Chris Gibbs

Professional Team Sport and Twitter: Gratifications Sought and Obtained by Followers

Without exception, all professional sport teams in North America use social media to communicate with fans. Sport communication professionals use Twitter as one of the strategic tools of engagement, yet there remains a lack of understanding about how users are motivated and gratified in their Twitter use. Drawing on a specific sample from the Twitter followers of the Canadian Football League, the researchers used semistructured in-depth interviews, content analysis, and an online survey to seek an understanding of what motivates and satisfies Twitter followers of professional sport teams, measured through the gratifications sought and the fulfillment of these motives through the perceived gratifications obtained. The results add to the sport communications literature by finding 4 primary gratifications sought by Twitter users: interaction, promotion, live game updates, and news. Professional sport teams can improve strategic fan engagement by better understanding how Twitter followers use and seek gratifi...

Social media usage in hotel human resources: recruitment, hiring and communication.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the use and non-use of social media (SM) by North American hotels for human resource (HR) activities. Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study used an online survey and a sampling frame of 1,711 North American hotels with 300 or more rooms, excluding economy properties. With a response rate of 17.1 per cent and a defined population, data were weighted to reflect the midscale, upscale and luxury market classes. Findings – Slightly more than half of North American hotels use SM for HR activities. Higher service level hotels are related to SM HR use generally; midscale properties report higher usage for internal communication. Use of SM in hotel HR is more focused on marketing versus recruitment activities. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability and, therefore, implications are limited to North American hotels, midscale or higher with 300 or more rooms. Future research should complement this broad-based study by delving more deep...

Pricing in the sharing economy: a hedonic pricing model applied to Airbnb listings

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of a variety of variables on the rates published for Airbnb listings in five large metropolitan areas in Canada. The researchers applied a hedonic pricing model to 15,716 Airbnb listings. As expected, the results show that physical characteristics, location, and host characteristics significantly impact price. Interestingly, more reviews are associated with a drop in price. This information is useful to hosts who are forming a pricing strategy for their listings as well as for Airbnb, who needs to support them. The paper raises important questions about pricing in the sharing economy and suggests avenues for future research in this area.

An experience-based taxonomy of branded hotel mobile application features

Increasing ownership of smartphones and availability of mobile travel solutions have driven the hotel industry to respond with creating mobile applications (apps). Research on mobile applications in the hotel context is relatively limited and a theory-based taxonomy related to hotel mobile application features is lacking. Taxonomies of hotel app features can provide a framework to comparatively analyze features and identify important gaps. This study examined the features available in a sample of 24 North American branded hotel mobile applications. The taxonomy developed in this research identifies 11 hotel app feature categories mapped onto four levels of technology integration and experience co-creation. The taxonomy provides insight into the current and future development of features and demonstrates opportunities where hotels can differentiate their guest service. It also highlights potential difficulties in implementing higher-level features and draws attention to differences in feature implementation across the family brand, brand and hotel property-levels.

Drivers of Responsive Website Design Innovation by Destination Marketing Organizations

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers are becoming an integral part of how people consume travel destinations. With the tremendous growth in mobile devices for travel planning and consumption purposes, this paper focuses on mobile and responsive website design and the organizational and environmental factors that drive mobile optimization strategies. Using a sample of United States state tourism offices, this research looked at mobile optimization techniques using different website emulators. The findings indicate that destination marketing organizations with lower budgets and organizations with higher website traffic have a greater likelihood of adopting responsive website design.

Use of dynamic pricing strategies by Airbnb hosts

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of dynamic pricing by Airbnb hosts.,This study uses attribute and sales information from 39,837 Airbnb listings and hotel data from 1,025 hotels across five markets to test different hypotheses which explore the extent to which Airbnb hosts use dynamic pricing and how their pricing strategies compare to those of hotels.,Airbnb is a unique and complex platform in terms of dynamic pricing where hosts make limited use of dynamic pricing strategies, especially as compared to hotels. Notwithstanding their limited use, hosts who own listings in high-demand leisure markets, manage entire places, manage more listings and have more experience vary prices the most.,This study identified a great need for Airbnb to encourage dynamic pricing among its hosts, but also warned of the potential perils of dynamic pricing in the sharing economy context. The findings also demonstrated challenges for hotel managers interested in actionable information related to Airbnb as a competitor.,This is the first Airbnb study to use a comprehensive set of data over a continuous period in multiple markets to look at a number of listing and host factors and determine their relation with dynamic pricing strategies.

Innovation-Related Organizational Decision-Making: The Case of Responsive Web Design

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing body of research on the adoption of responsive website design, by studying the related organizational decision making process. Using the Technological, Organizational and Environmental factors (TOE) framework as a theoretical foundation, this exploratory research used semi-structured interviews with US state level destination marketing organizations (DMOs). The findings demonstrate that DMO websites are multifaceted ecosystems and that innovation-related organizational decision-making is too complex but also too accidental to neatly fit within the TOE framework. The findings further question established notions of technology adoption and call for more critical and qualitative research to obtain insights into organizational technology adoption processes.

Video game–induced tourism: a new frontier for destination marketers

This paper aims to expand the media-related tourism literature in a new domain of application by highlighting a connection between the world of video games and tourism.,Through deductive content analysis, this study looks at 137 online comments posted on popular gaming and travel websites that connect two popular video games (Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed Unity) and travel motivation.,Results establish that video games share similar travel motivation elements with film and should be considered as a driver of tourism. It argues that destinations should consider video games as a platform for motivating tourists before they consider investing in virtual reality. It outlines opportunities for destinations interested in video game-induced tourism and calls for more research and case studies that link video games with destinations.,This is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first paper to investigate this connection. As such, it outlines untapped opportunities for destinations interested in video game-induced tourism and opens up a new line of research within media-related tourism literature.

The Challenges of Full-Service Restaurant Brand Internationalization: A United States/Canada Perspective

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to identify the challenges faced by full-service restaurant brands internationalizing across the border between the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 54 senior executives across the US and Canada. The results show differences in the challenges faced by U.S. versus Canadian full-service restaurant brands when they are expanding across the border based upon the context of the full-service restaurant and how they are internationalizing. This is the first empirical study about cross border expansion challenges for U.S. and Canadian full-service restaurant brands.