Research areas
- Service quality and satisfaction in sport, leisure and tourism
- Operational performance in tourism and leisure management
- Lifestyle, health and leisure
- Understanding the tourist and leisure experience
Service quality and satisfaction in sport, leisure and tourism
Service quality, satisfaction and customer behaviour analysis in sport, leisure and tourism is considered as a major focus of the centre. Associate Professor Gary Howat has a strong publication record in service quality/customer behaviour in sport and leisure contexts. In addition to journal publications, he has also overseen numerous technical reports for industry collaborators, and information from his service quality and customer behaviour research has been disseminated widely to the industry through a series of invited workshops, seminars, and conference presentations in Australia, England, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, and USA.
Operational performance in tourism and leisure management
As Co-Director of the CERM Performance Indicators® Project since 1990, Dr Crilley has been involved in developing benchmarks for operational performance for public sports and leisure centres in Australia and New Zealand. This applied research has expanded into areas such as golf courses, botanic gardens, zoos , national parks, trails, and caravan and tourist parks.
Dr Crilley has a strong publication and presentation record looking at issues related to an organisation's performance.
Lifestyle, health and leisure
Health lifestyles have been identified as a long term priority theme for University research over the next ten years. This Centre is well positioned to contribute to this theme through applications of applied research into, but not limited to factors affecting physical activity and exercise behaviours.
Health benefits is also considered and studied in a more wholistic paradigm. Examples of this approach includes a range of studies assessing personal health benefits for customers at public sports and leisure centres, visitors to botanic gardens, and users of tracks and public trails.
Understanding the tourist and leisure experience
Tourism is one of the growth industry sectors in Australia, contributing over five per cent to the total GDP of Australia. Consequently, understanding the tourist experience is of key economic, marketing and social significance and hence is an integral theme of the centre.
Professor Graham Brown is the team leader for this theme of the centre. Professor Brown has an international reputation in tourism with publications with noted international academics such as Donald Getz. He has published widely on tourism marketing and tourism planning in leading journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management and the Journal of Travel Research. He is a member of the State Government's Ministerial Tourism Round Table.
Research endeavours to understand tourism and leisure experiences have been international in scope and broad ranging in topical coverage. Much of the work has been guided by theories related to relationships between tourism and place identity and levels of involvement and tourism. The former was the subject of Professor Brown's doctoral thesis and features collaboration with colleagues in Canada and this has resulted in publications in Tourism Management and the Journal of Travel Research. Projects related to tourism experiences at events features prominently as another area of research activity. The interdisciplinary appeal of this theme is reflected in publications that have appeared in a range of leisure, sports and tourism journals.