Co-creating integrated health-hospitality hybrids for across the lifespan

Salutogenesis ensures that physical environments promote wellbeing across people’s lifespan. Although this has influenced medical architecture, it has not yet penetrated into the domain of urban development. Despite the gradual decrease of medicalization of healthcare facilities, a conceptual gap remains between hospitality and healthcare facilities. This paper explores the possibilities of synergistic domains between healthcare and hospitality facilities. Using the architectural typology interpretation of a dementia village as a case study this paper explores how to create hybrids between healthcare and hospitality facilities that contribute to the silver economy while providing the ageing population with better built environments

VALUE CO-CREATION ENHANCING DESTINATION RESILIENCE THROUGH SMARTNESS.

The sustainability and competitive advantage of a destination must be extended to the standard of the resilience within the destination. Tourism, a “complex business ecosystem” must collectively manage their inherent vulnerabilities to crisis and disasters. This paper contributes to tourism literature by demonstrating the potential of smartness to increase destination resilience through value co-creation for all stakeholders through their real time responsiveness to crisis and disasters, ultimately strengthening resilience. Secondary research was conducted using a multi-disciplinary approach to understand the tenets that were key in the development of the core concepts of the research. Value co-creation within tourism has been primarily restricted to the consumer organization relationship. The discussion, however, must be elevated and reflected in the internal destination systems and processes to enhance the traveller experience, safety and security, which, ulimately, is value for all. Value co-creation is one of the inherent elements and outcomes of the Real Time Resilience and augers well for all stakeholders as it capitalizes on smartness to enhance decision making during crisis and disasters

The influences and consequences of being digitally connected and/or disconnected to travellers

© 2017, The Author(s).Technological progress and tourism have worked in tandem for many years. Connectivity is the vehicle that drove the goal of technologically enhanced tourism experiences forward. This study, through an exploratory qualitative research identifies the factors that boost and/or distract travellers from obtaining a digitally enhanced tourism experience. Four factors can boost and/or distract travellers from being connected: (1) hardware and software, (2) needs and contexts, (3) openness to usage, and (4) supply and provision of connectivity. The research also analyses the positive and/or negative consequences that arise from being connected or disconnected. A Connected/Disconnected Consequences Model illustrates five forms of positive and/or negative consequences: (1) availability, (2) communication, (3) information obtainability, (4) time consumption, and (5) supporting experiences. A better understanding of the role and consequence of connectivity during the trip can enhance traveller experience

Destination Online Communication: Why Less is Sometimes More. A Study of Online Communications of English Destinations

This research investigates the relationship between Web site design and the Web site end-user experience of a vast number of English tourism destinations, both local and regional ones. Following recent research in the field, this paper evaluates destinations' online communication based on the implemented Web site features and on the effectiveness of the communication itself, borrowing its research methodology from different domains. After content and functionality analysis, a user-experience, scenario-based investigation has been carried out, which demonstrated that complex Web sites do not always serve end-users' needs properly; in other words, Web site complexity is not directly related with good user experience. This research may help destination managers to foster their online communication if they have fewer content and functionalities but are better focused and clearly user-oriented. © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Metaverse as a disruptive technology revolutionising tourism management and marketing

Metaverse is the next disruptive technology that will impact society in the coming decades, by enabling immersive experiences in both virtual and physical environments. Although still conceptual, Metaverse converges the physical and digital universe, allowing users to seamlessly traverse between them. Digital immersion offers opportunities for people to travel in time, supporting users to experience virtually ancient encounters, space explorations or dangerous natural phenomena, such as volcano eruptions. Users can explore immersive environments for working, learning, transacting, exploring interests and socialising with others. This is already evident in gaming ecosystems, where gamers effectively interact in the metaverse. Although still experimental, Metaverse is expected to revolutionize travel and tourism management and marketing. It empowers destination awareness, positioning and branding, as well as coordination and management, through digital twins. Metaverse provides opportunities to support trip planning, interaction and engagement, effectively transforming consumer behaviour. Visiting and engaging with destinations virtually is expected to motivate real travel, rather than replace it. This paper provides a vision of how Metaverse can revolutionize tourism experiences and transform tourism management and marketing. Drawing on a systematic review of scholarly works, articles from media and industry reports, this study defines and conceptualizes the Metaverse ecosystem for tourism and travel. It explores the foundations of the disruptions that Metaverse brings to tourism destinations and organisations and identifies the building blocks of Metaverse tourism. The study outlines research directions so that the tourism industry can take full advantage of the Metaverse capabilities and opportunities emerging as well as identify challenges for the future

Metaverse as a driver for customer experience and value co-creation: implications for hospitality and tourism management and marketing

Purpose: Metaverse blends the physical and virtual worlds, revolutionizing how hospitality customers and hospitality organizations facilitate the co-creation of transformational experiences and values. This paper aims to explore the opportunities and challenges that Metaverse introduces for hospitality and tourism management and marketing as part of the customer experience and value co-creation process. This paper also discusses how the advent and development of Metaverse can potentially transform hospitality customer experience and value co-creation. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive literature review was undertaken to explore conceptual developments on Metaverse and best practice examples from around the world. Findings: Metaverse not only opens many exciting opportunities for hospitality and tourism but also poses some great challenges. Hospitality and tourism organizations need to use the Metaverse strategically to customize and co-create hybrid virtual and physical experiences, allowing consumers to engage with them and also with other customers before, during and after their visit. A range of research opportunities also emerge for the adoption and operationalization of Metaverse. Research limitations/implications: This paper critically analyzes the early applications of Metaverse in hospitality and tourism as well as promotes future solutions for hospitality and tourism management and marketing. The conceptual model in this study can help different stakeholders better understand the flow, logic and potential of Metaverse in the hospitality and tourism industry. Originality/value: The paper defines and conceptualizes the potential of Metaverse in hospitality customer experience and value co-creation. Besides putting forward a research agenda for further exploiting the full potential for both hospitality customers and hospitality organizations, this paper elucidates the impacts of Metaverse on hospitality management, rooted in the previous literature in value co-creation and technology-enhanced experience

Social media use and impact during the holiday travel planning process

Through an empirical study among holiday travellers, residing in the Former Soviet Union Republics, this paper presents a comprehensive view of role and impact of social media on the whole holiday travel planning process: Before, during and after the trip, providing insights on usage levels, scope of use, level of influence and trust. Findings suggest that social media are predominantly used after holidays for experience sharing. It is also shown that there is a strong correlation between perceived level of influence from social media and changes made in holiday plans prior to final decisions. Moreover, it is revealed that user-generated content is perceived as more trustworthy when compared to official tourism websites, travel agents and mass media advertising

Open Space – a collaborative process for facilitating Tourism IT partnerships

The success of IT projects depends on the success of the partnerships on which they are based. However past research by the author has identified a significant rate of failure in these partnerships, predominantly due to an overly technical mindset, leading to the question: “how do we ensure that, as technological solutions are implemented within tourism, due consideration is given to human-centred issues?” The tourism partnership literature is explored for additional insights revealing that issues connected with power, participation and normative positions play a major role. The method, Open Space, is investigated for its ability to engage stakeholders in free and open debate. This paper reports on a one-day Open Space event sponsored by two major intermediaries in the UK travel industry who wanted to consult their business partners. Both the running of the event and its results reveal how Open Space has the potential to address some of the weaknesses associated with tourism partnerships

Smart technologies for personalized experiences: a case study in the hospitality domain

Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of innovative technological smart solutions providing unprecedented opportunities for application in the tourism and hospitality industry.With intensified competition in the tourism market place, it has become paramount for businesses to explore the potential of technologies, not only to optimize existing processes but facilitate the creation of more meaningful and personalized services and experiences. This study aims to bridge the current knowledge gap between smart technologies and experience personalization to understand how smart mobile technologies can facilitate personalized experiences in the context of the hospitality industry. By adopting a qualitative case study approach, this paper makes a two-fold contribution; it a) identifies the requirements of smart technologies for experience creation, including information aggregation, ubiquitous mobile connectedness and real time synchronization and b) highlights how smart technology integration can lead to two distinct levels of personalized tourism experiences. The paper concludes with the development of a model depicting the dynamic process of experience personalization and a discussion of the strategic implications for tourism and hospitality management and research