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This study investigates the impact of sensory food descriptors on restaurant menus on the intention to visit a restaurant and to spread positive word-of-mouth.

Drawing on the signalling theory and the assimilation-contrast theory, two online experiments and one field experiment test the assumption that food descriptors prompt food-quality inferences before and after consumption, and that in both stages, food-quality inferences prompt favourable behavioural intentions.

Sensory food descriptors impact positively on behavioural intentions through quality inferences, although not all aspects of food quality mediate this effect.

Not all four factors (deliciousness, visual attractiveness, variety and nutritiousness) prompt behavioural intentions to the same extent. While the signalling theory explains the positive impact of food-quality inferences on behavioural intentions before consumption, the assimilation-contrast theory explains the positive effect food-quality inferences have on the intention to revisit and word of mouth after consumption.

Managers should use either oral somatosensory descriptors alone, or in combination with flavour descriptors to prompt quality inferences and behavioural intentions.

The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that food descriptors addressing multiple senses have a superior effect on food-quality inferences compared to food descriptors stimulating only one sense. Instead, food descriptors referring to the texture, viscosity or mouthfeel of a dish, (i.e. oral somatosensory descriptors), impact on food-quality inferences, while adding flavour attributes did not have favourable effects.

Tourism in Coimbra today is influenced by the fact that the Univer(s)city was distinguished as a World Heritage Site in 2013. The number of visits has grown very significantly in recent years, but the diversification of the tourist offer is still weak and unable to take advantage of existing resources. This paper aims to present genealogy tourism as an alternative urban cultural tourism in Coimbra.

Methodology involved mapping the Jewish culture elements in the city of Coimbra, and a route was outlined and proposed.

Genealogy tourism resources are identified in the historic centre of the city. These alternative spaces need urban rehabilitation and (re)functionalisation, which allowed the authors to rethink tourism in Coimbra. They are the motivation to visit for all urban cultural tourists, especially Israelis/Jews, and provide contact with places where the experiences of ancestors combine with the history and memory of places, with recent discoveries and the elements of Jewish culture in the city.

It is concluded that the quantity, diversity, authenticity and singularity of the heritage resources that bear witness to the Jewish presence in Coimbra are sufficient assets to create a route, to enrich the tourist experience in the city and to include the destination in the Sephardic routes.

This study profiles and segments potential tourists on the basis of their various attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) services. Furthermore, this study distinguishes descriptors among the different clusters, such as preference for using diverse AI services, overall image of AI services, willingness to use AI services (WUAI), willingness to pay more for AI services (WPAI) in tourism and hospitality, and characteristics of respondents.

An online survey was conducted in South Korea. Data on 758 potential tourists were used for K-means cluster analysis.

This study identified three distinct tourist segments with differentiated attitudes toward AI services: the group aspiring to use or fantasizing about AI services (Cluster 1), the group being knowledgeable and supportive of AI services (Cluster 2), and the group having low interest about AI services (Cluster 3).

Members of Cluster 2 were the most marketable as this segment exhibited the greatest knowledge of and support for AI services, while Cluster 1 would be an ideal segment to launch and test novel AI services.

This study extends the authors’ knowledge of AI scholarship by unpacking the existing market segments, which could be tapped to sustain AI penetration in the tourism industry. Hence, this study contributes to existing debates on AI scholarship, which is predominated by conceptual reflections and issues of AI services in the tourism and hospitality field.