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Focusing on the positive aspects of business trips, the current study aims to examine the antecedents of vigor and the crossover of vigor from business travelers to their spouses.

The sample consisted of 275 business travelers and their working spouses. The business travelers were required to travel abroad several times a year within the framework of their jobs. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study finds that demands on the travelers (number of trips) and their resources (trip control and their business trips satisfaction) were positively related to travelers' vigor. Furthermore, as hypothesized, travelers' vigor crossed over to spouses' vigor.

The limitations of this paper are the use of a cross‐sectional self‐report survey. Its implications are that it showed that positive feelings may cross over between partners. Further research should focus on additional positive outcomes.

This is the first study that set out to investigate crossover relating to business travels and one of the few that focused on and found confirmation of crossover of positive experiences.

In this chapter, we discuss the impact of business trips on travelers and their families from the perspective of respite, thus embedding business trips in stress theories. We begin by reviewing the literature on respite and recovery. Focusing on the role of travelers’ resources, we relate the phenomenon of business trips to conservation of resources (COR) and job demands-resource (JD-R) theories. We then discuss the negative and positive characteristics and outcomes of business trips. We offer evidence from interviews with business travelers regarding the special characteristics and consequences of business trips. We summarize by addressing the question of whether business trips are a special kind of respite.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the narratives of the work-life interface (WLI) of Portuguese international business travelers.

Semi-structured interviews with 14 Portuguese international business travelers were conducted to expose the narratives of the WLI in terms of demands, resources, and coping and how these work-life events shape work-identity.

The findings show that: work-life events are interconnected and are sources of conflict and enrichment; work-life boundaries are personally managed and socially enacted; and WLI shapes work-identity. The analysis shows that occupational travel can be both a source of positive self-regard and fulfillment that entails high work-identity and low boundary control or a source of conflict and identity threat. In either case, work-life coping is devised to prompt self-worth.

Following the findings from this exploratory study, several research propositions are outlined for international business travelers, highlighting the interactions between work-life centrality, work-life boundary management and work-identity. In extending the work-life research to international business travelers this study reveals the extent to which the advancement of work-life research benefits from the theoretical and empirical contributions of the literature on work-identity.

Este estudo exploratório examina as narrativas dos viajantes de negócios internacionais quanto ao interface trabalho-vida pessoal.

Foram efetuadas catorze entrevistas semiestruturadas a viajantes de negócios internacionais portugueses com o objetivo de expor as suas narrativas de interface trabalho-vida pessoal, em termos de exigências, recursos e estratégias para lidarem com estes eventos. Adicionalmente examinou-se como os eventos relacionados com o trabalho e vida pessoal moldam a identidade profissional destes viajantes frequentes.

Os resultados demonstram que: (1) os eventos relacionados com o trabalho e a vida pessoal estão interrelacionados e são fonte de conflito e enriquecimento; (2) as fronteiras entre o trabalho e a vida pessoal são geridas individualmente mas são ditadas socialmente; e (3) o interface trabalho-vida pessoal molda a identidade no trabalho destes viajantes internacionais. A análise revela que as viagens de trabalho frequentes podem ser fonte de autoestima e satisfação, associada a uma forte identidade profissional, assim como podem ser fonte de conflito e de ameaça a essa mesma identidade. Em qualquer dos casos, os indivíduos inquiridos acionaram estratégias para lidarem com os eventos de ambos os domínios que visam elevar a sua autoestima e identidade.

Os resultados deste estudo permitem avançar várias proposições para investigação futura, salientando as interações entre a centralidade do trabalho e/ou da vida pessoal, a gestão das fronteiras entre estes domínios e a construção da identidade. Ao estudar o interface entre o trabalho e a vida pessoal dos viajantes frequentes, este estudo contribui para o avanço da investigação neste domínio ao revelar os benefícios de explorar as contribuições teóricas e práticas da literatura sobre a identidade associada ao trabalho.

This study aims to explore what may have contributed to risk-taking travel behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and what may be the drivers of satisfaction and intention to travel again. The study compares travelers based on their travel purposes (business, pleasure and visiting friends and relatives [VFR]) and explore the influence of subjective well-being received from their travel activities.

Data from a structured survey of 323 US residents who traveled during the COVID-19 pandemic were collected on MTurk. Respondents were asked travel behavior questions related to their favorite trips and to rate several multi-item scales measuring the benefits expected and received from their trip, the trip’s contribution to their positive mental and subjective psychological well-being, as well as their satisfaction with the trip and intention to travel in the future. In addition, personality measures focused on risk-taking, thrill-seeking and self-confidence, as well as additional risk-related concepts of optimism bias, probability neglect and proximity to self.

Data analysis revealed some differences among respondents who traveled for business, pleasure and VFR purposes. Business travelers were more risk takers and thrill seekers; pleasure travelers achieved more well-being benefits from their favorite trips during the pandemic; however, VFR travelers’ satisfaction and intention to go on similar trips were explained more by the benefits they received from their favorite trips.

Although several studies addressed consumers’ travel motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lack of empirical research comparing the characteristics of travelers based on their travel purposes, as well as their sociodemographics, personality traits and the expected and perceived well-being benefits from traveling.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

This paper aims to find out the impact of business travelers’ behavioral belief on positive and negative e-comments, which consequently lead to intention to purchase a hotel room. To explore the relationships among attitude toward positive and negative e-comments with intention to purchase, the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) was used.

Business travelers in the USA who read e-comments and made a hotel choice based on those e-comments within the past six months were targeted for this study. The TRA, as well as a wide-ranging review of literature, were used to develop the survey instrument. The survey was distributed through Qualtrics, which is an online questionnaire service platform. To measure the business travelers’ behavioral beliefs toward e-comments, a number of measures were developed for this research. The theories of Fishbein and Ajzen were used to examine business travelers’ behavioral beliefs toward positive and negative e-comments. All of the questions on this survey about the intention to purchase were extracted from Liao et al. Other questions about attitude toward positive and negative comments were adopted from Chu and Choi, Sparks and Browning, Gundersen et al. and Lee and Sparks. The last section of the survey included questions about business travelers’ sociodemographic statistics, such as ethnicity, level of income, age, gender and education. The first question separated respondents to recognize those who made a reservation at a business hotel in the past six months after reading comments about the hotel. Those who responded positively were asked to participate in the study. Participants of this research presented their degree of agreement on each item by using a seven-point Likert scale, rating from (1) “Strongly disagree” to (7) “Strongly agree”. To verify the reliability of the questionnaire and to ensure it reflected the TRA, a pilot study was conducted with a small group of business travelers who had booked a hotel room in the past six months and finalized their purchases based on reading e-comments. No major changes were made to the survey as a result of the pilot study and all factors indicated an adequate level of internal consistency. The proposed model examined the effects of both positive and negative e-comments toward business travelers’ intention to purchase. This research aimed to determine the impact of behavioral belief on positive e-comments and negative e-comments, which consequently lead to intention to purchase.

The results of the proposed model revealed that behavioral belief positively affects both positive and negative e-comments. This means that business travelers want to be informed about both complaints and compliments in e-comments. However, this does not mean they intend to purchase a hotel room based on both opinions; rather business travelers would be inclined to purchase a hotel room based on positive e-comments. Using gender as a moderating effect indicated that females neither believe of the helpfulness of negative e-comments nor intend to purchase based on these e-comments. However, males tend to find both positive and negative e-comments helpful.

The findings of this research will help hoteliers, as well as online website review operators, to obtain a clearer understanding of guests’ or users’ needs and wants in order to offer a more desirable service. Since business travelers are considered an important target market in the hotel industry, hoteliers need to put more emphasize on these factors to attract more business travelers. By recognizing business travelers’ requirements and their expectations, hoteliers should prioritize their responsibilities for meeting these guests’ expectations; therefore, they can assign their resources accordingly. In other words, once a guest’s needs are understood clearly, hoteliers will be in safe position to provide the desired service.

The goals of this review are to identify key theories, constructs and themes in the international business travel (IBT) literature and to propose a model based on findings, theories and constructs drawn from adjacent research literature.

The authors reviewed the business travel (BT) literature to identify conceptual and empirical articles on IBT published from 1990 to 2022. Only 53 publications were suitable for review. The authors reviewed them using an open coding system.

The IBT literature is dispersed across several disciplines that use different methods, focus on different aspects of travel and emphasize different positive and negative outcomes that IBT engenders. The publications employed a diverse range of methods, including review and conceptual (11), quantitative (28) and qualitative methods (14). The samples were diverse in country, age, marital status and tenure. Many publications were descriptive and exploratory. The few that based their research on theory focused on two stress theories: Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory.

Experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to reduce the causal ambiguity of this body of mostly correlational and cross-sectional research. The authors discuss the impact of emerging advances in virtual global communication technology on the future of IBT.

More research is needed on positive aspects of IBT. Human resource (HR) people should be aware of these issues and are encouraged to decrease the deleterious aspects of the international trips and increase the positive ones.

Increasing well-being of international business travelers is important for the travelers, their families and the organization.

This is the first IBT review focused on the theoretical underpinnings of research in the field. The authors offer a model for IBT and introduce adjustment and performance as important constructs in IBT research. The authors encompass crossover theory to add the reciprocal impact of travelers and spouses and label IBT a “double-edge sword” because it arouses both positive and negative outcomes.

This paper aims to determine to what extent hotels and peer-to-peer (P2P) facilities are substitutes for travelers. It then examines whether hotels target business travelers and P2P facilities target leisure travelers.

The author collected characteristics of Shanghai hotels and P2P facilities from websites to determine on what basis the two accommodation types compete. The author then conducted a modified importance-performance analysis (IPA) to determine the relationship between accommodations' provision of these characteristics and their importance to Chinese business and leisure travelers.

The characteristics of hotels and P2P facilities systematically differ, and travelers perceive these differences as important. While the differences are significant across all price ranges, they are smaller for budget hotels than for high-end hotels. The modified IPA indicates that P2P facilities appeal more to leisure travelers than to business travelers. Yet hotels better satisfy the requirements of both types of travelers.

The findings imply that P2P facilities can target lower- and middle-income vacationing families by charging lower prices. High-end hotels can compete by providing more diverse services and greater value to business travelers and higher-income leisure travelers. Budget hotels can reduce costs by not providing non-essential characteristics.

This paper contributes to the discussion of the competition between hotels and P2P facilities by focusing on the Shanghai market. It uses the modified IPA to derive implications for lodging market segmentation.

Advances in technology and in subsequent guest-related amenities have the potential to improve the guest experience and also increase both guestroom revenues and ancillary room revenues. Innovative technologies will be one of the prime differentiators of hotel companies in the twenty-first century. However, it is important for hoteliers to answer questions such as which technology amenities do their guests desire when choosing overnight accommodations? Further, what are the importance levels assigned by guests of these various technology amenities? This study aims to answer the question of how leisure travelers may differ or be similar to business travelers with regard to in-room technology amenities.

The target population of this study consisted of 2,500 US residents whose email addresses were randomly drawn from a national database company. A series of t-tests and ANOVA were conducted to answer the research questions.

High-speed internet access and guest device connectivity were perceived more important by business travelers than by leisure travelers.

Recognizing guests’ technology needs and answering those needs are important for hotel operators to remain competitive. While some segments perceive more value in certain technologies, for others it might be an indifferent amenity.

The amount of time guests spend in their rooms directly correlates to increased revenues from in-room dining, in-room amenities offered and, in general, all pay-for-use products and services such as the internet and movies. Therefore, with the right assortment and offering of technology amenities, hotels will increase their revenues from these ancillary revenues. Moreover, a hotel property with the right mixture of desired in-room amenities and services can charge higher rates for their guestroom sales.

The results of this study provide insights into the changing attitudes toward in-room entertainment technology that many hotel developers should take note of.

The purpose of this study was to investigate travelers’ preferences for peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations or hotels when traveling for leisure or business purposes given the rise of P2P accommodations in the form of Airbnb, Vacation Rentals by Owners (VRBO) One Fine Stay, etc.

VRBO hosts in Denver, Colorado, USA provided contact information for 788 travelers who stayed with them over the prior three years. These travelers received an email survey and the opportunity to be entered in a drawing for one of three US$250 gift cards.

P2P usage was driven by leisure travel. The most influential factors in the choice of P2P over hotel were price, location, party size, dwelling size and trip length. When choosing a hotel for business travel, the influential factors were location, safety and security, price and knowing what one will receive in the way of facility and services.

The external validity of the findings is limited as the study was conducted in one US city using travelers of only one P2P accommodations platform.

Hotels may want to leverage their loyalty programs and stress the importance of safety and security when traveling as a means of competing with P2P accommodations.

Given limited empirical research on P2P accommodations, this study provides an informative first look at the preferences and behaviors of travelers using P2P accommodations and points to a growing loyalty to P2P accommodations versus hotels in the leisure segment.