Exploring Guests’ Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction with Homestay Experiences: A Netnographic Study of a Rural Tourism Destination in Vietnam

Few studies have used online reviews to gain useful insights into homestay guests’ satisfaction. This study responds to demands from the existing literature on homestay tourism in a rural destination context to identify the factors that contribute to tourists’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction by examining homestay experiences in Vietnam’s Ben Tre province. User-generated content on Booking.com was analyzed using a netnographic approach. The data comprised 656 online posts. The findings suggest that guests achieve satisfaction from host families’ attitudes and language abilities, high-quality facilities in the bedrooms and grounds, authentic cuisine, a peaceful location, the availability of complementary services, and affordable prices. The findings contradict studies suggesting that homestay guests may seek familiarity, and this was largely not evident in terms of tourist food consumption while at the destination. In addition, the findings challenge studies indicating that prices have a strong influence on tourists’ satisfaction with homestay tourism

Antecedents of memorable heritage tourism experiences: an application of stimuli–organism–response theory

Purpose: Based on stimulus-organism-response theory, this study develops and tests a model of memorable heritage tourism experiences. The model proposes that experiencescape, experience co-creation, education and photography are important antecedents of memorable heritage tourism experiences, which is then a driver of place attachment.Design/methodology/approach: Data for this study were collected using a web-based questionnaire of people aged 18 years and over who had a heritage tourism experience during the previous three months (February–April 2023). The survey was distributed in May 2023 using Amazon Mechanical Turk. A survey link was posted on MTurk, which remained active for the first week of May 2023. Out of the 283 responses received, 272 were valid responses from individuals who met the participation criteria.Findings: Experiencescape, experience co-creation, education and photography were found to be positive drivers of the memorable heritage tourism experience, with a positive relationship between memorable heritage tourism experience and place attachment. Originality: Many studies linked to memorable tourism experience mainly replicate Kim et al.’s (2012) memorable tourism experience scale, regardless of the specific study context. This study offers an alternative framework through which alternative antecedents and outcomes of tourists’ memorable tourism experiences can be identified

Drivers and inhibitors of entrepreneurship in Europe's Outermost Regions: Implications for entrepreneurship education

Governments of peripheral regions often seek to encourage entrepreneurship as a means of bolstering employment, typically charging higher education institutions with the task of delivering this mission through their entrepreneurship education programmes. This study investigates the drivers and inhibitors of entrepreneurial intentions among young people in Madeira, a semi-autonomous outlying region of Portugal. Data were collected from 352 final-year undergraduate students on management, economics and tourism courses. The adaptive Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator method was then applied to select the best predictors from among a large pool of potential covariates. The results found that students with less access to start-up finance and a greater fear of failure tended to have the least entrepreneurial intentions. Children of entrepreneur had significantly stronger intentions to become entrepreneurs themselves. Entrepreneurial intention also increased significantly with the student’s age. The paper concludes that entrepreneurial education providers in island economies firstly need to change the narrative that young people in peripheral regions receive about becoming entrepreneurs, particularly with regard to the greater vulnerability to business risks (the ‘island penalty factor’), and secondly should provide practical support to students who do not have access to family business networks (a possible ‘island bonus factor’)

Experience‐driven well‐being and purchase: An alternative model of memorable wine tourism experiences

Wine tourism has several distinctive features that militate against using Kim et al.'s model of memorable tourism experiences to understand its antecedents and consequences. Accordingly, this study adopts an alternative theoretical framework—the stimulus–organism–response theory—to develop an alternative model. Data were collected from visitors to a well-known vineyard in Yantai, China and structural equation modelling and multiple group analysis were used to analyse them. The results suggest that experience co-creation, sensory experience, experiential satisfaction and appealing winescape are significant and positive antecedents of a memorable wine tourism experience, while eudaimonic well-being and wine purchase intention are significant and positive outcome variables. Visit frequency was found to be a moderating variable linking the winescape to memorable wine tourism experiences. Those who travel to the region frequently form a bond with the winescape that not only contributes to their well-being but also stimulates their future intentions to purchase its wine

Photographs in tourism research: Prejudice, power, performance and participant-generated images

Photography has often been considered tainted as a source of research data, even in tourism, its natural habitat. This situation is undoubtedly a legacy of the prejudice that many social scientists held toward the use of visual data when the academic study of tourism took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Tourism research has therefore persistently favoured textual data over visual data. This paper argues that the power of photography to prove and move can be harnessed to bridge this theoretical and practical cognitive gap. Issues relating to the performance of photography, including those of timing and intent, as well as the speed of information exchange, need however to be considered when designing and implementing research using photographic data. This implies a need to review the ‘circle of representation’ of tourism destination images, as well as to divide participant-generated image methods into two strands: found photographs and commissioned photographs.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

A CATREG Model of Destination Choice for a Mature Island Destination

This paper explores the factors that most strongly influence the attraction of tourists by mature island destinations during the stagnation phase of the resort lifecycle. Many such destinations have attempted to develop ex nihilo strategies, typically in the form of product differentiation. Others have adopted a strategy of consolidating their traditional tourism markets. It can be argued, however, that to undertake either strategy successfully requires a very clear understanding of the factors that determine tourists’ destination choices. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that shape tourists’ destination choices in the case of Madeira, a ‘classic’ destination in the Atlantic area that is in many ways typical of mature tourism destinations in their stagnation phase. The study presents the findings of a categorical regression (CATREG) based on a sample of 260 visitors. Insights are gained into how the destination can best be managed and marketed in order to facilitate the attraction and retention of tourists. The paper concludes that the most salient factors determining destination choice tend to be generic and cross-cutting, implying that destination management and marketing needs to be more focused on operational issues than it tends to be in many mature island destinations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Insights from analysing tourist expenditure using quantile regression

Mature tourism destinations are increasingly needing to diversify their products and markets. To be successful, such strategies require a very detailed understanding of potential tourists’ levels and patterns of spending. Empirical studies of tourist expenditure have tended to employ ordinary least squares regression for this purpose. There are, however, a number of important limitations to this technique, chief among which is its inability to distinguish between tourists who have higher- and lower-than-average levels of spending. As such, some researchers recommend the use of an alternative estimation technique, known as quantile regression, which does allow such distinctions to be made. This study uses a single data set, collected among rural tourists in Madeira, to analyse the determinants of tourist expenditure using both techniques. This enables direct comparison to be made and illustrates the additional insights to be gained using quantile regression.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Role of Childhood Participation in Cultural Activities in the Promotion of Pro-Social Behaviours in Later Life

Cultural organisations often serve as guardians of cultural heritage and, as such, cultural sustainability depends on their ongoing vitality. Many organisations in the cultural sector are, however, presently experiencing intense financial pressures. With their traditional sources of funding being progressively cut off, such organisations are focusing increasingly on monetary donations and the volunteering of time on the part of the general public to help plug the financial gap. Promoting and managing such pro-social behaviours can, however, be costly activities in themselves, so it is critical for cultural organisations to be able to target those segments of the public with the greatest propensity to give. This study sets out to address that need. The findings indicate that individuals who were involved in cultural activities as children are statistically more likely to volunteer their time in later life, not only with cultural organisations but also with good causes in general. In certain circumstances, this is also true of donating money. The cultural organisations benefiting from these pro-social behaviours need not be those with which the individual was involved in their childhood; nor need they be associated with the same form of culture. Importantly, continuous involvement in an activity from childhood into adulthood is not a necessary pre-condition for pro-social behaviour in later life

Assessing tourists' cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to an unethical destination incident

AbstractStudies of how tourists react to unethical incidents in destinations are scarce. Based on an online survey (n = 1350) and grounded in cognitive appraisal theory, this study examines people's reactions to a hypothetical breach of ethics at a tourism destination. Results from a structural equation model suggest that the more severe the incident and the greater the attribution of responsibility to agencies within the destination, the more likely it is that an individual will develop hostile emotions toward the destination. The tourist may then decide to avoid the incident emotionally or to spread negative word of mouth (WOM) about it. The study also highlights the importance of a positive destination image in reducing hostile emotions during such incidents. Moreover, tourists will be more likely to re-visit a destination if they choose to avoid engaging emotionally with an unethical incident and less likely to do so if they spread negative WOM