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This perspective article aims to summarize research on value co-creation and tourism experience management from the past decades and to propose several future research priorities related to the topic.

This perspective article reviews the previous work and offers a process model on co-creating tourism experiences through a traveler’s journey. In addition, the article proposes five future research priorities related to value co-creation strategies in tourism experience management.

This perspective article depicts value co-creation activities during the pre-, mid-, and post-travel stages and proposes five research priorities: (1) big data and real-time co-creation will become ubiquitous in future travel experiences, (2) social media will continue to empower travelers throughout their travels, (3) human–robot interactions will increase for travelers’ co-creation activities, and (4) the diversity of travelers and younger generations (Generation Z) will impact co-created travel journeys.

Co-creation of tourism experiences has been increasing in the travel industry. It is necessary to review what has been said in the past and to project future research priorities and directions for travel academia and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to explore the risk factors that employers consider when assessing an employee’s business travel (BT) assignment and the risk treatment, crisis response and recovery strategies they use to discharge their BT duty of care.

An exploratory approach is taken with in-depth interviews of 21 executives, travel managers and insurance brokers involved with the management of BT in four international hotel groups. In all, 12 follow-up interviews were conducted to assess the possible COVID-19 impact on BT risk management processes.

Employers assess BT assignments considering the travel’s characteristics, including the destination’s risk profile against seven types of risks (health, political, transport, natural, crime, technology and kidnap), length of stay, travel mode and activities undertaken in the destination as well as the traveler’s profile which includes diversity and travel experience. Accordingly, they develop a range of duty of care strategies for BT risk treatment, crisis response and recovery.

BT practitioners can use the proposed framework to develop risk assessment methodologies based on more accurate destination and traveler profiles and pursue targeted risk treatment strategies and insurance policies. The proposed duty of care approach can be used as a blueprint for organizations to design and manage BT policies.

BT risk is an under-researched area. The extant research looks predominantly at travel risks and their assessment taking the traveler’s perspective. This study looks at business travel risk and explores it from an employer’s risk management perspective offering a BT risk assessment framework and a BT duty of care plan.

As a growth of the competition between cities in Asia effective tourism marketing of the city cultural tourism product will become increasingly important. Cultural exposure to a particular foreign city through the media affects people’s preferences for that destination and may ultimately be a function of the behavior of that city cultural product. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of experienced and inexperienced travelers’ media exposure and their perception of the media exposure on their intention to visit the actual site (i.e. South Korea).

To enhance the understanding of the intention to visit the destination, this study proposes a research model based on use and gratification (U & G) theory and information system (IS) success model.

The authors found a direct, positive effect of satisfaction with the Korea Tourism Organization’s website on potential travelers’ intentions to visit Korea.

First, although most measurement items were adopted from previously validated empirical studies and the results of the measurement model testing showed high reliability and validity, further study is warranted to validate the measurement scales in the context of smart tourism. Second, given the relatively small sample size, the findings of this study should not be generalized to other populations.

The authors built a conceptual model that synthesized the IS success model and U & G theory in the context of tourism and empirically tested the model using a set of data collected from potential travelers. Overall, the proposed research model is well supported by the results of the study.

Dubai’s aviation industry is one of the most leading global aviation centers with a customer centric focus and tremendous challenges. The purpose of this paper is to determine the main Airport service quality (ASQ) drivers and evaluate the perception of travelers of Dubai International Airport (DXB) terminal 3.

Travelers’ feedback is captured through interviews, initial survey and online review, and a more focused survey is developed as the main research tool. A hypothetical model is proposed and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). The sample includes 275 passengers who had experience with DXB services.

The CFA supported by SEM was used and reveled check-in, assurance and empathy, and availability to some extent as the main constructs influencing travelers’ satisfaction and impression of DXB. Moreover, Kruskal–Wallis test suggested that nationality impact travelers’ experience of the airport. The study stresses the need to consider differences in perceptions among different travelers’ groups with different ethnical backgrounds.

The external validity of the results can be enhanced by including more terminals and larger sample size. Terminal 3 is administered by one company and provide services for one airline. Focusing on terminal 3 only improves the internal validity of this study but limits the external one.

Decision makers can use the findings to improve travelers’ experience at airport. For example, customizing services for certain groups can improve experience of travelers significantly.

Based on the surveyed literature, there is little information or guidance on how to cluster constructs that best describe passengers’ journey in airports. Second, there are some conflicting results regarding the impact of nationalities and purpose of travel on travelers’ satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to address the two gaps and identify factors that influence ASQ at DXB terminal 3. The investigation would help DXB management to understand what makes travelers satisfied during their journey at the airport.

Today's long haul travelers require destination information before they travel to a destination, and also while they are at the destination. The increasing complexity of the tourism industry and the increasing sophistication and diversity of travelers, makes access to this information both more important and more difficult, especially for long haul destinations. Indeed there are substantial search costs for travelers to identify products in long haul destinations. More accessible information sources on a destination's facilities can reduce the substantial search costs that are incurred in the planning and organization of a long haul trip, and thereby facilitate market transactions in the destinations.

While much of contemporary wine tourism research focuses on on‐site winery visitors, little is reported on the level of wine tourism participation among travellers outside the winery who may not necessarily be winery visitors or wine enthusiasts. This study investigates this dimension from the perspective of travellers.

Between October and November of 2006, a total of 998 questionnaires were distributed among travellers from the North to the South Island of New Zealand. In all, 500 travellers participated in the study, a 50.1 percent response rate.

One critical finding of this study is that while winery visitation appears common among domestic travellers, for the majority of international visitors lack of knowledge of New Zealand wines and wineries is their main reason not to visit wineries while members of this group travel in New Zealand.

The potential limitations of choosing a predominantly quantitative approach, as well as choosing specific days of the week for the questionnaire distribution are acknowledged in this study.

The overall results suggest that if wine tourism is to continue its present development in New Zealand, winery operators and the wine industry need to address several issues identified in this study, particularly overseas travellers' apparent lack of knowledge about New Zealand's wine and wine tourism.

This study examines wine tourism from a different perspective, namely, that of travellers who might not necessarily fall under the wine tourist category. This dimension has been ignored for the most part in previous wine tourism research. The study also provides avenues for future research to further explore this dimension of tourism/wine tourism.

This exploratory study aims to examine gay travelers’ travel psychographics (allocentricity and psychocentricity) in relation to openness about sexual orientation, collective self-esteem and socio-demographic variables.

A survey is developed and study participants are recruited from attendees at a large annual gay event. A total of 196 gay men were used as samples for correlation analysis and independent samples t-tests.

The findings suggest that collective self-esteem is positively correlated with allocentricity. Also, gay couples showed higher allocentricity than single gay men, and white/Caucasian gay men showed higher allocentricity than other ethnic minorities gay men. Yet, psychocentricity was higher for lower income gay men than higher income gay men.

Tourism marketers should recognize that the gay market is not as homogenous as it has been portrayed in the tourism literature. Hospitality service providers and destination marketers should be aware of the importance of the gay community, gay travelers’ psychographics and, more importantly, the diversity within the gay market to develop effective products and services to better position themselves in this niche market.

This research contributes to the tourism literature by enhancing the understanding of gay travelers’ socio-demographic profiles and their travel-related behaviors and perceptions.

This paper aims to examine the factors affecting travelers’ decision to select more than one destination in their trips. Drawn from the rational choice theory, this study posits that the selection of multi-destination tours, as a rational choice, is determined by the travelers’ perception of costs and benefits associated with that choice.

The conceptual model was developed from both an exploratory research with in-depth interview and the literature. A logistic regression model linking four explanatory variables representing perceived benefits and costs of multi-destination option with travelers’ choice of multi-destination trips. The conceptual model is controlled for diversity of travel purposes; tour group size; type of travel arrangement and travelers’ demographic characteristics while the research context of multi-destination travel within Phu Yen – Dak Lak – Gia Lai – Binh Dinh helps control for the characteristics of the destination set (spatial proximity and traffic convenience). The conceptual model was tested based on data collected from 1,361 Vietnamese travelers who have ever visited at least one of the four provinces.

This study finds that perceived benefits in terms of diversifying tourism experiences and perceived costs of traveling in multiple places compared to taking single trips represent the most significant drivers for tourists’ selection of multi-destination tours. In addition, the diversity of travel purposes and tour group size have a positive and significant impact on the demand for traveling more than one destination in a trip. Moreover, the richer, older and married travelers have a significantly higher tendency to select multi-destination packages.

The research findings provide important strategic implications for promoting multi-destination trips, thereby, maximizing economic benefits from tourism.

While multi-destination travel patterns have been examined empirically in individual studies sporadically without a common theoretical background, this research makes some progress on this front by using the rational choice theory to connect the relative contributions of those factors to the travelers’ choice of multi-destination trips. Specifically, this study provides a new perspective in explaining the selection of multi-destination trips – from tourists’ perceptions about costs and benefits associated with that choice.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

The purpose of this paper is to present industry perspectives on diversity research for the hospitality industry. This piece transcribes a panel discussion at the 2010 Hospitality Industry Diversity Institute Conference.

The panel discussion created dialogue between industry professionals and academic researchers with the goal of creating research on a variety of diversity topics that are meaningful to the hospitality industry. The variety of topics include visible tattoos in the workplace, multicultural travelers, attracting minority employees to the hospitality industry, and a general discussion of various issues central to the industry.

As a result of this discussion, researchers have learned that there are potential research opportunities regarding many of the topics presented in the discussion panel. Specifically, there is an interest in research regarding consumer perceptions of visible tattoos on employees; understanding what motivates and influences multicultural travelers in their travel decisions; how to attract minorities to choose the hospitality industry as a career; and general comments and concerns about research such as the need to make findings “relevant and applicable.” “We need industry support, especially gaining access and collecting data” (Dr Fevzi Okumus), and feedback should be stressed to make sure “the right thing is happening from a customer's perspective” (Tom Cusimano).

Further research is needed in the areas of how tattoos can influence the customer's experience, what is driving the multicultural traveler's decisions, what career paths are minorities choosing, and how the hospitality industry may successfully attract minorities to make their career in the field.

The paper provides original material from industry professionals and academic researchers. This piece is valuable for members of both the industry and academic community to help each better understand the needs of one another, including the need for collaboration from organizations in research from the academic community, and the need for research from the industry as well as practical application of results.