Italy is a sought-after tourist destination and unique all over the world for its many attractions. The economic crisis of 2008 has changed the tourist offers that accommodation facilities have made with a reduced average size. These include bed and breakfasts (B&B), which operate in compliance with specific regulations. This study is dedicated to them. The study analyzes the economic and financial dynamics investigated; it analyzes the ten-year trend of financial statement values and indices of a significant sample of larger companies. This study contains some figures, including the constant growth of product value in structures where few people are engaged, although they are the largest in the Italian market. The trend in profitability is growing; it is stimulated by the monetary policies curbing the growth in interest rates, a good relationship between sources and uses, even if the sector remains too indebted and therefore in need of capitalization. Capitalization may be generated by self-financing from the established increase in profitability.
Millennials worldwide are the connected generation that is actively changing the consumption patterns in various sectors, especially the restaurant and hospitality industry. This paper examines Lebanese Millennials' needs and the way Lebanese chain restaurant operators could efficiently satisfy them. Researchers implemented a mixed-method approach and collected 484 valid responses using an online self-administered questionnaire. The survey covered mainly: Millennials' restaurant selection attributes, social media food sharing, and satisfaction. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted with six local chain restaurants' operations managers to explore how they are satisfying Lebanese Millennials' needs. The results indicate a discrepancy in priorities regarding restaurant selection between Millennials and restaurants' managers. Interestingly, this study reveals a statistically significant relationship between sharing food on social media and preferring food presentation over taste.
This paper examines the development, implementation, and implications of farming and food experiential activities and the effects of these activities on agricultural sustainable tourism. A model is proposed that examines the major correlates and possible impacts related to these variables. A heuristic inquiry research design was adopted, employing a major multiple case study approach. In addition to secondary data, primary data were collected through 18 interviews with farmers, customers, government employees, community leaders, and scholars, and quantitative surveys with 132 tourists and visitors involved in the activities on site. The focal cases of the Small Bee Project, Pitaya Tour, and three other examples of farming and food education programs are introduced. Results show that farming and food educational experiences provide participants with more awareness of ecological sustainability, food safety, and a sense of sociability, and an appreciation of the linkages between farming and safe food. Farming and food education are still developing and need more promotion, training, and support. More cooperation is desired among both the private and public sectors, as well as the local community. The local farmers could benefit from training to increase knowledge about the latest scientific advances and technology tools, adopt practices that are less harmful to the environment, reduce food contamination, build professional tours for farming and food education, and increase profits. This study concludes that a comprehensive farming and food education program includes farming experiences, nutrition, food safety, and environmental education about respecting sustainable development. The major correlates of farming and food educational experiences include positive attitudes towards green tourism and potential demands for authentic experiences and educational experiences in food safety. These correlates contribute to the perceived value of experiential activities in farming and food education. Further, possible impacts of these experiential education activities on participants in this type of agricultural sustainable tourism include more awareness of ecological sustainability and food safety.
Dr. Danielle Barbe is a Lecturer in Digital Marketing in the Faculty of Business and Law, at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. Danielle earned her PhD in Tourism, Hospitality, and Event Management and a minor in Communications from the University of Florida in spring 2020. Danielle’s overarching research area is in tourism and digital communications, examining ways to enhance the communications efforts between tourists and tourism suppliers. Danielle’s research examines the capabilities of digital communication tools in the context of tourism, with the goal of developing theoretically driven and empirically tested strategies that incorporate web, social, and mobile technologies. Through this research, Danielle has studied concepts relating to crisis communication, technology acceptance and use, persuasion, credibility, misinformation, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), engagement, relationship marketing, and influencer marketing Danielle’s academic journey and passion for research began at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada where she was a Research Assistant for Dr. Kelly MacKay at the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research. In this role, Danielle conducted research on social media use and engagement in festival and event settings. Danielle’s experience with research at this time was limited. However, the more she learned, the more she wanted to continue to learn and discover answers to what was still unknown about this area. Danielle continued her academic journey at the University of Florida where her background on social media research took on the new lens of crisis communication. Working with Dr. Lori Pennington-Gray and the Tourism Crisis Management Initiative (TCMI), Danielle began evaluating the current state of online crisis communication by the tourism industry. The goal was to understand what organisations are communicating to tourists on social media in times of crisis. She analysed social media content by Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), hotels, the media, and publics. Danielle also analysed social media communication during a variety of crises (terrorist attacks, hurricanes, disease outbreaks, organisational-level crises) in multiple countries, including USA, UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and Sri Lanka. These studies were conducted as a situational analysis, to grasp a better understanding of current crisis communication. However, in these studies, Danielle found that, overall, the tourism industry was inept at communicating to tourists on social media during these times. Many DMOs and hotels were not only actively avoid communicating on social media about the crisis, but used an ineffective messaging strategy, focused heavily on recovery rather than tourists’ safety. Using these insights, Danielle’s dissertation titled ‘Developing a crisis communication model for the tourism industry: The effects of source, media, and time’ adopted a communications-focused approach to create a research-driven strategy that informs the tourism industry on how to increase visitors’ safety in times of crisis. Danielle’s dissertation focused on a terrorism-related crisis and consisted of three studies addressing each critical element of effective communication: source, medium, message and time. The purpose was to understand who the most influential sources are during a terrorist attack, which media tourists are most likely to turn to, when crisis communication is most necessary, and how message type can impact perceptions of safety and security at the destination. Danielle’s dissertation research informs destination managers on how to optimise their social media strategy by understanding how tourists behave on a variety of platforms during a crisis and how the messages by the tourism organisation may elicit a different response by the tourist. Each study provides unique elements to understand the communications process during a crisis in a tourism destination. Using the results from this research, Danielle is currently developing a crisis communication template to support tourism destinations’ crisis communication strategies. While Danielle’s primary research specialism is social media and crisis communication, Danielle’s overall research covers a wider spectrum. Danielle’s broader research agenda focuses on the use of digital technologies for the marketing, management, and development of tourism. Under the umbrella of communications, Danielle focuses on the factors influencing the persuasive effects of communication, looking particularly at the effects of source, media, message, and time on the attitudes and behaviours of the receiver. Her research extends beyond communication as a marketing tool, evaluating a range of communication options in the management, practice, and policy of tourism. Danielle acknowledges that tourism is a complex system, and thus examines communications from both a supply and demand perspective, focusing on strategies by the communicator as well as its effects on the receiver of messages. A recent research interest has been on influencer marketing, specifically through visually-centred platforms, such as Instagram. Influencer marketing has seen tremendous growth in recent years, however the research on this lucrative area is scarce, particularly in tourism. Danielle is exploring this area in depth to understand (1) why tourists follow influencers, (2) how tourists perceive influencers, and (3) the effects and outcomes of influencer marketing. In addition, Danielle has recently published research on the perceived credibility of misinformation on visually-focused social media platforms. Danielle is a strong believer in interdisciplinary collaboration and is actively engaged in partnerships with colleagues from universities in Canada, USA, and throughout Europe. Danielle is also a member of the Travel and Tourism Research Association and International Communications Association. Now part of the digital marketing team at Northumbria University, Danielle is excited for opportunities to work with colleagues across a broad area of specialisations.
Companies need systematic listening practices in the competitive environment to observe competitors and help managers in the decision-making process. Thus, the objective of this article is to analyze the strategies of the Brazilian hotel industry from the clients' perception of the quality of accommodation services. This research is also described as a mixed-method centered around delimiting the existing strategic information in hotels based on the 2017 JLL's Hotels & Hospitality Group report. Data were collected from the guests through on-site and online questionnaires and interpreted qualitatively based on the hotel chain's missions and views, and statistically from the two-way ANOVA and Tukey tests, which presented a low significance for the guests' educational training, income, and age. The objectives proposed in the hotels' strategic outline concerning the practices adopted and the experiences undergone by their guests showed some inconsistency. Hotels lack the identification of important sources of existing information in their area.
This study systematically reviewed studies about tourism stakeholder collaboration in tourist destinations published in seven high-ranking journals, which are Tourism Management (TM-19), Current Issues in Tourism (CIT-7), Annals of Tourism Research (ATR-6), Journal of Ecotourism (JE-2), Journal of Sustainable Tourism (JST-11), Journal of Travel Research (JTR-3), Journal of Tourism Planning and Development (JTPD-11). Using a systematic quantitative literature review method, six criteria were used to assess the published papers, including research methods, locations, main tourism stakeholders, identification of tourism stakeholders, tourism settings, and issues addressed in the papers. Fifty-nine (n=59) articles were reviewed; most of the studies used the qualitative research method. The criteria to include tourism stakeholders in these studies are based on many aspects such as literature review, available documents of destinations, local sources, tourism stakeholder's knowledge, and experiences. Furthermore, some studies included the tourism stakeholders based on their positions, power, and their dependence on destinations for livelihood; however, tourism stakeholders could be chosen purposively in several studies. This study demonstrates the trend of the most recent studies focused on tourism stakeholder’s collaboration in developed countries, and this issue should be studied more in developing countries in future studies.
My interest in Asian cultural heritage and anthropology began quite early during high school when I started to casually read different authors such as Mircea Eliade and Rene Guenon about Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism and other Asian religions. My father’s book collection was a great start for these readings. At the same time, I decided to learn a new language as a pastime, and being already interested in Japanese culture, I chose to take a dive into Japanese language. While at that time learning such a complicated language appeared to be no more than a curious hobby, over the years it became a valuable tool for not only academic research, but for forging meaningful relationships during my lifetime. Having a great interest in these subjects, I decided to carry out my undergraduate degree at the School of Oriental Studies of Del Salvador University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This School is one of the few academic institutions in Latin America to offer a bachelor degree in Oriental Studies, or Asian Studies as it is called in other countries, so having such an institution in my hometown was certainly a happy coincidence or good luck. During my undergraduate at Del Salvador University, I could learn about the literature, history and anthropology of different Asian cultures, but still my main area of interest remained East Asia, particularly Japan. Having graduated from Asian Studies, I had a longing to jump from books to the actual fieldwork in order to conduct research in Japan regarding the contemporary meaning and utilization of its cultural aspects. For this purpose, tourism proved to be both an unexpected and suitable academic field. Having decided to venture into this new academic field, I applied for the Research Student scholarship offered by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and arrived in 2013 to study at the Faculty of Tourism of Wakayama University. In this institution, I met many supportive professors and students who helped me complete my Master and PhD degrees. After arriving to Wakayama, I began to travel around the prefecture for study and leisure, as well as reading different materials about its locations. While there was a wide range of interesting places, the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage in particular caught my attention, as there was little academic material on it at the time, especially written in non-Japanese sources. The pilgrimage was also experiencing a rapid development in inbound tourism, particularly after its registration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Because of this context, different nationalities, particularly those from Western nations, were visiting the area. This sparked a great interest in me. Why would Western visitors come all the way down to the Kii peninsula, relatively far from the main tourism destinations, and undertake the pilgrimage? What was attractive to them about a place that had little to no cultural ties with them? These questions were the start for the PhD thesis objective, which was carried out during the course of three years: examine visitor diversification in pilgrimage sites through domestic and international visitors through means-end methodology, developed by Gutman (1982). Means-end proved to be a very valuable qualitative method for this type of research, as it allowed a multi-level comparison of destination’s attributes and their linkage to the participants’ personal valuables. Still, carrying out qualitative research in outdoor locations, such as mountainous pilgrimage trails, is a challenge due to time constrains, weather and participants’ busy schedules. Therefore, I stayed in a popular guesthouse as a temporary worker, which allowed me access to the tourists, as well as a suitable location for conducting fieldwork. After interviewing Australian and Japanese visitors, analysis showed a variety of similarities and differences between the two nationalities, demonstrating a growing diversification in sacred sites which incorporates a complex range of elements related to leisure, sports, intercultural exchange, nostalgia, escapism and relaxation, beyond a continuum of contemporary spirituality and traditional religion. In this sense, it was observed that nationality is a fundamental but overlooked factor for studying contemporary pilgrimage tourism. While conducting this study, I also carried out other research projects on themes related to my thesis such as DMO development, tourism impacts and sustainable destinations, which were later published. Some of these works include “Spiritual (walking) tourism as a foundation for sustainable destination development: Kumanokodo pilgrimage, Wakayama, Japan” (Kato & Progano, 2017), “Spirituality and tourism in Japanese pilgrimage sites: Exploring the intersection through the case of Kumano Kodo” (Progano & Kato, 2018), and “Residents’ perceptions of socio-economic impacts on pilgrimage trails: How does the community perceive pilgrimage tourism?” (Progano, 2018). Finally, I also had the chance to participate in academic conferences both in Japan and abroad which helped to expand my networking, as well as to acquaintance myself with different research perspectives. After completing my PhD in 2019, I continued my academic research as a lecturer at the Center for Tourism Research of Wakayama University with study themes centered on pilgrimage, tourism in Asia, cultural heritage, anthropology and cultural geography. Expanding my academic horizons, I am currently tackling spiritual and pilgrimage tourism in different locations in Japan from new approaches such as transformative experience and guiding. Also, I have started to build research cooperation with both Japanese and overseas universities in order to carry out multi-disciplinary research projects in which all the members can bring their own expertise and networking to help create innovative approaches to tourism studies. Finally, I started to diversify my research interests to different themes related to cultural anthropology and geography, as the current rapid tourism development in Asia and the rich diversity of its cultures constantly provide new study opportunities. In the following years, while continuing with studies on pilgrimage-related tourism, I will explore areas of research such as colonial heritage and communities, as well as tourism-related urban gentrification. These new studies are expected to not only bring forward understudied aspects of their related fields, but also to have practical contributions for their local communities. Particularly, the study of urban gentrification in Asian contexts is expected to bring attention to poverty issues related to tourism development, such as the role of tourism in poverty alleviation.
This study inspects the quality of tour guiding in Bali Island in specific to cultural tour. A total of 4 quality standards of tour guiding were conceptualized based on suggestions from UNESCO and the World Federation of Tourist Guide Association, namely 1) Knowledge, 2) Guiding techniques, 3) Compliance to Rules and Regulations, and 4) Sensitiveness. This study applied three research techniques: (1) In-depth Interview, (2) Site observation with experiential audit, and (3) Mystery shoppers in collecting data pertaining to perception, experiences, sharing of information, actions, and behavior in a natural setting. Two industry experts, seven cultural sites, fifteen tour operators, twelve tourists, and two non-local tour guides were sampled for interview, observation and evaluation. Thematic analysis was used to discover the overall indicators of performance, followed by benchmarking analysis to conclude on the level of compliance. Findings suggested that the sampled tour guides did show a certain degree of compliance, especially in guiding techniques and sensitivity towards tourists' needs. However, findings indicate a concerning gap in standards related to knowledge and abiding rules and regulations. The study also discovers that the performance of tour guiding varies and is somehow related to the presence of illegal tour guiding on the island. This study has contributed to understanding tour guiding qualities in Bali Island. Moreover, this study provides practical and realistic implications that contribute to the development of cultural tour guiding in Bali Island.
The aim of this article is to identify recent trends that are configuring the peer-to-peer market for tourist accommodation. Data comes from scrapings of active listings in the Airbnb platform in early 2016 and 2019, in 10 cities of the world. On that basis, it is observed, among other things, the growth of the market, the predominance of entire homes, the professionalization of hosts, and a booking policy in which flexible cancellation loses weight and instant booking gains protagonism. Some useful considerations for policy actions are noted.
An increasing number of foreign tourists who visit Indonesia, especially Gorontalo (an emerging regional destination), has increased tourist brochures' importance. Brochures are produced in multiple languages, and translation plays a crucial role in delivering the intent and purpose of the brochures to potential readers. The present study investigates the opinions of target readers regarding the text and content. Qualitative methods were used, and participants were asked to read tourism brochures and complete a survey with questions related to the content of the brochures, particularly the English translation. The findings reveal both positive and negative readers’ responses regarding the quality of the brochures. Regarding non-linguistic aspects, design and layout were most attractive to the readers. Regarding English translation, grammatical errors prevented tourists from understanding the brochures, thus undermining the text's function as promotional material.
The impact that local residents play in the promotion and marketing of a destination whether directly or indirectly can not be ignored. This is particularly associated with the the destinations’ image. The concept of destination image has therefore attracted a significant amount of attention from scholarship. This then leads to the purpose of this study which was to investigate perceptions of local tourists towards Cape Town as a travel and holiday destination. The destination under investigation was Cape Town, one of South Africa’s largest tourist cities. The nature of this research was quantitative adoptive the survey method. A total of 270 willing respondents selected through convenience sampling participated in the study. A key finding established by the study was that destination image had significantly more influence on local tourists’ attitudes in comparison to its influence on their willingness to visit a destination. Based on the findings, implications were brought forward as well possible suggestions for futher research on the topic under investigation.
The agrotourism industry in Malaysia has shown an increased interest among young tourists. The study aimed to explore the prospects of agrotourism among youth in Malaysia. The objective of this study is to identify the interests and needs of young people while visiting agrotourism destinations. The study focuses on a town called Pekan Nanas, Malaysia, famous for its pineapple production. Three methods employed in the study are surveys, interviews, and document analysis. The findings show that youths enjoy agrotourism with family and friends in large numbers. To attract youth, consistent promotion and marketing need to be carried out to get the information they need. In addition, interesting activities need to be enhanced, and basic amenities should be sufficient for tourist use. This paper is hoped to provide valuable information as a baseline study to help tourism-related authorities improve the current situation in Pekan Nanas.
This study probes a phenomenon from tourism actors because their profession demands the ability to communicate with various types of foreign languages. This case study at Kuta beach in Bali applied observation. The data were collected by recording, listening to the recording, and in-depth interviews. The results showed that the increased number of visits from various countries also increased the ability of tourism actors in foreign languages. Language skills obtained autonomously results in foreign language skills, which diverts from proper language use. The impact, multilingual phenomenon are not in accordance with grammar and ignore politeness aspects by the tourist actors.
A number of low-cost airlines (LCA) are repositioning their brand strategy to attract business travelers. This requires first understanding and then meeting business traveler's service quality expectations. Unfortunately, most studies on service quality attributes of LCAs have focused on leisure travelers. This formed the motivation of this study, which aims to examine the gap that exists between expectations and (actual) experience with the services received across the various dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) among international business travelers. A total of 142 responses from business travelers were collected using a structured questionnaire comprising 23 SERVQUAL items. An expectation-experience analysis (EEA) was then performed on the survey data to categorize each item in the EEA grid as 1) High priority (high expectation but low experience) 2) Keep up the good work (high expectation and high experience) 3) Low priority (low expectation and low experience) and 4) Possible overkill (low expectation but high experience). The results show that the LCAs should focus more on the 'reliability' factor as most of its items emerged in the high priority grid while low priority should be given to 'empathy'. Overall, an all-around improvement is required to narrow the service quality gap, given that none of the service quality attributes have met or exceeded business travelers' expectations. The results are useful for practitioners to prioritize service quality improvements and develop tailor-made marketing and branding strategies.
The 5th Emerging Research Paradigms in Business and Social Sciences (ERPBSS) was held at Middlesex University Dubai from January 14-16 2020. Aligned with the EXPO 2020 themes of Sustainability, Mobility and Opportunity, this conference brought together more than 180 researchers and practitioners from countries worldwide. The conference provided a platform for fruitful discussion of new concepts, progressive methodologies, and innovative practices from multiple disciplines in line with the conference themes and sub-themes. Over 90 research papers and case studies were presented at ERPBSS-2020, along with several plenary and panel sessions, and student poster presentations. Over 90 research papers and case studies were presented at ERPBSS-2020, along with several plenary and panel sessions, and student poster presentations. This special issue showcases some of the diverse topics of discussion at the conference, and features 9 research notes and papers.
My name is Dr Edmund Goh. This is my personal reflection as an emerging scholar. Currently, I am a Senior Lecturer in Hospitality and Tourism Management, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Australia. I obtained my Master by Research (Goh, 2007) from the University of Wollongong in 2007 under the principal supervision of Professor Sara Dolnicar and PhD (Goh, 2015a) from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2015 under the principal supervision of Professor Brent Ritchie. I am immensely grateful to both supervisors who have been great role models and mentors in helping shape my research career as an emerging scholar. Both mentors have always set the bar high and only expect the best and nothing less. This basic principle has anchored into my research career to strive for research excellence through impactful quality research. The decision to embark on a PhD journey was one of the greatest things that happened in my life. It can be best described as a bittersweet vicarious feeling of being overly ambitious of trying to solve all world problems in 80,000 words. At the beginning, I was not fully aware of the intensity and discovery of knowledge involved in gaining such an understanding would entail. As the PhD journey progressed, little did I realised how much I didn’t know, and the inflated confidence started to create self-doubt. This is where good supervision and critical reflections are essential. The word “why” was an adverb frequently used in discussions and milestone reports. Why did you choose this topic? Why did you use this theory? Why are you using this methodology? Before embarking on my PhD, I was lecturing at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, Torrens University Australia. In the vein of serendipity, my PhD impetus stemmed from a problematic behaviour at the Blue Mountains National Park where visitors were often engaging in dangerous non-compliant activities that resulted in death at times. This practical problem resulted in the birth of my PhD thesis to investigate “Visitor non-compliance at national parks: An extension of the theory of planned behaviour model with pro-environmental values”. Ever since, I have been passionate about visitor non-compliance in national parks and has subsequently published four research journal articles in this area (Esfandiar, Dowling, Pearce & Goh, 2020; Goh, 2020a; Goh, 2020b; Goh, Ritchie & Jie, 2017). After completing my PhD, I realised that my own academic identity as a researcher has developed and is still developing given the divergent research lens and landscape. I have learnt to be more pragmatic, more adventurous, less conventional, insist on theoretical underpinnings, and respect the academia industry. More importantly, my research mantra is to ensure that any research undertaken must be used as the nexus to bridge the gap between academia and industry. As my research journey continues to advance, I have started to segment my research into three key areas: hospitality workforce, hospitality education, and contemporary tourism issues. Within hospitality workforce research, I am interested in improving the working conditions of frontline hospitality workers and developing the future Generation Z workforce with eight journal articles published about hospitality workforce studies (Goh & Okumus, 2020; Scerri, Presbury & Goh, 2020; Goh & Jie, 2019; Lemy, Goh & Jie, 2019; Goh & Lee, 2018; Goh & Kong, 2018; Robinson, Goh, Kralj, Solnet & Callan, 2016; Robinson, Kralj, Solnet, Goh & Callan, 2014). The second area of my research foci looks at hospitality education. This is important as I strongly believe education must be meaningful and translate into employment outcomes. I have since published 13 journal articles that includes innovative teaching pedagogies, academic misconduct, and student satisfaction (Goh & Sigala, 2020; Goh & Jun, 2020; Goh & Kim, 2020; Goh & King, 2019; Frawley, Goh & Law, 2019; Goh, Nguyen & Law, 2017; Goh, Muskat & Tan, 2017; Goh & Scerri, 2016; Fatima, Khan & Goh, 2015; Goh, 2015b, 2013; Goh, 2011; Goh & Ritchie, 2011). My third research area explores contemporary tourism issues such as elderly tourism (Wen, Huang & Goh, 2020; Wen, Yu, Huang & Goh, 2020), suicide travel (Wen, Goh & Yu, 2019; Yu, Wen, Goh & Aston, 2019), disability travel (Tao, Goh, Huang & Moyle, 2019), and COVID19 tourism impact (Ying, Wang, Liu, Wen & Goh, 2020; Zheng, Goh & Wen, 2020). As an emerging scholar, I have developed a passion for good teaching. My philosophy of teaching is to ensure the learning experience is meaningful, relevant and capable of effective real-world application by linking curricula, pedagogy and assessment in a more productive way. My focus is to connect these productive pedagogies through knowledge integration to devise an inquiry-based curriculum. Using experiential learning theory as a pedagogical frame, students are engaged in critical thinking, problem solving and decision making in contexts that are personally relevant to them. During my journey as an emerging scholar, my teaching and research efforts have been recognised with a number of awards. In 2018, I received two awards from the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University: Excellence in Research by an Emerging Scholar Award; and Teaching and Learning Award for Impact on Learning. In 2019, I received the Mentoring in Teaching and Learning Award from the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University; and the Early Career Researcher Highlight Award from Edith Cowan University. As in the case of all Early Career Researchers, I feel the pressure to publish and contribute to the body of knowledge. My best advice to other Early Career Researchers and higher degree students is to make as many mistakes early in their career, network, collaborate, seek good mentors, work hard, teach, and do not fall into the rabbit hole of imposter syndrome. Obtaining a PhD is the beginning of the end, and the end of a beginning. Always remember that your academic journey is like running a marathon and not a 100 metres sprint. Let your PhD be one of your greatest legacy in life. Being married and having two kids have reshaped my priorities where work life balance is essential. To relax, I enjoy playing the guitar and singing Disney songs for my kids. I have a peculiar hobby of visiting hotels and aim to visit all 6807 hotels in Australia before I retire. In closing, I am grateful to everyone who have accompanied me in my pursuit of a PhD and an academic career. While the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, Torrens University Australia gave me the necessary teaching, administrative and fundamental research skills, Edith Cowan University opened up my research career and mentored me into becoming a world class researcher. As cliche as it sounds, I see the silver lining at the end of my PhD tunnel.
The spa industry is growing rapidly in the United States. The rising demand for spa services has met with an increasing number of spa businesses thus boosting overall revenue for the spa industry. Most spa research seems to be focused on hotel and resort spas even though three-fourths of all spas in the U.S. are day spas. The purpose of this study was to examine spa customers’ attitudes and behaviors when they visited day spas in the U.S. A total of 615 participants completed questionnaires. A model was examined in this study, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was selected as the statistic tool to analyze the model. The findings imply that past experience has a significant influence on spa goers’ consumption. Additionally, spa consumers’ perceptions of marketing mix impact how they perceived quality and satisfaction. The results also showed that satisfied customers were more likely to become loyal customers.
The article attempts to map the alternative forms of tourism and to outline the area of Corfu with its comparative advantages and as a goal, the viability of its tourism. Planning of regional policy of Ionian Islands focused on Corfu, should be formed in such a way that the main objective should be the maximization of sustainable tourism development. For that reason major role among others will have the contribution of the Special Framework for Spatial Planning and Sustainable development for tourism.
Some previous studies have identified variations in online scores about hotels, depending on the nationality or language of the users, observing substantial differences in some cases. We use Tripadvisor reviews to identify differences by country and language in 15 of the most visited tourist spots in Spain, France and Italy, using a sample of more than one million reviews. Some of the differences in scores by language are similar to those of earlier studies about hotels, differing in others. We observe how language behaviors are repeated systematically; speakers of each language tend to rate all monuments in the same way, regardless of their typology or location. French, Spanish and Italians, value their national symbolic monuments very similarly to the way foreigners who visit them do.
I commenced my scholarship in the field of information technology and tourism only in late 2014, when I started my PhD in Vienna, Austria with Professor Hannes Werthner and Doctor Julia Neidhardt. Coming from Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina and growing up in an environment coloured by conflict and underdevelopment, I did not have the opportunity to discover this field earlier in my academic career. I began my academic career by studying Informatics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo. After finishing my master’s degree, I worked as a software engineer for ERP solutions, and while valuing the exposure it gave me to the private sector, I quickly became unsatisfied with often unchallenging work. I became eager to try myself in a different setting, hence, I resolved to do a PhD in computer science. I relished the challenge presented by the shift from a largely process focused engineering role to a research paradigm focused on collaboration and problem solving.At the beginning, due to my previous education and experiences, I was interested to research business process models, frameworks and automation. Nonetheless, having the opportunity to work so closely with one of the pioneers in the field of information technology and tourism, Professor Hannes Werthner, it did not take me long, nor was it a surprise when I became deeply engaged in the field. My PhD thesis is about travel-related group decision-making, and tourism group recommender systems, and it is a continuation of the work of Neidhardt et al., addressing the picture-based approach to recommender systems in the travel and tourism domain. What excites me the most about this work is the complexity of the tourism product, how people make decisions related to it, and how we could facilitate such a decision-making process. Recommender systems, in general, aim to help their users to find items of interest in the online choice overload. Usually, the task of a recommender system is to make use of the user’s previous interactions with the system, in order to capture her preferences and to predict what the user might be interested in. However, in the travel and tourism domain, the task for a recommender system becomes quite complicated. First of all, there is the complexity of the tourism product, the risk it carries and the fact that it is rather an emotional experience. Secondly, but equally important, there is a question on how to elicit user preferences about such a product, which is the core of the recommendation engine. Understanding travelling as a group activity, as it usually is, imposes a whole new dimension onto the problem, which is occupying my attention for quite some time. In our research, and my PhD, we show how the variety of individual and group characteristics influence the group decision-making process when selecting a destination to visit together, which is only a small part of the overall decision-making process, but it provides strong evidence about the directions that the future research and the design of more efficient recommendation systems should follow. Therefore, I believe there is still a long and thrilling road ahead of us, in this particular topic.Currently, I am a teaching assistant at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo, where I teach Machine Learning, Data Mining and Decision Support Systems, and I am finishing my PhD thesis at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. At the same time, I am actively doing research in the field of group recommender systems, and user modelling in the travel and tourism domain. Moreover, I have been honoured to be invited to co-chair the RecSys Challenge 2020, which brings together researchers and practitioners in the RecSys community for ten years now to come up to new innovative solutions for the real-world recommendation tasks. Also, being passionately involved in the field of information technology and tourism, recently we have started a project named x3Light, in a cooperation between the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo, and the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the goal to develop an adaptive lightning framework that aims to optimize energy consumption and to enhance visitors’ experience.As my academic career evolves and progresses, I find I am increasingly involved in a great number of activities, but there seems to be less and less time for the kind that were done during my PhD, which sometimes I truly miss – exerting oneself in the full capacity just to make that small progress in a pretty tiny area was always fulfilling for me in terms of making a measurable contribution to the academic field. Until now, the journey was tough, but great and exciting, for which I am endlessly grateful to my supervisor, Professor Hannes Werthner, and a great number of people who worked with me, and who introduced to me the true meaning and value of research, and how to earnestly live it.
