Based on our research, there can be a clear connection between the level of subjective well-being of retired employees working in tourism and the work they do, if the nature of the task entrusted to them is related to heritage interpretation and knowledge transfer, and they have direct contact with visitors during their work. The ageing of society has now brought up the issue of (re-)employment of the ever-growing group of elderly, both due to the burden it imposes on the pension system and the issue of their social integration. The results of our three-year research project suggest that the skills, abilities and experience of elderly working in tourism-related workplaces make them particularly suitable for tasks of heritage interpretation and knowledge transfer; while these results may be of interest to tourism service providers when planning their human resources and the allocation of certain tasks. In the next phase of the research, we plan to conduct further in-depth interviews with other retired employees who are also working in tourism in order to
fine-123 tune our results. We have also begun to analyze the customer feedback in the guestbooks of the service providers, as these comments can be very instructive and a reflection of our previous research, which has been approached exclusively from the service provider's point of view. The results of this analysis will be published later.
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Author biographs
Edina Kovács is a fourth-year PhD candidate at Corvinus University of Budapest since 2016 and a junior fellow researcher at the Tourism Department of Budapest Business School. Her main research interests are quality of life, subjective well-being and the phenomena of ageing societies.
Kornélia Kiss is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Tourism Department at Corvinus University of Budapest. Previously she was working for the Hungarian Tourism Agency as a leading researcher.
Her research interests include tourism marketing, well-being and the relationship between tourism and quality of life.
Zsófia Kenesei is a Professor at the Marketing Department of Corvinus University of Budapest. Her researchinterests cover the fields of service marketing, consumer decision making and sevice economy.
Krisztina Kolos is a Professor at the Marketing Department of Corvinus University of Budapest. She is an expert of service marketing research, and marketing strategy compilation.
Gábor Michalkó is a Professor of Tourism at Corvinus University of Budapest and scientific advisor at the Geographical Institute of CSFK.
He is head of the Doctoral School of Business and Management, and director general at Corvinus Doctoral School. He was awarded a PhD in Geography from University of Debrecen in 1998, and a DSc (academic Doctor of Sciences) from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2009, for his contribution to tourism geography. His recent research interests include urban tourism, shopping tourism, health tourism, human ecology of tourism, and the relationship between tourism and quality of life.
127 Ivett Pinke-Sziva is an Associate Professor and the leader of the BA Program in Hospitality and Tourism at the Tourism Department of Corvinus University of Budapest. She shows particular interest for researches in destination management and competitiveness, as well as in health and gastronomy tourism and in sustainability issues.
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