Tourism and Hospitality Management.

Sustainable urban development is a concept that has become increasingly important as the urbanization continues and more and more challenges are focused to the cities.  The Swedish government and authorities regulates and sets goals for how a sustainable urban development is to be achieved. These laws and goals are vaguely defined, which leads to disputes between the actors about how the term should be interpreted. By examining Västermalms Strand, an urban development project in Stockholm, this study strives to describe how involved actors interpret the concept of sustainable urban development and what the consequences of this are for urban development in Stockholm from an ecological, social and economic perspective. A case study has been carried out where a document study and interviews have been conducted. The interviews were conducted with four key actors from the private and public sector.

Background: Today, the tourism sector is one of the economically fastest growing sectors in the world. Volunteer travel is a type of service that is gaining in popularity and a number of tour operators organize these trips. Few aid agencies engaged in volunteer activities and therefore the interest in volunteer travel is caught by tour operators. These tourists travel in small groups and interact with locals. Today fifty million children in Africa are orphaned and Africans struggling with the care of these children by founding orphanages.Research questions:What does volunteers contribute with during their stay at orpahanges?What view does volunteers and orphanages have on volunteer tourism?Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the positive and the negative effects that volunteer tourism contributes to orphanages.Method: The study is based on a qualitative approach with semi-and unstructured interviews, observations, and email interviews.

This thesis presents a research of Swedes view on sex tourism in Thailand. This research is showing how Swedes sees sex tourism in Thailand and what kind of thoughts they have about it. This research also shows the Swedish view on sex tourism in Thailand and how it differs from the view of the Swedish media and their opinion about the subject. Furthermore, this research shows that the view of this subject differs depending on the respondents? experience of travelling in Thailand.

The subject field studied in this essay is environmental scanning. The aim of this study is to analyse how three public organizations within the subject field sustainable development work with their environmental scanning. Most organizations have to relate to their surroundings such as clients and competitors. Environmental scanning is another very important field that organizations have to relate to in their work. This essay has three questions in focus which are the following;How is the work with environmental scanning in the three organizations arranged?How does the work with environmental scanning differ in the three organizations?How important is environmental scanning for the subject field sustainable development?The study was carried out through four conducted interviews with key persons within the three organizations.

This paper is the result of a study of competition and cooperation in regard to tourism between the five largest municipalities in Norrland in northern Sweden. The municipalities are Luleå, Skellefteå, Umeå, Sundsvall and Gävle. The aim was to study the relation between competition and cooperation between these municipalities. An important theoretical aspect in this study is coopetition, where competition and cooperation occur at the same time. The studies on coopetition in the Nordic kontext is limited and the main literature on coopetition study the relationship between firms. This study however takes a geographical standpoint and aims to fill the gap in the literature on how competition and cooperation are connected to each other between chosen municipalities. To do this the tourism strategies of the municipalities were studied thoroughly. These written strategies provided information about how the municipalities view their competitive advantages and disadvantages and some general information about how they cooperate with the nearest regions. To find out how the municipalities think about competition and cooperation with the other four specific municipalities interviews were made with experts on the tourism field in each municipality. The results show that the municipalities do not have established strategies for how they are to be competitive compared with other specific municipalities. They do not see it as profitable to compete, instead they should complement each other. At the same time however, most of the municipalities mostly cooperate with municipalities in a short distance from them, and due to lack of resources only briefly or not at all with the municipalities studied here..

The aim of this study is to make clear the conception ?Sustainable Urban Development? through an investigation dealing with how the sustainable goals are attained in today?s Swedish urban planning. And also try to clarify where and why sustainable development is failing or lacking. Besides that I have investigated how actors take position towards urban sustainability. The essay is based on a literature study about sustainable urban development and it?s changes through the time and place.

Sustainable design - a study on sustainable design and its incentives and barriersThe purpose of this study was to investigate the incentives and barriers existing within companies focusing on eco-design. The aim was also to examine the consumers? thoughts on eco-design and sustainable products. A further aim was to try to concretize important lessons for future work on sustainable production and consumption. Two methods were used for completing this study; a literature study and a practical study consisting of interviews with companies focusing on eco-design and a survey among students.

The aim of this thesis is to study discursive change in the Swedish environmental political discourse between 1987-2005. The text of three Swedish budget propositions are analysed for this purpose.The results from the analysis are related to a few relevant theoretical perspectives that hold partly different views on what constitutes ?sustainable development? and ?ecological modernization?. Through these theories the thesis continues the discussion around the two central but somewhat blurry terms sustainable development and ecological modernization. The aim of this discussion is to conclude whether the discursive change in Swedish environmental politics can be said to go more in the direction of sustainable development or ecological modernization, or if elements of both perspectives can be found.The analysis shows that the Swedish environmental discourse has come to include more and more political fields such as general welfare politics, during the period.

Kina är idag en av världens ledande ekonomier och placerar sig på andra plats gällande landets BNP. Under de senaste åren har tillväxten av Kinas turistnäring ökat i en snabb takt. En av de bidragande faktorerna bakom detta är att regler och gränser har luckrats upp och ger kineserna möjlighet att besöka allt fler destinationer världen över. Från år 2000 till 2012 har Kinas utrikesturism ökat från 10 miljoner resor till 83 miljoner. Med sin stadiga årliga befolkningstillväxt beräknar UNWTO, United Nations World Tourism Organization, att 100 miljoner kineser kommer att resa redan innan år 2015.

Today?s climate research shows that the climate may increase its temperature. One sector that is being threatened by global warming is the winter tourism of the Swedish municipality A?re. Tourism is an important economical source of income in A?re and is now threatened by a shortened winter season.

Pictures are often used when marketing a tourist destination. Photographs of a place, a destination, are used to convince customers and stimulate daydreaming in order to turn a potential customer into a real customer. For some people the photographic representations of a place is the only one they experience. With this in mind, it is reasonable to question how representations of places and geographical imaginations are being (re)produced when marketing a destination by using photographs. This paper aims to study how representations of place and people are used when marketing a tourist destination via travel commercial.

Our purpose with this thesis was to study how tourism providers deliver quality to their customers. We chose to carry out two case studies where we interviewed an owner of a camp site, and a municipal manager employed at another camp site. The questions were based on customer needs, service quality and dissatisfaction. The study gave us some useful aspects. The respondents told us that it was very important to the tourist providers to listen to the customer´s specific needs and to give them personal attention.

This paper contains an analysis that sets out to investigate how sustainable development is portrayed in textbooks used in gymnasium level civics education. The study covers three textbooks, all in current use. The paper sets out to explore the relationship between the books chapters on economics and those about environmental issues. The sum of these two parts is in the context supposed to make up the books big picture of green sustainable development, i.e. the ecological aspect of sustainable development. An analytical model will be used to categorise and compare the three textbooks.The method chosen for this is analysis of ideas by use of ideal types.

This master thesis is a study of how city cemeteries can be used and contributes to a socially sustainable urban development. Today sustainable development and sustainable urban development is something that more or less every organization is working with. Therefore it is also relevant to integrate our cemeteries in this work so that they can become a part of the sustainable urban development process.The thesis gives a basic understanding of sustainability as a concept and also defines socially sustainable (urban) development. The work then immerse itself in various types of park structures and how the relationship between the human individual and the public space work, to satisfy the needs that different people have.The literature study that has been made is also the base for the design of the walking interview that has been made for the two city cemeteries. The cemeteries that where studied where the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen and the Eastern cemetery in Gothenburg.