Where the Bloody Hell Are We? THE CONCEPTUAL NATURE OF MARINE RESEARCH TOURISM AND KEY

Marine research tourism is a form of marine ecotourism whereby marine research is an important part of the tourism attraction. Research was undertaken to further understand marine research tourism and how can that knowledge be used to further involve key stakeholders in marine research tourism across Australia? Focus was placed on exploring correlations and any notable relationships between key stakeholder preferences and conceptually derived tourism criteria. Ventures were classified as either classified as vacation or volunteer minded. Marine research quality across both vacation and volunteer minded ventures ranged from moderate to high. The potential involvement of key stakeholders in marine research tourism was shown to be dependent on variations in the levels of marine research quality, stakeholder views, volunteer mindedness, tourist training, tourist skills, hospitality and adventure