This year, the Biannual Conference of the International Association for China Tourism Studies (IACTS) event was hosted by PolyU’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM), with sponsorship from the PolyU Research Center for Digital Tourism Transformation (RCDTT). SHTM is the No. 1-ranked program of its kind in Asia and is located adjacent to the ICON hotel, a five-star high-rise hotel operated by STHM and consistently ranked among the Top 5 in Hong Kong.
Staying at ICON is exceptionally fortuitous because the two buildings are directly connected.
On August 4th, the first day of the conference, Hong Kong experienced the highest rainfall in 24 hours on an August day, with 355 mm of rain triggering an alert level, which led to the closure of all schools and universities. Those fortunate enough to stay in ICON could sneak into a lecture hall in the basement of SHTM; others, who had come a long way to participate, had to stay in their hotel rooms and attend via Zoom only. One unexpected result of the Climate Breakdown!
The conference gathered 34 fellows. Next to the content discussion in the official meeting of the organisation, this writer learned that as a Fellow, you are required to publish an article in a leading scientific magazine every year, or you will be removed.
Fortunately, one of the paragraphs in the bylaws states that if you are over 65 years old, you can apply for a “Senior Fellowship” and are then exempt from this obligation.
In the academic program, two expert-led panel discussions explored AI-related themes: Tourism Research in the AI Era and Tourism Education in the AI Era.
Twenty-three academic presentations showcased diverse China tourism scholarship spanning from theoretical frameworks to empirical studies.
Professor Arlt presented a more practically oriented talk with the title “Learning by Travelling – International Meaningful Tourism Projects as Transformational Experience for Students”, starting with the opening statement “
We are teaching yesterday’s forms of tourism with yesterday’s ways of teaching to students who lack social competence,” and introducing “Meaningful Tourism” field trips as a way to get Chinese and other tourism students out of the lecture hall and into reality, especially in less developed areas.
With much of the conference discussion focusing on the question of how to get published in academic journals, several fellows remarked that this presentation had the most practical approach of all the papers.
Billy Bai, Ph.D., a hospitality professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), for example, stated that even his university, located at a global hub for hospitality, has problems getting the results of its research translated into practical action by the industry.
With Prof. Song Haiyan, a distinguished connoisseur of wine, leading the organization, there was, of course, also a wine tasting included, with bottles brought by participants from their respective countries.
The conference concluded with a visit to the newly opened Hong Kong Palace Museum.
Housed in a spectacular building, it features approximately 1,000 exhibits from the Palace Museum in Beijing, as well as a restaurant with self-driving robots serving as waiters.
Interestingly, in the exhibition, it is mentioned how the British helped China protect its art from being stolen by the Japanese occupational forces by sending it out of the country in boxes mixed with Opera props.
That echoed a presentation given during the conference about a new museum dedicated to the history of Macau, where the Portuguese are also shown defending Macau against the Dutch, alongside the Chinese, in 1622.
Macau has also, in recent years, begun to promote its connections to Portuguese culture, art, and cuisine in a positive light. A strange turn away from the anti-colonial rhetoric one has been used to in previous decades.
