Present whilst absent: Home and the business tourist gaze

This paper reflects on business travel as a contemporary form of mobility and how it relates to family life. Through qualitative research with business travellers, insights are gained into the role digital technology plays in enabling connections to home and family. The paper argues that technology affords a ‘business tourist gaze’, characterised by a focus on ‘home’ rather than ‘away’ as might be the case for leisure tourists. The paper discusses how, through the business tourist gaze, the boundaries between the everyday and the exotic are dissolved and the business traveller is disconnected from the destination, simultaneously absent whilst present both at the destination and at home. Theoretical understandings of the business tourist experience are offered.     

PARTicipative inquiry for tourist experience

Despite a wealth of research on the tourist experience, empirical evidence remains weak due to difficulties in data collection during people’s holidays. Tourist experience has thus primarily been analysed from a fixed point, such as prior motivations to travel or retrospective accounts. However, this obscures important information on tourists as they transition through the total experience. This paper presents participative inquiry as a novel methodology for the acquisition of data before, during and after the holiday; facilitating ‘prospective’, ‘active’ and ‘reflective’ triangulation (PART). We provide an empirical example of PARTicipative inquiry in practice, highlighting the benefits and challenges of this approach alongside the (otherwise) hidden insights it reveals into the responsible tourist experience.     

Memory and forgetfulness in tourism crisis research

Even though academic attention has been paid on the tourism-memory nexus, the concept of forgetfulness in tourism has been largely overlooked and remains unexplored. The aim of this research note is to introduce the concept of forgetfulness alongside memory within tourism scholarship to discuss the way in which it may be integrated with future research. In so doing, the discussion focused on a tourist crisis context as tourists’ post-crisis behaviour often reflects forgetfulness as evidenced by their travel resumption patterns. Overall, by linking the concepts of forgetfulness and tourism, this research note contributes to knowledge advancement on tourism crises by shifting attention away from risk perceptions towards an understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes influencing tourist behaviour. The research note also illuminates understanding of how crises are forgotten; hence, contributes to the improvement of crisis management strategies. The research note concludes by proposing an agenda for future research.     

Tourist movement patterns understanding from the perspective of travel party size using mobile tracking data: A case study of Xi'an,China

Travel party size has been shown to affect tourists' behavior. However, due to a previous lack of big-data analytical techniques, there remains limited research on the effect of party size on tourist movements from a large-scale perspective. This paper presents an empirical case study on the understanding of tourist movement patterns from the perspective of party size using mobile tracking data in Xi'an, China. A Fine-grained Travel Party Partition (FTPP) method is proposed to automatically distinguish accompanied tourists from a dataset of all tourists in Xi'an. After aggregating travel parties according to the size, tourist movement patterns are compared across different party sizes from demographic, spatial and temporal aspects. We further discuss how the obtained insights can help the stakeholders in travel package improvement, connectivity enhancement among attractions, attraction planning and management, and personalized next-attraction recommendation.     

Too afraid to Travel? Development of a Pandemic (COVID-19) Anxiety Travel Scale (PATS)

Pandemics are affecting tourism in many ways. Being a niche research field before, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created a strong urgency to develop this topic. For researching pandemic-induced changes in tourist beliefs and travel behaviour, we developed a construct that measures the intra-personal anxiety of travellers (and non-travellers): the Pandemic (COVID-19) Anxiety Travel Scale (PATS), using two large online studies (N = 2180; N = 2062) and including two different cultural contexts (US and Denmark). In Study 1, explorative and confirmative factors analysis confirms a short and easy-to-use 5-item solution, while the presented model adds face validity. Study 2 confirmed the structure (reliability) and tested nomological validity, by putting PATS into the context of different constructs (xenophobia and prevention focus). Although the proposed scale arose from the coronavirus (COVID-19), it is not limited to this specific pandemic and will hopefully prove to be a valuable measurement tool for future pandemics as well.     

Tourists' shopping experiences at street markets: Cross-country research

Considering shopping as one of the most important motivations for travel, this study focuses on tourists' shopping attitudes towards street markets while on a vacation. Specifically, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model that assesses how price consciousness and perceived utility, as critical drivers of attitudes in street markets, may influence tourist satisfaction and future intentions. As opposed to the structure of previous research, this study is also based on a cross-national comparative study conducted among foreign tourists visiting Algarve, Portugal and Bodrum, Turkey, in the summer of 2011. Study findings confirm that price and utility perceptions are the most important marketplace cues and higher level of satisfaction moderates tourists' willingness to return or recommend street markets in both destinations.     

Travel burnout: Exploring the return journeys of pilgrim-tourists amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

This study investigates the timely, yet academically unexplored, topic of travel burnout. The study explores the return journeys of pilgrim-tourists from Iran to Pakistan during COVID-19 pandemic and contextualizes travel burnout as a negative emotional state placed in the existing theoretical streams. The conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989; 2004) provided theoretical support to guide current study's research agenda. On the basis of a qualitative grounded theory research design, 47 in-depth interviews of pilgrim-tourists were conducted. Travel burnout emerged as a multidimensional concept comprising 3 core dimensions, i.e., low tourist self-efficacy, travel exhaustion and emotional maladaptation. Travel burnout anchors emerged as those factors that facilitated preservation of the tourists' resources when travel circumstances became beyond their regulation. The results pave the way for a more theoretically sound conceptualization of travel burnout. For destination marketing organizations, various avenues are identified that need attention to alleviate the tourist concerns that lead to burnout.     

Staging a comeback? The influencing mechanism of tourist crowding perception on adaptive behavior

An increasing number of studies have recently elucidated the serious negative effects of tourist crowding. However, how tourists cope with crowding and adopt adaptive responses remains unclear. Thus, this study qualitatively identified the mechanism of tourist crowding perception of adaptive behavior from interviewees and then quantitatively validated the mechanism through the mediation of tourist fatigue and negative emotions, as well as the moderation of peer emotion contagion. Tourists were more likely to return to a destination and engage in temporal replacement behavior through the mediating effect of tourist fatigue, but it was also found that peer emotional contagion interferes with two paths that explain how tourist crowding perception influences tourist emotion change or state variation, impacting adaptive behavior responses. Consequently, we recommend diverting tourists, focusing on alleviating fatigue and negative emotions and channeling the peers’ negative emotions to mitigate the negative impact of tourist crowding.     

Integrating the tourist gaze with the social servicescape: Implications for creating memorable theme park experiences

This research examines how the social servicescape-directed gaze (i.e., perceptions of similarity, appearance, and behavior of other customers) influences theme park visitors’ affective states and experiences. A quantitative, survey-based research design was adopted with a total of 561 theme park patrons participating in the study. Results of structural equation modeling analyses reveal that similarity and behavior positively affect visitors’ feelings of arousal and curiosity, which in turn contribute to memorable theme park experiences. Other visitors’ appearances, however, are not a significant predictor of affect/experience. From a theory standpoint, this research represents a first attempt to study the tourist gaze at theme parks and makes a unique contribution by integrating the three dimensions of the social servicescape with the theoretical lens of the tourist gaze. Practically, this research provides suggestions for theme park management to create more memorable experiences by leveraging the social servicescape-directed gaze among visitors.     

Tourists’ happiness: are there smart tourism technology effects?

The purpose of this study is to develop a research model demonstrating tourists’ value-seeking processes through the tourism services and travel experiences of a destination. The model suggests that tourist happiness is assessed by tourists’ perceived experiences, which are formed by two motivational values: smart tourism technology (STT) and destination value. Despite a large quantity of research attention on destination tourism, the relation between tourists’ destination experience and STT has been less enthusiastically studied. Therefore, this study proposes to test an integrated model with attributes of STTs and destination values that contribute to tourists’ life happiness. The results of this study, from a survey of 191 foreign tourists in Seoul, South Korea, indicate that tourists are likely to put more value on what they perceived from their destination travel experiences than what they perceived from their experiences with STT services when they evaluate their overall happiness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Factors influencing Chinese tourist flow in Japan – a grounded theory approach

This study examined the factors influencing Chinese tourist flow in Japan. The study used a grounded theory to obtain insight into the tourist flow through text analysis of 96 online travel diaries and used these data to propose a model of factors. The model constitutes five categories: tourist condition (travel purpose, time budget, travel companion, prior visit experience, and opinions of others), destination characteristic (destination resource and distribution of destinations), transportation characteristic (transportation expense and transportation network), macro environment (visa policy and political relationship), and unforeseen circumstance (weather condition and fortuitous event). The study established a model for comprehensive understanding factors influencing tourist flow at inter-destination level.     

A Comparative Study of Generational Preferences for Trip-Planning Resources: A Case Study of International Tourists to Shanghai

Although many previous studies have investigated the information search behavior in some specific age groups of tourists, few of them comprehensively examined the relationships between cross-generational tourists and their preferences for various types of trip-planning resources. This study aimed to fill this research gap. The authors employed correspondence analysis to assess and visually display the correlations between four generational groups—the Silent Generation (aged over 65), the Baby Boomers (aged 50–64 years), Generation X (aged 30–49 years), and Y (aged 18–29 years)—and 10 primary travel information sources for the Shanghai international tourist market. The results indicated that tourists in the Baby Boomers and Silent Generation groups rely most on travel agencies and tour operators. The Generation X tourists are inclined to search websites for their travel information. Generation Y tourists are more likely to consult friends and/or relatives and travel guidebooks. The study has both theoretical and practical contributions. The core values of generations are used to explain their preference of information sources from a theoretical perspective. This study assists destination marketers to design effective promotional strategies suited for different generational segments.     

How do tourists respond to meta-stereotypes? Understanding their willingness to interact,self-presentation and the role of power

Research into the stereotypes of tourists by locals and the impacts of these stereotypes on local behaviors is well established. However, how tourists respond to these stereotypes remains underdeveloped. This research offers a thorough understanding of the effects of meta-stereotypes on tourists by revealing whether being stereotyped affects tourist intentions to interact with locals and their self-presentation during these interactions. Two scenario-based experiments and a follow-up survey were conducted. Study 1 demonstrates that meta-stereotypes influence in different ways the willingness of tourists to interact with locals and how they present themselves to locals. Study 2 reveals that these effects are significantly moderated by the degree to which tourists hold power, with powerful tourists being more likely to behave in line with meta-stereotypes. Study 3 draws consistent conclusions with Study 1 and 2 in surveying 313 Mainland Chinese tourists. This research offers insights into tourist responses to meta-stereotypes and has implications for organizations seeking to enhance tourist-host relations.     

Framing Chinese Tourist Motivations Through the Lenses of Confucianism

The present study investigates Chinese tourist motivations on the basis of the major life domains of Confucianism, which are self, family, social life, society, and nature. A 32-item, 9-factor Chinese tourist motivations scale was developed. The nine dimensions are family togetherness, harmony with nature, relationship/guanxi, face/mianzi, self-development, material fulfillment, escape and retreat, children’s learning, and exploration and discovery. Identified through a three-phase process, the scale exhibited adequate psychometric properties across multiple samples. While introducing a unique perspective to the understanding of tourist motivations, this study provides a timely framework as China becomes one of the most vibrant markets in the global travel industry. In discussing the results, themes that are peculiar to the Chinese context were deliberated.     

Analysis of international tourist arrivals in China: The role of World Heritage Sites

This paper analyzes the determinants of international tourist arrivals in China, especially for World Heritage Sites and various kinds of travel spots. Utilizing annual provincial panel data over the 2000–2005 period, the empirical results suggest that key determinants include the relative income, population in the original country, cost of travel, and tourism infrastructure. In addition, World Heritage Sites are also found to be significant in explaining the numbers of international tourists and have a greater tourist-enhancing effect. Other famous tourist sites rated 4A- and 3A-class are also attractive to foreign tourism. Moreover, cultural rather than natural sites attract more interest among foreign tourists, because China is internationally renowned for its long-standing historical and cultural assets. Finally, the importance of the determinants of the demand for tourism varies from country to country.     

Why Heidegger did not travel: Existential angst,authenticity, and tourist experiences

“Authenticity” continues to be debated within tourism studies, as seen in the extensive number of articles published in ATR since 1999 on this subject. Advocates of existential authenticity have used the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger to argue that tourists seek experiences that counter the emptiness of everyday life in modern societies and provide them an opportunity to be more authentic. This is, however, based on a partial reading of Heidegger. His work implicitly questions the efficacy of travel as a means of experiencing a greater awareness of one’s own place in the world and explicitly rejects cosmopolitanism as a worldview. Rather than a new intervention, ‘existential authenticity’ is a return to a familiar travel/tourist dichotomy.     

老年旅游者的出游行为决策研究--以江西省老年旅游市场为例

老年旅游市场是一个具有极大潜力的市场，其开发具有重要的社会意义。文章采用2000年7月江西省旅游市场调查的数据，逐一对老年旅游者的客源地结构与特征、人口学特征(性别、年龄、职业、月收入、文化)、行为决策(旅游目的、信息来源、出游喜好、旅游方式)等进行了分析，从而得出了老年旅游者出游行为的一般规律。     

The influence of travel photo editing on tourists’ experiences

Photo editing has become a prevalent practice when people share their travel photos on social media. This study examines this understudied phenomenon by exploring travelers' photo-editing behavior and its impact on tourists' destination experiences. Three pilot interviews and 23 in-depth interviews were conducted using photo-elicitation. The results show that photo editing does not necessarily alter the objective part of the trip memories, but rather reminds tourists of more positive than negative memories. Compliments from the social media audience on the edited photos improve tourists' overall recall of their destination experiences and further enhance their reflection on these experiences. The findings also enrich the understanding of the hermeneutic circle of representation in tourists’ photo editing behavior.     

Marketing Australia overseas—a corporate perspective

The Australian Tourist Commission promotes international tourism to Australia. It undertakes a range of marketing activities including advertising, public relations and tourist trade promotions. It does not sell travel. The tourist industry in Australia contributes 6% to Gross Domestic Product and employment. International tourism in Australia accounts for around 15% of all tourism. Australia is divided into eight states and territories all of which promote tourism within the country and also undertake offshore promotions with the Australian Tourist Commission. The strategy of the Commission for the next 3 years includes an emphasis on conventions and incentives, market research, quality promotions and special interest travel across a broad range of markets.