Revitalizing fieldtrips in tourism: Visual anthropology, photo elicitation, rapid appraisal, participant observation and Habermas

In seeking to strengthen pedagogical and research outcomes in tourism students' fieldtrips to assess community sustainability and resilience in Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong, and maximize experiential learning opportunities, the relatively neglected methodologies in tourism research of visual anthropology and Rapid Appraisal and the rarely reported concept of Habermas' communicative action to promote teamwork through consensus-based decision-making in tourism studies, were combined with more commonly utilized ethnographic participant observation. While taking photographs is fundamental for millions of tourists and has been researched from many perspectives, the use of visual anthropology and participatory photo elicitation not only to record but to generate new knowledge as a major component of research-oriented data collection, is comparatively novel in tourism studies. In isolation, all four methodologies are not new and are common in a range of social studies: but their fusion especially for tourism research, is atypical and assumes an additional element of innovation.