A Study on Factors Affecting Behavioral Intention and Behavior of Tourists to Use Tourism Applets in Chongqing, China

Purpose: This study focused on the influencing factors of behavioral intention and behavior of tourists to use tourism mobile applets in Chongqing, China. Trust, facilitating conditions, social influence, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention, and use behavior were examined in the research framework. Research design, data, and methodology: The researcher conducted quantitative research on 500 samples and statistical surveys on tourists in this region, and adopted non-probabilistic sampling technology, including judgment sampling and quota sampling. Before data collection, the index of item-objective congruence (IOC) was used to test validity. Cronbach's alpha coefficient values were taken from a reliability test of 30 participants. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) were used for statistical analysis, including validity, reliability, and goodness of fit tests. Results: The biggest factor affecting the behavioral intention to use tourism mobile applets was the facilitating conditions and trust. Meanwhile, social influence, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness were important factors affecting the behavioral intention to use tourism mobile applets. The behavioral intention was also an important factor that affected the use behavior to use tourism mobile applets. Conclusions: The enterprises should attach great importance to the facilitating conditions, trust, social influence, perceived ease of use, and usefulness of the tourism mobile applets to improve tourists' behavioral intention and use

Smartphone Adoption amongst Chinese Youth during Leisure-based Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities.

With the spread of Information communications technology (ICT) in China, the tourism industry has come to recognize the importance of examining the factors that influence adoption of smartphones during leisure-based tourism among Chinese youth, a vital segment in what the world’s greatest domestic, inbound, and outbound 10 tourism market will be by 2020. Using data collected from undergraduate students at a university in China, this study, based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of reasoned action (TRA), found that an extended model can predict travelers' intentions. A detailed profile of Chinese youth and their smartphone usage is provided, and the managerial implications of increased adoption of Internet-capable smart- 15 phones during leisure-based tourism are also explored

Medical, health and wellness tourism research – a review of the literature (1970-2020) and research agenda

Medical, health and wellness tourism and travel represent a dynamic and rapidly growing mul-ti-disciplinary economic activity and field of knowledge. This research responds to earlier calls to integrate research on travel medicine and tourism. This research critically reviews the literature published on these topics over a 50-year period (1970 to 2020) using CiteSpace software. Some 802 articles were gathered and analyzed from major databases including the Web of Science and Scopus. Markets (demand and behavior), destinations (development and promotion), and de-velopment environments (policies and impacts) emerged as the main three research themes in medical-health-wellness tourism. Medical-health-wellness tourism will integrate with other care sectors and become more embedded in policy-making related to sustainable development, espe-cially with regards to quality of life initiatives. A future research agenda for medi-cal-health-tourism is discussed

Tourism in contemporary cities. Proceedings of the International Tourism Studies Association Conference: University of Greenwich, London, UK 17–19 August 2016 Conference Proceedings

The 6th International Tourism Studies Association (ITSA) Biennial conference was held at the University of Greenwich, London, England from 17‐19 August 2016. This was the first time that the conference had been held in Europe and it provided a unique opportunity to meet, hear from and network with tourism scholars and professionals from across Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. ITSA has a mission to encourage interaction and cooperation between developing and developed countries and the conference was successful in attracting 130 delegates from 29 countries. The main theme of the conference was 'Tourism in Contemporary Cities' with four conference sub‐themes of ‘Tourism Cities and Urban Tourism’, ‘The Chinese Market for European Tourism’, ‘River, Cruise and Maritime Tourism’, and ‘Heritage Tourism in Cities’, The subthemes were chosen to reflect the unique location of the conference on the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and London which is Europe’s most visited tourist destination. The conference also presented ‘Dark Tourism and Cities’ and ‘Tourism and Communist Heritage’ as special sessions

The impacts of tour guide performance on foreign tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty in Vietnam

This research was generated through my previous career as a tour guide in Vietnam. The tourism industry has been developing over recent years in Vietnam, as will be evidenced by the literature review below. This research investigates the impact tour guides have on the satisfaction of tourists who are choosing Vietnam as a tourism destination. The following proposal outlines the case of the study in terms of history of tourism industry in Vietnam, the role of tour guide in a package tour, and the relationships between tour guide performance, foreign tourist satisfaction, and tourist’s destination loyalty in Vietnam. In the literature on tourism studies, significant attention has been paid to tourist satisfaction that depended on various factors, but relatively little attention has been paid to the effect of tour guide performance on both tourists’ satisfaction and their destination loyalty. Even less research has been conducted on the role of the tour guide in a package tour. Tour guides are frontline employees in the tourism industry who play a significant role in drawing tourists to a destination. Tour guiding service is the principal component of tour services. Whether tour guides can deliver quality service to tourists is not only essential to the business success of the company, but also significant to the image of the destination (Huang et al., 2010). Although previous research looked at the factors of tour guide performance on the experience of tourists in package tour, there is disagreement about the impact of tour guide performance on tourist satisfaction. Destination loyalty of tourist also needs to be investigated from the tour guide performance and tourist satisfaction perspectives, in order to provide a more complete understanding of the role of the tour guide in a package tour. This research, therefore, attempts to bridge these gaps by exploring the attributes of tour guide performance from the foreign tourist’s perspective. The study was conducted in the context of the foreign tourists who are in Vietnam to evaluate domestic tour guide performance. This context was chosen on the basis that there has been no research conducted on tour guide performance in the Vietnamese context. A self-administrated questionnaire was developed based on the review of the relevant literature and focus group interviews, and was administered to a sample of 500 foreign tourists in six big cities that attract many foreign tourists in Vietnam. Tour guides were recruited for data collection in every tour held by tourism companies. Tour guides distributed the questionnaires to the tourists on the last night of the package tour and then collected them on the next morning. The tour guide, in addition, also informed the tourists that only the researcher would see the returned questionnaires that they put in a sealed envelope. Additionally, I and my colleagues also travelled to the places that attract many foreign tourists; handed the questionnaires to them; let them have approximately 10 minutes to answer; and finally collected the questionnaires again. Following a pilot study testing the survey instrument, the main data collection phase resulted in 451 completed and useable questionnaires being available for analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the relationships among tour guide performance, tourist satisfaction, and destination loyalty. The findings show that the theoretical model fits well with the data, and that the five hypotheses proposed were supported, providing answers three research questions. The finding indicates that tour guide performance plays an important role on foreign tourists’ satisfaction and tourists’ destination loyalty in a package tour. Tour guide performance is comprised of five dimensions – appearance, professional competence skill, solving problems skill, organizational skill, and entertainment introduction skill. Tour guide performance is not only positively and significantly related to the satisfaction of tourists, but also is one of the factors that determine the destination loyalty of customers. This study, moreover, has proposed a number of suggestions for both tour guide and tour manager/tour operator in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of tour guide attributes, and then to foster and enhance the performance of this force to reach a higher level of customer satisfaction, as well as promote destination loyalty

Impact of memorable tourism experiences on revisiting intention : an empirical study on Santa Claus’s official hometown

Humans develop various experiences throughout their lives. During a trip, a tourist encountered a number of experiences. Some experiences are positive, and some are negative. It’s becoming harder for destination management organisations and firms to suppress the negative aspects and provide a memorable tourism experience for guests. This research explores the association between memorable tourism experiences and revisiting intention and furthermore explores the association of memorable tourism experiences with tourists’ satisfaction, destination image, electronic word-of-mouth, and destination safety. For this, a structured questionnaire was developed, and 136 responses were collected from international tourists visiting Rovaniemi. Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling statistical techniques were applied to analyse structural relationships using SmartPLS software to analyse the collected data. According to the empirical findings, memorable tourism experiences do not positively impact visitors’ intention to revisit Santa Claus’s official hometown. However, they do positively affect destination image, overall satisfaction, and electronic word-of-mouth. In contrast, overall satisfaction and revisiting intention do not have a positive association. Although electronic word-of-mouth is positively influenced by destination safety, revisiting intention is positively influenced by destination image. Nevertheless, destination safety as a moderator does not impact memorable tourism experiences and revisiting intention, as well as memorable tourism experiences and electronic word-of-mouth relationships. The study results indicate that there might be some missing links between tourist satisfaction and loyalty. Thus, a relationship marketing programme might effectively encourage tourists to revisit Rovaniemi and further improve the destination’s image and sustainability

Marketing for Sustainable Tourism

The aim of the Special Issue is to discuss the main current topics concerning marketing for sustainable tourism with reference to territories (i.e., tourism destinations, protected areas, parks and/or natural sites, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, rural regions/areas, etc.) and tourism enterprises and/or organisations (i.e., destination management organisations, hospitality enterprises, restaurant enterprises, cableway companies, travel agencies, etc.). In destinations where natural resources are pull factors for tourism development, the relationships among local actors (public, private, and local community), as well as marketing choices, are essential to develop sustainable tourism products. To this end, the Special Issue encourages papers that analyse marketing strategies adopted by tourism destinations and/or tourism enterprises to avoid overtourism, to manage mass sustainable tourism (as defined by Weaver, 2000), and to encourage and promote sustainable tourism in marginal areas or in territories suffering lack of integration in the tourism offer. Special attention will be given to contributions on the best practices to manage territories and/or enterprises adopting sustainable marketing strategies

THE IMPACT OF PUSH & PULL FACTORS AND POLITICAL STABILITY ON DESTINATION IMAGE, TOURIST SATISFACTION AND THE INTENTION TO RE-VISIT: THE CASE OF ABU DHABI IN THE UAE

Taking into consideration Abu Dhabi 2030 vision, the tourism sector is considered to be a significant sector in its contribution to the long-term economic growth of the UAE. Abu Dhabi has many of the push and pulls factors that attract tourists. By illuminating tourists’ behaviors, the results of this study will enable decision-makers to understand why tourists choose Abu Dhabi over other destinations, what type of experience they are looking for, and the variety of activities that they want. Meanwhile, taking into account the political stability of the UAE in general and Abu Dhabi in particular, insufficient attention has hitherto been given to the political issues that may significantly guide people in forming a destination image. No studies of the factor of political stability with others, such as push and pull factors in raising the intention to re-visit exist in the literature on tourism, at least not in the UAE context. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to identify the motivational push & pull factors that can affect the formulation of the destination image. Moreover, this study examines the relationship between push & pull factors, political stability, destination image, tourist satisfaction, and intention to re-visit to develop and test a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of destination image in the Abu Dhabi context. This study adopts the positivist research philosophy with a quantitative approach to empirically validate the fourteen hypotheses. To gather the primary data the questionnaire was distributed among international tourists above 18 years old in seven different attractive locations in Abu Dhabi. The suggested hypotheses were tested through a sample of 406 tourists visiting Abu Dhabi. The results show that tourists’ evaluations of the push and pull factors and political stability act as antecedents of a perceived attractive destination image. Furthermore, political stability and destination image have a strong positive impact on tourist satisfaction and the intention to re-visit. The proposed model in this study enhances existing theorization by exploring the value of political stability in the model of tourists’ intentions to re-visit. While from the practical perspective, it will also provide a recommendation to the policy and decision-maker in the tourism sector

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research