Christian Weismayer

Being passionate about the mobile while travelling

People interpret the availability of their mobile phone similar to their personal (social) relationships (friends, family, and pets). Hence, mobile phones are appliances that provide continuous functional and emotional support. Also, in the field of tourism, the integrated use of mobile phones is indicated by words such as ‘catalyst’ and ‘travel buddies’, enhancing tourists’ experiences. This study goes one step further by incorporating the concept of passion and affective outcomes of using the mobile phone while travelling. Perceived socialness of the mobile phone significantly effects passionate behaviour and affective outcomes. For practitioners aiming for digital innovation in the field of tourism, these findings provide insight into the development of tailor-made travel-related applications. Furthermore, affective feelings derived from mobile phone usage will be enhanced by effective travel-related applications encouraging the modern tourists while travelling.

The Role of Authenticity in Airbnb Experiences

Integrating the concept of perceived authenticity into a peer-to-peer accommodation setting, this study investigates its impact on tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty. Through an online survey among users of the popular peer-to-peer accommodation platform Airbnb, various factors which impact perceived authenticity were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Hospitality factors and service quality show to significantly impact tourists’ perceived level of authenticity. Self-congruence does not show to impact a peer-to-peer accommodation authentic experience. In addition, this study demonstrates the role of perceived authenticity as an important part of the peer-to-peer hosting experience leading to satisfaction. Furthermore, hosts are provided insights how to enhance tourists’ perceived authenticity and relive upon Airbnb’s authentic brand claim.

The passionate use of mobiles phones among tourists

As technology becomes more available and affordable, consumers get increasingly absorbed in and reliant on technology, becoming passionate users. This trend is also observed in the field of tourism. The development of travel-related apps, free WI-FI spots, QR codes and augmented reality applications are a few examples of how consumers use mobile phones to enhance their travel experiences. By making use of on exploratory data analysis approach, the study combines the concept of passion and affective states derived by mobile phone usage while traveling. The study identifies three types of users based upon emotions towards mobile phones. Among the three clusters a visible relationship with passion is detected. This study illustrates the psychological processes underlying mobile phone usage affecting the overall tourist experience. This study supports marketers designing mobile-enhanced tourist experiences for different mobile phone users.

Identifying emerging research fields: a longitudinal latent semantic keyword analysis

This study aims to gain insights into emerging research fields in the area of marketing and tourism. It provides support for the use of quantitative techniques to facilitate content analysis. The authors present a longitudinal latent semantic analysis of keywords. The proposed method is illustrated by two different examples: a scholarly journal (International Marketing Review) and conference proceedings (ENTER eTourism Conference). The methodology reveals an understanding of the current state of the art of marketing research and e-tourism by identifying neglected, popular or upcoming thematic research foci. The outcomes are compared with former results generated by traditional content analysis techniques. Findings confirm that the proposed methodology has the potential to complement qualitative content analysis, as the semantic analysis produces similar outcomes to qualitative content analysis to some extent. This paper reviews a journal’s content over a period of nearly three decades. The authors argue that the suggested methodology facilitates the analysis dramatically and can thus be simply applied on a regular basis in order to monitor topic development within a specific research domain.

A model of tourists’ loyalty: the case of Airbnb

Airbnb, a popular peer-to-peer accommodation platform, exceeds the yearly revenue of hotel chains, such as Marriot and Hilton. However, the reason why consumers engage with peer-to-peer accommodations and become loyal is not completely clear yet. This study aims to investigate Airbnb as a service setting. In doing so, more insights into the relevance of concepts, such as service quality (SQ) and hospitality factors, to explain consumers’ behavioral intentions with peer-to-peer accommodations and its effect on loyalty can be gained.,Through an online survey among Airbnb users and structural equation modeling, the model connecting the measurement constructs is analyzed.,This study shows that SQ and importance of having social and authentic experiences are significant antecedents of tourists’ loyalty toward Airbnb hosting services. Interestingly, perceived economic benefits do not impact the level of loyalty, neither does feelings of perceived reduce risk.,The theoretical contributions reveal tourists’ behavioral patterns in the peer-to-peer accommodation context influenced by standard service factors used for other types of accommodations. This study has particular implications for the accommodation sector when segmenting customers according to their needs and designing appropriate marketing strategies.,Airbnb是目前流行的大众提供住宿民宿的在线平台，其年收益已经超过很多连锁酒店，包括万豪和希尔顿在内。然而， 关于消费者如何消费和热衷于这种Airbnb民宿的原因还知之尚浅。本研究主要以Airbnb为题进行研究，其研究结果深刻讨论Airbnb相关概念，比如服务质量和酒店管理因素等， 以解释分析消费者行为动机和游客忠诚的联系纽带。,本研究采用在线问卷采样的形式，Airbnb客人在线填写问卷，其样本经过结构方程模型（SEM）技术，以分析相关模型结构。,本研究结果表明服务质量、社交体验、以及正宗的当地游客体验对于游客Airbnb忠诚度有着显著促进作用。饶有趣味的地方是，游客对于省钱和感知风险等方面并未对其Airbnb忠诚度有任何显著影响。,在理论意义方面，本研究深刻探讨游客对于大众提供住宿服务的行为模式。在实践意义方面，本研究结果对细分客户市场的需求探索和营销策略制定方面有着特别贡献。

Personality Impacts on the Participation in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Travel Accommodation Services

Peer-to-peer (P2P) services rapidly has become more and more important within the travel accommodation service industry over the last years. Thus it is crucial to know why certain groups of people do or do not participate in P2P accommodation services. Comparisons between the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) reveal insight into differences between Airbnb-users and Airbnb-nonusers with regards to their personality. Equality constraints on the measurement construct across the two groups guarantee for the comparability between them as well as reveal existing differences on the five latent dimensions. Comparableness is derived by a recently invented alignment procedure within the structural equation modelling (SEM) framework.

Spatial price dependencies between the traditional accommodation sector and the sharing economy

The emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation (e.g. Airbnb) has steadily increased the pressure on the traditional accommodation sector. Although Airbnb listings are perceived as being more affordable than hotels, this has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether significant price dependencies exist between the Airbnb and traditional accommodation sectors and to analyze the underlying pricing strategies. For this purpose, the Estonian capital city of Tallinn is used as a case example. Airbnb data, prices and locations of hotels in Tallinn, as well as spatial information such as distance to points of interest (POIs), and so on, are used in hedonic price regression models. The results show that Airbnb pricing positively depends on characteristics of the listing and the number of POIs within an optimal 650 m radius, which is obtained from a simulation study. Also, prices of hotels and of other Airbnb listings within the same radius positively impact Airbnb listing prices. Finally, Airbnb accommodations are shown to indeed be the more affordable alternative.

Aspect-Based Sentiment Detection: Comparing Human Versus Automated Classifications of TripAdvisor Reviews

Review platforms are gaining more and more importance in the tourism industry. From a consumer’s point of view, reviews facilitate information search and influence the decision making process. Service providers are unable to neglect the impact of such websites and are thus forced to track reviews. However, due to the massive load of reviews, this task becomes more and more time consuming. Text mining tools assist in extracting decision-relevant knowledge from user-generated content (UGC). In order to assess the appropriateness of machine-driven approaches, TripAdvisor reviews of restaurants as well as hotels were collected and analysed applying the AYLIEN Text Analysis API on RapidMiner. The conclusions hereof were then compared with results generated by traditional manual content analysis. Findings support the adequacy of fully automated domain specific aspect-based sentiment analysis tools. The authors argue that the suggested methodology facilitates the analysis dramatically and can thus be simply applied on a regular basis with the aim to constantly monitor reviews.

Profiling Wine Tourist Involvement Segments: A Case Study of Central Burgenland/Analyse von Weintouristensegmenten nach deren Involvementgrad am Beispiel Mittelburgenland

Weintouristen werden nicht als homogenes Touristensegment betrachtet, sondern als heterogene Gruppe. Typischerweise finden sich Segmentierungsansatze nach soziodemografischen und psychografischen Merkmalen, dem Weinkaufverhalten, den Lebensgewohnheiten in Bezug auf Wein, und auch der Besuchshaufigkeit. All diesen Herangehensweisen liegt ein gemeinsames Ziel zugrunde, namlich die Aufdeckung von moglichen Weintouristensegmenten. Es wird jedoch in der Literatur angemerkt, dass derartige Segmentierungsversuche im Weintourismus sehr regionalspezifisch sind, weshalb sich die hier gewonnenen Erkenntnisse auch auf das Mittelburgenland, Osterreich beziehen. Aufgrund der divergierenden Gruppencharakteristika ist es fur die Verantwortlichen der Weinbranche von auserster Wichtigkeit, sowohl Push-Faktoren (externe Kriterien wie reisen, entspannen) als auch Pull-Faktoren (interne Kriterien wie Wein verkosten und kaufen) zu untersuchen. So wurde in vergleichbaren Studien festgestellt, dass das Involvement und die Produktabhangigkeit das tatsachliche Verhalten beeinflussen, welches sich beispielsweise im Sinne von veranderter Konsum- und Besuchshaufigkeit niederschlagt. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie liegt somit in der anfanglichen Segmentierung hinsichtlich des Involvements und in der darauffolgenden Analyse der vorgefundenen Weintouristengruppen des Mittelburgenlandes. Die Datenerhebung wurde zwischen November 2014 und Mitte Janner 2015 mithilfe eines Onlinefragebogens durchgefuhrt. Weinkaufer und -interessenten von Weingutern im Mittelburgenland wurden als potenzielle und aktuelle Weintouristen betrachtet. Drei Weinguter und zwei Weinhandler lieferten Kontaktdaten in Form von 10.398 E-Mail-Adressen. Die Empfanger wurden uber Newsletter eingeladen, an der Onlinestudie teilzunehmen. Des Weiteren wurde der Link zum Fragebogen uber Social-Media-Plattformen wie Facebook und Weingut-Webseiten umworben und erzielte letztendlich 317 vollstandig ausgefullte Fragebogen. Bereits die soziodemografischen Charakteristiken der Befragten stimmten weitgehend mit den in der Literatur vorgefundenen Merkmalen des klassischen Weintouristen uberein. Zur Involvementmesssung wurde eine gekurzte Version der „Wine Involvement Scale“ (Getz and Carlsen 2008) herangezogen. Die Befragten wurden mithilfe einer Clusterzentrenanalyse gruppiert. Die datengetriebene Differenzierung zwischen hohem und niedrigem Involvement zeigt eine hohere Zustimmung der Involvement-Items vonseiten der Gruppe mit dem hoheren Involvement. Die anschliesende tiefer gehende Analyse der aufgefundenen Segmente basierte auf unterschiedlichen aus der Theorie abgeleiteten Variablen (Bruwer et al. 2013; Mitchell et al. 2011; Bruwer and Alant 2009; Getz and Carlsen 2008; Hashimoto and Telfer 2003). Hier zeigt sich, dass Personen mit einem hoheren Wein-Involvement auch das hohere Einkommen haben, vor allem mannlich sind, in den letzten zwolf Monaten mehr Besuche von Weingutern oder Vinotheken unternommen haben, ofter Wein trinken und generell mehr Geld fur Wein und auf weinbezogenen Ausflugen ausgeben. Die Gruppe mit hohem Involvement legt im Vergleich zur Gruppe mit niedrigem Involvement auch mehr Wert auf Authentizitat, Weinqualitat, Besuchbarkeit von Weingutern und Know-how der Weinproduzenten bzw. des Weinbauern. Demgegenuber steht die Gruppe mit einem niedrigeren Wein-Involvement mit dominierenden Wichtigkeiten in den Bereichen andere Aktivitaten, schone Landschaft oder naturliche Umgebung. Fur Praktiker leiten sich daraus beispielsweise Handlungsempfehlungen hinsichtlich masgeschneiderter Packages fur unterschiedliche Involvementsegmente ab.

Automated Hyperlink Text Analysis of City Websites: Projected Image Representation on the Web

The objective of this study is to identify the image representations of 75 European cities on the Web. As an effective image positioning strategy this will result in successful differentiation from competitors, given that it is crucial for tourism destinations to regularly examine their image. This study focuses on the supply side of destination-image formation and is therefore concerned with analysing the projected destination image. Hyperlink texts of DMO websites were collected automatically by a crawler. The texts were then edited and filtered. Latent semantic dimensions were generated by applying PCA. A hierarchical cluster approach revealed different groups of hyperlink terms. Finally, the co-occurrence of terms and cities was displayed in a joint map indicating which groups of hyperlink terms are over- or underrepresented for each city. This information permits drawing conclusions regarding the projected images of cities.