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This study examines the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the investment preferences of tour operators through a discrete choice experiment conducted among tour operator managers worldwide. Stakeholder theory is used as a theoretical platform for explaining the role of CSR within the tour operators’ investment preferences. The findings indicate that, when making investment decisions, tour operators generally tend to balance the interests of the local community, employees and businesses, and to consider the effects of their investments on the local economy and the environment. However, empirical evidence indicates that tour operator’s investment preferences are moderated by three factors, namely: local government pressure, size of the investment, and tour operator profile. In particular, greater attention should be paid to high-scale investments, and to investments made by generalist tour operators if destinations want to preserve their distinctive sociocultural and natural assets and provide well-being to local communities.

The complexity underlying the destination decision-making of tourists has prompted abundant research from various academic disciplines. This paper proposes the integration of the leisure tourists’ past reference experience into a model for long-haul destination choice. By analyzing the preference of tourists regarding various attributes of a tourist destination, this study consolidates the concept of reference-dependent behavior in the context of tourist destination choice and introduces the concept of reference-level bias. The research findings provide theoretical and managerial implications.

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.

Tourists visiting gambling destinations are likely to participate, to some or to a great extent, in gambling activities. Therefore, their gambling experience contributes to the evaluation of their experience at the destination. This study investigates the effect of gambling results on the overall satisfaction and loyalty of 7431 tourists visiting Macao by estimating a set of ordered probit models. The results indicate an asymmetric effect on the overall satisfaction: the negative effect of a losing outcome outweighs the positive effect of a winning outcome. Both winning and losing gambling outcomes have a positive and similar effect on the likelihood to recommend the destination, and the likelihood to revisit is affected in a positive way only by a winning outcome. The main determinants of tourist satisfaction and loyalty are further verified and the influence of tourist profile variables is also explored. Theoretical and managerial implications are outlined based on the results.

Hospitality is a field in which guests’ specific needs and wants should always be given serious consideration by hoteliers. Putting the guest at the centre of all business efforts contributes to generating customer value and enhancing a firm’s competitiveness. Being customer-centric is paramount for hospitality establishments to create and sustain superior customer value. However, there is scant evidence in hospitality marketing literature of a clear understanding of the customer-centricity concept or of the possible effects of its implementation. Using a mixed-methods multiple case study approach, this research studies two different properties that, to some extent, are already engaged in customer-centricity practices through the use of advanced Customer Relationship Manager software. Results clearly show an increase in customer ratings, leading to possible profit implications; a cultural shift within the organizations studied connected with the customer-centricity phenomenon has also been reported.

International long-haul travel represents a distinct market segment with great potential. Yet, empirical studies on the stopover destination visits are limited. The current research is based on a web survey conducted among residents in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which are three of the world’s top spenders and long-haul travel source markets. In this work, we examine tourist intentions to trade leisure time at a long-haul destination for a visit to a stopover destination. In particular, tourist preferences are analyzed as a function of traveler price sensitivity toward long-haul destinations, travel personality, activity engagement, motivation, travel profile, and demographic characteristics. Results provide insights into the under-researched topic of stopover tourism and guide aviation mega-cities toward an enhanced understanding of the potential demand.

This study investigates strategic consumer behavior in online hotel booking. Free cancellation policies enable consumers to rebook the hotel room at a later time should the price drop prior to the date of stay. A discrete choice experiment is used to infer consumer preferences for free cancellation and non-refundable rates under different scenarios. The study also examines the moderating role of the risk attitude of consumers. Risk-seeking consumers show preference for a free cancellation rate that increases with the availability of an automatic rebooking service. Although a higher booking window increases the utility of the free cancellation rate, such impact decreases as risk propensity increases. The identification of four distinct consumer segments provides clear implications for industry practitioners.

During hotel selection, tourists compare alternative hotels based on hotel characteristics and process such information according to a specific decision rule. This study investigates customer preference toward various hotel location attributes through the implementation of a stated choice experiment and estimation of a discrete choice model. The study further aims to compare the well-established utility-based decision rule with a recently introduced regret-based decision rule. The study analyzes the stated preferences of 719 tourists in Hong Kong for different factors, including walking time to the nearest points of interest, hotel neighborhood, online rating, and price. The two decision rules investigated in the study provide similar estimation results with regard to the significance of the estimated coefficient of different factors, although the random regret minimization model performs significantly better than the random utility maximization model. The paper also compares and discusses the willingness to pay measures and implications.

Hotel managers need to understand the marginal utility customers associate with a specific attribute of a hotel in order to effectively set up rate fences and to price their rooms accordingly. This study adopted a stated choice experiment and discrete choice modeling method to obtain hotel guests’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a specific set of room attributes within a single hotel property. The attributes include room views, hotel floor, club access, free mini-bar items, smartphone service, and cancellation policy. The study discovered that leisure travelers versus business travelers, and first-time visitors versus repeat visitors, perceive different WTP values for various attributes. These findings provide valuable information for hotel managers to segment their market and conduct revenue management practices in order to maximize revenue and profit. The results also demonstrate the value of discrete choice modeling in obtaining WTP for hotel room attributes.

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.

This paper reviews literature on travel destination choice and organizes these studies systematically. A “cell–system” structure is proposed to describe the psychological process of travel destination choice. When forming decisions on vacations, tourists gather information on potential destinations and evaluate visit intentions among potential destinations (“cell”). The visit intentions are successively compared while information is updated in the process (“system”). The “cell–system” structure provides a clear view of the psychological process of travel destination choice. Empirical studies based on the structure can provide further insights into why and how tourists choose travel destinations.

Service quality is an important issue for airlines. However, incidents of unruly passenger behavior (UPB) are increasing. Such incidents may have a negative impact on passengers' evaluation of the overall service quality of an airline, making the maintenance of airline standards difficult. This study investigates the relationship between acceptability of in-flight UPBs and traveler profile. Results show that aggression and violence are the most unacceptable forms of UPB. Educational and cultural background, purpose of travel, travel frequency, and flight duration are the main factors influencing participants' acceptance of UPB. This study provides information on the acceptability of different forms of UPB and the impact of different passenger characteristics. The study closes with the recommendations to airlines for dealing with UPB.

Highlights • A count model for the determinants of hotel advance booking is proposed. • Prices have a decreasing effect that is less than proportional. • Long stays at holiday homes increase the days of advanced booking. • Booking in July and August, as well as large party size, imply longer anticipation. • Reservations through DMO channels are related to longer advanced booking.

This paper proposes that movement patterns and transportation mode choices are linked, and then identifies the estimation of a bivariate probit model as an appropriate technique to investigate the two correlated choices. The two variables are described by a mixed combination of independent variables, wherein the transport mode choice can be explained by demographics, whereas movement patterns are influenced by trip characteristics. Moreover, the introduction of activity participation and motivation in the model allows for a better understanding of tourist behavior in relation to the two investigated variables. Finally, marginal effects are derived to quantify the impacts and draw policy implications in destination management and transport planning. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

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.

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. © 2012 SAGE Publications.

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.

In selecting a hotel room, guests evaluate specific room characteristics. After their stay, these characteristics are used as reference levels in deciding which hotel room to stay in the future. According to prospect theory, the gains (i.e., upgrade or improving) and losses (i.e., downgrade or worsening) with respect to the reference level are perceived differently by individuals. In particular, losses are weighted more than gains. This research investigates the asymmetric preference in hotel room choice by performing a stated choice experiment among the guests of a hotel in Hong Kong. A mixed logit model is estimated by deriving different coefficients for improving and worsening conditions, and attribute-specific cluster analyses are performed to identify those segments with similar preferences. The results confirm the validity of reference-dependent specification in hotel room choice and provide insights for revenue managers in relation to their aim to maximize revenue for repeat guests.

Tourist accommodation expenditure is a widely investigated topic as it represents a major contribution to the total tourist expenditure. The identification of the determinant factors is commonly based on supply-driven applications while little research has been made on important travel characteristics. This paper proposes a demand-driven analysis of tourist accommodation price by focusing on data generated from room bookings. The investigation focuses on modeling the relationship between key travel characteristics and the price paid to book the accommodation. To accommodate the distributional characteristics of the expenditure variable, the analysis is based on the estimation of a quantile regression model. The findings support the econometric approach used and enable the elaboration of relevant managerial implications.

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.

The analysis of the drivers of expenditures is an important topic that has been studied in the literature; however, the effect of individual price sensitivities to tourism activities on on-site expenditures has received no attention. Price sensitivity is an internal characteristic of the individual related to an external, very influential variable (price), and expenditures on tourism activities represent direct income for the destination. On this account, the objective of this study is to analyse the effect of individual price sensitivity on tourists' expenditures tourists on vacation activities. The operative formalization follows a mixed logit model to estimate individual sensitivities to price, and then a regression analysis to detect their effect on expenditures. The empirical application finds that price sensitivity has a non-linear quadratic influence on holiday expenditures. The managerial implications are also outlined.

This research analyses the influence of tourist' psychological motivation visiting a destination on their actual travel behaviour and the use of this information for bundling tourism attractions and services in a destination card. The relation between push motivation and activity consumption at the destination is recognized in the literature. The paper extends this evidence by introducing activeness indicators measured according to the amount and type of activity participation normalized to the length of stay. Regarding destination cards the paper investigates, through the use of ordered logistic regressions, four requirements (monetary, timesaving, informational and customization), defined as the benefits of a card tourists may find important. The model results show a significant relation between card requirements and both activeness and motivation, suggesting that destination cards need to be based on natural and cultural attractions, whereas entertainment, sport and social activities can be only additional benefits on discounted price. The data has been collected in the Ticino region, Switzerland. The sample refers to 586 face to face interviews with tourists visiting the area. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

The literature contains evidence that there is a marked heterogeneity in price responses to tourism products, leading to a great variety of tourist sensitivities to price. Thus the role price plays is complex, and a particularly challenging aspect of this complexity is that its effect is not unambiguous, thereby negating the idea that the demand for tourism products and tourist activities can always be regarded as demand for ordinary goods. This article identifies and explains, as a novelty for the tourism industry, price sensitivities to tourism activities individual by individual. The operative formalization uses a mixed logit model to estimate the individual sensitivities to price, and then a regression analysis is applied to detect their determinants. The empirical application finds that motivations, influenced by age, and length of stay with a non-linear effect, are explanatory factors of tourists' price sensitivity to activities.