The comparative analysis of the motivations of visitors at four South Island, New Zealand, events—two food and beverage festivals, an air show, and a country and music festival—highlights the diversity in motives that are to be found from event to event. Event-specific factors are especially important; there is little evidence yet of generic event motivations. In contrast to earlier case studies, the comparative approach employed here gives more weight and greater visibility to events per se as a distinctive phenomenon.

In two different experiments, subjects reported on the visual direction of a flash presented during a voluntary saccade relative to the visual direction of a stimulus viewed prior to the saccade. Under the conditions of the first experiment the report given by the subject was primarily determined by the relative retinal positions of the two stimuli. In the second experiment evidence was obtained for precisely timed shifts in local signs which are due to proprioceptive compensation for changes in ocular position during the saccade.

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Destinations are a fundamental focus of much tourism research. How we conceptualize and frame destinations is critical not only for the research that we do but also for practical matters such as destination management and marketing. To date, however, work on the conceptual and theoretical foundations of destinations has been fragmented, incomplete, and without much general sense of direction. Through a wide-ranging review, this paper seeks to develop an integrative conceptual framework of destinations by systematically identifying and then synthesizing the key elements of five major sets of concepts used to depict and analyze destinations: industrial districts, clusters, networks, systems, and social constructs. A set of recurring elements is identified, grouped under three major dimensions—geographic, mode of production, and dynamic—and presented in an initial integrative framework. Issues of extending and operationalizing the framework are outlined and the implications for destination management discussed.

This article extends research on tourism distribution channels, a topic dominated by studies of providers and intermediaries, by addressing the use of multiple channels from the visitors’ perspective. The article reports the results of intercept surveys of international and domestic independent visitors, and their use of a range of distribution channels to make travel, accommodation, and attractions arrangements at two New Zealand destinations: Rotorua and Wellington. Emphasis is given in turn to the different functions of distribution—information search, booking, and payment—and to the factors that influence the channels selected for each of these functions. Similarities and differences are found among the three sectors and between the destinations and segments analyzed.