Damir Krešić

Critical Factors of the Maritime Yachting Tourism Experience: An Impact-Asymmetry Analysis of Principal Components

ABSTRACT As the first study to explore key drivers of the maritime yachting tourism experience, this study applies principal component analysis (PCA) and impact-asymmetry analysis (IAA) to the context of Croatian nautical tourism. The data used in this article were collected as part of the TOMAS Nautica Yachting study, an institutional study on attitudes and expenditures of yachtsmen in Croatia. Overall, the study encompassed 2171 tourists who were interviewed during the 2012 tourism season. The analysis revealed a five-dimensional structure of the yachting tourism experience, with three dimensions having an asymmetrical impact on tourists’ global judgment of their yachting experience. It is noteworthy that the onshore destination experience emerged as the factor to have the largest potential to impact tourists’ overall experience. This is despite the fact that the attributes underlying this dimension are not directly related to the yachtsman’s primary travel motive – namely sailing.

Propensity to Travel: What Is the Macro-Data Telling Us?

Propensity to travel, loosely defined as willingness of a person to be a tourist, is one of the most fundamental concepts of tourism research. It is deeply rooted into the core of tourism demand, and draws the attention of actors on tourism supplyside. Three of the theoretically most discussed socio-demographic determinants of propensity to travel are: age, education and income. It is quite dogmatically accepted that these three socio-demographic factors immensely influence somebody’s willingness to become a tourist. The aim of the present paper is to examine this stance by conducting an empirical analysis of the determinants of propensity to travel on the macro level. In 2011, the European Parliament and The European Council have adopted the Regulation by which the Member States are obligated to compile annual data on trips of its residents. Accordingly, the data on participation in tourism for personal purposes of EU inhabitants have recently been published by Eurostat. Those data were used to answer the question which of the determinants of propensity to travel are truly important on the macro level.

The relationship between brand strength and tourism intensity: empirical evidence from the EU capital cities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between brand strength and tourism intensity indices and to determine to what extent the implementation of the branding process can have an impact on building a destination’s brand strength and tourism economic performance in the European Union capital cities. Design/methodology/approach – For the purpose of this study, secondary data on brand strength and tourism intensity for a sample of 20 European capital cities were used. Correlation analysis between brand strength and tourism intensity was then performed by using a cross-section analysis design. Findings – The findings of this research show that destination brand strength is indeed significantly and positively related to tourism intensity. Originality/value – This paper concludes that destination branding process is an important factor for creating and maintaining competitive advantages among capital cities on the mature and saturated European tourism market.

The influence of political factors in fashioning destination image

Political factors and tourism promotion can play an important role in the formation of national brand which substantially increases a nation’s competitive advantage. This is particularly true for newly formed transition countries, such as Croatia, that have gained independence and faced the imperative of creating a new national image. This chapter examines the influence of political factors and the role of tourism promotion in fashioning international image of Croatia. Tourism promotion played an important role in this process, and Croatian National Tourist Board is heavily relying on tourism attractions to position Croatia internationally. Therefore, other potential attributes of Croatian image are unknown even in the regional context. To substantiate these claims, this chapter presents some research results regarding Croatia’s image in 18 tourism generating markets.

Key-Driver Analysis with Extended Back-Propagation Neural Network Based Importance-Performance Analysis (BPNN-IPA)

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is a popular prioritization tool used to formulate effective and efficient quality improvement strategies for products and services. Since its introduction in 1977, IPA has undergone numerous enhancements and extensions, mostly with regard to the operationalization of attribute-importance. Recently, studies have promoted neural network-based IPA approaches to determine attribute-importance more reliably compared to traditional approaches. This chapter describes the application of back-propagation neural networks (BPNN) in an extended IPA framework with the goal of discovering key areas of quality improvements. The value of the extended BPNN-based IPA is demonstrated using an empirical case example of airport service quality.