From Tourist Attractions to Tourist Traps: Laying Theoretical Foundations

The study conceptualizes tourist traps and posits a theoretical framework based on a review of the scant literature available on the topic. The aim of the study is to illuminate how some tourist attractions evolve from being attractions to “tourist traps” and to lay the groundwork for identifying relevant factors underlying the process\u27 nomological network. The study adopts a concept mapping approach to the phenomenon of tourist traps. Data comes from a subset of a sizable corpus of traveler comments mentioning the term “tourist traps” (n=13,934), mined from Tripadvisor.com. Content analysis using natural language processing of the narrative comments reveals some potential correspondence between the hypothesized framework and the emergent empirical observation

Attracting Convention and Exhibition Attendance to Complex Mice Venues: Emerging Data From Macao

This study presents an importance-performance analysis of multi-level attributes (event, facility and destination) evaluated by delegates attending an exhibition event in a ‘complex meetings, incentive, convention or exhibition (MICE) venue’ in greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). The study's findings expound the relevance of various attributes in light of the emergence of complex MICE venues and destination resorts and, in particular, emphasizes the relative importance of destination – vis-à-vis facility – and core event-related attributes towards determining exhibition attendance

Reasons For Visiting Destinations Motives Are Not Motives For Visiting — Caveats and Questions For Destination Marketers

Many tourism studies consider elicited reasons for undertaking a behavior (e.g., visiting a destination) as the basis from which tourist motives are inferred. Such an approach is problematic principally because it ignores a dual motivational system in which explicit as well as implicit types of motives drive behavior. This paper tackles the conceptual challenge of differentiating explicit from implicit motives in tourism studies or the lack thereof. It reviews the need to discriminate between the two constructs, theorize their interrelationship and assess their relative significance in predicting a wide and varied interconnected array of travel behavior

Conceptualising the impact of culture and language upon hospitality service management

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and definitions of culture and its relationship to language and cultural sensitivity in hospitality management services. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes the form of a critical literature review followed by a phenomenological exploratory pilot study, using template analysis. Findings: Previous studies indicate that the more individuals understand and embrace notions of intercultural sensitivity, then the better they become at being able to recognise and discriminate between cultural differences. Furthermore, as a by-product, there is an increased appetite and tendency towards adopting cultural perspectives other than ones’ own. However, the operationalisation of this process encourages benchmarking along linear scales, which is problematic and over-simplifies the dynamic and fluid nature of effective cultural transmission. The paper’s findings suggest that rather than there being singular cultural and language constructs, there are cultures, which in places overlap, but elsewhere do not and therefore cannot be placed on universal scales; second, the critical success factor is less about linguistic literacy linked to vocabulary and explicit rational comprehension, and more about a pre-emptive cultural interpretive intelligence which identifies emotion and sentiment. Research limitations/implications: This is largely a conceptual paper, which, it is suggested, needs further empirical investigation – both longitudinally and on a larger scale. Originality/value: This perspective moves management, marketing and service delivery away from zero-sum games and transactional exchanges, whether financial, social or linguistic, towards collective wealth creation and empowerment – manifest in social cultural capital and the generation of tacit knowledge. The challenge that remains is how this process can be formalised and the tacit and implicit knowledge gained and created can be preserved

From Tourist Attractions to Tourist Traps: Laying Theoretical Foundations

Leonardo (Don) A.N. Dioko, Ph.d., is Professor at the Institute for Tourism Studies Macao (IFTM) and Director of IFTM’s Tourism Research Center. Since 2003, and formally as Director of ITRC, Don has conducted a considerable number of policy research studies commissioned by the Macao S.A.R. Government or its agencies.The study conceptualizes tourist traps and posits a theoretical framework based on a review of the scant literature available on the topic. The aim of the study is to illuminate how some tourist attractions evolve from being attractions to “tourist traps” and to lay the groundwork for identifying relevant factors underlying the process' nomological network. The study adopts a concept mapping approach to the phenomenon of tourist traps. Data comes from a subset of a sizable corpus of traveler comments mentioning the term “tourist traps” (n=13,934), mined from Tripadvisor.com. Content analysis using natural language processing of the narrative comments reveals some potential correspondence between the hypothesized framework and the emergent empirical observation