Lorenzo Masiero

Selling rooms online: the use of social media and online travel agents

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on the reason why hoteliers choose to be present in online travel agent (OTA) and social media web sites for sales purposes. It also investigates the technological and human factors related to these two practices. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a survey sent to a wide range of hotels in a Swiss touristic region. The empirical analysis involves the specification of two ordered logit models exploring the importance (in terms of online sales) of both social media and the online travel agent, Booking.com. Findings – Findings highlight the constant tension between visibility and online sales in the web arena, as well as a clear distinction in social media and OTA web site adoption between hospitality structures using online management tools and employing personnel with specific skills. Practical implications – The research highlights the need for the hospitality industry to maintain an effective presence on social media and OTAs in order to move towards the creation of a new form of social booking technologies to increase their visibility and sales. Originality/value – This research contributes to understanding the major role played by OTAs and social media in the hospitality industry while underlining the possibility of a major interplay between the two.

Tourism Market Segmentation Based on Price Sensitivity Finding Similar Price Preferences on Tourism Activities

This article builds on the double role of the effect of prices on the choice of tourism activities: not only is it the sole component of the destination marketing mix that represents revenue but also a determinant factor in tourist choice. On this account, identifying patterns of tourists with different degrees of sensitivities to prices would help destinations design an appropriate bundle of activities and have a clear definition of the segment they should try to attract. Accordingly, the objective of this article is to identify tourist segments from individual price sensitivities to activities. The results show—although price has a dissuasive influence on the choice of activities—a differentiated effect (as this dissuasiveness is not general for all individuals); this heterogeneous responsiveness to price supports its use as a segmentation criterion. In the empirical application, four segments are found with significantly different price sensitivities.

Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together? The Impact of Ethnic Segregation Preferences on Neighbourhood Choice

Ethnic residential segregation can arise from voluntary or imposed clustering of some ethnicities in specific urban areas. However, up to now it has been difficult to untangle the real causes underlying the segregation phenomena. In particular, voluntary segregation preferences could not be revealed from the observed location choices given the existence of constraints in the real housing market. This study aims at analysing the voluntary segregation drivers through a stated preferences experiment of neighbourhood choice. This method obviates the choice-constraint issue by allowing a hypothetically free choice of alternative urban locations. The results suggest that ethnic preferences exist, positive for co-national neighbours and negative for other foreign groups. However, such preferences do not constitute a major location choice driver given relatively modest willingness-to-pay for ethnic neighbourhood characteristics. Certain heterogeneity in preferences for higher concentration of own co-nationals is captured for households of different origins and educational attainment.

Regret minimisation and utility maximisation in a freight transport context

This study is the first to compare random regret minimisation (RRM) and random utility maximisation (RUM) in freight transport application. This paper aims to compare RRM and RUM in a freight transport scenario involving negative shock in the reference alternative. Based on data from two stated choice experiments conducted among Swiss logistics managers, this study contributes to related literature by exploring for the first time the use of mixed logit models in the most recent version of the RRM approach. We further investigate two paradigm choices by computing elasticities and forecasting choice probability. We find that regret is important in describing the managers’ choices. Regret increases in the shock scenario, supporting the idea that a shift in reference point can cause a shift towards regret minimisation. Differences in elasticities and forecast probability are identified and discussed appropriately.

Freight transport distance and weight as utility conditioning effects on a stated choice experiment

Abstract Within a freight transport context, the origin-destination distance and the weight of the shipment play an important role in the decision of the most preferred transport service and in the way logistics managers evaluate the transport services attributes. In particular, the attributes commonly used in order to describe a freight transport service in a stated choice framework are cost, time, punctuality and risk of damages, respectively. This paper investigates the role of origin-destination distance and weight of freight transport services introducing a conditioning effect, where the standard utility function is conditioned on the freight transport distance. We refer to this model form as a heteroskedastic panel multinomial logit (panel H-MNL) model. This model form outperforms the underlying unconditioned model and suggests that an appropriate conditioning effect leads to an improved understanding of the derived measures, such as measures for marginal rates of substitution.

Comparing Reservation Channels for Hotel Rooms: A Behavioral Perspective

ABSTRACT This paper studies the customers’ selection of different sales channels for booking hotel rooms. Direct (hotel website) and indirect channels were considered, in which the latter were distinguished according to online travel agencies, destination marketing organization (DMO) website, and DMO call center. A multinomial logit model was estimated to investigate the influencing factors among a specific set of variables of interest (associated with either customer or hotel). The role of DMO as a third-party actor in booking hotel rooms was also investigated. Results indicated that hotel guest profile and hotel characteristics have different effects on the four analyzed sales channels. The active role of DMO in booking hotel rooms was found to be beneficial to the hotel industry as it attracts specific segments of customers, thus creating additional marketing opportunity. Relevant managerial implications were also outlined.

The relevance of mobile tourism and information technology: an analysis of recent trends and future research directions

ABSTRACT Although there have been studies concerning information and communication technologies adoption in the tourism industry, the research trends of mobile tourism (m-tourism) are still not very clear due to the short development time and emerging nature of the technologies. To fill this gap, this study reviewed and analyzed articles related to online reviews of tourism and hospitality published in academic journals between 2002 and 2015. Through a keyword-driven search and content analysis, 92 articles are identified as relevant and classified into three topics. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of this promising research direction by presenting the interesting classification methods used by relevant publications and their insights. This paper also discusses significant topical and methodological trends, and contributes to an overall understanding of existing research and its limitations.

Accounting for WTP/WTA discrepancy in discrete choice models: Discussion of policy implications based on two freight transport stated choice experiments

A key input in cost-benefit analysis is represented by the marginal rate of substitution which expresses the willingness to pay, or its counterpart willingness to accept, for both market and non-market goods. The consistent discrepancy between these two measures observed in the literature suggests the need to estimate reference dependent models able to capturing loss aversion by distinguishing the value attached to a gain from the value attached to a loss according to reference dependent theory. This paper proposes a comparison of willingness to pay and willingness to accept measures estimated from models with both symmetric and reference dependent utility specifications within two different freight transport stated choice experiments. The results show that the reference dependent specification outperforms the symmetric specification and they prove the robustness of reference dependent specification over datasets designed according different attributes levels ranges. Moreover we demonstrate the policy relevance of asymmetric specifications illustrating the strong implications for cost-benefit analysis in two case studies.

Choice behaviour in online hotel booking

The objective of this study is to analyse how people process information and make decisions with regard to booking hotel rooms via online booking systems. The authors propose a nested decision process and compare it with the approach of previous literature in analysing the determinants in choosing a hotel. This research attempts to model online hotel bookings in the real market using discrete choice modelling. The methodology is based on the estimates of nested logit models, and the results show that tourists choose a hotel by going through a number of staged decision structures, which is in line with Associative Network Theory and the Cybernetic decision-making model.

Chinese Outbound Tourist Preferences for All-Inclusive Group Package Tours: A Latent Class Choice Model:

Extensive studies were conducted to understand package tour participants, but little is known about the selection and trade-off for a specific tour versus another. A stated choice experiment was conducted in this study with 270 prospective mainland Chinese outbound tourists, aiming to identify their heterogeneous preferences for package tours that involved eight attributes, each with varying levels. To identify the sources of preference heterogeneity, a latent class choice model was estimated to segment each of the three predetermined budget groups into two subgroups, and profile these subgroups by sociodemographic characteristics and consumption values. Different preference patterns for tour attributes were revealed among the subgroups, whereas majority of the respondents reported common preferences for fewer designated shops and direct flights. The results provide researchers and practitioners with innovative insights into the preferences and trade-offs of mainland Chinese package tour participants, as well as practical guidance for package tour design and pricing.