Tourism Management最新文献

In a social-media context, brands need to understand how to frame their messages, so that a topic can be quickly recognized, promoting higher levels of user engagement. However, knowledge about the link between content type and its engagement is not sufficiently studied. We first explore hotel Firm-Generated Content (FGC) and its inherent themes using topic modelling; we then use an ad hoc metric to investigate the engagement levels associated with each topic; thirdly, we compare the relevance attached to the topics with their engagement levels. In total, 44,448 corporate tweets from 62 hotel brands were analyzed to identify 14 topics, one of which had not previously been uncovered. Notably, there was a positive correlation with engagement for content related to hotel management activities and, among smaller groups, to sustainability. The results will expand FGC-related investigation within the hotel sector and will be of interest to firms seeking effective communication strategies.

Compassion fatigue, which results from empathy, is associated with many negative consequences. However, limited attention has been devoted to the compassion fatigue of employees in the tourism and hospitality sector, particularly within the context of service failures. To mitigate the potential negative impact of compassion fatigue on employees, this research reveals how leader humor alleviates employees' compassion fatigue via three scenario-based experiments. Findings show that leader humor affects employees' compassion fatigue through the mediating effect of perceived organizational support. Additionally, this research uncovers the moderating roles of leader hypocrisy and power distance beliefs. Results expand the literature on compassion fatigue and leader humor. This study also offers suggestions to guide tourism and hospitality organizations in using leader humor wisely to minimize employees’ compassion fatigue, particularly among staff with low power distance beliefs and in cases of low leader hypocrisy.

Drawing upon the interdisciplinary integration of co-production approaches of public service rooted in the public administration science, this study presents a retrospective analysis of the impact of public service and identifies key co-producers of tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) during uncertain periods. Utilizing the mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the policies implemented in Macao from 2020 to 2023 and the data from 1109 questionnaire surveys involving stakeholders, this study identifies 22 dimensions of the four types of co-production public services. This establishes the internal casual effects between the co-production public service and the TDC, which are achieved through diverse combination of co-production public service dimensions and specific co-producers, considering both their asymmetric and symmetric aspects. Our findings offer new insights into the tourism literature on TDC, exploring the conditions facilitated by co-production public service and providing valuable guidance for destination governments in developing public services to enhance TDC.

Due to the intangible nature of tourism products, successful destination marketing depends on whether visual materials can evoke tourists' vivid fantasies of their future travel experiences. Our research sheds light on an effective visual cue (i.e. human presence) that can be easily manipulated in destination photographs to facilitate such mental simulation processes. Across three experimental studies with cross-cultural subjects, we found that the presence of a person in photos significantly prompted tourists to imagine their future travel experiences in the depicted travel scenes, thereby enhancing the perceived destination attractiveness. However, this favorable effect is mitigated when the photo features an urban (vs. natural) landscape and when the person's face is clearly shown. These findings provide new insights into the theoretical understanding of tourist mental simulation activation and human presence perception, with critical implications for effective destination photo marketing.

Social media influencers are increasingly recognized for their ability to influence tourists' decision-making processes. The emergent phenomenon of virtual influencers presents an unprecedented challenge to their human counterparts, reshaping the dynamics of the tourism industry. It remains a challenge to integrate various forms of destination advertising and harmonize the approaches of both human and virtual influencers to effectively attract tourists. This study addresses this gap by investigating the effectiveness of human and virtual influencers in endorsing natural versus cultural destinations. Adopting source credibility theory, we conduct five empirical studies. Our findings reveal that virtual influencers boost visit intentions for cultural destinations, while human influencers do so for natural destinations. Credibility and self-referencing play a serially mediating role in this process. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating role of tourists’ preference for uniqueness. This research offers valuable insights for tourism industry managers aiming to harness the power of virtual influencers effectively.

“Red tourism” serves political and educational functions. It could take dark tourism sites as the spatial basis for constructing the red experience, with patriotism cultivation as the result. Taking the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders as a case study, this research integrates field survey data, spatial luminosity, and user-generated content. It explores how the museum space unifies the spiritual production of body (visual darkness), experience (dark and red experiences), and patriotism, illustrates how the official discourse constructs the sites as a red experience, and demonstrates the process of transforming abstract history into individual psychological experiences through bodily and personal narration. Furthermore, this research constructs an approach from individual to collective emotion and the production mechanism of patriotism. The study offers a new reference for tourism experience and provides a highly representative case and theoretical analysis for “dark” and “red” tourism.

The global aging population brings a growing older traveler market. This study applies social comparison theory to explore how travel influencers' age cues affect older adults’ travel intention through a dual process of assimilation (direct effect) and contrast (mediated by age identity). The moderating effects of travel cues (activity type and presence/absence of companions) and travel constraints are investigated as boundary conditions. Data were collected from older U.S. travelers through three online experiments. The results indicate that older travelers are inclined to visit destinations featured by old (vs. young) influencers, especially those with low intrapersonal or high interpersonal travel constraints. The marketing message is more effective when it features an old influencer pursuing a challenging (vs. relaxing) activity and a young influencer with companions (vs solo travel). The study findings provide valuable insight into leveraging social media influencer marketing for destinations and tourism businesses.

This study presents a meta-analysis of the relationships between hospitality and tourism employees' innovative behavior and (a) its predictors and (b) various performance measures. Findings contribute to the field in four key ways. First, this research addresses the sector's burgeoning innovation landscape through a targeted meta-analytic review. Second, it describes a dense nomological network, expanding on previous studies' predictors. Third, it broadens this network by including relevant outcome variables. Lastly, it explores moderators: a theoretically significant distinction (i.e., creativity vs. innovative behavior), common control variables (i.e., age, tenure), and nine cultural dimensions. Drawing on dynamic componential theory, this study integrates individual and organizational components, psychological factors, and external influences to clarify employees' creative and innovative performance. An analysis of 215 independent samples covering 1,128 relationships provides valuable insights for hospitality and tourism management leaders and scholars.

Sustainability is becoming a vital theme in the development of tourism-related industries and have been notably investigated in the aviation and accommodation industries, but, sustainability in the context of the tourism shopping industry, which generates a great proportion of the tourism and travel sectors' contribution to gross domestic product, has been rarely studied. Using discrete choice modelling, this study holistically models the impact of tourist heterogeneity on tourist shoppers' preference towards different sustainability features and estimates their attribute-specific willingness to pay under a three-pillar framework. Tourists' heterogeneity underlying their sustainability-related behavioural tendency and socio-demographic profiles are depicted by market segmentation and its socio-demographic determinants, respectively. Segment-specific behaviour, sustainability willingness to pay and socio-demographic profiles are then presented to provide managerial implications in a more comprehensive manner.