Guest editorial

Citation

Chi, B.T.C.a.C.G. (2014), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCTHR-06-2014-0045

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Volume 8, Issue 3

Welcome to the Special Section Issue of the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research (IJCTHR), 2014. The production of this special issue marks the successful culmination of a year-long laborious process, from the very successful 3rd Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Marketing & Management Conference (AHTMMC), held at The Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan, between June 25th and 30th, 2013, to the preparation of the refereed proceedings. The 3rd AHTMMC was jointly organized by National Chiayi University, National Taiwan Normal University, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, National Science Council, National Changhua University of Education, Washington State University and Alexander Technological Institute of Thessaloniki. On behalf of the co-organizers of the conference, we are grateful to the IJCTHR’s Editor-in-Chief Professor Andreas Zins for offering the journal space in support of the conference. We also would like to thank the conference’s scientific committee and review committee members who have provided valuable feedback during the review process.

For this 2014 IJCTHR Special Section Issue, papers were selected from the 3rd AHTMMC conference proceedings that focus on the topic of consumer behavior and tourism development. The goal of the special issue is to thoroughly examine contemporary hospitality and tourism issues, especially those related to the impact of culture on tourism planning, development, management, marketing, tourist behavior and travel decision-making. It is important for the tourism industry to examine tourists’ characteristics and differences in today’s global tourism environment. We also believe that the new research perspectives provided by this special section issue will enrich the tourist behavior literature. The following provides a summary of the papers included in the special issue.

The first paper entitled “Complaint behavior intentions and expectation of service recovery in individualistic and collectivistic cultures” is authored by Seul Gi Park, Kyungmi Kim and Martin O’Neill. The authors investigated whether complaint behavior intentions and expectations of service recovery based on justice theory were different among customers from collectivistic versus individualistic cultures (South Korea vs USA), and to find which service recovery strategies were appropriate for different culture-based complaint behavior intentions. The findings of this study contributed to the globalized hospitality industry by identifying consumers’ different complaint behavior intentions and their expectations for service recovery efforts based on different cultures and by suggesting managerial guidelines to handle different type of complaints.

The second paper is “The tourism life cycle: an overview of Langkawi Island, Malaysia” authored by Shida Irwana Omar, Abdul Ghapar Othman and Badaruddin Mohamed. This paper attempted to examine the life cycle of the tourism sector in Langkawi Island using Butler’s (1980) Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model as the research framework. Applying the TALC model, this study identified both benefits and costs derived from tourism development in Langkawi Island and provided a better understanding of how tourism and its market have evolved in the Island and at what stage of development the Island is in today.

The third paper is “Understanding tourists’ perception and evaluation of inter-cultural service encounters: a holistic mental model process” by Defang Zhao and Ingrid Y. Lin. The study sought to explore the underlying structure of the community perception of the impacts of an agro-cultural festival in Nigeria. The results showed that age and economic dependency led to significant differences with respect to some perceived impact factors. History of resident’s participation in the event significantly influenced some perceived impact factor. This study provided an insight into the pattern and underlying structure of community-perceived impact of an agro-tourism festival Nigeria.

The final paper is “Typologies of the visitors at Khāled Nabi: tourists or pilgrims?” by Mehdi Ebadi. This study explored the reasons and motivations of visitors to Khāled Nabi, and the classification of the visitors at the shrine using tourist-pilgrim continuum model. It revealed that visitors of Khāled Nabi shrine were not homogenous and comprised different types of tourists. Based on their travel incentives, the visitors were categorized into five groups: “religious pilgrims”, “nostalgic pilgrims”, “eco-tourists”, “ethnic tourists” and “cultural tourists”.

In closing, we would like to, again, thank all the authors, reviewers of this Special Section Issue and the IJCTHR Editorial Board. Hopefully, the contributions in this issue will provide new insights for future studies and trigger new ideas for hospitality and tourism research.

Brendan T. Chen and Christina G. Chi