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Laws, regulations, and policies, including specific intergovernmental visa agreements, exert significant influences on people’s mobility and cross-border travels. Such forces are powerful in shaping the emerging Asian tourism market. This chapter provides a critical review and analysis of the laws and regulations that have shaped Chinese outbound tourism. It first reviews the evolution of China’s policies and government attitude toward outbound tourism. The three tourism administration regulations promulgated by the State Council are then reviewed and their implications for outbound tourism are discussed. The Tourism Law enacted in 2013 is reviewed and discussed separately due to its significance and supreme power in China’s legal system. Finally, the chapter discusses the impact of intergovernmental visa facilitation arrangements on Chinese outbound tourism.

This study re-evaluates the criteria in the choice of exchange partners from the buyer’s and seller’s perspective within the context of inclusive tour production and reveals priorities to such criteria among the business actors, providing theoretical frameworks for a wider understanding of the criteria within a tourism context. The study is based on a study of cooperative relationships between European tour operators and Norwegian sub-suppliers. It deploys a qualitative research approach (personal interviews) inspired by grounded theory. The resultant data present critical three consideration embracing (1) market capacity (its ability to acquire customers), (2) purchase price and the attaching conditions and (3) confidence/reliability as criteria of selecting the exchange partners. Lastly nine future agendas are suggested in a bid to theory development.

This paper introduces two methodological innovations for qualitative research. We apply these innovations to holistically understand youth peer cultures and improve participant-driven qualitative methodology.

It moves the methodological frontier forward by blending technology with the “go-along” approach used by ethnographers to prioritize participants’ perspectives and experiences within their socio-cultural contexts.

We introduce the youth-centered and participant-driven virtual tours, including a neighborhood tour using Google Maps designed to explore how youth navigate their socio-spatial environments (n = 64; 10–17 year-olds; 2013) and a social media tour designed to explore how youth navigate their networked publics (n = 50; 10–17 year-olds; 2013), both in relation to their local peer cultures.

Applicable to a wide range of research populations, the Google Maps tour and the social media tour give the qualitative researcher additional tools to conduct participant-driven research into youths’ socio-cultural worlds. These two innovations help to address challenges in youth research as well as qualitative research more broadly. We find, for example, that the “go-along” aspect of the virtual tour minimizes the perceived threat of the researcher’s adult status and brings youth participants’ perspectives and experiences to the center of inquiry in the study of local peer cultures.

This paper deals with an issue that has been identified in many markets where there are large numbers of package tourists. In Australia, there have been a number of studies undertaken into the use of a range of dubious business practices employed by Inbound Tour Operators (ITOs), particularly in the Korean market. The cause for this problem is identified as the minimization of the retail price of package tour by transferring part of the cost of the tour to ITOs in the destination country. Under this system, ITOs are paid a daily tour rate below their real costs and are forced to recover losses by employing a range of dubious business practices including forced shopping and kickbacks from shops. The paper models the normal operation of the package tour cycle where no business practices are used and compares this to the Korean package inbound market in Australia where the use of business practices of this nature is widespread.

People have unconscious motives which affects their decision-making and associated behavior. The paper describes a study using thematic apperception test (TAT) to measure how unconscious motives influence travelers' interpretations and preferences toward alternative tours and hotels. Using the TAT, the present study explores the relationships between three unconscious needs: (1) achievement, (2) affiliation, and (3) power and preferences for four package tours (adventure, culture, business, and escape tours) and for seven hotel identities (quality, familiarity, location, price, friendliness, food and beverage, and cleanliness and aesthetics). The present study conducts canonical correlation analyses to examine the relationships between unconscious needs and preferences for package tours and hotel identities using data from 467 university students. The study scores 2,438 stories according to the TAT manual to identify unconscious needs. The findings indicate that (1) people with a high need for affiliation prefer an experience based on cultural values and hotels that are conveniently located, (2) individuals with a high need for power indicate a preference for high prices and good value for their money, and (3) people with a high need for achievement prefer a travel experience with adventure as a motivation. The study findings are consistent with previous research of McClelland (1990), Wilson (2002), and Woodside et al. (2008) in exploring impacts of the unconscious levels of human need.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the experience-centric strategy from the aspect of innovation management, its contribution to designing and managing valuable tourism experiences, especially in context of guided tours.

The study reviews literature on experience-centric approaches and innovation, it discusses the concepts of experience-centric innovation and experience innovation, particularly the role of experience design and market intelligence in experience-centric service processes. It analyzes empirical data from interviews with eleven tour providers.

Creating novel experiences through product innovation was found as the most common type of innovation on frames of guided tours. The group size was identified as an influential feature of the experience design, and imitation has proved to be a major threat. The role of knowledge management and dynamics of knowledge were explored, too, and tour guides were identified as experiential knowledge collectors and/or creators; thus their role in knowledge management is crucial alongside the market intelligence. In contract with theoretical proposition, costumer-driven innovation is not seen by tour providers as a crucial issue in creating memorable experiences.

The chapter studied only traditional guided tours where the customer meets the service provider, and the data was collected only in Budapest.

The chapter emphasized the role of market intelligence and experience design in the process of experience-centric service provision for a successful innovation – in frames of a theoretical model. The empirical results identified some main issues and obstacles in implementation of the experience-centric approach and innovative tools and processes in context of guided tours.

Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings.

Design/methodology/approach: A multi-layer ethnographic research on wine-tourism was employed. The interviews, observations, and field notes were analyzed through the lens of performance theory. A constant comparative method was used to identify emergent patterns, and a hermeneutic method was used to interpret the data.

Findings: The paper builds on performance theory and delineates the ways in which guides co-create intense experiences with participants. It portrays how tour guides often adjust their theatrical scripts to consumers’ unique needs through creative variations: surprise treats, activities, and personal stories. When guides take pleasure in tours, participants do as well, resulting in memorable co-created experiences. The tours feature processes such as pitching and relation-building techniques that call upon identity, morality, and materiality scripts, which ultimately build a sense of social obligation among participants toward tour guides and winery staff.

Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, the paper adds value to the discussion of performance in tourism by suggesting that the service blueprint, architecture, and employee training are only part of the story. This paper shows how consumer engagement and interactions between participants, guides, architecture, and landscapes are essential elements of memorable experiences.

Research limitations: Like other studies, there are limitations to our study as well. Our study only included one-day wine tours. A broader investigation of strategic alliances between tour companies and wineries, and how wine tourists experience and sustain a sense of social obligations to the wineries they visit, will provide further insights into how wine-tourism functions as a co-creative emergent form of consumption involving individuals, products, and processes.

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.

The chapter details the development of one of the most lucrative professional sports for women in the world, while drawing attention to institutionalised issues of racism and sexism in the sport. We discuss the history of women in professional golf, from the roots of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), through the modern-day game where women now play for large sums of money each week. We then shed light on the development of a global tour which started with the likes of Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, and Se Ri Pak dominating a once Americentric tour, and how the LPGA struggled to embrace this cultural shift via the Five Points of Celebrity marketing plan and the contentious English-speaking rule. The discussion then moves to focal point of the chapter: the US media's reaction to long-time American professional golf coach and former radio broadcaster Hank Haney's disparaging comments before and at the conclusion of the 2019 Women's US Open. Twenty-five articles were collected from US golf and sport media outlets and coded resulting in four themes: (1) a downplaying of the remarks, (2) ambivalence to the women's game, (3) a privileging of men, and (4) a global tour. The chapter concludes with remarks that highlight the media's struggle to find the appropriate framing and language to cover the incident and how an intersectional approach reveals that oppression of women on the LPGA Tour exists beyond gender.