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This research is to identify how user-generated contents (UGC) affect a pre-trip decision on the booking of a guesthouse among international travelers. Online surveys are conducted among social network users who have booked an ecolodge in the past year. A snowball sampling is used, which posts a questionnaire link in social networks including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in addition to travel blogs. This study indicates a positive relationship between UGC and lodging selection. UGC is considered as a significant predictor of booking an environmentally friendly guesthouse. Among the UGCs, travelers' review is the most important one influencing guesthouse selection. Future studies may focus on other IT potentials such as “Gamification” or other types of content such as “Podcasts” or “live videos” to engage independent travelers.

The purpose of this study is to review recent work in the robotics literature and identify future opportunities for consumer/tourist experience research in human-robot interactions (HRIs).

The paper begins by covering the framework of robotic agent presence and embodiment that are relevant for HRI. Next, the paper identifies future opportunities for hospitality and tourism scholars to undertake consumer/tourist experience research in HRIs.

The result of this study provided potential directions for advancing theoretical, methodological and managerial implications for tourism experience research in HRI.

Concepts from robotics research are diffusing into a range of disciplines, from engineering to social sciences. These advancements open many unique, yet urgent, opportunities for hospitality and tourism research.

This paper illustrates the speed at which robotics research is progressing. Moreover, the concepts reviewed in this research on robotic presence and embodiment are relevant for real-world applications in hospitality and tourism.

Developments in robotics research will transform hospitality and tourism experiences in the future.

This research is one of the early papers in the field to review robotics research and provide innovative directions to broaden the interdisciplinary perspective for future hospitality and tourism research.

This paper aims to investigate antecedents of using non-travel-specific social media (specifically Facebook) for travel decision-making before a leisure trip.

Based on an online survey of 426 young travel consumers from Italy and Sweden, this work applies structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The study finds support for most of the conventional TAM-related constructs: perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and intention, while ease of use is not found relevant in this context.

Results shed light on the antecedents of using non-travel specific social media in two countries. Future research might focus on validating the factors identified and add others that might shape usage in the selected countries. Future studies could further investigate possible differences arising from culture, country of origin and age. The analysis can also be extended to other countries.

The analysis might help managers in the hospitality and tourism sector by providing an understanding of the cognitive factors which determine travelers’ decision to use Facebook for trip planning. Thus, managers should get to know these factors in their effort to influence social media in hospitality and tourism settings.

The findings offer interesting perspectives on the applicability of conventional models to the context of non-travel-specific social media platforms. The exploration of cross-cultural differences also adds to the extant body of knowledge.

Purpose: The information-intensive nature of the tourism and hospitality industry requires regular communication between firms and customers. Yet, customer service personnel’s high contact levels with customers often lead to customer dissatisfaction arising from embarrassment in emotion-inducing service encounters. Accordingly, such companies have been seeking a cost-effective means of maintaining consistency in customer contact. Thus, it seems that the future of chatbots is here.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter examines chatbots in two ways: the technical composition and its adoption by tourism firms. The technical perspective is represented by a diagram which espouses the functioning of chatbots from inputs query to output reply. On its adoption by tourism firms, two main organizational theories were proposed.

Findings: While chatbots are diffusing rapidly in other areas, their use in the tourism and hospitality industry remains low. We have examined the role of chatbots in various areas of the tourism and hospitality industry and highlighted the barriers to their successful adoption. By applying a conceptual and theoretical approach, our study used a hybrid of institutional theory and organizational learning theory and diagrammatically espouses how the integration of these theories can aid subsequent studies to understand the environmental and organization-specific factors influencing chatbots adoption.

Research limitations/implications: This study is conceptual, consequently, we recommend future studies to empirical test and validate our proposed conceptual framework.

Originality/value: This study is one of the earliest studies that advances firm-level adoption of chatbots by integrating two key organizational theories.

This paper aims to examine the differences in expenditure and satisfaction level between first-time and repeat spectators to a motor sport event, as well as differences in their intention to return and to recommend the host destination.

A structured questionnaire was developed and data were collected on-site during the 2012 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) World Rally Championship (WRC) in Sardinia via 210 interviews. A series of descriptive analysis, independent t-tests, chi-square tests and regression analysis were run for the purposes of the study.

Findings showed first-timers spend more and are more satisfied than repeaters, even if no significant differences were reported. Repeaters reported to be more willing to return and to recommend, with significant differences, only in the intention to return.

The study is based on a convenience sample of a relatively small size, and it might be influenced by the idiosyncratic characteristics of the location. Further, it does not consider the mediating effect that the budget of spectators and their travel/event career ladder can exert over their behaviour.

Destination marketers and event organizers need to run their marketing operations to renew their customer mix and/or to increase the standard level of quality to be delivered to repeaters. Further, their marketing and communication strategy should be personalized, and incentives should be given to encourage both groups to purchase multiple products simultaneously.

The paper adds to the growing, and often still inconsistent, research aiming to compare first-timers’ and repeat visitors’ behaviours by offering insights from the context of motor sport events, where no published paper exist so far.

Archaeological heritage tourism has great potential for development in numerous destinations. However, literature on archaeological heritage tourism is scarce and empirical data are minimal. This paper aims to identify the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists, as well as identify factors known as satisfiers and dissatisfiers based on Herzberg’s two-factor theory among tourists who visited Petra UNESCO heritage site.

The research used content analyses to analyse 1,419 tourist’s online reviews on TripAdvisor. Leximancer software provided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis that pinpoint the dominant themes, after which further qualitative analysis found the main narratives associated with different satisfaction groups.

Successively, seven themes were revealed: entrance, trip, monastery, buildings, animal, carriage and safe. Furthermore, a four-dimensional model was postulated to help understand the components and flow of visitors’ experiences in an archaeological heritage site. In addition, the findings of the study revealed that tourists who scored their experience as 4 (very good) or 5 (excellent) (satisfiers) commonly shared perceptions about architecture, buildings, safe, temples, monasteries, tours, tombs and helpful. Contrarily, reviewers that rated their experience as 1 (terrible) or 2 (poor) (dissatisfiers) shared narratives around concepts such as expensive, animals, carriages, locals and shops.

The results offer valuable understandings of cultural heritage tourists’ overall experiences based on TripAdvisor reviews and facilitate the identification of the dominant themes associated with drivers of tourists’ satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

The paper aims to comprehensively use the knowledge of tourist spatial behaviour to improve World Heritage Site (WHS) management. Efficient heritage management can be achieved if critical aspects such as tourist spatial activities were better and comprehensively understood, primarily at the micro-level. Inaccurate information on these essential aspects will potentially cause problems in managing a WHS and compromises its Outstanding Universal Value. This study aims to extend the knowledge of tourist spatial behaviour by including the non-spatial and spatial characteristics of the tourists to better manage a WHS.

This study uses a trip diary and a GPS tracking app with 384 free independent tourists as the study respondents. Melaka WHS was chosen as the study area. The data were complemented by an aggregative analysis method to extract different discrete patterns based on individual itineraries.

This paper indicates a noticeable relationship between individuals’ non-spatial and spatial characteristics. It suggests that integrating these two characteristics can provide more comprehensive knowledge of tourist behaviour.

This paper provides a different perspective to improving WHS management by determining the operative tools to develop an effective visitor management plan.

To succeed in a competitive tourist market and attract more foreign tourists, it is essential to have a clear understanding of what travellers are seeking and endeavour to meet those needs, as well as key influential factors in their travel decision-making process. The purpose of the study is to develop and examine tourists’ pre-trip motivational model using the push–pull theory.

A tourists’ pre-trip motivational model was developed and then tested based on a sample of 320 Chinese and non-Chinese visitors to Melbourne, Australia, to assess the suitability of the new model. Data were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, such as principal component analysis and independent T-tests.

The analysis revealed statistically significant differences between studied samples in terms of the push and pull factors. In comparison with non-Chinese tourists, Chinese visitors to Melbourne assigned higher importance to resting and relaxing opportunities, family-oriented activities, as well as safety and a high level of service. The identified differences should be reflected in marketing and promotional activities provided to Chinese and non-Chinese travellers.

The study provides useful information for Destination Marketing Organisations in tourism cities wanting to develop specifically customised tourist products, services and promotion programs tailored to each market.

The proposed extended push–pull model represents a holistic and complex model of the travel decision-making process with the multiple linkages between motivations for travelling, preferences of destination attributes, information source usage, trip expectations, possible constraints for travelling and evaluation of destination choice criteria. Understanding all these factors, their relationship and their influence on the final destination choice is a prerequisite for effective and successful actions on attraction and retention of visitors for all tourist destinations. The developed tourists’ pre-trip motivational model may be used as a conceptual framework to guide subsequent motivational studies in tourism.

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.

This paper aims to introduce a structuring and processing model (SPM) as a framework for tourism decision making research.

The study employs McCracken's long interview to collect data in field settings. The study introduces advances in Mintzberg et al.'s approach to structuring seemingly unstructured decision making to explain travelers' decision‐making processes.

SPM enables mapping and comparing visitors' plans, motivations, choices, and consequences. The results demonstrate nuanced decision‐behavior dynamics and complexities of visitors' travel‐related unconscious/conscious thinking and behavior.

SPM does not attempt to generalize findings to large survey samples.

Travel planning and execution dynamics dictate that a decision‐making funnel metaphor in consumer research does not capture such trip complexity because additional decisions are made when the traveler arrives at the destination.

SPM is dynamic and inclusive explaining simultaneous planning elements as well as considering sub‐decisions occurring before and after different phases in the process. This model includes both conscious and unconscious internal retrievals as well as contextual influences relating to current planning affect the decision‐making process.