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The purpose of this paper, a critical reflection, is twofold. First, by comprehensively reviewing scale development procedures in hospitality research, a concerning lack of nomological validity testing is demonstrated. Second, the need for nomological validity testing is discussed and both conceptually and empirically reasoned.

This research systematically reviews scale development studies in three leading hospitality journals, including Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and International Journal of Hospitality Management over ten years (2012–2021) to analyze the completeness of scale development procedures. Specifically, the authors evaluate whether the reviewed studies engage in testing the nomological and predictive validity of the newly developed measures.

The results indicate a concerning gap in the current practices in hospitality research. Specifically, only 33.3% of the examined studies assess nomological validity. These findings collectively underscore the need for improving the comprehensiveness of scale development processes in hospitality research.

The study offers important implications for hospitality researchers. The paper provides an extensive discussion on the importance and benefits of testing for nomological validity in scale development studies, contributing to the completeness and consistency of scale development procedures in the hospitality discipline.

This research critically assesses prevalent, and widely accepted, scale development procedures in hospitality research. This research empirically demonstrates the neglect of nomological validity issues in scale development practices in hospitality research. Scale development is an essential scientific practice used to create a research instrument in a field of study, improving our understanding of a specific phenomenon and contributing to knowledge creation. Considering the significance of scale development in advancing the field of hospitality research, the validation procedures involved in the scale development processes are of utmost importance and should be thoroughly applied.

The purpose of this study is to understand the status quo of the use of Web analytics tools by European destination management organizations (DMOs) and to provide guidelines in using these metrics for business intelligence and tourism design. In addition, the goal is to improve destination management at the city level using Web analytics data.

In this exploratory study, the authors analyze how European DMOs view Web analytics data through the lens of the “data to knowledge to results” framework. The authors analyze the use of Web analytics tools by DMOs through the theory of affordances and “data-to-knowledge framework” developed by Davenport et al., which incorporates several factors that contribute to a successful transformation of data available to an organization to knowledge, desirable results and ultimately to building an analytical capability.

The results show that European DMOs mainly use Web analytics data for website quality assurance, but that some are also using them to drive marketing programs. The study concludes by providing several suggestions for ways in which DMOs might optimize the use of Web analytics data, which will also improve the management of destinations.

Web analytics tools are used by many organizations such as DMOs to collect traffic data, to evaluate and optimize websites. However, these metrics can also be combined with other data such as bednights numbers and used for forecasting or other managerial decisions for destination management at the city level. There is a research gap in this area that focuses on using Web analytics data for business intelligence in the tourism industry and this research aims to fill this gap.