Steps so far

Content analysis on VFR
I conducted a content analysis of academic articles on VFR tourism as part of my requirements for UW, which has been published in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management.  The general conclusions were that VFR has been undervalued and misrepresented by tourism statistics that only use motivation as a distinction between VFR and 'pleasure' vacationers- in other words when people are surveyed and asked 'why are you here?' if they say 'for vacation' then they are pleasure visitors, and if they say 'to visit friends or relatives' then they are VFR, but the problem is that the industry (which is heavily influenced by the hotels) assumes that 'pleasure' means staying in a hotel, but of course many who say 'vacation' are actually staying with friends or relatives.  In reality the number of people who visit a destination who have a personal relationship with a resident is even greater than the VFR numbers typically reported.  I suggest in the paper that this personal relationship should be the focus of research and marketing efforts.

I have also written a paper on the methodological discussion about approaching the study of immigrant hosts. I argue that because of the complex and unique experiences of immigrants, and the broad possibilities of meaning construction with various people and places, that a social constructionist approach would be most appropriate for an initial study in this area. The paper is published in Current Issues in Tourism.

Comprehensive Exams
For my comprehensive exams I was given three questions and had to respond in papers that I defended in front of a committee (the questions are here).  In these papers I argued that a constructionist approach would be most suitable for the study due to the complex and unique nature of the settlement and hosting experience.

In addition I also considered the effect of the restructuring of the destination marketing organisations in Ontario on the potential for a VFR campaign. I argued that the new Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) implemented by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports could have a neutral to slightly positive effect on VFR being pursued for two main reasons. Many destinations traditionally rely heavily on a hotel levy of some sort to fund marketing initiatives and hotels traditionally don't see the VFR market as a top priority (despite several studies that suggest VFRs do use paid accommodations), the RTO structure provides funding that is not directly related to the hotels, and makes RTOs answerable to a government agency that was not on the table before. However, with the likely reintroduction of a Destination Marketing Fee in the upcoming months for the larger RTOs the hotel influence is unlikely to wane.