Search results

Sustainable tourism is becoming more popular all over the world. Eco-friendly (green) hotels are properties that are friendly to the environment and are becoming increasingly popular among green travellers. Electronic word-of-mouth is a technique of communicating with consumers in order to share their experiences, and it is a significant marketing tool for hotels. This paper aims to identify the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists visiting eco-friendly hotels, and which of these themes were associated with satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings.

The research used qualitative content analyses to analyse 1,202 user-generated content of the top 10 hotels in UK shared by guests on an online platform.

The analyses revealed nine themes in descriptions of airline travel experiences. These are “hotel amenities”, “services”, “location”, “staff”, “eco” (eco-friendly activities), “value” and “recommend/revisit” (intentions). Negative comments are associated with the “bathroom”, “mattress”, “water”, “bed”, “price”, “shower”, “Wi-Fi” and “restaurant” concepts.

This study differs from previous research in which it aims to address a void in the literature on the shortcomings of research focused on finding the dominant themes expressed in online reviews by tourists visiting eco-friendly hotels, and it does so using data mining approach.

The study investigated the strategic contribution of COVID-19 preventive measures in building corporate reputation in the hospitality industry when mediated with ethical branding.

The hypothesized model was developed and tested using a cross-sectional research design among 404 customers of hospitality organizations (i.e. hotels and restaurants). The collected data were analyzed quantitatively using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that COVID-19 preventive measures are important drivers in building or rebuilding corporate reputation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also showed that ethical branding acts as a mediator between COVID-19 preventive measures and corporate reputation.

The study used a nonprobability sampling technique, i.e. convenience sampling and a cross-sectional survey research design. It is therefore necessary to be careful when generalizing the findings.

The study recommends that managers in hospitality organizations should ensure proper and effective compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures during service delivery. Among others, the study highlighted areas for further study to include an investigation using a longitudinal approach to observe behavioral changes toward COVID-19 preventive measures and their consequences on the overall corporate reputation of the hospitality industry. This recommendation is based on the fact that, currently, new cases and mortality rates have decreased considerably. As a result, customers in the hospitality industry have started to have different opinions about complying with COVID-19 preventive measures.

The study is among new endeavors to investigate drivers that can rebuild and sustain the corporate reputation of hospitality organizations during a pandemic like COVID-19.

The main purpose of this research paper is to generate a holistic bibliometric study of the tourism industry and COVID-19 fields, to further investigate the current interests and trends emerging from scientific collaboration and thematic analysis and to identify research gaps that indicate future research directions.

This study conducts several analyses, which include the co-authorship and social network analysis, co-citation and keyword co-occurrence knowledge structures. The authors generate a knowledge map of the leading articles and link them with previous literature to elucidate the debates and consensus in research on COVID-19 and tourism.

Research interests concentrate in the USA, China, Europe and the Oceania areas, so more cross-continental collaborations are expected among them and with other regions. Popular topics are tourism sustainable transformation, crisis management and multidisciplinary fields like tourism, hospitality, information technology and environmental sciences. This paper also identifies underexplored topics for future investigation on the social, environmental, cultural and governance dimensions of sustainable tourism.

This paper contributes to guiding tourism researchers in identifying and finding publication references and future collaborations. Moreover, the investigation of knowledge structures could be beneficial for scholars hoping to broaden the current understanding of this field and discover potential for future tourism research, especially in the global pandemic and other severe health crises.

This study enriches the existing literature in the fields of tourism and the pandemic and highlights current interests and research trends exploring scientific collaboration, thematic analysis and knowledge mapping.

As Chinese Generation Z consumers have distrust over traditional advertising and marketing, this study focuses on user-generated content (UGC) travel apps to demonstrate the structural relationship among the expertise of amateur information publisher, interactive atmosphere, information quality, expectation confirmation, perceived trust, experiential satisfaction and switching intention.

This study carried out a questionnaire-based survey among Chinese Generation Z consumers and obtained 356 valid questionnaire copies that were analyzed with the structural equation.

The expertise of amateur information publisher and the interactive atmosphere of UGC travel apps have positive effects on perceived trust; expectation confirmation and perceived trust have positive effects on experiential satisfaction, and experiential satisfaction has negative effects on switching intention.

The results should encourage UGC travel app developers to use visual effects so as to achieve a higher quality of information, foster a cordial interactive atmosphere and enhance the expertise of information publishers by selecting the best candidate, thus spurring the design of marketing activities popular among the Chinese Generation Z consumers.

This study argues that new-generation consumers have their specific appeals and in the tourist market. It explores the UGC travel apps, which are popular among Generation Z consumers in order to deepen marketing personnel's understanding of the relationship among the expertise of amateur information publisher, interactive atmosphere, information quality, expectation confirmation, perceived trust, experiential satisfaction and switching intention.

This study aims to examine the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels in service ecosystems, analyzing the case of a tourist destination.

A questionnaire was designed based on previously validated scales. The questionnaire was distributed through the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. The survey yielded 1,476 valid responses for three types of destinations. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were performed to test the hypotheses.

Aggregate service experience and memorable customer experience (MCE) in service ecosystems are determined by customer experiences at a dyadic level. Service experience at the ecosystem level is formed from ordinary experiences at the actor level, while MCE is formed from extraordinary experiences at the dyadic level. The type of ecosystem moderates the relationships between the variables but does not alter the importance of each of them.

The relationship between the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels of service ecosystems (dyadic vs aggregate) is addressed. A relationship is established between the ordinary and extraordinary character of experiences and their memorability at the ecosystem level.

This study explores the role of international tour operators as the agents assuming the governance and the upgrading of the tourism global value chains (TGVCs), with a special focus on their influence on the development of technological capabilities (TCs) in the hotel industry.

The data used in this article originates from a survey carried out in 2016 on Spanish small and medium-sized hotel companies. An ordinal regression analysis is employed to test the hypotheses proposed in this research.

This study finds that tour operators exert a positive effect on the technological upgrading process in the hotel industry by stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to invest in TCs. The causal mechanisms through which these effects take place differ across the various stages of the relationship between hotel companies and tour operators.

The results have implications both for hotel management in terms of how hotels take advantage of technological upgrading to become more competitive, and for public administrations in terms of what measures can boost the development of hotel TCs in order to increase their added value.

To date, very few studies have analysed the tourism sector based on the influence on the development of TCs of SME hotels by combining GVC concepts and the resource-based view. It is also the first time that the causal mechanisms are shown to explain such influences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on internal auditing as the pandemic forced individual internal auditors and audit teams to conduct the work remotely.

Five in-depth semi-structured interviews of internal audit experts that work in German retail and manufacturing industry were conducted between February and April 2021.

The authors find that the importance of audit technologies did not change significantly due to the pandemic, as audit technologies were already an integral part of internal audits. Interestingly, the transition to remote audits occurred with remarkable speed and efficiency. The presence of well-functioning information and communication technologies emerges as a critical facilitator for effective remote communication, collaboration and data exchange. However, audit technologies can only partially replace physical on-site examinations and human interaction. The main challenges of remote audits are related to the auditing of non-digitalized processes and the inherent limitations of auditee interviews and interactions.

The authors' interview approach does not allow to cover variations between industries and between countries. While internal audit experts provided notably consistent responses during the interviews, acknowledging that the sample size is very small is important.

The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a catalyst for increased digitalization and technology adoption within the realm of internal auditing. A hybrid approach combining the benefits of on-site and remote audits is expected to prevail in the future.

The paper is among the first to document the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of internal auditing using field-based research methods.