Search results

Historically, hot springs have been regarded as hedonic and foodie destinations, yet the antecedents that affect tourists' intentions for local cuisine in hot springs remain unexplored. The present study aims to address this knowledge gap by considering the role of nostalgia and hedonic values in tourist food consumption.

Data were collected from 315 domestic tourists by intercept surveys conducted in the Beitou Hot Spring, Taiwan. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses as well as mediating effects.

Nostalgia positively influences hedonic values, which affect tourists' intentions for local food consumption. Unexpectedly, nostalgia does not directly influence tourists' preferences due to complete mediation through hedonic values.

Given a growing number of young consumers visiting hot springs, hedonic experience is essential and more effective for pulling visitors and stimulating local food consumption than nostalgia vibes are. Cross-cultural samples and qualitative research are suggested for future studies.

The study demonstrates different levels of nostalgia in different ages. It highlights the mediating role of hedonic values between nostalgia and tourists' intentions for local cuisine in the hot spring destinations, which has been overlooked in previous studies. Originality is also established by simultaneously investigating hedonic values and behavioral intentions within the context of food tourism.

The article seeks to study consumer evaluation of the health benefits of a health‐promoting destination. Health‐promoting destinations often attempt to scientifically prove health benefits. It is suggested that health destinations should instead attempt to reflect consumers' preconceived health beliefs, rather than reform them. The aim is to test the applicability of the expectation‐disconfirmation theory to health promoting destinations and to offer recommendations for place marketing of destinations which are positioned as proving health benefits.

Cognitive dissonance is a central theoretical concept in the model of consumer evaluation of the health benefits of a health‐promoting destination. The authors suggest that low cognitive dissonance between subjective health beliefs and the characteristics of a destination results in positive customer evaluations of the destination. This hypothesis was tested through regression analysis of data collected via a survey of 240 visitors at seven hot spring resorts in Taiwan.

The study suggests that the subjective beliefs of tourists regarding what is healthful are important criteria for tourists to evaluate the health benefits of a destination.

The expectation‐disconfirmation theory is successfully applied to the tourism sector and health care.

Based on the results, consumer research about what is believed to be beneficial to health is important when designing and promoting a health place.

Destinations have been mostly studied as wellness destinations. However, many destinations promote scientific health benefits. The effect of consumer health perceptions on the attractiveness of health‐promoting destinations has received little attention. While common in tourism, the results are a novel approach to health care destinations.

This research takes Taijiang National Park (TNP) tourists as the study population while gathering the survey data via an online questionnaire. For the data analyses, it uses the importance–performance analysis (IPA) and the Kano two-dimensional quality model to evaluate the tourist satisfaction of TNP. Specifically, it considers the importance of service quality, classifies its service quality attributes, and suggests the priority for service improvement, rendering the TNP valuable reference points to realign service strategies. The study shows that the service quality attributes related to service personnel are the priority item to be improved, which could eventually enhance tourist satisfaction. In addition, brand differentiation could be achieved by improving the attractive quality items identified in this study to enhance tourist loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the planning and architectural design features, and the post‐occupancy evaluation (POE) of the Beitou Branch Library in the Taipei Public Library System. This paper also proposes possible solutions in response to the public's suggestions for improvements.

A library‐user survey was employed to appraise the functioning of the Beitou Branch Library by the general public. The questionnaire for this survey was divided into three parts: background information of patrons; patrons' use of the Beitou Branch Library; and patrons' opinions on the facilities of the Beitou Branch Library. The 511 valid returned patron questionnaires were numbered and processed by means of Microsoft Excel statistical analysis. Chi‐square testing, ANOVA and Pearson T‐test were then used to analyze the relevant data and statistics.

The findings from the Beitou Branch Library survey are as follows: its innovative design and unique architecture and furniture has created a trend for new design concepts in Taiwan; it increases the number of library visits; it increases the visibility of the library and changes the stereotype of the library in the public's mind; it embodies the principles of ecological education and has become a multi‐faceted learning center; it has gained the support of local residents and professional experts; it has generated corporate sponsorship of green library buildings; and the average numbers and distribution of frequency indicate that, other than “convenient parking” and “number of computers in the computer area”, patrons were generally satisfied with the library's facilities, with all other categories receiving an average rating of 3.5 or greater.

This paper provides details of the experience of Taipei Public Library in planning and designing a diamond class green library and may increase public libraries' concerns about the issues of environmental protection and energy conservation.

This study aims to establish customer service factors for wellness tourism from both service providers and customer perspectives, and to determine whether gender and age factors affect older tourist opinions of customer service.

The authors interviewed 13 experts in the hot spring hotel industry and more than 469 hot spring hotel visitors who are over 50 years of age. Content validity and homogeneity reliability as proposed by Aiken were used to confirm customer service factors. This study uses the verbal-linguistic evaluation to assess customer service factors and each service item associated with these factors.

Eight crucial customer service factors, from high to low, are personnel services, environments, healthy diet, relaxation, health promotion treatments, experience of unique tourism resources, social activities, and mental learning.

This study implicated allocation and management of input resources as the service factors that are used for determining the preferences of older consumers in wellness tourism.

Numerous countries are currently facing an aging population and market opportunities for wellness tourism are popular with the tourism industry. Studies show that enhanced customer service increases competitive advantage in the tourism industry. However, customer service differs from what customers prefer. For this study, the authors compiled the viewpoints of older consumers, hotel personnel, and expert opinions in the hotel industry to identify customer-service factors in wellness tourism. The analytical results of this study suggest that hot spring hotels in Taiwan can focus on critical customer-service items, resource management, and resource allocation.

This study aims to construct a scale for measuring the spa hotel experiencescape in wellness tourism, clarify the mechanism through which wellness tourism experiencescape influences revisit intention and investigate the mediation roles of authenticity, memorability and organizational identification.

This study conducted content analysis of interviews, online reviews and relevant articles and used the concept of experiencescape to interpret spa hotels’ experiential environment. The stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model was used as the basis for introducing authenticity, memorability, organizational identification and revisit intention to investigate how wellness tourism experiencescape affects tourists’ behavior. In total, 488 valid questionnaires were collected at Taiwanese spa hotel clusters.

Four factors of spa hotel experiencescape were identified: health promotion treats, mental learning, unique travel experience and healthy diet. Existential authenticity–memorability and existential authenticity–organizational identification exerted full positive mediation effects in the relationship between wellness tourism experiencescape and revisit intention.

This study provides guidance on experience design for spa hotels. It promotes the consideration of existential authenticity in wellness tourism design.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of wellness, drastically increasing the potential of the wellness tourism market. This study investigated the construction of wellness tourism experiencescape and its influence, and the findings can facilitate post-pandemic restoration of the wellness tourism industry. On the basis of SOR model, a chain mediation model was proposed to reveal the influence of wellness tourism experiencescape on revisit intention. Existential authenticity was discovered to play a crucial role in the relationship between wellness tourism experiencescape and revisit intention, which suggests that existential authenticity should be considered during service design and in marketing strategies for wellness tourism.