Search results

Online reputation management (ORM) plays a significant role in the tourism industry. Tourists are more and more interested to express their opinions about their experiences/satisfaction not only with their friends but also on social media. ORM is largely used not only by tourist destinations but also by other companies operating in the tourism industry. This chapter aims to draw attention to the importance of intermediaries in tourism, their reputation in general, and especially their ORM and its specifics. This contribution also characterizes different types of intermediaries and their different roles in the distribution process of tourism services. These roles are important and can be even more significant in the “new normal” post-COVID-19 time. In the scientific literature and research, there is not much attention given to intermediaries as a whole and even less to their ORM and its specific solutions. But practical contributions can be found. Due to the specific activities and roles of different types of intermediaries, also their reputation is influenced not only by tourists but also by their suppliers. Their ORM has also some specifics and needs specific solutions. Their reputation is depending not only on customers' satisfaction with their own services but also on the reputation of tourism service providers, whose services they offer and mediate either individually or in the form of their own product, e.g., package tours. Specific attention in this chapter is given to intermediaries such as OTAs (Online Travel Agencies/Agents) and tour operators. At some time, these two types of intermediaries help to increase the reputation of tourism services providers, e.g., hotels. The chapter describes the situation in the field of intermediaries with a conceptual model, their ORM, and summarizes its specifics.

This paper aims to examine the impact of other group members on the travel experiences of Chinese tourists participating in domestic package tours.

Based on the critical incident technique, usable responses were obtained from 253 tourists regarding the influence of other group members on their travel experiences in the same group package tour (GPT).

The results show that the travel experiences of Chinese tourists on a domestic package tour are affected by three general factors, namely, appearance, behaviors, and language of other group members.

This research mainly involves samples of young tourists. The findings may not be able to generalize to elderly tourists. Future studies may involve samples from various age cohorts.

The findings offer new insights and directions for GPT operators and tour guides to improve tourism management and tourist experiences.

This study contributes to tourism literature about customer-to-customer interaction by identifying the major categories of other customers’ characteristics or behaviors that may positively or negatively influence a GPT tourist’s travel experience.

This study enriches the existing literature by investigating the attributes of other group members that may affect the travel experiences of a domestic GPT participant. Tourism firms can formulate better strategies and staff training to enhance tourists’ travel experiences.

This chapter sets out to analyze the impact of the Covid-19 virus on the holidays provided by UK group tour operators (GTOs) and the implications for overtourism. With tourism arrivals expected to fall by up to 30% in 2020 and a slow return to pre-Covid-19 levels for 2021 and beyond, the industry is possibly suffering the loss of up to 100 million travel-related jobs (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2020). GTOs will need to assess and possibly change the way they do business to initially survive and subsequently build up tourism numbers in the coming years.

This chapter identifies how GTOs could alter their holiday proposition to reassure travellers including the challenges of operating international tours when airlines have reduced capacity, the need to consider alternative age demographics who are more likely to travel and assessing existing itineraries to visit rural or small town locations rather than cities where numerous itineraries travel to now.

Finally, this chapter discusses and describes the significance of the findings with insights about possible opportunities based upon the approaches taken by various countries to target potential holidaymakers and the need to create a ‘crisis management plan’ for current and future countries. This may result in operational adjustments to meet these new requirements including the changing outlook of potential customers and the possibility of offering domestic tours to meet the current demand.

The pilgrimage and tourist industry, which brings just under two million people from around the world to Israel and the Occupied Territories every year, is both a microcosm and perpetuator of the political tensions which divide Jews and Palestinians. This paper investigates the detrimental impact of religious tourism to the Holy Land. Different types of western Protestant pilgrimage are highlighted, as well as categories of tour operator. The consequences of this kind of tourism for the indigenous Palestinian Christians are examined, together with the ethical issues determined by the dominant political force in the region ‐ the Israeli Government. Tour operators and tour group leaders face significant ethical dilemmas in seeking either political balance or religious solidarity, and these are explored. The conclusions address some of the characteristics of what might be termed “responsible pilgrimages” to the Holy Land. This research is based on 12 years’ experience of leading pilgrimages and five years as a director of a travel company, Highway Journeys. The empirical data is drawn from surveys of tour groups, together with interviews with tour group leaders and operators.

The travel industry in Belgium has gone through a number of notable changes in recent decades. One of the most important trends is the growth of the organised travel market in Belgium. Belgian holidaymakers are turning increasingly to travel intermediaries in general and to travel agents and tour operators in particular. The successive surveys of Belgian travel behaviour carried out by WES since the early eighties illustrate the increase in the number of long holidays booked through a tour operator. These rose from 900,000 in 1985 to 2,300,000 in 1996 and around 2,700,000 today.

This study aims to examine stakeholder interests in and influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation in hotels through an instrumental stakeholder theory lens.

Semi-structured interviews with 54 managers from several sectors of the Cyprus tourism industry were undertaken using purposive sampling.

There is a dominance of supply-chain stakeholder interests which in turn outline the CSR orientation of hotels, whereas stakeholder influence, largely shaped by the interdependent, multi-faceted nature of the tourism industry, conditions the implementation of CSR in hotels. Interestingly, stakeholder influence on CSR in hotels is not corresponding to stakeholders’ perceived saliency, indicating that stakeholder analysis needs to move beyond the consideration of salient stakeholders’ interests.

Although the focus of this study has been the perceptions of tourism stakeholders in Cyprus, the exploratory approach adopted in the study sets the ground for further research to consider stakeholder issues regarding CSR in hotels from an instrumental perspective. In addition, insights from this study might inform practitioners in similar destinations.

In encouraging a holistic approach to strategic CSR in hotels, this study contributes a framework of stakeholder roles, emanating from stakeholder responsibility and stakeholder involvement in CSR in the hotel sector that will be of interest to both academics and practitioners.

This paper aims to explore the key elements and dynamic formation mechanisms involved in the company identity construction during multicompany identification.

This study adopted a longitudinal single case study method, selected a representative company as the study case and analyzed the interactive practice of identity construction between the company and its external stakeholders based on the theory of organizational identity and sensemaking.

This study finds that the process of company identity construction for external stakeholders involves six elements. Companies mainly use a highly controlled, equality and interaction model to develop identity for a single stakeholder. Company identity is based on the company’s core identity claims and is formed by gradually integrating and cooperating with the identity claims of different stakeholders. Meeting the self-defining needs of stakeholders is a key driving force behind the evolution of company identity.

This study offers practical implications for companies to pursue and construct multicompany identity. For different types of external stakeholders, companies can adopt different identity sensemaking models. To build a new company identity, a company needs to do more on the basis of identity insights to break cognitive constraints and build new identity claim. Companies need to integrate new identity claims with the original identity claims. If different identity claims conflict or are difficult to reconcile, it may damage their original identity claims and companies need to evaluate the trade-offs.

This study expands the concept of company identity construction from the individual perspective to organizational identity and contributes to research in relationship marketing. This study identifies the key elements of company identity construction with multistakeholder participation and contributes to theory building in company identity research. The results of this study reveal the company identity construction mechanism for different external stakeholders and the dynamic formation process of multicompany identity.

A group of Japanese tourists arrive at a 4-star hotel, situated in the city center of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Upon arrival, the Danish-born Japanese tour guide is the first to enter the hotel, while leaving his group of tourists in the bus. He then spends about 15 minutes with the front desk agent, checking details of the stay. Finally, after he is satisfied, he assists the tourists with checking in to their rooms. Afterwards, the guide overhears the front desk agent discussing and venting about the “annoying and time-consuming” process with a coworker in Danish. What should the hotel management do?

The purpose of this paper is to get a better understanding of the influence of terrorism on risk perception and attitudes of the German travel behavior toward Turkey as a destination in crisis, which has been considered one of the biggest losers for 2016.

The research process involved an online self-administered method created with one of the leading research and web-based survey tools called Qualtrics. This tool has been considered useful to reach a wider target, the questionnaire filled in by 305 respondents.

The findings revealed a strong tendency of a low safety perception among the sample toward Turkey. Furthermore, a large proportion indicated a strong unlikelihood of traveling to the country within the upcoming 12 months independently of a past travel experience. In addition, Turkey and Egypt were the countries perceived as most unsafe among the mentioned destinations.

The majority of the respondents of the study were aged between 50 and 59 years and were employed as commercial employee, office or administration workers. The outcomes might be different for a higher sample size with a tendency of various demographic characteristic such as age and profession. Furthermore, the study should be repeated while focusing on respondents with accompanied children on holidays, which only made up a minority for the present research study.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to examine the influence of terrorism on risk perception and attitudes of the German travel behavior toward Turkey and their risk reduction strategies/preventive measures.