on and fell up under that flap in the carry-on. It was no way for me to see it. I couldn't just open the bag and see it in the bottom," she said. "I would have to pull that whole flap out the bottom of that suitcase to see it. It was impossible for me to see it, hear it or anything in that bag."

Possessing a gun or ammunition is illegal in  Turks and Caicos , but was previously punishable by a fine. In February, a court order required a mandatory prison sentence, even for tourists, in addition to paying a fine.

Another one of the five is Ryan Watson , a father of two from Oklahoma, who has been away from his family for over 40 days will be in court next week. 

Watson was arrested April 12 when four rounds of hunting ammunition were found in his carry-on luggage as he and his wife, Valerie Watson, were trying to head home after a vacation. Valerie Watson isn't facing charges and has returned to the couple's children in Oklahoma. 

"I wake up everyday thinking that it's gonna make more sense to me, um, and it doesn't," said Watson. "I can tell the kids are hurting. It's probably too much weight for an adult to bear, um, let alone a 7 and a 9-year-old."

Watson earlier told CBS News the ammunition may have been left in his bag after he went to Texas on a hunting trip. The Transportation Security Administration acknowledged its officers missed it when the Watsons went through security in Oklahoma City at the start of their trip to Turks and Caicos.

"We're never gonna be able to stop everything that we want to stop," said TSA administrator David Pekoske. "So we do have these misses. We take them very seriously and do everything we can to figure out why."

Another tourist, Bryan Hagerich, who is a father of two from Pennsylvania, expects to be sentenced Friday, possibly providing a sign of what's to come for the other Americans.

"I think, you know, Brian's case is gonna set the precedent for all of us," Watson said. "We're still remaining really heavy in prayer right now that, um, that exceptional circumstances are found."

Meanwhile, there is growing pressure on the tourist hotspot, with the  U.S. governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Oklahoma sending letters asking for leniency. A congressional delegation recently left the islands after meeting with top leaders.

"Like thousands of Americans each year, these individuals traveled to your beautiful territory for leisure," the U.S. governors wrote. "We humbly ask that your government—in its wisdom—temper justice with mercy and recognize that these men made mistakes but had no apparent malicious intents."

"They were very clear that, you know, there's going to be times for discretion and expedition and everybody is on the same side of wanting this to come out," said Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman .

Charles Washington Misick, the premier of Turks and Caicos, will deliver a "speech" on the ongoing situation at 10 a.m. EST Thursday, his office announced on social media. It will mark Misick's first public comments on the issue. 

In a May 20 news release on Turks and Caicos' government website , it acknowledged the U.S. delegation's trip and said, "The Governor and the Premier confirmed – as per the constitutional separation of the executive and judicial branches – they cannot intervene nor comment on ongoing legal cases before the courts. They explained that the Turks and Caicos Islands have clear laws prohibiting the possession of firearms and/or ammunition and strict penalties are in place to serve and protect all who reside and visit the Turks and Caicos Islands."

Grier, who has a July 5 court date, is trying to staying optimistic.

"You know, it's hard, very hard. Cause I got grandkids. I got five grandkids. I have three children. I have a loving family back home. I have like a community," she said. "I have a whole life back home. A whole life back home, you know? So it's a lot."

• Turks and Caicos
• Travel Warning

Emmy Award-winning journalist Kris Van Cleave is the senior transportation correspondent for CBS News based in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also serves as a national correspondent reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms.

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Actress Melai Cantiveros-Francisco appointed KTO honorary ambassador for Korea family tourism in PH

The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) appointed actress and comedian Melai Cantiveros-Francisco as honorary ambassador for Korea Family Tourism in the Philippines. 

Cantiveros-Francisco and her family flew to South Korea to attend the special appointment ceremony on May 21 in Seoul. Her tenure as honorary ambassador for Korea Family Tourism in the Philippines will be from May 21 this year to May 20 next year. 

Melai Cantiveros-Francisco with her family visiting the Panda World at Everland in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea on May 20 (KTO Manila) 

She is the first Filipino celebrity to be appointed by KTO as an honorary ambassador to promote Korean Family Tourism in the Philippines. 

She rose to prominence in the entertainment industry after winning in the reality TV show, “Pinoy Big Brother: Double Up” in 2010. She then had various projects as an actress, comedian, and host. 

Currently, she is one of the hosts of the popular morning talk show, “Magandang Buhay.”

As the honorary ambassador for family tourism, she will be the celebrity representative for the KTO’s family tourism promotional campaigns, programs, and events in the Philippines. Part of her duties and activities is visiting Korea with her family and sharing her experiences through her social media accounts. 

She will promote Korea’s attractive family tourist attractions at various events arranged by KTO and other Korean government agencies. She is also set to appear in select big campaigns and events of KTO such as familiarization tour and travel fair within one year from the date of her appointment.

In an Instagram post, Cantiveros-Francisco said she is elated to be appointed as the KTO honorary ambassador. 

“Kamsahamnidaaa mga Kamsamiii kung di dahil sa inyu di kmi mapipili na maging ambassador and ambasadress ng KTO @ktomanila as Korean Tourism Ambassador Family,” she wrote. 

She added, “This oppurtunity ay para sa inyu mga Kamsamiiii , ipapakita nmin sa inyu ang mga happiness nmin dtu sa Korea , medyu di lang ako naka update dahil nagkaroon ng emergency , and Thank you sa inyung prayers na ok na ang health ng baby steya nmin ❤️ This appointment ay para sa inyu , at inaappoint nmin kayu mga Kamsamiii na Best Viewers AWards 💯 salamat/kamsamiii s ainyung supports SarangheyoOoOoOoO.” 

Before her appointment to the position. She engaged in various projects that promoted Korea’s charm to the Filipinos. 

She starred in the 2023 movie “Ma’am Chief: Shakedown in Seoul” mainly filmed in Seoul. She also won the best actor award at the 2023 Asia Artist Awards held in December at the Philippine Arena. 

In addition, Melai and her family are fondly called the “Kamsamii Family” among their fans. 

Hyung Joon Kim, director of KTO Manila explained that KTO chose Melai to be the honorary ambassador specifically for family tourism as evidenced by her various projects relative to Korea. 

KTO hopes that through Melai and her family’s promotional content, there will be more awareness and interest in Korea’s family-friendly tourist attractions and destinations among Filipino families.

Melai and her family visited Korea this week for a familiarization tour in Seoul and Gyeonggi provinces of the family tourist attractions, such as theme parks, K-pop dance classes, and wellness experiences. 

Aside from her husband and two daughters, Melai’s mother also joined them on the trip. Three generations of Melai’s family experienced Korea’s attractive family-friendly tourist destinations.

Melai Cantiveros-Francisco at her appointment ceremony in Seoul as honorary ambassador for Korea Family Tourism in the Philippines (Instagram) 

Ohio tourism brought in $56B in visitor spending in 2023

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Ohio tourism saw another increase in 2023, with overall tourists, spending and tourism related jobs up from 2022.

According to Governor Mike DeWine, tourism in 2023 surpassed $56B in spending, surpassing pre-pandemic levels of $48B in 2019. More than 436,000 tourism jobs are also now in Ohio, also an increase from previous years.

In addition to the natural increase in tourism, Governor DeWine says his administration has made an effort to encourage people to spend more than just a few hours in the state. According to the state, tourists spending a day in Ohio will spend around $106 per person, while those who spend the night will more than triple that, spending $327 per person.

That desire to encourage people to stay longer has been shown in improvements to the state’s 10 park lodges. All of those will be updated prior to the end of 2024, hopefully leading to people using the parks and spending money. The state saw 48M overnight visits, with 238M visits in total.

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5 Americans held in Turks and Caicos for having ammunition as U.S. lawmakers fail to secure their release

U.S. lawmakers traveled to Turks and Caicos this week to push for the return of five American citizens detained on ammunition possession charges, but failed to facilitate their release.

The Americans were arrested in the last five months under a strict law in Turks and Caicos that prohibits possession of firearms or ammunition and carries a mandatory 12-year sentence.

One American, Michael Lee Evans, was jailed in December; Bryan Hagerich was arrested in February; and two Americans, Ryan Watson and Tyler Scott Wenrich, have been detained since April. The latest arrest occurred on May 13 when Sharitta Grier was jailed.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said a group of lawmakers "went in respectful" and "with an open mind looking to find common ground" during a meeting Monday with the Turks and Caicos government.

"Unfortunately, despite our willingness to work with Turks and Caicos officials to get our constituents home, we were not able to find a path forward today," Mullin said Monday in a statement on X. "At this point, well-intentioned American citizens are facing a dozen years in prison all for unknowingly having one or two bullets in their luggage."

Watson, 40, of Oklahoma, traveled to the islands with his wife, Valerie Watson, and two friends to celebrate his 40th birthday on April 7. The trip came to a screeching halt when airport staff found hunting ammunition in a carry-on case belonging to the couple.

"They were hunting ammunition rounds that I use for whitetail deer," he told  NBC Boston . "I recognized them, and I thought, 'Oh, man, what a bonehead mistake that I had no idea that those were in there.'"

The couple was arrested but the charges were dropped against Valerie Watson. She later returned home to Oklahoma City.

Airport security also found ammunition in Hagerich's luggage as he tried to board a flight with his family out of Turks and Caicos. Hagerich, of Pennsylvania, said he accidentally left it in his bag.

Wenrich, 31, of Virginia, was arrested after two 9 mm rounds were found in his bag after he tried to reboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship following a beach excursion, NBC Boston reported.

He told the news station that he had used the bag to go to the shooting range with friends and checked the bag before his trip.

"It was just a complete oversight on me, TSA and the port security," he said. "Three groups missed that ammunition."

Grier, 45, of Florida, said the ordeal has been a "nightmare." She told NBC Boston that she took a trip to the islands for Mother's Day weekend with her daughters.

Grier was arrested after security at the Howard Hamilton Airport in Providenciales found two bullets in her luggage, according to the station.

"It   was an honest mistake, it fell up under the bottom of the flap in my carry-on," she said. "There was no way possible that I could see it because it’s a flap in the bottom. They took the bottom of the flap out the bag. That’s where the two rounds was, in the bottom of that flap. So, it’s no way that I would of knew or seen them in there."

The U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas had warned travelers in September that authorities in Turks and Caicos strictly enforce laws related to firearms and ammunition.

Violators "are subject to TCI laws and must follow local law enforcement procedures" and the embassy "will not be able to secure your release from custody," it said.

Mullin said the islands' law has "unintended consequences."

"We will stay at the table through this process until the issue is resolved," he said in his statement.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., joined the lawmakers on the trip and said they had a chance to meet with the detained Americans.

"These people did not set out to break the law," he said in a statement. "They are people who made a mistake and now face substantial time in prison because of it. As we articulated to TCI officials, I urge the court to be lenient when addressing this case."

Fetterman said he left the meetings "optimistic that we can get this resolved."

Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., said the lawmakers had a "diplomatic" discussion with Turks and Caicos government officials.

"I reiterated that with Turks and Caicos’ economy being 65 percent based on tourism, and with 80 percent of that coming from the United States, it is in their interest to ensure justice prevails," Brecheen said in a post on X .

"We were emphatic that it would be unfathomable for five Americans, including Oklahoma’s own Ryan Watson, to face 12 years in prison for accidentally leaving a handful of shells in their luggage," he continued.

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said in a post on X he is "very concerned" about the consequences the Americans face.

The governor’s office of Turks and Caicos said in a news release that “per the constitutional separation of the executive and judicial branches” Gov. Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam and Honourable Premier Charles Washington Misick cannot intervene or comment on pending legal cases.

But the court can find that there are "exceptional circumstances" where a judge could "impose a custodial sentence and a fine that are fair and just in the circumstances of each case rather than impose the mandatory minimum," the office said.

If the Americans are sentenced, Brecheen said the U.S. must "respond appropriately, using every economic tool in our toolbox."

Evans, 72, of Texas, pleaded guilty to possessing seven 9 mm rounds of ammunition, according to authorities, and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 18.

Wenrich and Watson also have a court hearing in June, police said. Grier's hearing is scheduled for July.

Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.