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In addition to individual differences, variations in visitors’ motivations may result from temporal variance. The leisure ladder model (LLM) is one of the most representative motivation models, which proposes patterns for an individual's temporal dynamic nature. This study attempts to examine empirically the ageing and experiential variations of the theme park visitors’ motivations, which underlie the model. Using stratified and systematic sampling techniques, survey data were collected from visitors to four leading theme parks in Taiwan – an Asian island nation. Limited support for the ageing variation was found and its changing pattern was also recognized in this study. A relatively more discriminating scale to measure the extent of visitor's experience was also suggested.

This chapter explores what has been and is planning to be implemented in the theme parks in the Orlando area to meet the specific needs of a rising number of Chinese tourists. The literature review examines factors affecting tourists’ decisions and provides an overview of inbound Chinese tourists to the United States and their expectations and behaviors in theme parks. An online survey instrument was developed and implemented; it focused on Orlando-based theme park professionals’ creative design and operation strategies specific to meeting Chinese needs. The study provides a descriptive account of managers’ perspectives of both current and planned efforts to meet their needs in this particular theme park.

Late spring, early summer 2020, theme parks across the World started to publish their plans for reopening. In this regard, this chapter ventures into critical questions like what did theme parks learn from the first ‘reopening’? What worked and what has changed? Have or will visitors return? Drafted as an exploratory paper this chapter brings forth the strategies adopted by the theme parks in the quest to return to the normal.

Since tourism is viewed as being a fast-growing industry, researchers are keen to investigate the negative impacts brought by an increasing number of visitors. As one of the derived social impacts, crowding has been proven to have a negative effect on tourists’ visiting experience. Thus, this study aims to understand tourists’ perception of crowding and its subsequent effect on their loyalty. A theme park in China called China Dinosaur Land, located in Jiangsu Province, is selected as the research site and 296 valid questionnaires are collected from the visitors. The results illustrate that psychological states, such as perceived crowding, emotional response, and coping behavior are much more complex than the study initially proposes; therefore, the hypotheses of the study are amended according to the research results.

Millions of ratings and reviews about products are available on the Internet for free, and they are used by academic researchers in the tourism sector. Data from websites like TripAdvisor are replacing or complementing traditional questionnaires and interviews. The authors are proposing a methodology to estimate the percentage accounted for by the sample of self-interviewed individuals over the total study population, in order to calculate the reliability of the results obtained. Average percentages obtained for hotels cannot be easily generalized due to the high dispersion in participation rates among hotels, even in the same city. Participation levels for tourist attractions are substantially lower than those for hotels and are likely biased, due to the fact that some tourists evaluate places without actually visiting them, merely after viewing them from the outside.

The Gold Coast has long been one of Australia’s iconic destinations. Rapid development by entrepreneurs in the 1960s saw the former coastal fishing and surfing town grow quickly into a city. After many decades of success, market fluctuations and changing consumer patterns the Gold Coast has stagnated as a destination. This case discusses the history of tourism on the Gold Coast and provides a context to some of the modern governance challenges faced by the destination. The findings of an empirical study of social network analysis identify various power relationships in the destination’s governance structure.

There are more than 40 million Americans with disabilities. If U.S. hospitality and leisure professionals are keen to attract customers with disabilities, then the particular services in line with the needs of those individuals have to be addressed, given the lack of clear actions toward the service delivery to individuals with disabilities. This study attempts to discover the issues pertaining to the perceptions of the services and facilities offered to visitors with disabilities. A total of three thousand questionnaires are distributed to visitors with disabilities. Cross-tabulations, chi-square, and ANOVA are deployed to determine the differences among visitors with different disabilities. Promotion strategies, suggestions regarding accessibility issues, and the benefits associated with a visit to various destinations are also presented.

“Unplanned city” (and its relation “unchecked growth”) is the way many people describe cities of which they disapprove. They usually mean too little top-down planning, assuming that this is the only planning possible. But Stephen Davies, describing urbanization in England, shows that this was not always so. He notes that,[t]he years between 1740 and 1850 therefore saw an unprecedented amount of urban growth. Cities and towns of all kinds and sizes grew more rapidly and on a greater scale than ever before in history. The rapidly increasing population was drawn into the towns in ever larger numbers with the rise of industry, creating an enormous demand for housing and the urban fabric in general. This was the kind of situation that, when its like happens today, is regularly described in terms of “crisis” or even “catastrophe”. And yet the challenge was largely met. Housing and other facilities were built and provided. The towns of Britain grew to meet the new demands of a growing population and a transformed economy. There were no great shantytowns around growing cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. Instead a tidal wave of brick and stone swept over fields, turning them into new urban areas. Moreover, the period also saw the creation of great architectural achievements of lasting value in both the great cities and the new towns …. The elegance of Bath and Cheltenham, the West End of London and Bloomsbury, the New Town in Edinburgh, and the centers of Glasgow and Newcastle-upon-Tyne – all were built in this period. As this was the first instance of such wide-spread urbanization our understanding of its nature is crucial for our thinking about the process of urbanization in general, whether historically or today. In particular this instance raises the question of how urbanization can happen in the absence of an apparatus of planning and controls, by voluntary means, and what the results of this may be. (Davies, 2002, p. 19)

Since waiting in a queue may induce both negative and positive effects on customers’ quality perceptions of which the queue is formed, an optimal queuing wait which is long enough but not too long to have positive effects on the pursued service is critical for successful queuing management. This study examined the existence of an optimal queuing wait at theme parks by merging the interpretative approach of institutional norms with the measuring application of the adapted Return Potential Model from crowding studies. Using quota and systematic sampling techniques, survey data were collected from 1,440 visitors to five leading theme parks in Taiwan. An optimal queuing wait represented by an institutional norm among visitors with moderate consensus for the longest acceptable waiting time (LAWT) was revealed in this study. As a critical reversal point of visitors’ quality perception, significant ascent of visitors’ crowding perception did occur when their actual waiting times exceeded their LAWT.