Co-creating knowledge in tourism research using the Ketso method

ABSTRACT

Tourism scholars have called for critical engagement with transformational co-creative methodologies. Within this call, there is a need for researchers to be positioned as facilitators and co-creators; rather than lone experts. We provide a critical review of the Ketso method. Ketso is a facilitated ‘workshop in a bag’; a toolkit that enables people to think and work together. Ketso can be used for data collection and as a supplementary analysis tool. Critical reflections on Ketso are provided to illustrate how it co-creates knowledge and collaborative solutions for transformational tourism. As a data collection tool, Ketso provides an innovative and authentic approach to stakeholder collaboration and decision making. As a supplementary data analysis tool, it provides an opportunity to address some of the limitations of thematic analysis such as simplicity and lack of coherence. In providing critical reflections on Ketso, we contribute to future thinking for the adoption of this co-creative method for tourism research.

KEYWORDS:

• Ketso
• creative methodology
• transformational tourism
• stakeholder collaboration
• participation
• co-creation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yana Wengel is a postdoctoral research fellow at Leeds Beckett Unviersity.¹ Yana takes a critical approach to tourism studies and her interests include volunteer tourism, non-profit tourism, tourism in developing economies, creative methodologies and mountain tourism. Her doctoral research examined the social construction of host-guest relationships in World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms programme (WWOOFing). She has an interest in creative qualitative tools for data collection and stakeholder engagement.

Alison McIntosh is Professor of Tourism and Hospitality at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. As a critical scholar, her main research interests are in social justice, inclusion and advocacy through tourism and hospitality; humanitarian travel, community hospitality and volunteering; reflexivity, co-creative and participative research approaches, and community engagement methods. She has published widely in leading international journals and is Founding Co-Editor of the journal, Hospitality & Society.

Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten is Senior Lecturer, University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her work adopts an interdisciplinary approach but mainly draws on organisational communication theories to apply to tourism, hospitality and contexts involving social issues. She is also, along with Professor Alison McIntosh, co-founder and co-facilitator of the Network for Community Hospitality which bridges teaching and research expertise with external stakeholders to make a difference to issues facing New Zealand society.

ORCID

Yana Wengel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8131-4137

Alison McIntosh http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1593-700X

Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3339-630X

Notes

1 Since January 2019 Dr Yana Wengel is a lecturer at the Work, Employment, Organisation department at the University of Strathclyde Business School.