People-First Tourism Lab Blog

Throughout my Fall 2015 semester I thoroughly enjoyed my experience in the Tourism Poverty and Health class at NC State.   From meeting local microentrepreneurs in nearby communities to the in-depth discussions in class, I learned more from this class than from many others.   The material covered in this class had very important takeaways that not only provoked me to rethink much of my earlier knowledge, but also made me want to be an agent for change. The class started with an introduction to the different types of tourism and the traits, good or bad, that went along with them.   Mass tourism continues to boom due to the ease of planning, low costs and lack of public knowledge about the detrimental effects it generates in destination communities. Next we were introduced to People-First Tourism to show that tourism can be sustainable, benefit the local economy and utilize local microentrepreneurs to provide fun, genuine, and enriching experiences to tourists [as seen in thi

The P1t Dashboard Analytics report has changed format to include a longitudinal comparison of the previous year’s website visitation performance. Data included in these reports provide a snapshot of the overall reach of the project, as well the performance of the most visited micro-entrepreneurs.  Additionally, the report includes data about the reach of the project’s scholarship to the general public through select social media tools – e.g., this web blog. Some significant changes have shaped the changes in the performance of the website; moving the entrepreneurs to the new website format has greatly reduced the number of offers presented. P1t is moving the site offers from the old site to the new offerings in a systematic way to insure consistency and to keep the offers up-to-date. Here is the most recent report, P1t Dashboard Analytics Report for 1st Quarter of 2016 (see inset below). The report for the 2nd Quarter 2016 will be appearing in a July posting on this blog.