Investigating Leadership Applications in Tourism: A Case Study of Leadership in Community Tourism

With the increased influence of economic diversion, globalization, and distress, tourism has been a popular choice for communities seeking to enhance local economies, respond to changing social and environmental conditions, and strive for new benchmarks. That being said, with changes accelerating, and global patterns becoming all the more tumultuous the field needs to embrace a new ways of creating sustainable positive change. One area that can benefit this field community tourism development greatly is the study of the connection between types of leadership and effects on follower engagement. The study of the relationships between leaders and followers is important and between charismatic leaders and followers offers key insights. Charismatic leaders are capable of developing effective, or ineffective, relationships with their followers. They also can either foster, or discourage, civic, or community, engagement – which is critical to the growth of networks, or social capital, in their communities. The research investigates proprietary ways for creating that intersect between tourism and leadership through a teaching case study in order to take the field to the next level of success. The case study of San Luis Colorado provokes learners to analyze and reflect upon charismatic leadership and its effects. The researchers explore the role of leadership in community tourism and the need to integrate this into tourism curricula to build awareness of leadership theory in students and assist practitioners by creating a foundation of new knowledge in the field.