Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review of Publications from 2005 to 2007

The tourism and hospitality industries have widely adopted information technology (IT) to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and most importantly to improve service quality and customer experience. This article offers a comprehensive review of articles that were published in 57 tourism and hospitality research journals from 2005 to 2007. Grouping the findings into the categories of consumers, technologies, and suppliers, the article sheds light on the evolution of IT applications in the tourism and hospitality industries. The article demonstrates that IT is increasingly becoming critical for the competitive operations of the tourism and hospitality organizations as well as for managing the distribution and marketing of organizations on a global scale

What makes an exceptional cuisine that worth a special journey?

The food tourism supply chain includes as consumption activities "Fine dining" and as classification schemes the "Michelin star system". Despite the growing interest in luxury dining, there are only a few studies published about the high-end of the restaurant industry. The main objective of study two was to identify the main dimensions of the Michelin Stared Restaurant experiences as revealed by customers’ narratives shared in social media websites in the post-purchase phase of their experience. Moreover, this dissertation aims at studying whether the dimensions of the experience vary according to market segments (client type, gender and age) an according to value ratings. Mixed content analysis methods, combining Leximancer with narrative analysis, were used to identify the main themes in restaurant reviews. Moreover, the main themes were graphically displayed in a concept map. The results were based into two samples, from Portuguese two-star restaurants, and from three star restaurants worldwide. The analysis revealed that 12 main themes describe the fine dining experience, as follows: "restaurant", "food service", "menu", "chef", "wine", "meal", "dining", "staff", "feel", "worth", "dessert" and "delicious". The result also revealed that fine dining customers are not a homogeneous group and that demographics proved to be effective market segmentation variables. Moreover, high and low levels of value ratings are linked with different themes of the experience. From a theoretical point of view this dissertation is expected to add to the literature of food tourism by providing a better understanding of the dimensions of the dining and provides evidence of the relevance of market segmentation variables. Managerial implications were also drawn.A cadeia de valor do turismo gastronómico inclui atividades de consumo, como as refeições de luxo, e o sistema de classificação como o Sistema de Estrelas Michelin. Apesar do crescente interesse no segmento de restauração de luxo, poucos estudos foram publicados sobre este segmento na indústria de restauração. O principal objetivo deste estudo é identificar as principais dimensões associadas à experiência num restaurante com Estrelas Michelin, com base das narrativas partilhadas em plataformas de redes sociais na fase pós-consumo do processo de compra. Adicionalmente, esta dissertação tem como objetivo estudar se as dimensões da experiência variam de acordo com o segmento de mercado (tipo de cliente, sexo e idade) e de acordo com as avaliações do valor da experiência. Para identificar os principais temas nos comentários "online" são usados métodos de análise de conteúdo misto, que combinam o "Leximancer" com uma análise narrativa. Adicionalmente, os principais temas são apresentados graficamente num mapa conceptual. Os resultados derivam de duas amostras, de restaurantes Michelin com duas estrelas localizados em Portugal e de restaurantes Michelin com três estrelas localizados em diversos países. A análise revelou a existência de 12 temas que descrevem a experiência de refeição de luxo, nomeadamente: restaurante, serviço de refeição, menu, "chef", vinho, refeição, jantar, "staff", sentir, valer a pena, sobremesa e delicioso. Os resultados também revelaram que os consumidores de restaurantes de luxo não são um grupo homogéneo e que as variáveis demográficas são variáveis efetivas de segmentação de mercado. Para além disso, "ratings" elevados e baixos estão associados a diferentes temas da experiência. Numa perspetiva teórica, espera-se que esta dissertação forneça uma melhor compreensão das dimensões da experiência das refeições de luxo e forneça evidencia da relevância de variáveis de segmentação. São também apresentadas implicações para a gestão

Access beyond geographic accessibility: understanding opportunities to human needs in a physical-virtual world

Access to basic human needs, such as food and healthcare, is conceptually understood to be comprised of multiple spatial and aspatial dimensions. However, research in this area has traditionally been explored with spatial accessibility measures that almost exclusively focus on just two dimensions. Namely, the availability of resources, services, and facilities, and the accessibility or ease to which locations of these opportunities can be reached with existing land-use and transport systems under temporal constraints and considering individual characteristics of people. These calculated measures are insufficient in holistically capturing available opportunities as they ignore other components, such as the emergence of virtual space to carry out activities and interactions enabled by modern information and communication technologies (ICT). Human dynamics today exist in a hybrid physical-virtual space, and recent research has highlighted the importance of understanding ICT, individual behavior, local context, social relations, and human perceptions in identifying opportunities available to people. However, there lacks a holistic approach that relates these different aspects to access research. This dissertation addresses this gap by proposing a new conceptual framework for the geography of access for various kinds of human needs, using food access as a case study to illustrate how the proposed framework can be applied to address critical societal issues. An interactive multispace geographic information system (GIS) web application is developed to better understand and visualize individual potential food access based on the conceptual framework. This dissertation contributes to the body of research with a proposed conceptual framework of access in a hybrid physical-virtual world, integration of various big and small data sources to reveal information relating to the access of people, and novel development of a multi-space GIS to analyze and visualize access to opportunities

Social support, social capital and online community e-loyalty: an empirical study

Online communities, as an essential manifestation of online social relationships, sociality factors (including social support factors and social relationship factors, etc.) ought to facilitate the formation of community trust and community satisfaction. However, although the existing literature has explored the underlying mechanisms of online community trust and satisfaction formation, few studies implemented research from the integrated sociality perspectives. In this thesis, we integrate social capital theory and social support theory to consider social capital and social support as important antecedent social factors in forming community trust and community satisfaction, which influence users' trust and satisfaction in online communities. Community trust and satisfaction further promote community loyalty. Specifically, this thesis scrutinizes the influence of three levels of social support factors such as information support, emotional support, and human-computer network management support and three kinds of social capital such as structure, cognition, and relationship to online community trust and satisfaction. Based on the proposed research model, 430 online community users' survey data were collected through an empirical questionnaire and the research model was tested through the partial least squares structural equation model method. The results of the thesis suggest that social support factors, including information support, emotional support, and interpersonal network interaction support, and social capital factors including structural capital, relational capital, and cognitive capital significantly affect community users' loyalty not only directly but also indirectly through enhancing community users' trust and satisfaction. Thus, users' trust and satisfaction with the community are significant mediating variables.Nas comunidades online, como uma importante manifestação das relações sociais online, os fatores de socialidade (incluindo fatores de apoio social e fatores de relacionamento social) devem facilitar a formação de confiança e satisfação da comunidade. No entanto, embora a literatura existente tenha explorado os mecanismos subjacentes à formação da confiança e da satisfação da comunidade online, poucos estudos consideraram a perspectiva social de forma integrada. Nesta tese, integramos a teoria do capital social e a teoria do suporte social para considerar o capital social e o suporte social como importantes fatores sociais antecedentes na formação da confiança e satisfação da comunidade, que influenciam a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores em comunidades online. A confiança e a satisfação da comunidade promovem ainda mais a lealdade da comunidade. Especificamente, esta tese estuda a influência de três níveis de fatores de suporte social - suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de gestão da relação homen-computador - e três tipos de capital social - estrutura, cognição e relacionamento - na confiança e satisfação da comunidade online. Com base no modelo de pesquisa proposto, 430 observações de utilizadores de comunidades online foram recolhidos através de um questionário. O modelo de pesquisa foi testado através de métodos de equação estruturais. Os resultados da tese relevam que fatores de suporte social, incluindo suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de interação de rede interpessoal, e fatores de capital social, incluindo capital estrutural, capital relacional e capital cognitivo, afetam significativamente a lealdade dos utilizadores da comunidade, não apenas diretamente mas também indiretamente, aumentando a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores da comunidade; a confiança e a satisfação dos usuários com a comunidade são variáveis mediadoras importantes

Consumer participation and the trust transference process in using online recommendation agents

Online product recommendation agents (hereafter RAs) can provide important benefits to consumers. But whether consumers trust RAs and integrate an RA\u27s recommendations into their product choices has not yet been examined. Nor has there been research on whether different levels of consumer participation in using RAs lead to different levels of trust in the RA. Using an experimental design that combined the benefits of a field study with those of a lab study, active consumer participation in using an RA was found to have increased consumers\u27 trust in the RA, which in turn increased intentions to purchase based on the RA\u27s recommendations. The study also proposed and found support for a trust transference process, hitherto not tested in the RA context, wherein trust in the website was a key driver for trust in its RA and the RA\u27s recommendations. These findings extend the extant literature on RAs as well as research in offline contexts on consumer participation and the trust transference process. Managerial implications and directions for future research are also provided

Understanding electronic word-of-mouth in tourism in the social media era

In recent decades, social media has fundamentally changed how communication takes place in business. It has contributed to the evolution of the Internet from a broadcasting medium to a participatory and interactive platform which allows users to generate and share information and become part of the media. For instance, social media has enabled the creation and exchange of electronic word-ofmouth (eWOM). We have witnessed the popularity of eWOM in travel and tourism industry. EWOM behaviour among individuals and the impact of eWOM on organizations have become important research focuses in eWOM research. However, the extant research has ignored the important function of social media platforms as both hedonic and social-oriented information systems (IS) for users, and few researchers have tried to explain eWOM use from the social, hedonic, and technology perspectives. eWOM application from the organizational perspective has also attracted the attention of researchers. Most prior studies in this field have focused primarily on the impact of eWOM on business performance and organizations’ eWOM strategy. However, the understanding of how social media platforms can be used to co-create value with customers and how eWOM can help organizations to engage customers is still fragmented. What is more, the understanding of the interplay between an organization’s activity and social media technology remains obscure. The objective of this study is threefold: 1) to explore eWOM use and generation behaviours among individuals by taking eWOM content, as well as the social media platform—that is, the channel of eWOM generation and use—into consideration; 2) to explore the value creation of social media and eWOM in organizations; and 3) to examine how social media and eWOM connect individuals and organizations and uncover the myth of how eWOM benefits both individuals and travel organizations. A combination of quantitative survey research and qualitative case study is used in this study. In particular, quantitative survey research method was used to explore the eWOM use among individual user’s to solve the research questions regarding the determinants of travellers’ eWOM use and generation behaviours. Qualitative case study method was used to solve the questions regarding how can tourism organizations use social media to co-create value with customers and to engage with customers via eWOM communication. This research includes empirical data collected from individual tourists in China and tourism organizations from both China and Finland. This study contributes to the understanding of eWOM in tourism context. Specifically, it contributes to the understanding of customers’ eWOM behavior by taking the social and hedonic functions into consideration, and sheds light on the understanding of eWOM application in organizations. This study also integrates eWOM research from both individual and organization perspectives and helps to explain the eWOM interplay between them. From practical view, the results of this study have important implications for tourism e-service practitioners in their understanding of customers’ decision making process, and the strategy to facilitate customers’ propensity of eWOM generation behavior. It also helps eWOM website designers to make successful eWOM websites. The findings also shed lights on e-service providers on how to co-create value with customers via social media platform and how to engage customer via eWOM communication.Sosiaalinen media on ratkaisevasti muuttanut tapaa jolla liikeviestintää hoidetaan nykyvuosikymmenellä. Se on muuttanut Internetin yksisuuntaisesta julkaisukanavasta yhteisölliseksi ja interaktiiviseksi alustaksi joka mahdollistaa käyttäjien informaation tuottamisen ja jakamisen, heidän tulemisensa osaksi mediaa. Esimerkiksi, sosiaalinen media on mahdollistanut eWOM-ilmiön, jolla tarkoitetaan asiakkaiden ja käyttäjien jostain kohteesta tekemien arvioiden antamista ja jakamista sähköisillä alustoilla. eWOM on osoittautunut erittäin suosituksi matkailun ja turismin alalla viime vuosina. eWOM-yksilökäyttäytyminen sekä se miten eWOM vaikuttaa organisaatioihin ovat tulleet tärkeiksi tutkimuskohteiksi eWOM-tutkimuksessa. Kuitenkin nykyinen tutkimus on jättänyt ottamatta huomioon sen että sosiaalisen median alustat toimivat myös mielihyvää tuottavina ja sosiaalisesti orientoituneina tietojärjestelminä käyttäjille, ja vain vähäinen tutkimus on yrittänyt selvittää eWOMkäyttöä sosiaalisesta, hedonisesta ja teknologisesta näkökulmasta. eWOM tutkimus organisatorisesta näkökulmasta keskittyy pääosin siihen miten eWOM vaikuttaa liiketoimintaan ja organisaation eWOM-strategiaan. Kuitenkin sen ymmärtäminen miten sosiaalisen median alustoja voidaan käyttää arvon yhteiseen tuottamiseen ja kuinka eWOM voi auttaa organisaatioita sitouttamaan asiakkaan on yhä sirpaleista. Lisäksi, organisaation toiminnan ja sosiaalisen median teknologian vuorovaikutuksen ymmärtäminen on yhä häilyvää. Tällä tutkimuksella on kolme tavoitetta: 1) tutkia eWOM-käyttöä ja tiedon tuottamista yksilötasolla ottamalla eWOM-sisältö samoin kuin sosiaalisen median alusta – kanava eWOMin tuottamiseen ja jakamiseen – huomioon; 2) tutkia eWOMin sosiaalisen median arvontuottoa organisaatiossa; 3) tutkia miten sosiaalinen media ja eWOM yhdistävät yksilöitä ja organisaatioita, jotta voitaisiin selvittää myytti siitä miten eWOM hyödyntää sekä yksilöitä että organisaatioita. Tässä tutkimuksessa käytettiin kvantitatiivisen kyselytutkimuksen ja kvalitatiivisen tapaustutkimuksen yhdistelmää. Erityisesti, kvantitatiivista kyselytutkimusta käytettiin tutkimusmenetelmänä tutkittaessa yksilöiden eWOM-käyttöä, jotta voitiin vastata tutkimuskysymykseen koskien matkustajien eWOMgeneroinnin ja –käytön keskeisiä suureita. Laadullista tapaustutkimusta käytettiin tutkimusmenetelmänä selvitettäessä sitä miten organisaatiot käyttävät sosiaalista mediaa tuottaakseen lisäarvoa asiakkaiden kanssa ja miten ne sitouttavat asiakkaat eWOM-viestinnän keinoin. Tämä tutkimus sisältää empiiristä dataa jota on kerätty sekä yksittäisiltä matkustajilta Kiinassa sekä matkailualan yrityksiltä sekä Kiinassa että Suomessa. Tämä tutkimus lisää ymmärrystä eWOM-ilmiöstä matkailussa. Erityisesti se tuottaa tietoa asiakkaiden eWOM-käyttäytymisestä ottamalla eWOMin sosiaaliset ja hedoniset aspektit huomioon, ja tuottaa tietoa eWOMin käytön ymmärtämiseksi organisaatioissa. Tämä tutkimus integroi eWOM-tutkimuksen sekä yksilön että organisaation näkökulmasta ja auttaa ymmärtämään näkökulmien yhteydet. Käytännön näkökulmasta tämän tutkimuksen tuloksilla on tärkeitä viestejä sähköisen palvelutuotannon toteuttajille kun he pyrkivät ymmärtämään asiakkaan päätöksentekoa. Se myös auttaa eWOM-suunnittelijoita tekemään onnistuneita eWOM-verkkopalveluita. Tutkimustulokset myös kertovat verkkopalveluiden tuottajille miten tuottaa lisäarvoa yhdessä asiakkaiden kanssa sosiaalisessa mediassa ja miten sitouttaa asiakkaat eWOM-kommunikaation avulla

MORE THAN FRIENDS: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON WORD OF MOUTH, BRAND LOYALTY AND PURCHASE INTENTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL HOTELS

Purpose of the study: Increases in global travel have led to the internationalization of the hospitality industry. Though a number of applications of social media have been examined in the hospitality industry, few of them integrate key dimensions of fan pages into a measurement model in the same time, including interactivity (INT), engagement (ENG), trust (TRT), friendship (FRP), word-of-mouth (WOM) and purchase intention (PI). Methodology: Based on 408 valid fans from Facebook fan pages of 24 International hotels in Taiwan, the empirical results show that ENG, FRP, TRT, and WOM all act as partial mediators in their impact on post-purchase behaviors. Based on Taiwanese International hotels, this study attempts to explore why these owners want more than just a friend. Main findings: The empirical results show that ENG, FRP, TRT, and WOM all act as partial mediators in their impact on post-purchase behaviors. The study demonstrates the mechanisms behind utilizing social media to build solid long term potentially profitable relationships with hotel clientele. Originality/value: We propose and empirically investigate an integrated theoretical framework to more fully capture and describe the consumer’s behavior in the brand community. Our model of the social media process is informed by an “S-O-R” view from consumer behavior, where INT and ENG help create the situation which acts as a stimulus for FRP and TRT which in turn influence BL, WOM, and further PIs. Here, we see the pull force (website INT) as an influence on the brand-consumer relationship (i.e., FRP) through a push force (fan’s ENG). Together and along with the brand content they combine to create the consumer stimulus