Bart Neuts

Tourist Loyalty and Urban E-Services: A Comparison of Behavioral Impacts in Leipzig and Amsterdam

Abstract E-services are increasingly important communication tools for tourism providers but not all tourists prefer the same type of services. This work compares the preferences for e-services according to the characteristics of tourists and the implications on their expenditures during travel to the cities of Amsterdam and Leipzig. In addition, the determinants of satisfaction and loyalty according to the characteristics and motivations of the visitors in these cities are analyzed. Despite some important common tendencies, most of the relations under analysis in both structural models did not provide identical results for these two cities, emphasizing the heterogeneity of tourism destinations.

Describing the Relationships between Tourist Satisfaction and Destination Loyalty in a Segmented and Digitalized Market

As a result of advances in ICT services, transportation and local development, among others, more destinations are competing to attract both national and international visitors. Globalization requires destinations to increase their competitiveness or risk losing out on tourist revenues. While the research into destination competitiveness and tourist loyalty is well founded, recent progress in e-services has opened up new opportunities for informing and attracting visitors. This paper examines the potential effects of e-services in an inclusive model of destination loyalty to the city of Leipzig in Germany. The results of the path analysis indicate possibilities for e-services to increase both satisfaction and loyalty, especially with regard to various tourist subgroups.

An econometric approach to crowding in touristic city centres : Evaluating the utility effect on local residents

Using a common property resource conceptualization, this article introduces a new methodology for crowding valuation in touristic city centres. Crowding issues are defined in terms of utility gains or losses through a stated-preference choice experiment, making it possible to quantify crowding disturbances in monetary terms. The proposed method is applied to the case of Antwerp, Belgium, specifically focusing on the effect of use density on local inhabitants. The case study serves to reveal quantitatively the theorized quadratic effects of crowding on the space utility of residents. Potential utility effects of different crowding levels are discussed and compared to actual use levels. The methodology provides new opportunities for threshold optimization in crowding-sensitive urban areas, taking into account a community-based norm development.

Crowding Perception in a Tourist City: A Question of Preference

Two main topics are analysed in this paper: a crowding model for an urban destination is tested by the use of a binary logistic model in order to identify the variables influencing crowding perception; and the inherent negativity of the crowding concept, as is often assumed, is examined through association statistics. The results confirmed that personal and behavioural variables have a larger effect on the perception of crowding than use-level. Furthermore, the relationship between crowding and experience, while significantly negative, could only be found in respondents with a preference for low, and a perception of high, use-levels, while for the majority of individuals the perception of a certain crowding level did not lead to a negative evaluation of the conditions. This proves that the concept of crowding cannot be assumed to be implicitly negative, and needs individual preferences to be fully understood.