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This paper aims to review the state of the art for the Tourism Review special issue on “Business Models in Tourism”. The authors’ purpose is twofold: first, to contextualize the empirical and conceptual contributions featured in the special issue in relation to the state of research on business models in tourism. Second, the authors position the special issue in the broader scholarly conversation on business models to identify avenues for future research.

The authors systematically review the content of tourism-specific business model studies from leading literature databases to answer four questions relevant for future work on business models in tourism: First, how do tourism scholars define the business model concept? Second, what is the ontological stance (object, schema or tool) of existing studies of tourism business models? Third, what are the methodological preferences of existing work on business models in tourism? And finally, what qualifies as rigorous business model research?

From the critical review of 32 contributions, the authors identify a minimal consensus and dominant approach to conceptualizing the business model concept in tourism studies. In addition, the authors reveal a strong preference for small-n case study research designs. In sum, those findings point to important gaps and design decisions for future business model studies in tourism.

This review of the state of research on business models in tourism details research opportunities with regard to theory, methods and applications that tourism scholars can investigate to contribute to the theory and practice of business model management.

Social media advertising (SMA) has become overly critical in the interactive marketing research field. This paper aimed to construct a research architecture model and to investigate the mediating effect of customer engagement between SMA and consumer behavioral intention in the context of Macao's casino integrated resorts.

The authors collected data from 300 Chinese-speaking visitors of Macao's casino integrated resorts through a face-to-face survey. The hypotheses derived from the conceptual model were tested through two-stage structural equation modeling. The authors considered age and gender as control variables.

This study found that entertainment and promotional rewards had significant direct effects on consumption intention. Social media dependency did affect directly not only consumption intention but also sharing intention. Customer engagement on SMA mediated the effects of two SMA features (entertainment and promotional rewards) and one feature of SMA viewers (social media dependency) on consumption intention. As to extraneous variables, neither age nor gender significantly influenced consumer behavioral intention.

The casino integrated resort managers should enhance the entertainment elements and provide reasonable promotional rewards to increase SMA's effectiveness. Managers should also consider the social media usage habits of the targeted customers. Further academic research on casino integrated resorts in other regions may use this study as a basis for investigating the mediation of customer engagement on SMA.

This study contributed to understanding the mediating mechanism of customer engagement on SMA by conceptualizing customer engagement on SMA as a unique idea and provided a conceptual framework for further theoretical and empirical research in the interactive marketing research field.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effects of customer engagement on the relationships between customer's perceived values of social media advertising (SMA) and customer response, as well as the moderated mediating effect of media involvement.

The sample was drawn from integrated resort tourists who use WeChat to browse advertisements of Macau integrated resorts. A total of 221 valid questionnaires were collected after three weeks of data collection.

Results showed that the hedonic value and utilitarian value of SMA have a significant positive impact on customer response through customer engagement with SMA respectively and media involvement moderates the mediating effect of customer engagement on SMA.

This study reveals the influence mechanism of social media advertising value on consumer response and pioneering attempts to highlight the moderated mediating effect of media involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the casino development and regulation in Macau and Singapore. The paper also seeks to assess the potential for casino development in Asia, with a particular focus on the prospects of Japan's casino resorts.

The paper reviews the gaming history, gaming/tourism policies and casino regulations of Macau and Singapore. The key aspects concerned with the casino development in Asia are also examined.

The paper identifies the fundamentals that have contributed to the prosperity of casino resorts in Macau and Singapore, as well as highlights the potential and challenges for the casino developments in Japan and other Asian destinations.

A number of legal and tourism-related factors are identified to be the determinants of casino development. However, more research is needed to examine the political, economic and socio-cultural factors associated with casino gaming.

The paper, discussing the casino development and regulation in Macau and Singapore, provides practical implications for the design of gaming/tourism policy and casino control in Japan and other prospective gaming jurisdictions.

The paper contributes to the growing body of literature on the gaming law and casino development in Asia and provides insights for policymakers contemplating the adoption of casinos as a strategic policy for tourism development and economic growth.

The purpose of this study is to analyze state-of-the-art knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality.

This study adopts the theory-context-methods framework to systematically review 100 AI-related articles recently published (i.e. from 2021 to April 2023) in three top-tier hospitality journals, namely, the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management.

Findings suggest that studies of AI applications in hospitality are mostly theory-driven, whereas most AI methods research adopts a data-driven approach. State-of-the-art AI applications research exhibits the most interest in service robots. In AI methods research, little attention was paid to the amid-service/experience.

This study reveals inadequacies in theory, context and methods in contemporary AI research. More research from hospitality suppliers’ perspectives and research on generative AI applications are advocated in response to the unveiled research gaps and recent AI developments.

This study classifies the most recent AI research in hospitality into two main streams – AI applications research and AI methods research – and discusses the gaps in each research stream and latest AI developments. The paper then suggests future research directions to guide researchers in advancing AI research in hospitality.

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.

The operational component of a company’s short‐term plan (amounts of products to be delivered and sold to various markets at prices that vary according to markets, sales channels, types of customers and quantities sold, levels of utilization of production capacity, assignment of resources to the manufacturing of different products, amounts of raw materials purchased from different sources, stocks of raw materials and finished products) gives rise to a series of cash inflows and outflows which are not synchronized. The financial component of a company’s short‐term plan has to indicate how to compensate the imbalances, in time, generated by the operational plan, between availabilities and requirements of cash, and indicate the sources of financing to be used and how to temporarily invest cash surpluses. The approach, too often followed in companies, that defines the financial component of a company’s short‐term plan as a consequence of the operational component of the plan, ignores the potential interactions between them and the possibility of defining simultaneously a more economic interfunctionally integrated plan. A model is presented for the decisions in the operational component and a model for the decisions in the financial component. If these models are used separately, they can be integrated resorting to an iterative approach that mutually adapts their separate solutions in order to define the company plan. However, the best approach is to build a model that integrates the two separate models into one structured in a way that can define the optimal integrated short‐term operational and financial plan. The lack of integration between the operational and the financial components of the short‐term company plan is a common weak point in the existing literature and practice.

The case of Passeiertal/Val Passiria illustrates how typologies of governance forms help to differentiate cases with concentrated authority from cases with an even distribution of power. In particular, it exemplifies how the interplay between DMOs and powerful private businesses can improve the competitive position of a destination. First, Passeiertal/Val Passiria has managed to develop a common strategy in collaboration with the biggest private player. Second, the whole destination is positioned with the themes driven by the player. The case also shows that property rights theory and principal agent theory may provide useful explanations as to how sustainable destination governance can be improved in situations of significant power asymmetries.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the factors that result in V-shape rebound of Macau gambling industry's from 2014 to 2019. Both internal and external factors are examined and discussed by representatives from academia, industry and government.

Practitioners from the gambling industry offered their cutting-edged analysis and viewpoints with observation and comments from scholars and government representatives in gambling domain.

Internally, actions are taken by both the Macau government and Macau casino operators to rebrand Macau with nongambling elements and to adjust the strategies to attract more tourists from a wider range. Externally, global economic upturn and support from the China government also enhance Macau's quick rebound. A total of nine key factors are finally recognized.

This study provides answers and sense-making explanations to why Macau gambling industry can recover in such a short time after a big drop in Gross Gambling Revenue in 2014. This work reveals that Macau, by learning the lessons from the dramatic decline, conducts various self-rescue action plans which contribute to the quick V-shape rebound. This study is also a self-examination of Macau gambling industry from the firsthand perspectives of scholars, government representatives and casino management.

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.