Segmenting Chinese Tourists to Korea: Experiential Value Based Approach

The aim of this study is to explore how tourists derive experiential value. To assess tourists’ travel experiences, the experiential value was adopted from scales developed by Mathwick et al. (2001). The seven-dimensional measures—visual appeal, entertainment value, escapism, efficiency, economic value, service excellence, and intrinsic enjoyment—were used. This study contributed to the existing literature by utilizing a multi-dimensional experiential value to segment the Chinese tourists visiting Korea. This study identified three lucrative segments: value ignored, neutral and highly value driven. The study discusses the implications

Text mining approach to explore dimensions of national parks visitors’ experience and satisfaction using online customer reviews

Natural parks are gaining global popularity with millions of visits per year. However, studies evaluating park visitors\u27 experiences, satisfaction, and motivations are limited to traditional methods, such as direct observations, spatial analysis using global positioning system (GPS) trackers, interviews, surveys, and focus groups. As an alternative to these conventional methods, user-generated content (UGC) provides available, easily accessible, and consumers\u27 reliable recent experiences with services. This study investigated visitors\u27 reviews of selected Canadian national parks to explore the dimensions of the visitors\u27 quality of experience and the drivers of satisfaction based on online ratings on the Trip Advisor website. The analysis yielded various topics ranging from visitors\u27 pleasant feelings about trails, mountain views, and water activities to their unpleasant experiences regarding food, crowds, lineups, and parking lots. Besides, analysis of the reviews based on the reviewers\u27 start ratings highlighted the most important drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction between them. Findings suggest that topics related to schedule and weather-related hassles; food, tickets, and shopping experiences; and visitor information center and exhibitions were among the most distinguishes dissatisfied visitors (1- and 2-star) from others. On the other hand, positive vibes, expressiveness, photography opportunities, and daytime and weather experience were the principal determinants of visitors\u27 satisfaction (4- and 5-star)

Benefit Segmentation of US Pleasure Travellers to Hawaii

This study delineates the benefits sought by US pleasure travellers to Hawaii by using a factor- cluster market segmentation technique. Based on four benefit factors (knowledge/learning; relaxation; family/social bonding; and pleasure experience), cluster analysis was used to identify similar respondents based on the benefits that they sought. This study identified three distinct segments: active travellers, relaxation seekers, and traditional tourists. The following variables were shown to be statistically significant among the three segments: age; gender; education; occupation; marital status; ethnicity; household size; information sources; Web site visit behaviour; destination selection factors; appealing states; travel frequency to Hawaii; and activities enjoyed. The study discusses the distinctive and common characteristics of the three identified segments

19. A Research-Based Approach to Participation Assessment: Evolving Beyond Problems to Possibilities

This research study, undertaken across a department, presents the results of two focus groups in which twenty undergraduate students offer their views on participation assessment and its underlying goal of student engagement. Barriers to fairly assessing participation are discussed along with their solutions. Assessing participation, though, isn’t just about identifying and then dealing with problems, as necessary as that is. It’s also about fostering and acknowledging personal and academic growth on the part of the student and, as strange as this may sound, on the part of the professor

Understanding Hotel Guest Experience: A Text-Mining Approach

The objective of this study is to explore the group differences of consumers in handling service failures in the hotel industry via a text-mining approach. Distinguishing from previous studies which used data either from third parties like tripadvisor.com or surveys from random customers, this study obtained a nine-year longitudinal dataset directly from an internationally recognized hotel chain. A total of 1,224 observations were analyzed with the text mining and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique. A series of analyses were conducted to explore the hidden information from the massive amount of unstructured text data. The results revealed that gender demonstrated group difference in reporting service failure. Female travelers are more sensitive to affective feelings in a hotel stay while males concern more about facilities/amenities experience. Purpose of stay also affects how consumers deal with service failure. Leisure travelers are found to be more price sensitive and likely to have issues with the usage of coupons. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed