Amata Ring

Tourism destination competitiveness: second thoughts on the world economic forum reports

The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Reports of the World Economic Forum elaborate the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) as an overall measure of destination competitiveness for 130 economies worldwide. From a tourism management point of view, a measure such as the TTCI is expected to be instrumental in explaining and predicting the tourism performance of receiving countries. This study explores several ways to transform the TTCI into a formative structural model. Partial least squares path modelling, PLS regression, mixture modelling and non-linear covariance-based structural equation modelling are applied to examine the TTCIs predictive power. The analysis probes possible measures for improvement. The destination countries may be subject to unobserved heterogeneity with regard to how the various constituents of competitiveness act on tourism performance. Interaction phenomena seem to prohibit a simple cause–effect pattern and non-linear relationships show encouraging results.

Word-of-Mouth Segments Online, Offline, Visual or Verbal?

Most tourists love to share their holiday experiences with family, friends, and, increasingly, strangers, using the Internet. Such word-of-mouth represents a highly influential information source for potential tourists and is therefore of great interest to tourism marketing managers. This study aims to understand patterns among tourists when sharing holiday experiences, both in terms of the communication channel they use and the kind of content they share. The findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of word-of-mouth behavior by empirically showing that word-of-mouth is not a homogeneous activity. Rather, results show that distinct segments of word-of-mouth behavior exist. Segments differ with regard to content shared (visual/verbal) and channel used (offline/online). Two out of the five segments use only offline channels to share their experiences, and the extent of visual content shared varies across segments. The article illustrates how these findings could be translated into proactive marketing action aimed at instigating word-of-mouth behavior.

Optimizing or maximizing? A challenge to sustainable tourism.

Virtually all destinations seek to increase tourist numbers, pursuing economic maximization strategies. Considerably less attention is paid to optimizing existing tourist systems to create more profitable, stable, resilient and potentially more sustainable entities. While aspects of tourist expenditure, average length of stay and seasonality as three key destination management variables have received considerable attention in the literature, focus has usually been on the identification of “profitable” tourism markets by considering observed patterns of spending, length of stay and vacation timing. Building on such earlier studies, this paper focuses on flexibilities in these parameters: could tourists have spent more, stayed longer or visited during a different season? Perceptions of destination expensiveness as a potential deterrent to visitation were also addressed. Based on a sample (n = 1914) of domestic and international tourists in the Swedish cities of Kalmar and Stockholm, data were collected in face-to-face interviews using questionnaires. Results indicate considerable potential to optimize the Swedish tourism system with regard to all variables studied, while also providing new insights for destination management in the context of economic resilience. Results also indicate the need for researchers everywhere to have detailed market knowledge if they are to persuade the industry to change its sustainability behavior.

Drivers of Export Segmentation Effectiveness and Their Impact on Export Performance

In recent years, export segmentation effectiveness has attracted increasing attention in academic literature. The current study acknowledges this constructs ability to capture the proximal outcomes of export segmentation efforts and contributes to the literature by investigating its key drivers and link to export performance. The results identify export segmentation commitment, export segmentation strategy, and number of segmentation bases used as the key drivers of export segmentation effectiveness. A segments-within-countries strategy proves the most promising choice because it affects all export segmentation dimensions, which, with the exception of cost reduction, are significantly linked to customer satisfaction, strategic export performance, and, ultimately, financial export performance. The findings also provide support for the sequential segmentation → targeting → positioning process and highlight the importance of managerial commitment to export segmentation when facing heterogeneous markets.

Tourist segments' justifications for behaving in an environmentally unsustainable way

ABSTRACT Misalignment of pro-environmental beliefs and environmentally unsustainable vacation behaviour can cause psychological tension to tourists. They manage this tension by finding justifications for their behaviour, rather than changing their behaviour. A recent study has systematized such justification; this systematics is used in the present study to investigate the existence of tourist segment sharing justification patterns. A finite mixture model with concomitant variables is used to analyse 2785 survey responses. Three segments are identified. The government blamers express strong interest in the environmental sustainability of their vacation, but deny both their responsibility and ability to make a difference. The struggling seekers would not book their dream vacation if it was environmentally unfriendly, yet do not feel in control of reducing negative environmental impacts of their holiday, which they fully acknowledge. The impact neglecters also state they would not book their dream vacation if it was environmentally unfriendly, but their main justification for taking – potentially environmentally harmful – vacations is denial of the negative environmental consequences of tourism. The existence of these differences in justification patterns indicates different approaches could counteract each of these segment-specific beliefs by inducing cognitive dissonance, shown in other contexts to induce behavioural change. Advice on approaches is given.

Tourism and hospitality universities in Austria: what’s in the difference?

Abstract This paper reports on an exploratory study into the perceived differences of educational institutions in Austria. In this, a set of four institutions in and around Vienna, are compared on the basis of a questionnaire measuring student choice components for studying tourism and hospitality degrees. The set of institutions comprise one private university, one public university and two universities of applied sciences. The comparison of these institutions was considered of particular interest as the recent reorganisation of degree structures in Austria, according to the Bologna process (European Unions agreement on the standardization of higher education programs), is likely to reshape the educational environment in Austria.

Same, Same but Different. How Pictures Influence Emotional Responses of Users with Different Web Search Behaviours

Especially in the information-intensive tourism industry, searching for information is of major importance. In the context of online information search, a distinction between goal-directed and experiential searchers can be made. These two types of searchers have shown to differ in their perception of websites. As the notion “pictures are worth a thousand words” suggests, images are heavily used in advertising to convey information and trigger emotions. Besides the content of the picture, its low-level features have the power to shape the emotional quality. The purpose of this study is to link web search behaviour with emotional responses provoked by these stimulatory attributes. Following a between-subjects design, people were manipulated by randomly assigning them to one of the two search strategies. Results show that users with different web search strategies differ in their emotional responses initiated by pictures.

Perspectives on Destination Competitiveness – National Destination Competitiveness’ Influence on Regional Attractiveness

Destination competitiveness as such is central for all National Tourist Offices (NTOs) and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) as it is considered as the main outcome of all marketing endeavor (Pike 2008). The Osterreich Werbung (Austrian NTO) explicitly states that its main concern is “gemeinsam mit allen osterreichischen Tourismuspartnern fur den Erhalt bzw. den Ausbau der Wettbewerbsfahigkeit des Tourismuslandes Osterreich zu sorgen”1 (Osterreich Werbung 2011). In academia, Ritchie and Crouch’s (2003) notion seems to be the one other researchers agree to rely on. They argue that