The Potential for Appreciative Inquiry in Tourism Research

Abstract

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is perceived to be a significant recent innovation in action-research. It has been proposed as providing the opportunity to close the gap between theory and practice, focus on the positive aspects of a situation, and turn towards sociorationalism. Although it is rarely used in tourism research, this paper suggests that there is significant potential for the adoption of this approach within our discipline. It is typically used to facilitate positive developments within organisations and could be employed in this way within the tourism industry. Moreover, existing studies suggest that it can also be adopted as an evaluation technique or as an interview tool for field research. In addition, a recent AI conducted into good practice in volunteer tourism points to the way in which AI can be applied as a methodology in tourism. In particular, this example highlights the way in which AI encourages participants to identify examples of success, as well as explore imaginative ideas for the ...