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This article aims to characterize the profile of non-resident tourists visiting Porto and the North of Portugal and highlights the importance and evolution of tourist flows to the region, taking into account the airport development and the impact of low-cost airlines.

The article presents and discusses official tourism statistics and the results of on an ongoing survey by Institute for Tourism Planning and Development (IPDT) – Institute of Tourism, conducted at Porto airport on the tourist profile of non-resident tourists to the region.

The research findings reveal a remarkable growth in Porto and North of Portugal tourism – reflecting notable work over the past few years by tourism industry organizations. The Porto airport upgrade allowed for a new dynamic in the region, opening the door to European tourists via low-cost routes. The tourist’s profile depicts a young, active, upper class tourist, with an above average income, who truly appreciates Porto and the North of Portugal region and is willing to recommend it to friends and family.

Results provide rich insights on non-resident tourism in the region – where tourists come from, why they selected this destination for their trip and what they enjoy doing, among other information and is highly relevant for strategic and marketing activities related to tourism promotion and the service quality offer.

This article seeks to illustrate the non-resident tourist profiles of those visiting Porto and the North of Portugal, based on a unique study conducted over the past three years.

Nowadays, many organizations use quality function deployment (QFD) in order to recognize their customers’ wants and arrange a set of corrective activities in order to satisfy these wants. In a competitive environment, two or more organizations cooperate in order to meet their customers’ wants. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new hybrid approach of QFD employing SERVQUAL method, named three-dimensional house of quality (3DHOQ) to help the cooperation between two organizations with common customers by determining some common corrective activities that would satisfy their customers’ wants.

In order to better explain the proposed model, it is implemented in Birjand International Airport and Iran Air airline. At first, the customers’ want in the airport and airline sections are identified and the SERVQUAL method is used to determine the final weight of these wants. Afterwards, the corrective activities for satisfying the customers’ wants are determined using the three-dimensional QDF; and then are given weights using the multi-dimensional relation matrix.

Results of this study show the customers’ wants in two sections of airport and airline, the importance of each customer want, the gap between customers’ perception and expectation of each want, the collective corrective activities required to satisfy the customers’ wants and the weight of these corrective activities.

This paper helps the airline and airport sections have an analyzed list of their customers’ wants and a set of shared and unshared corrective activities to meet these wants.

This paper presents a simultaneous QFD analysis in the airport and airline sections. Moreover, a new hybrid approach employing SERVQUAL method, named 3DHOQ is introduced to determine the corrective activities of both organizations and their weights.

This paper aims to measure and unveil the relationship between customer satisfaction and efficiency levels in the most relevant Brazilian airports.

The authors utilize a two-stage network DEA (data envelopment analysis) and AHP (analytic hierarchy process) model as the cornerstones of the study. The first stage of the network productive structure focuses on examining the infrastructure efficiency of the selected airports, while the second stage assesses their business efficiency.

Although the results indicate that infrastructure and business efficiency levels are heterogeneous and widely dispersed across airports, controlling the regression results with different contextual variables suggests that the impact of efficiency levels on customer satisfaction is mediated by a set of socio-economic and demographic (endogenous) and regulatory (exogenous) variables. Furthermore, encouraging investment in airports is necessary to achieve higher infrastructural efficiency and scale efficiency, thereby improving customer satisfaction.

There is a scarcity of studies examining the relationships among customer satisfaction, privatization and airport efficiency, particularly in developing countries like Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the increasing importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in smart tourism destinations, in their integration in the activity of the tourism companies, and in their interaction with visitors/tourists. In summary, it is intended to evaluate in the city of Porto how the use of technology before, during and after the visit influences the tourist experience.

The authors empirically investigate the importance of using ICTs during tourism experience, assess the access/availability of ICT at the destination and its importance in tourist’s decisions. It is analyzed if the applications and/or information available on the internet are important and positively influence the tourism experience in Porto, that is, the degree of tourist satisfaction. The empirical evidence is based on a quantitative analysis, using a data set involving 423 tourists in the city of Porto.

The importance of the internet access at the destination, especially in places like airports and hotels, since most tourists are primarily using their mobile devices and computers during the trip, and the existing information technologies available in the destination (internet, smartphones or other mobile devices and applications) are considered very important in explaining tourists’ experience.

This study identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the technological strategies, providing useful information for destination management, discussing innovation in tourism, and proposing a framework that empirically evaluates how technological components used in smart tourism destinations can improve tourists’ experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potentialities and weaknesses of the city of Porto (Portugal) in the business tourism segment in order to ensure and develop a destination’s business tourism strategy position.

Data were collected through the participation of 28 experts living/working in Porto in a three-round Delphi exercise. Experts should identify the main straights, weaknesses and opportunities of the city for the business tourism development.

The main results show that the city’s potential to become landmark destination in the business tourism sector far outweighs its limitations. With measures aimed to improve the functionality of the business tourism segment and marketing strategies to increase external promotion, Porto meets the conditions to become an excellent business tourism destination.

Many studies have been conducted from the perspective of leisure tourism; few have been conducted from the perspective of the business tourism and none have been conducted from the perspective of the business tourism in the city of Porto. This research fills a gap in the literature relating to the practice of meeting industry. It represents the first attempt to elicit stakeholders opinions about important issues related to the development of business tourism in the city. The results of the study provide a more informed and systematic basis on which to develop the business tourism segment in Porto.

There is a strong academic and professional interest in the changing business model of LCCs in Europe. Recently, even Ryanair which is often considered a European LCC role model has departed from the point-to-point paradigm by offering transfers within its own network. We first provide a general overview of recent changes in the business model of airlines that used to be categorized as LCCs. We then add to existing studies on LCC network strategies toward building connections. While we distinguish different approaches to accommodate transfer passengers, our analysis focuses on mesh networks as an airline network topology other than hub-and-spoke networks to provide online connections. A schedule analysis of Ryanair’s direct and indirect services at its base at Porto airport exemplifies that a mesh network might allow LCCs to go beyond stand-alone operations to become network carriers without requiring a complete transition of the generic LCC business strategy.

The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the effect of different hotel characteristics and room attributes on room rates of hotels in the cities of Lisbon and Porto, the capital and second most important city in Portugal.

Using the hedonic pricing method, hotel characteristics are decomposed and analyzed, giving us the perception of the impact of each hotel attributes on the room rates and the people’s willingness to pay for this. Ordinary least square regression analysis was applied to the hedonic price model to find which variables could explain differences in the hotel room rates in Lisbon and Porto.

The results suggest that in Lisbon and in Porto, a number of common characteristics have significant effects on consumer willingness to pay for a stay in a hotel as star rating, consumer rating and the room size. In Porto, the existence of a fitness centre and in Lisbon, the distance to the city centre are also attributes that create a premium in room rates.

The knowledge of the most valued characteristics by consumers is an important tool for hotel managers to define a price strategy. Also important is the knowledge of the attributes that provide more added value for consumers as these should be taken into account in new investment decisions.

This study highlights the implications of the way one defines and measures qualitative hotel characteristics in hedonic pricing. Although the hedonic method has been applied in several studies, to our knowledge, in Portugal, there are few studies applied only to hotel room rates, and there are no studies comparing hotel room rates in different Portuguese cities. Moreover, the research highlights the critical role of a proper definition and measurement of the variables in hedonic pricing in general and the hotel star in particular.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the articles of this theme issue and explain the pertinence of the strategic question.

A brief context for the strategic question is provided, as well as the issue alignment and a content analysis of the articles selected.

The profile of current and future tourists is changing. Travel consumers now want and expect accurate information to guide their choices, and these are increasingly based on quality, experimentation, willingness to undertake active holidays and to travel to sites with diverse and unique tourism products.

Collectively, the articles in this theme issue provide rich insights on key trends impacting the worldwide tourism industry, as well as suggestions on how to explore the opportunities arising from the highly competitive tourism markets. Proposals on scanning the tourism business environment are also presented and their importance discussed and illustrated.

From various angles of analysis, the final articles for this issue explore the trends and issues affecting the tourism industry, as well as approaches to scan the tourism business environment.

This paper aims to explain how FC Porto became an important agent on the contribution for the development of tourism in the city of Porto.

The paper is based on information drawn from official sources and relevant data from Futebol Clube do Porto.

Through the football matches and since the migration of the club’s headquarters to the eastern district of the city, during the mid-1950s, FC Porto proved to be responsible for bringing attention and public to the city of Porto and then to an area where progress was missing.

The FC Porto Museum has been able to capture strong interest and satisfaction from visitors less connected to the phenomenon of sports, attracted by the theme of a museum of a sports club that speaks the language of the city, the region and the country.

This paper aims to characterize the profile of non-resident female tourists visiting Porto and North of Portugal (PNP) and highlights the importance and evolution of the women travel market and its segmentation.

This paper presents and discusses trends and segmentation in women travel market and the results of a survey on the profile of international female tourists to PNP.

This study identifies the key differences of male and female travelers to PNP and confirms that segments that have been highlighted as emerging markets in the literature such as businesswomen, solo travelling and girlfriend getaway are all present in this market. It also presents and discusses the profile of female tourists to PNP.

This study provides knowledge about the women travel market to PNP, thus enabling decision makers to better tailor their marketing strategies to this segment.

This paper seeks to illustrate the importance of the female travel market and characterize the profile of non-resident women tourists visiting PNP.