European Journal of Tourism Research

Kagermeier, Andreas;Gronau, Werner

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.385pmid: N/A

Uphaus, Per;Ehlers, Annika;Rau, Harald

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.386pmid: N/A

This contribution focuses on tourists’ usage behaviour of Location-Based Services (LBS) during their vacation. LBS represents technologies that localise a user’s mobile device (Turowski & Pousttchi 2004: 73) to offer services and content based on the user’s current geographical location (Egger & Jooss 2010: 21; Frey et al. 2015: 124). In vacation spots tourists find themselves in a situation characterised by increased information and service needs (Link & Seidl 2008: 56). Given that, LBS are considered to be promising services in the tourist industry (Egger & Jooss 2010: 21). In order to make use of the entire potential of LBS in tourism, the following key question needs to be answered: Which factors influence tourists’ usage behaviour of LBS and which possibilities can be derived for tourism providers and destinations? To answer its research question, this empirical study follows a deductive approach using UTAUT2, a popular technology acceptance model. The findings show a high usage rate of LBS in vacation and indicate that especially performance expectancy, effort expectancy as well as hedonic motivation influence the rate of usage. Considering these main causes, we derive theoretical implications as well as valuable clues for tourism management in practice.

Tetzlaff, Laurens;Rulle, Katrin;Szepannek, Gero;Gronau, Werner

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.387pmid: N/A

This paper aims at creating a tool to automatically extract online customer reviews of hospitality businesses and to assign a reliable score to them, based on a specifically created sentiment dictionary for this purpose by means of a statistical learning method. The effect of the amount of available training data and their resulting dictionaries is investigated. As such, a practical approach for applying LASSO regression in the context of online hospitality reviews is presented resulting in a sentiment dictionary of 778 terms with their associated weights trained on 20 000 reviews. It is shown that the created dictionary is able to accurately predict online review scores set by consumers, therefore highlighting the practical relevance of the proposed approach.

Kagermeier, Andreas;Amzil, Lahoucine;Elfasskaoui, Brahim

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.388pmid: N/A

In the Global South traditional hierarchical steering modes are still quite widespread. The significantly changing conditions of competition in recent decades have boosted the need for innovation in tourism. As such, the core challenge for tourism development in many countries of the Global South has been to attain an innovation-based orientation by using stimuli from destination governance. This article is an attempt to analyse the factors that might facilitate the diffusion of an innovation-based orientation. As a basic hypothesis, the article adopts the “counter-flow principle”, with exchange between different spheres as stimuli for innovation. Taking the Souss-Massa region in Southern Morocco as a case study, the paper describes an analysis of the positions of public and private stakeholders as well as civil society organisations. The main question is what kind of relationship between the stakeholders would foster effective governance processes among local, regional and (inter-)national stakeholders. One of the major constraints seems to be that existing public governance conditions concerning the fostering of private activities limit the implementation of an innovation-oriented range of rural tourism options. The paper then examines such limitations and constraints of existing governance structures, which lead to the suboptimal performance and effectiveness of (mainly) top-down approaches.

Thimm, Tatjana;Bild, Christine;Kalff, Michael

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.389pmid: N/A

The aim of this paper is to portray the risks of climate change for low mountain range tourism and to develop sustainable business models as adaption strategy. A mixed-method-approach is applied combining secondary analysis, a quantitative survey, and qualitative in-depth-interviews in a transdisciplinary setting. Results show, that until now, climate change impacts on the snow situation in the Black Forest – at least above 1,000 m – have been mild and compensated by artificial snowmaking, and up to now have not had measurable effects on tourism demand. In general, the Black Forest appears to be an attractive destination for more reasons than just snow. The climate issue seems to be regarded as a rather incidental occurrence with little importance to current business decisions. However, the authors present adaption strategies as alternatives for snow tourism, e. g. the implementation of hiking hostels, since climate change will make winter tourism in the Black Forest impossible in the long run.

Chiappa, Giacomo;Atzeni, Marcello;Pung, Jessica;Risitano, Marcello

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.390pmid: N/A

This study aims at profiling a quota sample of 600 residents in Naples, a home port in the Campania Region (Southern Italy), based on their perceptions and attitudes toward the development of cruise tourism, and their willingness to support different tourism types. To achieve this aim, a factor-cluster analysis was applied and five clusters were identified, namely ‘indifferent’, ‘moderate lovers’, ‘moderate critics’, and ‘cautious’. Significant differences emerged between the identified groups based on their prior experience with cruise vacation and their relatives’ economic reliance on cruise activity. On the contrary, no significant differences exist based on gender, age, employment status, economic reliance on cruise tourism, education level, length of residence, geographical proximity to cruise port area. Furthermore, no significant differences between clusters were found based on residents’ attitude towards cruise tourism and their support to its further development. Hence, theoretical contributions and managerial implications are addressed, including recommendations for future research.

Sacco, Brandon;Cassar, Ian

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.391pmid: N/A

This article puts forward an analysis of the first Tourism Satellite Account compiled for the Maltese economy. The resulting Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) compiled for Malta adheres to the European System of Accounts (2010) and is based on the reference year of 2010. It reveals that tourism’s direct contribution to Malta’s GDP is around 6.1% and that the tourism sector directly employs 8.0% of the total population of gainfully occupied persons (employed or self-employed). Both the symmetrical approach and a variant of the net ratio approach are utilised to derive the tourism value added and tourism gross domestic product. The contribution of tourism to the local economy during 2010 is on par with that of what are generally considered to be the key sectors in Malta, however, the direct contribution to GDP is significantly lower than the estimates presented from past studies. The results presented in the article can be of significant use to further understand the various dimensions of both tourism demand and the tourism supply chain.

Carlbäck, Mats

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.392pmid: N/A

Hotel affiliation is a debated issue in the hospitality industry. The question is primarily if it adds any financial advantages, and secondly to what extent an intangible asset value is created. Intangibles are per definition difficult both to define and to calculate and the aim with this article is to develop a method, based on earlier studies, to facilitate calculations in a consortium context. This is the least researched affiliation format, but at the same time the preferred option for independent hotel owners seeking strategic advantages for the future. By identifying the contribution associated with an affiliation as well as incremental costs and including the investment for adapting the property in accordance with the stipulated standards for the affiliation, a method to compute the brand value attributable to affiliation (BVAA) is developed. This study, by using a constructive approach, produces an indicative valuation method (the BVAA calculation method) usable both to assess the financial effect of the brand value associated with a specific brand and for separating intangibles (in this case the BVAA) from the market value.

Al-Saad, Saad;Ababneh, Abdelkader;Alazaizeh, Mohammad

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.393pmid: N/A

The purpose of this research is to examine empirically the relationships between, on the one side, awareness, feeling of comfort, of Jordanian international travellers towards airport security procedures, and on the other, their intention to re-travel. Three levels of airport security procedures were examined: standard, elevated and racial profiling/human treatment independently in one single model. A quantitative survey based on a convenience sample was conducted in Jordan. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis have been conducted to test the research hypotheses. The findings revealed that travellers' awareness and feeling of comfort toward standard and elevated procedures positively influence their intention to re-travel. Whenever the awareness and feeling of comfort decreased, travellers intend to re-travel less through airports. It was also found that travellers' awareness and feeling of comfort toward racial profiling do not influence their intention to re-travel. Suggested recommendations and policy implications for airport security procedures and airports administrations are discussed.

Duman, Feridun;Ozer, Ozgur ;Koseoglu, Mehmet;Altin, Mehmet;Okumus, Fevzi

doi: 10.54055/ejtr.v23i.394pmid: N/A

This study aims to determine the effects of ISO 9001:2015 quality certification on the firm performance. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 241 resort hotels in Turkey. The EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) and Cronbach alpha were used in order to test the unidimensionality and reliability of the scales. The difference between the ISO 9001 non/certified resort hotels was determined by t-test in order to test the hypothesis. As one of the first study focusing on how ISO 9001:2015 quality certification influence organizational and business performances of resort hotels in an emerging economy. The results show a significant relationship between the ISO 9001 quality certification and the operational performance, but not a positive one. However, the study does not show any significant relationship between the ISO 9001 quality certification and business performance. Finally, this study provides theoretical and practical implications with limitations and suggestions for potential future studies.