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Following the increasing trend of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality literature, this critical reflection paper aims to identify AI-assisted mindfulness as a critical yet under-investigated issue and to contribute feasible directions for future research.

The authors first conceptualize a framework explaining the effects of mindfulness design in AI interventions on improving human mindfulness. The authors then identify opportunities for interventions in AI-assisted mindfulness for the tourism, hospitality and events industries. Finally, the authors propose potential themes for AI-assisted mindfulness research.

This study contributes three major conceptual works. First, we conceptualize a framework of AI-assisted mindfulness, showcasing that the scope of AI-assisted mindfulness spans from AI interventions to state mindfulness and then to trait mindfulness. Second, the authors offer two approaches to strategic thinking, one from mindfulness (i.e. mindfulness-focused niche markets and activities) and one from AI applications (i.e. AI-facilitated devices and platforms), to identify opportunities for AI-assisted mindfulness interventions. Third, for both management- and marketing-oriented AI-assisted mindfulness research, the authors propose 18 themes.

This critical reflection paper offers directions for future knowledge creation in AI-assisted mindfulness in the tourism, hospitality and events industries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this critical reflection paper serves as the first in hospitality and tourism literature to systematically propose the research issue of AI-assisted mindfulness, offering directions and themes for future research.

This study aims to uncover marketing strategies to restore a positive image in times of pandemic crisis to bring tourists back to a popularly affected tourism city in China, Wuhan in Hubei Province. The paper argues that the process of restoring city image requires understanding the perceptions of Generation Z, a segment of the population who have a high propensity to travel after COVID-19.

This study employed a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the perspectives of China’s Generation Z consumers of Wuhan’s future image to restart tourism. The data is collected through semi-structured interview of 29 respondents and analyzed with the initial, focused and theoretical coding process.

Start by narrowing the gap between projected and perceived image, the findings suggest that Generation Z could be pulled to visit Wuhan city through four core products such as dark tourism activities, special-interest leisure, heroism and storytelling.

The destination image restoration framework after health-related crisis is creatively proposed. It combines the analysis of crisis and urban characteristics from the perspective of the target audience (Generation Z) and provides specific strategies to restore the tourism city image from cognitive, affective and conative dimensions. Significantly, two novel characteristics of Generation Z (i.e. lighthearted and patriotic) emerge in addition to the typical features of this generational cohort. This study also found a high preference for a technologically oriented type of attraction that reverses the morbid COVID-19 memories into an entertainment tool.

This paper examines the changes in Macao's gaming public policy following the 2022 revision of the gaming law. The revision introduces more regulations on the gaming industry and highlights the gaming industry's contribution to economic diversification, anti-money laundering and national security. The paper analyzes the economic, cultural and political factors that motivated these changes and evaluates the effectiveness of the new gaming public policy.

This paper compares the different versions of Macao's gaming laws and the gaming laws of Nevada and New Jersey, using a qualitative approach to interpret the meanings behind the law text.

The paper reveals that Macao's gaming public policy has changed significantly. The revised policy focuses more on economic diversification than the growth of the gaming industry and imposes more responsibilities on the gaming operators. It predicts that Macao's gaming industry will face more difficulties in increasing its market share in the next decade.

The findings of this paper can help the Macao government assess its gaming public policy and other governments learn from the complex situation when developing their public policies.

The findings of this paper can enhance the understanding of Macao's gaming laws and the reality of Macao's gaming industry.

This paper is the first in academia to address Macao's new public policy toward gaming.

Drawing on person–environment fit theory, this study aims to investigate how the relationships between service task types (i.e. utilitarian and hedonic service tasks) and perceived authenticity (i.e. service and brand authenticity) differ under different conditions of service providers (human employee vs service robot). This study further examines whether customers’ stereotypes toward service robots (competence vs warmth) moderate the relationship between service types and perceived authenticity.

Using a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design, Study 1 examines a casual restaurant, whereas Study 2 assesses a theme park restaurant. Analysis of covariance and PROCESS are used to analyze the data.

Both studies reveal that human service providers in hedonic services positively affect service and brand authenticity more than robotic employees. Additionally, the robot competence stereotype moderates the relationship between hedonic services, service and brand authenticity, whereas the robot warmth stereotype moderates the relationship between hedonic services and brand authenticity in Study 2.

Restaurant managers need to understand which functions and types of service outlets are best suited for service robots in different service contexts. Robot–environment fit should be considered when developers design and managers select robots for their restaurants.

This study blazes a new theoretical trail of service robot research to systematically propose customer experiences with different service types by drawing upon person–environment fit theory and examining the moderating role of customers’ stereotypes toward service robots.

This study aims to progress scholarly understanding of the staycation phenomenon by examining customer segments and documenting local customers’ attribute preferences.

A stated choice experiment is used to examine customer preferences for staycation package attributes. Latent class discrete choice modeling is deployed to classify customers into market segments based on their preferences. The profile of each segment is enhanced by documenting customer characteristics and consumption styles.

Six prominent market segments are identified using a combination of sociodemographics, consumption styles and staycation attribute preferences. The findings draw on consumer experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic to generate theoretical insights into preferred staycation packages. Empirically, the estimation results from the research framework and choice experimental method demonstrate that staycation market segments exhibit distinct preference structures.

Practitioners and policymakers can incorporate the findings of this study in designing and/or assessing staycation packages. This can ensure differentiated products for defined segments that resonate within local communities through positive word of mouth, thus offering prospective spillovers to visiting friends and relatives.

This is a pioneering study on preference heterogeneity from the customer perspective, with a focus on staycation markets. The findings can encourage and assist hotel sector leaders to capitalize on local market developments to achieve a more resilient hospitality business model.

With its potential to significantly improve the tourism sector, augmented reality (AR), an emerging technology, is a growing force in the field. It has attracted significant academic attention and expanded publishing options over the past 20 years. However, so far, no review has provided a comprehensive overview of AR-related research in tourism. This work uses the VOS Viewer and Bibliometrix R-package software to present a bibliometric review of the scientific literature in the area of AR-related tourism research in order to fill this gap.

The theme of AR in tourism was searched in the Scopus database. The original search yielded 327 papers in total, which were then filtered based on the parameters. A total of 190 relevant documents were generated by the refining process. For the publications pertaining to AR in tourism, the most cited papers, prominent authors, productive journals and countries, co-authorship among countries, trending topics, thematic map, co-occurrence analysis of keywords and bibliographic coupling of documents were all looked into.

This report shows a recent rise in research on AR in the tourism industry. The top 10 studies in the topic had a combined total of 1749 citations, while the authors found three papers with more than 200 Scopus citations. Till the date of extraction, 555 writers have contributed to the field of AR in tourism, with Tom Dieck M.C., Chung N. and Jung T. receiving the most citations. According to co-authorship analysis, the UK collaborates with other countries the most. Thematic map has thrown insight into the niche themes and emerging themes in the field. Coupling analysis has revealed four major research streams in the field of AR in tourism.

This study can be considered as a first study to utilize a bibliometric method to address this research gap, identifying the top documents, journals and, most importantly, the future research areas identified through the thematic map analysis of keywords and bibliographic coupling.

Historical growth within this discipline was made clear by an in-depth analysis of the studied themes in this area. Hence, the discovery of relatively new subjects offers scholars the chance to plan their research in this area and thereby enhance the literature. The study is also beneficial for practitioners in the tourism industry.

This work examined previously published publications on AR in tourism using a bibliometric analytic technique. Additionally, it contributes to the current knowledge accumulation in learning about the applicability of AR in tourism and enlightens tourism scholars on the structure of the field.

This study aims to use organizational fashion to underscore a novel phenomenon in which products, services and practices fade in and out of the tourism/hospitality setting within a specific time frame. Drawing from the fashion theoretical strands in organization research, this paper studies how fashion has been conceptualized, operationalized and then diffused among tourism/hospitality enterprises.

A qualitative case design was used. A total of 37 semistructured in-depth interviews with executives of innovative tourism/hospitality companies (e.g. restaurants, hotels, theme parks and travel agencies) were conducted. This paper focuses on the organizational fashion phenomenon in which organizational trendsetters with creative, “hot” products/services have emerged prominently in the marketplace.

This inquiry illustrates a social phenomenon concerning the organizational fashion setting process by integrating existing production practices among different organizational suppliers in the hospitality sector. Different cases in the study show that fashion consists of a series of hybrid, paradoxical processes. These include conceptualization (conventionalization vs novelty, and personalization vs conformity), operationalization (bundling vs unbundling, and learning vs relearning) and diffusion (framing vs co-framing, and adaptation vs alteration).

Throughout the three continuous processes, service design and identity development for consumption, as well as value creation and knowledge transformation for production, are carried out according to the decision of what is “hot” and what is “out” at a particular time. In essence, fashion helps to explain why hospitality institutions imitate specific innovations to take advantage of popular trends in the consumer market, as well as how such trends vanish eventually.

This research contributes the insight that organizations use fashion as a managerial initiative to translate their organizational goals and improvise nascent products and services. The fashion processes can be triggered by microlevel individual organizations and are spread through a series of social interactions to become macrolevel phenomena in a recurring manner.

Souvenirs have been repeatedly studied as both a subject and as a variable for other tourism-related phenomena, but research into this issue is fragmented. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to analyze souvenir in tourism to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review. Second, this paper contributes to identifying the directions for future search through reviewing existing literature. This study is one of the first papers to offer a systematic overview of the key themes in tourism souvenir research. In addition to the key themes, this paper also offers insights into future souvenir research.

This study aims to explore the good crowding effect among Indian domestic travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the city destination. This study uses the framework of social motivation theory to achieve the objective.

This study adopted a qualitative research design by taking the case of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents, and themes were drawn manually.

The analysis found four themes that create a good crowding effect among domestic tourists, namely, convenience and price; familiarity and place attachment; social affiliation; and safety. The themes indicated that despite the pandemic, and constant occurrences of new variants, Indian domestic tourists’ on-site attitude towards crowding was favourable.

Firstly, the good crowding effect during the pandemic could have been better understood using empirical data. Secondly, the results cannot be generalized, specifically for developed economies.

This study offers practical implications to destination managers and local administrative bodies for whom achieving sustainability in urban tourism has always been concerning. These include developing infrastructural facilities, encouraging cultural activities in city centres and improving the perception of safety to sustain the good crowding effect.

The affective dimension involved in making a travelling decision played a significant role in the post-pandemic phase. While suppliers needed survival, tourists needed social affiliation and escape from the mandated home isolation due to multiple phases of COVID-19 lockdown in India. This study adds value to society by emphasising that the need for social affiliation among travellers remains intact, and the tourism industry should embrace this transformation.

While most of the pandemic-related studies criticised crowd and tourists’ crowd averting behaviour, this study reported that the good crowding effect could also be an outcome owing to different factors. Therefore, this study offers distinctive nuance of tourists’ behaviour in the post-COVID-19 phase, allowing destination managers and tourism stakeholders to re-think their strategies.

There is lack of knowledge about how the existing streets need to be redesigned and the infrastructural changes that need to be made to adopt autonomous vehicles. The purpose of this study is to investigate the infrastructure requirements of autonomous vehicles in terms of (1) lane widths, (2) parking spaces, (3) drop-off zones and (4) other facilities, followed by analyzing them and suggesting changes in the existing urban design of Msheireb Downtown Doha (MDD).

Mixed method of combining both qualitative (secondary research of analyzing the existing data about the urban design guidelines for an autonomous future, observations of the existing infrastructure) and quantitative methods (on-site measurements of pedestrian walkways and road lane widths) is used.

The outcome of the research consists of a series of major infrastructural changes with regard to lane widths, parking spaces, pick-up and drop-off zones and other facilities needed for the deployment of autonomous vehicles.

The results imply that Qatar can benefit by adopting the proposed urban design suggestions for the implementation of autonomous vehicles on the streets of MDD in particular, and smart cities of Qatar and the region in general.

The proposed changes can work as a reference and serve as a possible setting for addressing Autonomous Vehicle preparations in emerging cities.

The proposed urban design changes can be adapted for an autonomous future in emerging cities.