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This study aims to explore a potential conference experience design strategy, namely, festivalization. It investigates the potential festivalization effects on conference attendees in two formats of business conferences: virtual and in-person.

A series of two scenario-based experimental studies were conducted. A series of one-way analysis of covariance and PROCESS procedures (Model 6) were performed for data analysis.

The inclusion of festivalization elements significantly enhances positive responses of attendees, especially for in-person conferences. This effect is further explained by a serial mediation effect, where enhanced perceived values and conference engagement play key roles in improving attendees’ conference experience.

By incorporating festivalization elements, conference organizers can create a more engaging and satisfying event experience for attendees. This can lead to greater satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth and increased registrations.

This study represents a pioneering effort in revealing the underlining mechanisms that explain how festivalization affects attendee engagement and subsequent behaviors in business event management in both face-to-face and virtual settings.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the research trends in guest experiences of service robots in the hospitality industry.

In this study, a review was carried out on the Web of Science (WoS) database with the assistance of bibliometric analysis techniques. Cluster analysis was also employed for this to group important data to determine the relationships and to visualize the areas in which the studies are concentrated. The thematic content analysis method was used to reveal on which customer experiences and on which methods the focuses were.

On the subject of experiences of service robots, the greatest number of publications was in 2021. In terms of country, China has come to the fore in the distribution of publications. As a result of thematic content analysis, it was determined that the leading factor was the main dimension of emotional experience. In terms of sub-dimensions, social interactions attracted more attention. Most of the studies discussed were not based on any theory. Apart from these, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Service Quality Model (SERVQUAL) and Perceived Value Theory (PVT) were featured more prominently among other studies.

In this study, only the WoS database was reviewed. In future studies, it would be possible to make contextual comparisons by scanning other databases. In addition to quantitative research designs, social dimensions may be examined in depth following qualitative research methods. Thus, various comparisons can be made on the subject with mixed-method research designs. Experimental research designs can also be applied to where customers have experienced human-robot interactions (HRIs).

In the hospitality industry, it is critical to uncover every dimension of guests' robot acceptance. This study, which presents the current situation on this basis, guides future projections for the development of guest experiences regarding service robots in the hospitality industry.

Wine producers and marketing professionals increasingly recognize the significance of online wine reviews. Emotions have long been acknowledged as influential in online review behaviors. However, considering the multisensory nature of the wine experience, consumers’ wine expertise also plays a substantial role. Hence, this study aims to examine the online review behaviors exhibited by wine consumers through the dual lens of wine expertise and emotionality.

Two studies were conducted to address the research question. Study 1 explored the relationship among expertise, emotionality and review behaviors using a panel data model, with a data set consisting of 4,600,922 reviews from Vivino.com. Study 2 used a multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis using data obtained from an online survey. Study 2 aimed to investigate the interactive impact of emotionality and expertise on online review intention mediated by customer engagement.

The findings from Study 1 demonstrated a positive correlation between emotionality and online wine reviews. In addition, expertise displayed a bell-shaped relationship with both emotionality and online wine reviews. Study 2, in turn, uncovered that novices and experts experienced a direct influence of emotionality on their review intentions. In contrast, for those classified as ordinary, the influence of emotionality on review intention occurred indirectly through the mediation of customer engagement.

This paper extends the current literature on online wine review by integrating the effect of emotion and expertise on online wine review behaviors, expanding the examination of Dunning–Kruger effect in the wine literature. It also adds value by introducing emotionality and the Evaluative Lexicon into the hospitality literature, extending the measurement of emotion from valence and extremity to a third dimension, emotionality, in hospitality and wine domains.

Despite the wide research and discussion on international performance, innovation and digital resilience dimensions of enterprises, the investigation and understanding of their interrelations seem to be limited. The purpose of this study is to identify the influential factors affecting the mentioned dimensions, determine the causal relationships among these identified factors and finally evaluate their importance in an aggregated framework from the viewpoint of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A hybrid methodology is used to achieve the objectives. First, the main factors of international performance, innovation and digital resilience are extracted by an in-depth review of the literature. These factors are then screened by expert opinions to localize them in accordance with the conditions of an emerging economy. Finally, the relationship and the importance of the factors are determined using an uncertain multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach.

The findings reveal that there is a correlation between digital resilience and innovation, and both factors have an impact on the international performance of SMEs. The cause-or-effect nature of the factors belonging to each dimension is also determined. Among the effect factors, business model innovation (BMI), agility, product and organizational innovation are known as the most important factors. International knowledge, personal drivers and digital transformation are also determined to be the most important cause factors.

This study extends the literature both in methodological and practical directions. Practically, the study aggregates the factors in the mentioned dimensions and provides insights into their cause-and-effect interrelations. Methodologically, the study proposes an uncertain MCDM approach that has been rarely used in previous studies in this field.

Tourists with different cultural backgrounds think and behave differently. Accurately capturing and correctly understanding cultural differences will help tourist destinations in product/service planning, marketing communication and attracting and retaining tourists. This research employs Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory to analyse the variations in destination image perceptions of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking tourists to Xiamen, a prominent tourist attraction in China.

The evaluation utilizes a two-stage approach, incorporating LDA and BERT-BILSTM models. By leveraging text mining, sentiment analysis and t-tests, this research investigates the variations in tourists' perceptions of Xiamen across different cultures.

The results reveal that cultural disparities significantly impact tourists' perceived image of Xiamen, particularly regarding their preferences for renowned tourist destinations and the factors influencing their travel experience.

This research pioneers applying natural language processing methods and machine learning techniques to affirm the substantial differences in the perceptions of tourist destinations among Chinese-speaking and English-speaking tourists based on Hofstede's cultural theory. The findings furnish theoretical insights for destination marketing organizations to target diverse cultural tourists through precise marketing strategies and illuminate the practical application of Hofstede's cultural theory in tourism and hospitality.

This paper investigates the usage and trust of Chinese social media in the travel planning process (pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip) of Chinese tourists.

Through a combination of structured online survey (n = 406) and follow-up interviews, the research identifies the diversification of the demand-and-supply patterns of social media users in China, as well as the allocation of functions of social media as tools before, during and after travel.

Social media users are diverse in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour and scope; the levels of trust and influence; and their ultimate travel decisions and actions. Correlations between the level of trust, influence of social media and the intended changes in travel decisions are observed. Destination marketers and tourism industries should observe and adapt to the needs of social media users and potential tourist markets by understanding more about user segmentation between platforms or apps and conducting marketing campaigns on social media platforms to attract a higher number of visitors.

This paper demonstrated the case of social media usage in mainland China, which has been regarded as one of the fastest growing and influential tourist-generating markets and social media expansions in the world. This study further addressed the knowledge gap by correlating social media usage and travel planning process of Chinese tourists. The research findings suggested diversification of the demand-and-supply pattern of social media users in China, as well as the use of social media as tools before, during and after travel. Users were diversified in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour, scope, the levels of trust, influence and the ultimate travel decisions.

Destination marketing organizations should note that some overseas social media platforms that are not accessible in China like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook and Instagram are still valued by some Chinese tourists, especially during-trip period in journeys to Western countries. Some tactics for specific user segments should be carefully observed. When promoting specific tourism products to Chinese tourists, it is necessary to understand the user segmentation between platforms or apps.

Social media is a powerful tool for tourism development and sustainability in creating smart tourists and destinations worldwide. In China, the use of social media has stimulated the development of both information and communication technology and tourism.

Past research often relies on linear relationship assumptions from the perspective of managers when studying the relationship between attribute performance and satisfaction. However, this study extracts tourists’ online reviews to explore asymmetric relationships and identifies island tourism satisfiers, hybrids and dissatisfiers.

The research uses 3,523 reviews from Tripadvisor to examine Langkawi Island’s tourist satisfaction. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) machine-learning approach, penalty–reward contrast analysis and asymmetric impact-performance analysis (AIPA) were employed to extract and analyse the data.

Langkawi’s dissatisfiers included “hotel and restaurant”, “beach leisure”, “water sport”, “snorkelling”, “commanding view”, “waterfall”, “sky bridge walk”, “animal show”, “animal feeding”, “history culture”, “village activity” and “duty-free mall”. Amongst these, five were low performers. Hybrids encompassed “ticket purchasing”, “amenity” “traditional food market” and “gift and souvenir”, all of which were low performers. Only one attribute was categorised as a satisfier: “nature view” which performed exceptionally well.

This study provides recommendations to enhance tourist satisfaction and address tourist dissatisfaction. The elements requiring immediate attention for enhancement are the five low-performance dissatisfiers, as they represent tourists’ fundamental expectations. Conversely, the satisfier or excitement factor (i.e. nature views – mangroves and wildlife) could be prominently featured in promotional materials.

This research constitutes an early endeavour to categorise attributes of island tourism into groups of satisfaction, hybrid or dissatisfaction based on user-generated data. It is underpinned by two-factor and three-factor theories.

This paper aims to explore the promotion decisions of heterogeneous sellers on a decentralized platform under competitive conditions and analyze how seller behaviors impact platform profit, seller revenue, buyer surplus and social welfare.

This paper considers a Cournot model consisting of a platform charging a commission rate and two sellers with different conversion rates and browsing costs. Promotion efforts by sellers can increase traffic, but they also incur promotion costs for sellers. The sellers decide on promotion effort by weighing these two effects. The authors also explore the equilibrium when the platform charges a fixed usage fee.

The seller’s profit improves as its conversion rate increases and worsens as browsing costs increase. Also, increasing the commission rate charged by the platform makes the seller invest less in promotional efforts. Therefore, the platform must consider this trade-off to determine an optimal rate. The analysis shows that the seller with a high conversion rate and high browsing cost plays a greater role in generating more overall revenue. When the market favors such a seller, the platform tends to charge less in order not to impair its profitability.

This paper incorporates conversion rate, buyer’s browsing cost, unit promotion cost and the fee charged by the platform into the model to study sellers’ promotion decisions on decentralized platforms.