Managing passengers’ experience through mobile moments

Travelers' experience is dramatically affected by the use of digital technologies. On the one side, travel companies use them to support management and marketing practices with the purpose of fostering efficiency and ultimately increase competitiveness. On the other side, travelers heavily rely on their digital devices to organize, personalize and to a certain extent ‘live’ their travelling experience. Within this scenario, mobile devices are seen from both ends as crucial mean for location and context based interactive communication. Mobile devices are here discussed as personalization tool for leisure air passengers' experiential journey in an airport starting from customers' journey analysis, along with information sources used within the whole journey.     

Making an effort for free – volunteers' roles in destination-based storytelling

Many destinations are dependent on volunteers. Storytelling is one of the areas to which volunteers are increasingly contributing; however, the role of volunteers has been offered only sporadic attention. The aim of this study is to provide insights into volunteer involvement by studying volunteers as destination stakeholders with focus on their roles, influence, and contribution. A cross-case analysis of three Nordic cases is undertaken. A theoretical framework is developed based on volunteer tourism, stakeholder theory, and marketing literature on storytelling. A three-phase model of the storytelling process is developed. Findings show substantial variation. Unsurprisingly, early inclusion of volunteers result in substantial influence on the storytelling concept, however, this does not guarantee volunteer involvement later on. Conversely, late inclusion of volunteers does not necessarily hinder engagement among volunteers in the execution of the stories. All cases demonstrate that developing a strong concept that can tie together the efforts of stakeholders across professional and volunteer divides is a major challenge. The results point at the importance of strategic goals coordinating storytelling activities, volunteer inclusion, and ‘use’ of volunteers' local knowledge and enthusiasm in all phases of the destination-based storytelling process planned along with strategic goals such as ‘selling place’ or ‘building community’.     

Optimizing the block size in container yards

A block is the basic unit of storage space in container terminals. This study proposes two methods for optimizing the block size, by considering the throughput requirements of yard cranes (YCs) and the block storage requirements. To estimate the YC performance, cycle-time models of various handling operations of YCs are analytically derived. Two types of container yards are examined: those with blocks that are laid out parallel to the quay and those laid out vertical to the quay.