Martina Toni

Data-Centered Platforms in Tourism: Advantages and Challenges for Digital Enterprise Architecture

Digitization changes business processes and enterprise architectures in many sectors. In the Tourism sector more and more data must be analyzed and integrated into business processes. Therefore, the current architecture must be changed to a more flexible, data-driven one. Besides the basements of current Tourism application, we investigate which scenarios are possible via data-centered platforms in Tourism and how this transformation can be done.

A scaling up framework for innovative service ecosystems: lessons from Eataly and KidZania

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore why innovative service ecosystems scale up, using a service-dominant logic lens. The focus is on identifying the key drivers of the scaling-up process as the basis for a new conceptual framework on the scaling up of service innovations. Design/methodology/approach An inductive research design is used to zoom in on two innovative service ecosystems, Eataly and KidZania, to identify the key drivers that can explain why innovations scale up. For both companies, the triangulation of semi-structured interviews, archival sources and in-store observations is used as complementary data sets. Multiple investigators and multiple coders have been involved in the data collection, coding process and analysis. Findings An extended conceptualization of service innovation is obtained, grounded in a framework of four drivers of scaling up: effectuation as the basis for creating the value proposition; sensing and adapting to local contexts; the reconfiguration and alignment of resources and forms for collaboration between actors; and values’ resonance. Originality/value This study represents one of the first empirical investigations of the key drivers of the scaling up process of service innovations. The paper contributes with a conceptualization of service innovation and why scaling-up processes emerge, emphasizing the existence of multiple constellations of four drivers.

Do satisfied employees lead to satisfied patients? An empirical study in an Italian hospital

This study aimed to understand the relationship between care provider (employee) satisfaction and patient satisfaction and to identify key drivers of their satisfaction. The European Foundation for Quality Management-based 4P model and Picker’s Patient Experience quality dimension were used as the theoretical basis for understanding the satisfaction relationship along with the key drivers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in two wards (maternity and cardiology) from June to August 2014. The partial least squares structural equation modelling method was used to analyse the data. For the 4P model, we found strong evidence for the influence of enablers on the results and eventually on employee satisfaction. Likewise, we found strong evidence for the effect of patients’ experience on their overall satisfaction and eventually on their loyalty. Concerning the relationship between employee and patient satisfaction, we found that a higher patient satisfaction level in one ward was associated with higher employee satisfaction in the same ward. Other findings include the identification of key drivers of patient and employee satisfaction along with improvement priorities for each ward. This study provides insights that can be useful for healthcare managers and policy-makers responsible for developing and planning strategies for more sustainable healthcare organisations.

Digital Enterprise Architecture Management in Tourism – State of the Art and Future Directions

The advance of information technology impacts Tourism more than many other industries, due to the service character of its products. Most offerings in tourism are immaterial in nature and challenging in coordination. Therefore, the alignment of IT and strategy and digitization is of crucial importance to enterprises in Tourism. To cope with the resulting challenges, methods for the management of enterprise architectures are necessary. Therefore, we scrutinize approaches for managing enterprise architectures based on a literature research. We found many areas for future research on the use of Enterprise Architecture in Tourism.

Technology and Cultural Heritage Management: Can Technology Have an Impact on Word-of-Mouth and Territorial Attractiveness?

The main aim of this chapter is to explore the existence of a bond that tied together the satisfaction of a cultural heritage’ visitors (after the experience of the technological visits), their propensity towards the word-of-mouth and their intention to discover the local territory in which the cultural attraction is located. To achieve this purpose, a theoretical review was carried out, in order to analyze the existing literature on cultural tourism and relative flows, visitors’ satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and destination management. Nowadays, the cultural visit is changing and a wide number of sites provide to their customers the possibility to experiment a “technological visit.” Starting from the results of the literature analysis, a theoretical model was developed with the following objectives: (a) detecting the main aspects that impact on the visitors’ satisfaction; (b) understanding the relation between the visitors’ satisfaction and the word-of-mouth (WOM) inherent to a cultural site; (c) identifying the existence of positive relation between the WOM and the willingness to come back to discover the local territory. Many authors studied the factors that affect visitors’ satisfaction, but only few researches have been oriented to deep analyze the specific role played by the technological applications along the cultural path. In addition, the literature on cultural tourism shows a lack in the analysis of the tourists’ satisfaction ability to generate a positive WOM, in turn able to increase the attractiveness of the territory in an important way. To verify the developed model, a survey on the visitors of the Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri was carried out. The presented cultural site is part of the Cultural and Technology District (CTD) of Lazio region and providing the possibility to experiment a technological visit, allows the study of this new feature on visitors’ satisfaction. The model was test by using a structural equations modeling (SEM).