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This paper aims to understand Chinese tourists’ changing shopping experience in Macao. In scrutinizing reviews posted in the pre-COVID and during COVID eras, the study has identified changing patterns in Chinese tourists’ shopping experiences, including increased leisure components while shopping, decreased luxury pursuits and an improved overall leisure and shopping experience because of decreased prices in accommodation and a less crowded retail and leisure environment. An emergent opportunity to provide “retail-tainment” experience is discussed.

This article analyzes the concepts of experience economy and promotion of authenticity at The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas by exploring the resort's tangible and intangible heritage use in design and marketing strategies.

This qualitative study conducts a content analysis of marketing material, historical documents, and site observations.

Visitors' active involvement, combined with The Venetian's use of tangible and intangible heritage, is used in creating an authentic themed experience. In addition, our study suggests that authenticity constitutes a key concept for today's hospitality industry.

This study centers on a single case study, and requires adjustments in order to be replicated. However, The Venetian represents one of the most prominent models followed by the hospitality industry worldwide.

This analysis provides a baseline for comparison among resorts that have theming but do not integrate it in the same way, or in general, to other professionals and academics considering themed experiences.

The manuscript centers on several aspects that are being debated in numerous fields, from business to sociology, such as customers' desire for authentic experiences through the creation of themed attractions.

This research fills a gap in hospitality marketing research into authenticity and themed experience by investigating how The Venetian Hotel and Casino uses the heritage of another, tourism-focused city (Venice) to promote itself. The investigation uncovers how themed attractions in hospitality create an experience-based involvement that centers on the authenticity of the theme (in our case cultural heritage) they replicate.

Due to product diversity, traditional quality signals in the hotel industry such as star ratings and brand affiliation do not work well in the accommodation booking process on the sharing economy platform. From a suppliers’ perspective, this study aims to apply the signaling theory to the booking of Airbnb listings and explore the influence of quality signals on the odds of an Airbnb listing being booked.

A binomial logistic model is used to describe the influences of different attributes on the market demand. Because of the large sample size, sequential Bayesian updating method is utilized in hospitality and tourism field for the first attempt.

Results show that, in addition to host-specific information such as “Superhost” and identity verification, attributes including price, extra charges, region competitiveness and house rules are all effective signals in Airbnb. The signaling impact is more effective for the listings without any review comments.

This study contributes to the literature by incorporating the signaling theory in the analysis of booking probability of Airbnb accommodation. The research findings are valuable to hosts in improving their booking rates and revenue. In addition, government and industrial management organizations can have more efficient strategy and policy planning.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role that food and beverage (F&B) sensory stimuli play in building non-food-themed touristic experiences, such as wellness tourism experiences.

This paper adopts an asynchronous netnographic approach supported by software (T-Lab, 2021). The study was conducted on a database consisting of 3,141 reviews in English, left by customers of 38 wellness facilities (Spa Retreats) spread across 5 continents.

The analysis reveals that F&B stimuli contribute significantly to the tourist's perception of the wellness experience in a two-fold manner: on the one hand, they support the wellness experience, and on the other, through specific proposals (e.g. wine, vegan, detox, etc.), they qualify and differentiate the wellness experience in a hedonic rather than eudaimonic way.

The present study contributes to managerial literature on the topic of gastronomic tourism and wellness tourism by providing, on an international scale, empirical evidence of (a) the importance and role of F&B touchpoints in hybrid gastronomic experiences; and (b) the presence of a variety of “wellness experiencescapes”.

This study is the first attempt to measure the role of F&B in tourists' perceptions of non-food-themed experiences. The research not only provides new data on the wellness experience through a cross-continental analysis but also offers useful theoretical and managerial insights for the design of wellness tourism experiences.

This study aims to examine the role of Australian casinos in facilitating money laundering and Chinese capital flight.

The reports and transcripts of evidence from government inquiries into money laundering in Australian casinos are integrated with analyses of Asian transnational crime.

Money laundering in Australian casinos is linked to transnational crime and Chinese capital flight. A central finding is that junket operators play a key role in facilitating money laundering. The casinos are particularly exposed to criminal influences in the Chinese very important person gambling market, since they have used junket operators and underground banks, many of whom are closely linked to major Chinese criminal groups from Hong Kong and Macau.

Very little information is available on money laundering in Australian casinos and this research has relied on the government inquiries that have been conducted over the past two years on the subject.

The author’s focus on money laundering in Australian casinos in the context of Asia-Pacific transnational crime is important for Federal and state government regulators grappling with the rapidly changing money laundering issues. The government inquiries recognised that the money laundering was related to transnational crime, but did not have the time and resources to explore the topic. The paper provides state government casino regulators and financial crime regulators with a broader international perspective to anticipate future money laundering and crime pressures facing Australia’s casinos.

Money laundering in Australian casinos has had devastating social implications on the community. My research helps to focus attention on the problems of transnational crime and money laundering.

Little research has examined the linkages between casinos and transnational crime. This study has found that Australian casinos were used to launder the proceeds of illegal drug trafficking and to facilitate Chinese capital flight. While casinos have been forced by damming government inquiries to tighten anti-money laundering controls, it is likely that there will be pressure to relax these controls in the future because of competitive pressure from other casinos in the Asia-Pacific region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine crisis management practices among gambling-related hospitality business stakeholders (GBSs) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

An online survey was administered to a sample of GBSs resulting in 64 completed surveys. The survey explored the COVID-19 crisis using a three-phase framework: preparedness (prior experience and response plans), response (level of importance and use of crisis practices) and future (confidence in recovery, beliefs about consumer behavior and new strategies). Independent-samples t-tests were conducted to investigate the influence of preparedness variables on crisis management capabilities. Importance-Performance Analysis was used to evaluate GBSs' crisis management capabilities and identify where performance might be improved. Factor analyses were employed to explore groupings of response practices as well as future strategies.

Prior experience had a significant impact on GBSs' crisis management. IPA indicated gaps between the importance GBSs assign to response practices and their corresponding level of use, specifically for those related to marketing and government. Factor analysis revealed response practices did not group according to the questionnaire's four themes, instead, three themes of marketing, efficiency and expenses were revealed. Prevention and hygiene emerged as dominant themes with respect to future strategies.

This is a timely study that investigates crisis management among GBSs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides important methodological contributions as well as valuable practical considerations for gambling-related hospitality businesses.

This article aims to analyze the strategic work of Polish entrepreneurs in the furniture industry following the political changes in 1989. The authors examined how these entrepreneurs transitioned from local craftsmen or importers into leaders of international manufacturing companies and how their strategizing contributed to the unprecedented growth of the Polish furniture sector.

The authors examined extant data, specifically biographical interviews conducted with 11 prominent leaders in the Polish furniture industry (Hryniewicki, 2015, 2018). They analyzed within a theoretical framework that integrates J.C. Spender’s theory of strategic management with Barry Johnson’s concept of polarity management. Polarity is a way of understanding and managing interdependent, opposing pairs of values or perspectives that give rise to conflict.

The analysis reveals key patterns of strategic challenges at the level of human agency, history and sense-making. The authors identified four key polarities: life and business, knowledge presence and absence, concordance and discordance, and instrumental and non-instrumental sense-making.

The polarity concept illuminates the interplay of agency and determinism in strategic decision-making, offering valuable insights for methodology and a deeper understanding of Poland’s furniture industry.

Nearly 40 years since they first appeared, there is renewed interest in dashboards, engendered by the diffusion of business intelligence (BI) desktop software, such as Power BI, QlikView and Tableau, denoted collectively as “self-service” BI. Using these commodity software tools, the work to construct dashboards apparently becomes easier and more manageable and no longer requires the intervention of specialists. This paper aims to analyse the implementation of this kind of commodity dashboard in a university, exploring its role in performance management processes and investigating whether the dashboard affects the organisation (or not).

This paper focusses on an action research project developed by the authors, where the objective was to design and implement a dynamic performance measurement tool fitting the needs of department directors. The three authors were all involved in the project, respectively, as project manager, dashboard implementation manager and accounting manager of the studied organisation.

The results reveal a specific but complex change to the procedures and outcomes in the organisation studied, where the dashboard becomes a boundary infrastructure, thereby reviving technical and organisational problems that had been latent for years.

In this paper, the authors contribute to the debate on the digital age and the role of accounting with their exploration into the “revolution” of self-service BI tools. The democratisation and flexibility of these instruments put into discussion two core and somewhat controversial functions of accounting: data integration and personalised reporting.

Based on a panel vector error correction model (PVECM), this study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on tourism development in a selected group of 17 small island economies during 1995-2018. In the long run, a positive and direct relationship was found between foreign investment and tourists’ arrival. Moreover, economic performance and tourists’ income were also found to be key determinants of tourism development. It is further observed that there is bidirectional causality between the two variables. Hence, one can argue that FDI is a key element for tourism development. So, if the countries can attract more FDI and grow economically, these elements will contribute positively to the sector in the future.

This work uses rigorous dynamic time series analysis, namely, a dynamic PVECM, which takes into account dynamism and endogeneity issues in tourism modelling. Furthermore, the PVECM is also appropriately suited for integrating short- and long-run analysis.

The results confirm that FDI has been an important ingredient in the tourism development of the island economies in the long run. Interestingly, a bidirectional causality between FDI and tourism development is validated. Moreover, growth will as well be important. So, if the country can attract more FDI and grow economically, these elements will attract the tourists of the future.

Relatively few studies have rigorously studied the relationships between FDI and tourism development, particularly with respect to developing countries and small island states which rely heavily on tourism as well as FDI. As such existing research has neglected dynamic and reverse causality analysis in their respective FDI-tourism modelling. This study thus attempts to address the above and supplement the literature by investigating the direct and indirect relationship between FDI and tourism development for the case of small island economies over the period 1995-2018. Moreover, the implication of foreign capital inflows on tourism futures will as well be developed.

An AI concierge is a technologically advanced, intelligent and personalized assistant that is designated to an individual customer, proactively taking care of that customer’s needs throughout the service journey. This article envisions the idea of AI concierges and discusses how to leverage AI concierges in the customer journey.

This article takes a conceptual approach and draws insights from literature in service management, marketing, psychology, human-computer interaction and ethics.

This article delineates the fundamental forms of AI concierges: dialog interface (no embodiment), virtual avatar (embodiment in the virtual world), holographic projection (projection in the physical world) and tangible service robot (embodiment in the physical world). Key attributes of AI concierges are the ability to exhibit semantic understanding of auditory and visual inputs, maintain an emotional connection with the customer, demonstrate proactivity in refining the customer’s experience and ensure omnipresence through continuous availability in various forms to attend to service throughout the customer journey. Furthermore, the article explores the multifaceted roles that AI concierges can play across the pre-encounter, encounter and post-encounter stages of the customer journey and explores the opportunities and challenges associated with AI concierges.

This paper provides insights for professionals in hospitality, retail, travel, and healthcare on leveraging AI concierges to enhance the customer experience. By broadening AI concierge services, organizations can deliver personalized assistance and refined services across the entire customer journey.

This article is the first to introduce the concept of the AI concierge. It offers a novel perspective by defining AI concierges’ fundamental forms, key attributes and exploring their diverse roles in the customer journey. Additionally, it lays out a research agenda aimed at further advancing this domain.