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Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), have been influencing both the tourism supply side and tourists alike. The purpose of this study is to analyse VR research in tourism and to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review. As the technological connotation of the term VR has been changing and encompasses various VR systems with different capabilities, this paper aims to provide a systematic and structured overview. The overall objective of this paper is to contribute to a thorough understanding of VR research in tourism.

This paper comprehensively reviews and analyses existing literature on VR in tourism, published from 1994 to February 2018. Using a wide variety of sources, these papers were examined so as to give a state-of-the-art literature review and to deepen one’s understanding of the diverse applications of VR in a tourism context. This paper also presents a novel classification of different VR systems according to the level of immersion and depicts their respective technological capabilities.

The advent of new VR hardware necessitates a distinction for different VR systems applied in the tourism sector. Research conducted during the past three years has been focussing on the application of head-mounted displays, which reflects the temporal development of VR technology. Regardless of the VR system, most studies examine VR as a marketing tool for promotion and communication purposes during the pre-travel phase, focussing on behavioural aspects. Advances in technology will yield new opportunities and application possibilities for the tourism industry.

The key contribution of this paper lies in its structural approach, which differentiates between non-, semi- and fully immersive VR systems in tourism, as well as the proposition of respective definitions. The concluding part of the paper proposes practical implications for tourism businesses together with directions for future studies.

Intrigued by the methodological challenges emerging from text complexity, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of different topic modelling algorithms based on Instagram textual data.

By taking Instagram posts captioned with #darktourism as the study context, this research applies latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), correlation explanation (CorEx), and non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) to uncover tourist experiences.

CorEx outperforms LDA and NMF by classifying emerging dark sites and activities into 17 distinct topics. The results of LDA appear homogeneous and overlapping, whereas the extracted topics of NMF are not specific enough to gain deep insights.

This study assesses different topic modelling algorithms for knowledge extraction in the highly heterogeneous tourism industry. The findings unfold the complexity of analysing short-text social media data and strengthen the use of CorEx in analysing Instagram content.

基于对文本复杂性的兴趣, 本研究以Instagram文本数据为基准, 旨在比较不同主题建模的算法的有效性。

本研究以标有 #darktourism的Instagram帖子作为背景, 评估直观理解（LDA）, 相关解释（CorEx）和非负矩阵分解（NMF）在分析与黑暗观光相关的帖子的实用性。

CorEx分析出17个新兴的黑暗景点和活动, 亦胜过LDA和NMF。虽然LDA能探讨出较多的主题数, 但它们的内容几乎重复。同样的, 尽管NMF适用于短文本数据, 但它提取出主题相当笼统且不够具体。

透过将营销和数据科学学科相结合, 本研究为分析非结构化的文本奠定了基础, 并证实了CorEx在分析短文本社交媒体数据（如Instagram数据）中的效益。

Intrigado por los desafíos metodológicos que surgen de la complejidad del texto, este estudio evalúa la efectividad de diferentes algoritmos de modelado de temas basados en datos textuales de Instagram.

Al tomar publicaciones de Instagram con #darktourism como contexto de estudio, esta investigación aplica la asignación de Dirichlet latente (LDA), la explicación de correlación (CorEx) y la factorización matricial no negativa (NMF) para descubrir experiencias turísticas.

CorEx supera a LDA y NMF al clasificar los sitios y actividades oscuros emergentes en 17 temas distintos. Los resultados de LDA son homogéneos y se superponen, mientras que los temas extraídos de NMF no son lo suficientemente específicos como para obtener conocimientos profundos.

Este estudio evalúa diferentes algoritmos de modelado de temas para la extracción de conocimiento en la industria del turismo. Los hallazgos revelan la complejidad de analizar datos de redes sociales de texto corto y fortalecen el uso de CorEx para analizar el contenido de Instagram.

Near field communication (NFC) is currently perceived to be one of the most promising technologies for the future and will most likely become the standard in mobile devices in the years to come. Due to the novel nature of this technology, the assessment of its importance for the tourism industry is still relatively unclear. The author is one of the first to focus on NFC in tourism, with the aim of introducing NFC technology and drafting first responses to the following questions: what benefit can NFC technology have for tourism and what functionalities can it trigger? What are the possible future applications in tourism and what challenges will tourism be faced with in this respect?

The potential of NFC for the tourism industry is outlined in an extensive literature research, as well as in the presentation and discussion of several pilot projects and case studies.

The paper provides an overview of NFC functionalities and presents a first insight into the range of application for this technology in the tourism industry. The NFC ecosystem is examined and operative and strategic effects for companies, as well as the impacts for tourists, are analysed.

NFC has a huge potential and offers a vast field of possible applications for the tourism industry. The technology must be seen, however, as an enabler that cannot solve problems from a supplier perspective, or increase convenience from a consumer perspective by itself. This paper helps to understand the complexity of NFC as a technology, the need for a common understanding and vision of its ecosystem, consistent business models which generate additional benefit, as well as the combination of market push-and-pull effects with regard to adoption and diffusion.

Modern society is virtually inconceivable without mobile devices and the consequent use of mobile services. The multitude of technologies incorporated in the tiniest space has turned mobile phones, and smart phones in particular, into the Swiss knives of our times. NFC could change the way we interact, share, exchange and retrieve information.

Little research has so far been carried out on this topic and the author is one of the first to focus on NFC in tourism so far.

The concept of touristic space is continually evolving, due to the advent of new technologies. Today, physical space and virtual space are interwoven, creating a phenomenon that can be described using the term ‘phygital’. The perception of touristic space as well as the interaction with it has been altered by phygital appearances and changing travel behaviour. While interaction with the touristic space previously only occupied a physical dimension, virtual information now enriches all stages of the customer journey (CJ). Hence, this chapter deals with new technologies, analysing their impact on the perception of touristic space for the traveller throughout the whole CJ. Thereby Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are cited as examples of state-of-the-art technologies, which wield a direct perceptional impact, as they have the power to blend together one’s perception of real and virtual space.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to present gamified mobile experiences as valid tools for DMOs to enrich the experience of tourists, and to present the benefits provided to DMOs by analytics tools integrated on gamified mobile experiences.

Staff from three DMOs have generated a gamified mobile experience using a custom authoring tool designed and developed to fulfil their requirements. This gamified experience has targeted families with children visiting Basque Country during off-peak season. The experience has been validated over a period of seven weeks within a pilot project promoted by the local tourist information offices of the DMOs. Data directly provided by tourists and data gathered from analytic tools integrated on the gamified mobile experience have been analysed to fulfil the research objectives presented on the paper.

Both DMOs and tourists can benefit from gamified mobile experiences. The integration of analytics tools to gain insights into the behaviour of tourists can be a relevant information source for DMOs.

The pilot project has targeted a niche tourism market, families with children visiting Basque Country, and has been running during off-peak season. Further studies focusing on other tourist types and different tourism season and destination types will be required to strengthen the validation of the research objectives presented on this paper.

The paper promotes both the development of gamified mobile experiences and the inclusion of analytics tools for DMOs to obtain relevant information about tourists and the mobile experiences.

A gamified mobile experience is generated by DMOs, validated on the basis of experience of real tourists. The analytics tools inside the gamified mobile experience provide DMOs with relevant information.

Social entrepreneurship is gaining attention as a valid field for academic inquiry and a useful tool for funding a social mission and driving social change. As they are assimilated, innovative mechanisms and practices often require a new vocabulary and context to support precision in communication and clarity in analysis. This chapter takes a step toward merging previously disparate fields that may need to be aligned to help the advancement of social entrepreneurship and offers a neologism to describe this process. Primarily, it proposes that the real value of social entrepreneurship is an advancement in non-violent social change.

The purpose of this study is to examine how hotel brands communicate on social media before and during the pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in relation to the tourism season.

To gain insights into the communication of Italian hotel brands on social media, this study applies a qualitative methodology. Using the text mining technique, topic modelling was conducted on a sample of 5,032 posts from Italian 5-star hotel brands shared on the hotels' official Facebook pages.

The results show that hotel brands used essentially the same communication strategy in the tourism seasons before and after the pandemic outbreak, but with a particular focus on trust, safety and cordiality during the pandemic. Hotel brands focussed intensively on brand awareness, customer engagement and special activities that promote memorable and authentic experiences as well as luxury service quality.

This study contributes to the theoretical and empirical sense by bridging the concepts of tourism and hospitality, social media and corporate communication.

The purpose of this study is to provide a synthesis of the state of research on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality. It presents a systematic review of the academic literature, and provides insights into the specific issues addressed by studies in this area.

A search of major research databases with multiple keywords was performed to identify relevant articles up to 2017. A total of 79 articles were identified and analyzed according to the following criteria: location of the study, perspective of analysis, methodology, level of analysis and specific themes addressed.

Based on a qualitative thematic analysis, five groups of articles were identified: cooperative behavior of innovating firms, co-creation, collaborative networks for innovation, knowledge transfer and innovation policies.

This study contributes to making the current body of knowledge on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality more organized. The analysis of the different issues addressed by the literature could build the foundation for future research.

This study presents a comprehensive review of literature on collaborative innovation in tourism and hospitality. It can serve as a roadmap of literature for both academicians and practitioners, and help stimulate further interest.

The chapter analyzes the modern features of the movement of foreign investments and the participation of the Republic of Belarus in this process. Trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in the context of different countries and the structure of investment capital in our country have been considered. A greater priority in attracting investments in large projects in the form of equity participation compared to debt instruments and profits refinancing has been justified. The largest projects with foreign investments as well as features of outgoing FDI have been considered. The activities of foreign transnational corporations and the factors hindering the internationalization of business activity of domestic enterprises have been studied in detail. The priority areas of government in activities to promote the attraction of FDI to the Republic of Belarus have been analyzed.