Travel and Life – A Development Perspective

Whether we travel to discover the unknown or to simply take a break from our daily routine, it\u27s often said that travel broadens the mind. But how exactly does travel impact life, and how does the relationship between travel and life change at different life stages? In new research, Associate Professor Xiaoxiao Fu at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management and her collaborators take a developmental perspective on tourism consumption and look at how travel and life inform and shape each other, from childhood to maturity

A Closer Look At Visitors\u27 Immersion In China\u27s Theme Parks

Engaging life experiences can become deeply entrenched in the human memory, facilitating mind associations, stimulating the imagination, and inspiring rich storytelling. UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management\u27s Associate Professor Xiaoxiao Fu and Assistant Professor Carissa Baker, along with their co-authors, recently collected the subjective accounts of 30 people who had visited renowned theme parks in China. By analyzing these first-person tales, the researchers were then able to pin-point patterns and processes that characterized the respondents\u27 immersion in experiences at the Chinese theme parks

Can Humor Help Sell A Tourist Destination Online?

Destination marketers pack a lot into their websites, assuming potential visitors want detailed information. But perhaps they\u27re missing a simple trick to attracting the attention of potential travelers and getting them to connect with what\u27s on offer: a dash of humor. But humor is a doubleedged sword; experimenting with it can be potentially damaging. However, research by Dr. Maksim Godovykh and Dr. Xiaoxiao Fu at UCF\u27s Rosen College of Hospitality Management has shown that even making light of a crisis can help boost attitudes and intentions

Are there gender differences in what drives customer delight?

Purpose– This paper aims to understand how male and female hotel guests become delighted customers. It aims to present the similarities and differences along with respective implications for theory and application. Design/methodology/approach– During a period of three months, tourists were interviewed at an upscale Florida hotel. A total of 208 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The script for the interviews was based on an interview protocol used by Crotts et al. Adapted from a previous customer delight study (Torres and Kline), a codebook was developed to determine the salient themes that emerged during the interview process. Interviews were coded independently by three experienced reviewers using the process of content analysis. Findings– The results demonstrated that while men and women agreed on most aspects of the service experience that led them to feel delighted, there were other aspects of the delight experience that seemed to vary by gender. More specifically, female guests were more likely to be delighted by employee friendliness and professionalism. In contrast, male tourists appeared to be more likely to be delighted by having their needs met, by efficient and timely service and by the availability of complimentary amenities or upgrades. Research limitations/implications– The present study contributes to existing literature by demonstrating that men and women can potentially be delighted by different aspects of the service experience. Such information can potentially benefit hospitality industry practitioners to deliver service experiences desired by each gender. Originality/value– Ekinci et al. proposed that the ultimate evaluation of customer experiences can be highly individualized by elements such as personality. The present research argues that the process of delighting customers might be more complex than originally conceived. Accordingly, the results suggest: a universal set of criteria will tend to delight all guests, and a more specific set of criteria will potentially delight guests of a certain gender. Future research is encouraged to quantitatively validate the findings and explore other factors that impact customer delight such as personality, age, income and culture

Unravelling the Tourism–Poverty Nexus

Literature on the links between tourism development and poverty alleviation is surprisingly fragmented. A new model, the Tourism-Poverty Interdependence Diamond (TPID), from Dr. Jorge Ridderstaat and Dr. Xiaoxiao Fu, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, offers a tool to unravel the complexities of this relationship. Using Honduras as a case study, this new approach clearly shows that tourism development can impact poverty, and highlights that poverty can also impact tourism development, with the links ranging from direct to indirect

Cultured Divergence of Consumption Values in Vacation Experience

The primary objective of this study is to identify and understand, from a cultural perspective, the departure of Chinese consumptive values from their U.S. counterparts on a vacation experience. Through analysis of travelogues by tourists from China and the U.S., three salient themes were identified. They are Scenery, Food and Mood. Although all three were emphasized by both Chinese and American tourists, a closer look revealed that they’re being valued quite differently. What is important to the overall satisfaction of an experience in fact differ for the two groups. These exhibited divergences are found to be underpinned by different cultural dispositions, which are pivotal in shaping and influencing distinctive values. The results allow meaningful understanding of the uniqueness of Chinese consumption values, which are buttressed by its complex cultural system

Towards More Authentic Heritage Destination Experiences

Heritage destinations have a significant responsibility to visitors. In countries like China, where heritage plays a significant role in a person\u27s identity, such destinations offer visitors an opportunity to develop a deeper sense of self. For this reason, they need to be authentic, but so do the visitors. UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management researcher Dr. Xiaoxiao Fu joined a team of experts based in China to identify how the perceived authenticity of two of China\u27s most revered heritage sites affects visitors\u27 personal sense of authenticity, their wellbeing, and how memorable they found their visits

Leverage Business Analytics and OWA to Recommend Appropriate Projects in Crowdfunding Platform

Nowadays, crowdfunding is becoming more and more popular. Many studies have been published on the crowdfunding platform from different perspectives. However, among all these studies, few are concerned about the recommendation methods, which, in effect, are highly beneficial to crowdfunding websites and the participants. Having considered the situation talked above, this paper works out the several features from the relative projects of user’s current browsing project. Then we give different weights to each feature based on selective attention phenomenon, and adopt the method of OWA operator to calculate the final score of each relative project and accomplish our model by picking out the four projects with different outstanding characteristics. Finally, according to the statistics on China’s famous crowdfunding website, we conducted a group of contrast experiments and eventually testified that our proposed model could, to some extent, help classify and give recommendation effectively. Furthermore, the results of this research can give guidance to the management of crowdfunding websites and they are also very significant advices for the future crowdfunding website development

Examining Key Drivers of Customer Delight in a Hotel Experience: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Welcoming all guests is the calling shared by those who work in the hotel industry. Everyday hoteliers strive to provide a service of excellence to all of those who visit. This can be somewhat of a complex endeavor, as hotels receive guests from different nationalities and cultures. Previous research in the area of customer delight has revealed some of the factors that define and drive the customer delight experience. Despite the emerging literature on the subject, the question remains: are guest from different cultures likely to be delighted by different things? In the present study, the researchers conducted extensive semi-structured interviews (n = 228) with guests from different nationalities visiting the Central Florida area. The guests interviewed came predominantly from the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Canada. Using a process of content analysis, the researchers analyzed the drivers of customer delight and concluded that while some universal service elements exists, guests from different cultures can also be delighted by different services and amenities