Community Involvement in Tourism Entrepreneurship: A Case Study in Tioman Island, Malaysia

The tourism sector is one of the major economic contributors to most countries. Island tourism is one of the important tourism products of a country and is able to catalyse socio-economic development for the local communities. In Malaysia, studies on local entrepreneurship development in Tioman Island has not been given much attention by researchers. To fill this gap, this study aims to provide information on the field of entrepreneurial tourism in Tioman Island. The main objective of this study is to identify the characteristics of the island community as a tourism entrepreneur and to analyse the problems and challenges faced by the island's tourism entrepreneurs. The findings show that the majority of entrepreneurs are male, aged between 25 to 44, receive education until secondary school and married. Most of the local tourism entrepreneurs run the food and beverage business and manage their businesses for 11 to 15 years and earn a monthly income of RM2001 to RM4000. The local tourism operators also face a few problems such as capital and finance, marketing, business management and infrastructure. At the same time, the entrepreneurs also expect collaboration from the government to play an important role in advancing the island's tourism industry. At the same time, local tourism entrepreneurs also expect cooperation from the government and other authorities to play a role in developing the island's tourism industry

Tourism marketing in rural contexts – the potential of wine tourism in the Dão wine region

Wine tourism represents a particularly interesting activity that can improve the development of rural areas, especially less developed ones. Indeed, the opening of wineries to visitors is a marketing tool for increasing their direct wine sales, but it also constitutes a diversification strategy for the winery’s core business and for rural wine destinations, regarding both tourism and the overall local economy. However, to contribute to these dynamics, wineries need to conduct an integrated and sustainable marketing approach. This study researches marketing actions developed by wineries involved in wine tourism within the Dão wine region, located in the Region Centro of Portugal. Results show that wineries have difficulty promoting their tourist product and fail to establish a fruitful collaboration with other entities. The results may help identify strategies aiming at more successful management of rural wine tourism businesses and destinations.This study is developed in the scope of the research project TWINE – PTDC/GES-GCE/32259/2017 – POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032259, funded by the ERDF through the COMPETE 2020 – Operational Programme Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI), and national funds (OPTDC/GES-GCE/32259/2017 -E), through the FCT/MCTESinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring the experiences of instructors teaching massive open online courses in tourism and hospitality: a mixed methods approach

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have existed as a disruptive educational phenomenon for nine years. Grounded in the roots of distance education, open education, Open Educational Resources, and OpenCourseWare, MOOCs have now survived various critics and have continued growing globally. Reports about MOOCs in both the press and scholarly publications began to grow significantly in 2013 (Sánchez-Vera, Leon Urrutia, & Davis, 2015; Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017) and, since then, more and more researchers have joined the discussions, developing them to explore various new topics. To contribute to the literature of MOOC studies, this doctoral thesis begins with an in-depth analysis of the background, history, growth, and vision, and proposes a tentative definition of MOOCs. Meanwhile, by conducting bibliometric research to review MOOC studies conducted between 2015 and 2017, this thesis fills in the gap that has existed due to a lack of systematic reviews of MOOC literature since 2015. The results of the bibliometric research summarised the relevant MOOC research into nine categories, including learner focused, commentary and concepts, case reports or evaluations, pedagogy, curriculum and design, course object focused, provider focused, technology, systematic review of literature, and learning analytics and big data. They also suggested a limited amount of provider focused research, which became the research interest and focus of this thesis. In the centre of the Europe, Swiss universities have marched forward in the MOOC movement, together with other over 550 universities (Shah, 2016) around the world. Università della Svizzera italiana (USI; Lugano, Switzerland), a Swiss public university, became a MOOC provider in 2015 and offered the first MOOC in the topic of eTourism: eTourism: Communication Perspectives. This doctoral thesis is closely related to this university-level initiative, which was dedicated to producing the first pilot MOOC at USI. Therefore, the cases chosen by this thesis are positioned in the discipline of tourism and hospitality. The first MOOC with a large audience taught artificial intelligence in 2011 (Zancanaro & Domingues, 2017). Nowadays, MOOCs have broken the barrier of space and time to educate the masses in a wide range of subjects. However, the provision of MOOCs in the subject of tourism and hospitality did not appear until 2013, when two MOOCs from two American universities became available. In the past four years since these MOOCs were launched, the number of tourism and hospitality MOOCs available in the market has remained limited (Tracey, Murphy, & Horton-Tognazzini, 2016). This scarcity contradicts the fact that tourism and hospitality is the field that contributes the most to the employment of the global workforce. Pressing problems, such as high turnover, seasonality, and new global challenges have urged for solutions to quickly training people working in this area to become available (Cantoni, Kalbaska, & Inversini, 2009). A call for more studies about tourism and hospitality MOOCs has emerged. The combined reality of the lack of studies regarding MOOC providers, opportunities for first-hand experience of producing a tourism MOOC in a university, and the deficiency in both the research and practises of tourism and hospitality MOOCs has inspired the direction of this thesis in regard to exploring MOOC instructors’ experiences, using cases in the field of tourism and hospitality. It cumulates six studies, using a mixed methods approach, to tackle the two main research objectives: to investigate at large the tourism and hospitality MOOC provisions between 2008 and 2015 and to report the experiences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) when producing the eTourism MOOC. In order, the first two studies in Chapter 3 of this thesis focus on tourism and hospitality MOOCs in general and produce a big picture context for the other four studies in Chapter 4. The first study proposes a conceptual framework through which to describe and analyse the course design of a MOOC and applies it to 18 tourism and hospitality MOOCs produced between 2008 and 2015. The second study then continues to interview six tourism and hospitality MOOC instructors, to describe their experiences and perspectives of teaching MOOCs. After exploring a holistic view of the overall development of MOOCs in tourism and hospitality and gaining a deep understanding of the instructors behind these offerings, this thesis introduces the experiences of one single MOOC provider: Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Chapter 4. It first introduces its overall implementation process (Study 3), and further elaborates three phases of this process: how it selected a suitable MOOC platform at the beginning (Study 4); how it assessed learner engagement in the MOOC (Study 5); and, eventually, how it evaluated the performance of the MOOC (Study 6). This thesis was written mainly from the perspective of eLearning, with the intention of benefiting its community of scholars and practitioners. It has contributed to the literature by developing a framework with which to review MOOCs (in Study 1), the implementation process of producing MOOCs (in Study 2), practical review schema of MOOC platforms (in Study 4), the MOOC Learner Engagement Online Survey (in Study 5), and how to use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate MOOCs (in Study 6). These conceptual frameworks and experiential tools can benefit future researchers and practitioners. Meanwhile, due to its intimate connection with the field of tourism and hospitality, by directly using its cases, the research outputs of the six studies can also benefit the tourism and hospitality education and training sector as a reference for further action

The homestay program in Malaysia: Motivation for participation and development impact

The main purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics and factors affecting the participation and perception of homestay operators about the impact of homestay development on their local communities in Johor. The research instruments used were questionnaires and face to face interviews in 8 major homestay areas. A total of 80 operators were selected via stratified random sampling for the interviews. The study found that majority of the operators in Johor involved in the homestay program are full time operators. Their involvement was driven by various factors such as their own desire to be operators, encouragement from communities, families and associations as well as government incentives. The reasons for being involved in this program are: gaining new experiences, acquiring better source of income, spending their leisure time, improving skills and interests of individuals and the SME businesses they owned. With regard to perception, their homestay operators believed that the development of homestay tourism has positive impacts on their local communities. Based on the 1-5 Likert scale, the impact of cultural heritage is the highest of the overall impacts with a mean score of 4.81, followed by the economic impact with value of 4.80, social and environmental impacts at 4.70 and 4.43, respectively. Overall, from the perspective of homestay operators, the homestay program in Johor has positive impact and is successful. Nonetheless, collaboration and networking with government and private organizations are still needed to further improve the development of homestay program

Enhancing Digital Promotion of Cultural Attractions: Assessing Websites, Online Marketing Tools and Smart Technologies

Background: Built heritage in developed tourism destinations presents a resource of attractiveness, and its presentation through digital technology impacts the perception of culture. Objectives: The paper aims to determine opportunities for further development of digital promotion of cultural attractions by identifying the potential of websites, online marketing tools and smart technologies implemented by tourism attraction decision-makers. Methods/Approach: Qualitative and qualitative research methods were used as longitudinal research and structured interviews with decision-makers of the tourist destination. Results: Positive developments in implementing the digital promotion of cultural heritage during and after the pandemic are evident, but not fast enough considering the accelerated development of new smart technologies. At the same time, decision-makers recognise the importance of the digital promotion of cultural heritage. However, they are still unfamiliar with the possibilities of smart technology to affirm the digital promotion of cultural heritage. Conclusions: The paper points to the conclusion of how the advantages and potentials of developing a smart culture in destinations, recognised as a strategic policy of development, are implemented in the digital marketing of heritage sites

The Vision of the Main Mobile Apps Related to Caravanning: an Analysis of the Reviews Focusing on Users and Developers

Mobile applications (apps) are becoming an essential tool when it comes to sightseeing. There is even a specific category for trips in the leading app stores. These are no strangers to the rise of the itinerant travel style, the caravans. The study aims to understand the situation of the main caravanning apps in Spain. We have carried out a web scraping methodology using a sample of 1,601 Spanish reviews of the main apps related to caravanning. The most interesting findings, among others, are that we are getting to know a sector that up to now was unknown and that even has not been affected by the pandemic crisis. Besides, the paper has demonstrated that developers do not follow the right strategies in caravanning apps. The paper also shows users' most crucial concerns about these apps. Therefore, managers of caravanning apps could improve their strategies by focusing their attention on users' concerns and, most important, reviews to respondThis publication has been possible thanks to the support of Spain's Ministry of Universities which has granted David Perea with a Margarita Salas grant for the training of young PhD included in the grants for the requalification of the Spanish University System 2021-2023, financed by the European Union Next Generation E

Aset pelancongan luar bandar daripada lensa komuniti Lembah Beriah

Sektor pelancongan telah mengalami pertumbuhan yang berterusan dan menjadi salah satu sektor ekonomi yang paling berkembang pesat di dunia sekaligus menjadi pemacu utama dalam kemajuan sosioekonomi. Aset pelancongan merupakan elemen penting dalam industri pelancongan. Terdapat beberapa elemen aset pelancongan di sesebuah destinasi seperti (1) tarikan (attractions), (2) ketersampaian (accessibility), (3) kemudahan (amenities), (4) pakej pelancongan (available packages), (5) aktiviti pelancongan (activities) dan (6) perkhidmatan sampingan (ancillary services). Lembah Beriah merupakan salah satu kawasan di dalam Daerah Kerian, Perak dan memiliki taburan bentuk muka bumi yang menarik dan boleh dibangunkan untuk menjadi salah satu pusat pelancongan di Malaysia. Kajian ini bertujuan mengenalpasti aset pelancongan yang berpotensi untuk dibangunkan sebagai produk pelancongan di Lembah Beriah. Berdasarkan kaedah kuantitatif menggunakan borang soal selidik yang diedarkan kepada 300 orang komuniti di Lembah Beriah mendapati bahawa terdapat kepelbagaian aset pelancongan di Lembah Beriah yang menarik dan berpotensi dibangunkan sebagai produk pelancongan, terdiri daripada produk alam semula jadi dan buatan manusia. Aset pelancongan alam semulajadi meliputi sawah padi dan tasik sementara aset pelancongan budaya dan warisan merangkumi seni silat, kraftangan dan gastronomi setempat

Transformation theory and e-commerce adoption

This thesis investigates business transformation on the Internet; particularly the nature and significance of Cyber transformation theory and the Marketspace Model as a framework for E-commerce adoption. E-commerce can raise a firm\u27s productivity, transform customer relationships and open up new markets. The extent to which nations become adopters of E-commerce is set to become a source of comparative national competitive advantage (or disadvantage) in the twenty first century