‘Inter-services’: a qualitative phenomenological study of leadership perspectives on guest per-trip engagement within tourist attractions

Tourist attractions appreciate the importance of innovation in their attraction, products and services to entice visitors to attend. Therefore, initiatives to examine areas where attractions could innovate to improve and enhance the visitors’ experience are welcomed. A way of doing this is to seek to understand their specific customer journey, as this could be considered vital for getting an increased insight into opportunities for increased experience for the visitor in exchange for their currency. Using the customer journey model, there may be an opportunity of starting building the relationship with their guests much earlier than presently. An untapped area is where a relationship could start is from the time the visitor purchases a ticket in advance electronically to the time they arrive at the location. This area is called 'inter-services' and can be implemented in any customer journey model. There is an opportunity for attractions and consumers to build trust and a relationship with each other during this stage. Both parties would get the maximum opportunities of increased engagement, experiences and increased transactions which may not necessarily have taken place previously. The aim of my dissertation was to find out tourist attractions’ views regarding ‘inter-services’ and if it is an important area for attractions to concentrate on when starting to build trust and relationships with their visitors in advance. This was done by interviewing senior figures from five high-profile London attractions to find out their views regarding this area. Each attraction interviewed is from a different area of the tourist attraction spectrum, from museums to concert halls, which will give a general overview of what the current situation is regarding this idea of ‘inter-services’. Interacting with dedicated tourism groups on LinkedIn also gave an overview of what the tourism industry feels about this area. A number of different themes were explored such as technology, social media, human resources and marketing. The majority of attractions interviewed were aware of this area, however, all attractions currently had a very basic element of this in place. Overall the ‘inter-services’ in the tourist industry is in an infancy stage. Development depends on ‘INTER-SERVICES’ - Copyright © 2014 Carlton Gajadhar 4 finance and a willingness to experiment with technology as a key factor in delivering this sort of service

Promoção dos parques temáticos nos websites

Mestrado em Gestão e Planeamento em TurismoEsta dissertação pretende identificar os fatores críticos de sucesso em parques temáticos e o modo como estes fatores são explorados na promoção dos parques através dos seus websites. No âmbito do Turismo, a importância dos parques temáticos tem vindo, em geral, a aumentar. A Internet tem assumido uma grande relevância a nível da promoção turística nos últimos tempos, apresentando-se como uma nova oportunidade para os parques temáticos captarem o interesse do consumidor. Com base na revisão da literatura identificaram-se os fatores de sucesso dos parques temáticos e analisaram-se as oportunidades oferecidas pela Internet ao nível da promoção do turismo. Procedeu-se a uma investigação empírica com o objetivo de estudar a promoção a nível dos websites dos parques temáticos mais visitados da Europa, em 2012. Foi feita uma análise do conteúdo dos websites através da contabilização de palavras-chave relacionadas com fatores críticos de sucesso previamente identificadas na revisão da literatura. Os resultados obtidos no presente estudo permitiram identificar o ‘tema’ como o fator de sucesso mais proeminente nos websites dos parques temáticos, seguido das ‘atrações’, ‘preço’ e ‘emoções’. Os fatores com menor evidência ao longo dos websites foram o ‘staff’ e a ‘segurança’. O presente estudo fornece orientações importantes para os responsáveis pela promoção dos parques temáticos, nomeadamente, no que concerne à promoção dos parques através de websites.This dissertation aims to identify the critical success factors in theme parks and the way these factors are explored in the promotion of these parks through websites. In general, the importance of theme parks in the scope of tourism is increasing. Nowadays, the Internet has assumed a great relevance in the tourism promotion, presenting itself as an opportunity for theme parks to capture the consumers’ interest. Based on a literature review the success factors of the theme parks were identified and the opportunities offered by the Internet in the scope of tourism promotion were analyzed. An empirical research aimed to analyze the promotion through the websites of the most visited theme parks in Europe in 2012, was carried out. A content analysis of the websites was performed by counting words related to success factors previously selected based on the literature review. The results obtained in this study identified the ‘theme’ as the most prominent success factor in the theme parks’ websites, followed by ‘attractions’, ‘price’ and ‘emotions’. The factors with less relevance were the ‘staff’ and ‘security’. The present study provides important guidelines for those responsible for the promotion of theme parks, namely, as far as the promotion of theme parks through websites is concerned