Purpose: This study investigates whether tourism’s involvement to economic growth shows diminishing returns past a certain threshold and seeks to identify the point at which this transition occurs. Specifically, it examines whether the part of tourism in the economy eventually leads to reduced incremental gains for overall growth. Methods: A balanced panel threshold regression model is applied to data from 30 OECD countries spanning from 2008 to 2020. The analysis aims to clarify the association among tourism’s economic share and aggregate economic growth. Results: The findings indicate that tourism significantly stimulates economic growth up to a defined threshold, after which the marginal benefits decline. This threshold is estimated at approximately 4.68. Below this value, a one-unit increase in tourism’s share of the economy is connected with an average rise in economic growth of 3.5 percentage points. Beyond this threshold, the corresponding effect decreases to approximately 2.74 percentage points per additional unit. Implications: The results suggest that excessive reliance on tourism does not guarantee sustained economic growth. Expanding tourism beyond a certain level may generate negative externalities such as congestion, environmental degradation, and social costs that can offset economic gains. Accordingly, for stable and sustainable development, countries should pursue a balanced growth strategy that integrates tourism with other sectors.
Purpose: This study investigates the outstanding universal value (OUV) of the Maluku Islands, which are on the Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage sites. It examines the ecological and cultural dimensions through spice heritage, traditional practices, and historical significance, addressing gaps in existing literature that often separate natural and cultural heritage, or prioritise tourism narratives over local knowledge and heritage governance. Methods: Using a qualitative, interdisciplinary approach, the study integrates geospatial analysis, historical archives, and ethnographic data from field surveys in Maluku and North Maluku. Sources include cartographic records, environmental datasets, and interviews with farmers, elders, and cultural practitioners. Results: Maluku’s spice landscape, rooted in endemic clove and nutmeg cultivation, ritual agroforestry, and oral traditions, demonstrates authenticity and integrity under UNESCO’s mixed heritage criteria. The study offers original insights by foregrounding vernacular knowledge and lived heritage within global heritage discourse. Implications: The findings support Maluku’s World Heritage nomination by recommending improvements to narrative coherence, inclusivity, and representational balance. It proposes a heritage governance model based on sustainable development and community-led tourism, positioning Maluku as an exemplary island cultural landscape for integrated conservation and revitalisation.
Purpose: This study examines the transformation of Uzbekistan’s tourism geography between 2010 and 2024, emphasizing the shift from rapid spatial expansion to strategic consolidation around heritage cities such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. It investigates how tourism functions as a spatial instrument of governance, identity construction, and economic diversification in a post-Soviet context. Methods: Using longitudinal visitor data, economic indicators, and spatial mapping generated through R and Python, the study analyzes evolving tourist flows, destination hierarchies, and the spatial concentration of tourism investments across Uzbekistan’s regions. Results: Findings show that while the number of officially recognized destinations plateaued after 2016, tourist arrivals and receipts continued to increase, marking a transition from territorial expansion to qualitative consolidation. Tourism has evolved into a form of spatial storytelling that reinforces the visibility of core heritage centers while reproducing symbolic and infrastructural inequalities across the periphery. Implications: Beyond Uzbekistan, the findings offer insights for emerging tourism economies aiming to balance heritage valorization with regional inclusion, providing adaptable guidance for equitable destination planning aligned with SDGs 8, 9, and 11. Theoretical Contribution: By extending core–periphery theory to a post-socialist tourism context, the study reframes tourism as a territorial governance project that links cultural heritage, spatial inequality, and statecraft. It demonstrates that spatial inequality is not merely an economic outcome but a deliberate product of narrative and institutional governance.
Purpose: This study aims to develop and validate a multidimensional scale that identifies the attributes influencing dining experiences at nutraceutical restaurants, specifically those based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It addresses gaps in hospitality literature by clearly defining nutraceutical restaurants and providing a comprehensive measurement tool. Methods: The research employed a rigorous multi-step scale development process, including literature review, qualitative interviews, expert reviews, and empirical validation. Data were collected from 993 Chinese diners who had recently patronized TCM restaurants, using a stratified random sampling approach. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, conducted with SPSS and Smart PLS software, ensured the scale’s reliability and validity. Results: The study identified five key dimensions of TCM restaurant attributes: interior design/furniture/tableware, food quality, food recommendation, service quality, and atmosphere. Statistical analyses demonstrated strong internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity. Importantly, food attributes showed the highest influence on customers’ revisit intentions mediated through place attachment. Implications: This validated scale provides restaurant managers and researchers with an actionable framework to enhance customer loyalty and dining satisfaction. Future research could extend this scale’s application across diverse cultural contexts and different types of health-oriented dining establishments.
Purpose: This systematic literature review explores the relationship between employee well-being and job satisfaction within the tourism industry. The study aims to identify current knowledge, theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, and trends, while highlighting gaps and suggesting areas for future research within the service marketing triangle context. Methods: The researchers employed a systematic literature review and content analysis, examining 39 peer-reviewed articles sourced from the Web of Science database. Studies were evaluated based on their relevance to employee well- being and job satisfaction, categorizing them according to the service marketing triangle into employee-business, employee-customer, and business-customer interactions. Analysis techniques included bibliometric mapping using VOSviewer and manual content analysis with Microsoft Excel. Results: Findings indicate a notable growth in studies post-2018, predominantly focusing on internal organizational factors affecting employee well-being. Leadership styles, workplace culture, and organizational support emerged as critical variables. Conversely, research addressing external factors, such as employee-customer interactions and corporate social responsibility initiatives, remains limited. Implications: This review underscores the strategic importance of employee well-being for enhancing customer satisfaction and organizational performance. It recommends broadening research to include external service interactions and customer-facing roles, advocating holistic approaches to employee well-being in policy development and industry practice.
Purpose: This conceptual study examines how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) reshapes value co creation, destination governance, and responsible innovation in tourism. It seeks to reposition GenAI from a backstage tool to a tourism actor and to present the Synthetic Experience System, a triadic framework connecting Tourist, GenAI, and Place/Community through data, content, and emotion layers. Methods: The paper follows an integrative theory building approach. It abductively synthesises tourism literature, information systems, marketing, psychology and ethics to surface recurring constructs, situates them within the service dominant logic and the actor–network theory, and iteratively refines a model through comparison of GenAI applications focusing on responsible research and innovation. Results: Analysis reveals three continuous co creation loops that circulate agency among actors and four boundary conditions—authenticity, bias, sustainability, privacy—that determine system viability. The Synthetic Experience System clarifies where value emerges, identifies points of potential value co destruction, and yields fifteen research propositions spanning tourist cognition, firm capabilities, destination policy, and planetary carbon limits. Implications: The framework provides a roadmap for destination management organisations, platform designers, and regulators to audit algorithms, design participatory prompts, and adopt carbon aware deployment. By naming actors, layers, and boundaries, the study offers a shared vocabulary that can anchor empirical investigations and stimulate cross disciplinary citations in tourism, information systems, and sustainability research.
Purpose: This paper hopes to examine the effect of staff empowerment on jobs that fall inside the travel and tourism industry across eighty-four nations from the years 2000 to 2021 using yearly cross-country information gathered by the World Tourism Organization (WTO). Methods:The purpose of this study is to provide an approximation of the level of employee empowerment according to the limit to which companies that are active in the economic reality provide employees with training opportunities. The analysis accounts for the effect of economic situations, the development of infrastructure, and policy frameworks by controlling for the impact of several social, economic, and institutional variables. This allows the analysis to take into account the influence held by economic circumstances, growth in infrastructure, and policies and frameworks. Results:Our research shows that there is a substantial beneficial correlation involving employee training and employment in tourism-related industries across the board in every country. The robustness of these results is demonstrated by the fact that they are not affected by a variety of tests for sensitivity and endogeneity analyses. According to the findings of our research, modifications to employee training could not have a quick or solely linear effect on employment rates in the tourism sector. It has been observed that nonlinear effects can occur, in addition to the possibility of delays in the impact that training programs have on employment. In addition, a wide variety of social, economic, environmental, and geopolitical factors all have the potential to have an impact on the link between employee training and job placement in this sector. Implications: Employee training programs in the economy appear to be important tools in enhancing employee skills and therefore empower them to seek employment in the tourism sector.
Purpose: This research note argues that investigating the intersections between hospitality and speed dating events can yield practical implications for both industries. Hospitality professionals can gain valuable insights into how to enhance customer experiences by understanding the unique needs and expectations of individuals participating in dating events. Conversely, dating event organizers can draw upon the principles of hospitality to create more engaging and enjoyable experiences for their attendees, ultimately contributing to the success and longevity of such events. Methods: Adopting the User-Centred Design (UCD), which is structured around seven distinct phases including understand, observe, engage, define, ideate, prototype and test, and implement. Results: This study suggests a blueprint for the new concept of speed dating event. It proposes a methodology to develop a research agenda to generate strategies for implementing the “dinner date” concept. Implications: Developing aligning goals between hospitality and dating industries creates a valuable experience for their target audience, where food is presented as a soft management tool facilitating this relationship.
Purpose: This paper investigates the main factors of international tourist arrivals to three Mediterranean destinations, namely Greece, Albania and Montenegro. Methods: A gravity model for panel data was used to analyze the number of tourists from twenty of the most important origin countries during the period 2012-2021. Results: Findings show that international tourism is adversely affected by bilateral distance and large-scale crisis such as COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the flow of international visitors is positively related to populations and incomes per capita in origin and destination countries, geographical contiguity and climate similarity. Other pull factors for tourism flows include total investments in infrastructure, and political stability and absence of violence or terrorism. Implications: The results of this research provide some important implications and recommendations for tourism industry policymakers and managers.
Purpose: Despite regenerative tourism representing a beacon of hope to fight the problems faced by today’s humankind, its multidisciplinary essence and fragmentation hinder the identification of major thematic areas for upcoming researchers. Therefore, the present study aims to systematically review the relevant literature on regenerative tourism. Methods: The literature was revised by adopting a bibliometric protocol. Web of Science and Scopus were employed to access pertinent publications, and Biblioshiny was used to track publication and source evolution and impact, main countries and affiliations’ production, authors’ relevance, productivity, collaborations, perform content, thematic, and co-citations analyses. Results: The literature on regenerative tourism has recently grown, fostered by rising interest due to the COVID-19 crisis. Attention in the field is still limited to a few main players, requiring an expansion in geographic and academic discipline terms. Thematic areas and their level of development were identified, assessing some relevant topics as fairly unexplored, especially concerning mindset change. Implications: This study offers inferences for future researchers and practitioners, employing literature summarizing, main sources and author identification, as well as gap detection, limiting its results to dual database record retrieval, as well as limited scope or search.
Purpose: Branding is a predominant part of a marketing strategy. When the brand building is implemented effectively, it delivers customer satisfaction, nurtures customer loyalty to a higher level, and ensures greater airline success. This study explores the relationships of price, safety, and in-flight service quality with airline customers’ perceptions of the brand image and trust and clarifies their impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Methods:A sample of 367 valid responses adopting a convenience sampling method was collected from customers of Korean Air. Data analysis was conducted using Partial Least Squares SEM method. Results:The findings connote that price, safety, and in-flight services are the core factors determining the creation of a strong impression in customers’ minds about airline brands and have different impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The mediating effects of brand trust and customer satisfaction on the relationship between brand image and customer loyalty were also highlighted. Implications:This study underlines that airlines should focus on controlling and maintaining the brand stance in consumer perception. Therefore, there is a need to provide a flight experience that meets consumer expectations in terms of providing a positive brand image and building brand trust in order to generate customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Purpose: This study seeks to advance the literature by examining the mediating role of brand loyalty and the moderating impact of brand awareness in the relationships between social media marketing and collectivist Chinese behavior in the hospitality service context. This exploration is grounded in brand commitment and expectancy disconfirmation theories. Methods: Empirical testing was conducted on survey data gathered from 150 collectivist Chinese customers in Hong Kong, utilizing partial least squares structural equation modeling. Results: Brand loyalty plays a partial mediating role in the relationships between social media marketing and purchase intention as well as word-of-mouth. Additionally, brand awareness exerts a negative moderating influence on social media marketing-brand loyalty link. Implications: Recommendations are provided for front-line staff tasked with addressing communication challenges by effectively managing the hotel’s social media account. They are strongly advised to steer clear of creating face-threatening situations and to demonstrate respect for the loyalty of Chinese collectivist customers. Furthermore, a negative brand awareness effect emerges when collectivist Chinese customers compare hotel brands with online travel agents.
Purpose: Booking intention in the hotel context has motivated the interest of researchers in recent decades. However, research in this field is fragmented and its understanding presents gaps. The aim of this paper is to identify current trends in booking intention research and to recommend future research directions. Methods: To this end, a bibliometric study and content analysis were conducted on a total of 274 papers published between 2000 and 2022 in the Web of Science database. In particular, VOSviewer, SciMAT and the R software package were used to determine, quantify and visualise research clusters, as well as emerging topics in this field of study. Results: The results revealed the existence of three lines of research that have evolved during the total period studied: (1) the impact of technologies on booking intention, (2) the influence of internal consumer factors on booking intention and (3) the hotel attributes that are most sensitive to booking intention. Finally, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on tourist booking intention is reflected cross-sectionally in the studies, where variables such as consumer trust and perceived risk have become more important. Implications: Consequently, this paper contributes to the current body of literature on booking intention, providing a structured overview of research in this field and suggesting future avenues for research.
Purpose: Sentiment analysis is built from the information provided through text (reviews) to help understand the social sentiment toward their brand, product, or service. The main purpose of this paper is to draw an overview of the topics and the use of the sentiment analysis approach in tourism research. Methods: The study is a bibliometric analysis (VOSviewer), with a systematic and integrative review. The search occurred in March 2021 (Scopus) applying the search terms “sentiment analysis” and “tourism” in the title, abstract, or keywords, resulting in a final sample of 111 papers. Results: This analysis pointed out that China (35) and the United States (24) are the leading countries studying sentiment analysis with tourism. The first paper using sentiment analysis was published in 2012; there is a growing interest in this topic, presenting qualitative and quantitative approaches. The main results present four clusters to understand this subject. Cluster 1 discusses sentiment analysis and its application in tourism research, searching how online reviews can impact decision-making. Cluster 2 examines the resources used to make sentiment analysis, such as social media. Cluster 3 argues about methodological approaches in sentiment analysis and tourism, such as deep learning and sentiment classification, to understand the user-generated content. Cluster 4 highlights questions relating to the internet and tourism. Implications: The use of sentiment analysis in tourism research shows that government and entrepreneurship can draw and enhance communication strategies, reduce cost, and time, and mainly contribute to the decision-making process and understand consumer behavior.
Purpose: The tourism industry needs to identify potential tourists' planned behavior after COVID-19 and prepare accordingly. This study was conducted in Israel during the initial outbreak of COVID-19. This research focused on different types of precautionary measures used by the tourists and how perceived risk of getting sick with COVID-19 while traveling abroad as well as risk perceptions and attitudes about travel abroad might affect tourists’ intentions to adopt precautionary measures when planning future travel abroad. Methods: This research is based on an online survey questionnaire distributed during March 2020 among four hundred and six Israeli participants. Results: The analytical model show that people’s with higher levels of attitudes toward traveling abroad and those that prefer to avoid destinations with higher levels of attitudes toward traveling abroad and those that prefer to avoid travel to destinations with various risks had higher intentions to take precautionary measures while traveling abroad. Implications: The results of the current research can assist the tourism industry understand what precautionary measures are important to potential travellers and what health safety assurances the industry must provide to facilitate its recovery in the near future.
Purpose: In this article we aim to model social media users’ behavior in relation with the use of specified Facebook pages and groups, related to eHealth, specifically to healthy diet and sport activities. The study represents to the best of our knowledge the first region-focused on a specific geographical area research. Methods: The users’ personality is measured through the well-known Big Five model and the behavior is predicted with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Structural Equation Modeling is used in order to statistically control the associations among the diverse observed and latent variables. Results: The results suggest an extended theory of planned behavior in combination with personality traits, on eHealth field. Openness and Extraversion do not seem to have positive effect on Attitude. Users’ attitude can be affected positively from Agreeableness and Subjective Norms, guiding to finally positive affection of users’ actual behavior. Agreeableness cannot influence behavior, directly, nor through SN, since the hypothesis path A-SN is not verified, but it can through Attitude. Neuroticism was negatively correlated to PBC but this hypothesis was not, also, confirmed in the proposed model. Implications: While literature confirms all of our hypotheses, in our study only 8 in 12 are finally confirmed. The difference between the present model and literature findings can be located on the different cultural dimensions among the different studies. The present survey is focused on the Greek region with all the participants to be Greeks. This location-based limitation could be surpassed by conducting the same research on different geographical regions and then confront the outcomes.
Purpose: This study examines the process by which eWOM susceptibility moderates the strength of indirect links between the perceived credibility of eWOM messages and the intention to visit a destination via the destination image and the perceived usefulness of these messages. Methods: The research hypotheses were tested according to structural equations modelling and Hayes procedure, which made it possible to study simultaneously and rigorously the mediating and moderating effects, and to have a clear view on the model fittness. Results: The results indicate that the mediation links of the destination image on the relationship between perceived credibility and intention to visit a destination, are moderated by the susceptibility of the eWOM (the comments generated by Internet users or the sharing of tourists' experiences on Facebook). This study also indicates that the relationship between the perceived credibility of the eWOM and the intentions to visit a destination is mediated by the usefulness of the eWOM messages and the destination image. Implications: Tourism practitioners seeking to attract tourists can use the eWOM as a communication technique for product and/or service recommendations. Given the powerful influence of the eWOM, it should not be ignored or misused, but managed to improve the effectiveness of marketing strategies in hospitality, tourism and travel.
Purpose: To introduce and define the concept of sieving tourism destinations as an umbrella term representing faster decision-making processes compared to destination choice models, and to demonstrate its usefulness for both sides of consumption and production of tourism attractions. Methods: Fast decision at the consumers' demand side is demonstrated via an exploratory graphic model. Producers' supply side sieving is measured by observing data elimination on two public serving internet platforms compared to a baseline taken from special interest group tour operators representing Jewish heritage attractions in Sicily and Thessaloniki. Results: On the demand side, nowadays market conditions enable destination choice decision making in a few simple steps often interpreted as spontaneous, intuitive, or irrational. Quantitative analyses on the supply side provided measurable sieving ratios. They reveal careful partial sieving performed at local level editorship, while much harsher sieving occurs on social media platforms. This is interpreted as a market failure related to niche and special interest groups attractions. Implications: The demand side findings call for targeted marketing distinguishing customers not only by income but also by temperament, mood, and personality. The supply side findings call for careful examination of the conditions for inclusion and exclusion from the list of attractions as well as the need to remedy the concealment of minor attractions from social media platforms.
Purpose: The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) global pandemic forced hospitality and tourism service providers to respond by pivoting business models in line with governmental restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. This paper explores the online responsiveness of tourism-affiliated culinary service providers to a major external disruption. Methods: This study uses ecosystem resilience and Internet marketing theories to analyze 139 web homepages of culinary tourism service providers promoted by the official tourism website of Jamaica, to measure of Jamaica to measure online responsiveness to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Findings show that web page responses vary between the official tourism web page and the restaurants promoted on its site. Responses also vary across restaurant affiliation clusters and across location clusters. Further, resilient web page responses are more commonly associated with hotel restaurants and eponymous restaurants. Implications: Culinary service providers promoted by the official tourism marketing arm of a destination should consistently practice resilient online marketing response to external shocks. This study provides a novel analysis of online responsiveness to COVID-19 and contributes a summary framework for resilient response by culinary ecosystem providers preparing for post-pandemic travel.
Purpose: The current COVID-19 pandemic has created an extremely dynamic and uncertain environment in which businesses find it very difficult to operate, particularly those in the hospitality industry. It is therefore very important to understand which actions hospitality businesses think the private and public sectors should adopt in order to cope with the pandemic and its impact. To facilitate this, this research adopted chaos theory to investigate Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the hospitality sector. Methods: A mixed method approach, based on a convergent parallel design data validation variant, was adopted. A survey with open and closed questions was developed and sent to a sample of businesses. 1,040 completed questionnaires were collected and analysed through descriptive statistics; in addition to these usable surveys, 361 open-ended answers were analysed thematically. Results: The results showed that Italian entrepreneurs and managers were over-relying on interventions from the public sector and that there was a lack of business actions being made, thus evidencing a deficit in terms of long-term strategic thinking and the innovation required during such turbulent times. Implications: Although these results cannot be generalised to the whole of the hospitality industry, they shed light on important elements that industry associations should take into account.
