Matkailukoulutuksen ja -tutkimuksen kannatusyhdistys ry

 (Text & Photos: Muqiu Du) In August 2026, I attended the doctoral course "Using Generative AI in Research". The course was organised by KATAJA and held at the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics on 26 and 27 August. I am a second-year PhD student and I work with a very large amount of text data, so the course came at a good moment for me. In this blog post, I would like to share what I learned during these two days and how it has already changed my research plans. My PhD research focuses on Work Exchange Sharing Accommodation, a niche sharing economy model where travellers exchange their labour for accommodation. My material is a large collection of reviews written by hosts and travellers on platforms such as Workaway and HelpX. In my current article, I use large language models to run aspect-based sentiment analysis on these reviews. Before the course, I had already finished a pretest where I compared different prompting strategies across four LLM APIs...

 (Teksti ja kuvat: Tuuli Pulkkinen) Väitöskirjassani tutkin inklusiivista matkailu seksuaali- ja sukupuolivähemmistöjen eli sateenkaariväestön kontekstissa. Tutkimukseni toisessa osassa keskityn tarkastelemaan yrityksien näkemyksiä sateenkaariystävälliseen ja/tai -inklusiiviseen liiketoimintaan. Matkailukoulutuksen ja -tutkimuksen kannatusyhdistys ry:n mahdollisti tämän tutkimukseni toisen osan aineistonkeruun, jonka toteutin haastatellen sateenkaariystävällisiä yrityksiä ympäri Suomen. Tampereella pääsin jopa kertomaan tutkimuksestani Muumipeikolle, kuten kuvasta näkyy! Aloitin aineistonkeruun lokakuussa 2025, ja näillä näkymin tulen vielä haastattelemaan yhtä yritystä nyt syksyllä 2026. Tutkimuksenhan olisi varmasti voinut tehdä itselle helpoksi ja tehdä kaikki haastattelut etänä, mutta jokin minussa kaipasi kasvokkain tapaamisia yrittäjien kanssa ja erilaisiin yritysmuotoihin tutustumista. Nyt, kun kaikki varsinaiset yritysvierailut ovat näillä näkymin tämän osalta takana päin, ...

(Text: Muhammad Khogali | Photos: Muhammad Khogali) The 12th International Adventure Conference (IAC2026) was organized by the Adventure Tourism Research Association (ATRA) in collaboration with leading academic institutes including Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUAS) and Wageningen University. It took place at the inspiring and modern BUAS campus in Breda, Netherlands 10-13 June 2026. The conference gathered tourism professionals from academia, government, and industry to re-view “adventure” from a new perspective compared to traditional approaches . Adventure is more than just rugged landscapes, wild rivers, or towering mountains; it is about how these natural assets become a backdrop for experience, and how we connect with other people through them. This approach re-positions tourism experiences based on consumers’ needs rather than being traditional services.   The conference themes include the following relevant topics to my dissertation: • Marketing, branding, and st...

(Text: Anatoly Lvov | Photo: Henna Konu) Participating in the XV Symposium of Finnish Tourism and Leisure Research 2026 was an inspiring experience for me. The symposium brought together researchers from different fields of tourism and leisure research in Tampere during 28-29.4.2026. This symposium was a great place to share ideas, talk about what's new in tourism research, as well as make professional connections. The symposium program is available at:  https://www.matkailututkimus.org/symposium/2026/programme/ Sharing knowledge is a big part of any research. Of course, you can get new ideas from articles and books, but talking to people face-to-face really makes a difference. Conferences and symposiums create a setting where new ways of thinking can start, hypotheses can be sharpened, and unexpected answers can be found. For me, participating in the symposium provided several important results. First and foremost, it was the experience of public speaking. The opportunity to pre...