The evaluation of visitor experiences using the peak-end rule

ABSTRACT

As the peak-end rule suggests that the peak and the end moments are a better predictor of the overall evaluations of experiences than an average of the total experiences, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of the peak-end rule in predicting overall satisfaction with the visitors’ experiences. The data was collected from 187 visitors who participated in alleyway historical tour areas. The results of this study support for the peak-end rule of visitor experiences associated with travel and tourism behavior. The study also suggests distinct roles for the visitors’ positive experiences of enjoyment, happiness, and pleasure with the demographic variables to explain the visitor satisfaction. Additionally, the research finding implies that the visitor experiences were enhanced at the peak and end moments rather than at the most memorable episodes during the historical tour activities. Tourism practitioners may provide a range of meaningful opportunities and differentiated programs with the participants by identifying the relationships between the peak-end experience and visitor satisfaction. Future research can focus on investigating other important antecedents of individuals’ experiences, and identifying the complex nature of visitors’ perceptions and their relationships with their experiences.     

Tour Booking: Do Travelers Respond to Tourism Accreditation and Codes of Ethics Initiatives?

Tourism and hospitality organizations are spending more time and money on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, but at the same time not fully understanding how such initiatives enhance travelers’ responses. This study investigates the impact of two CSR initiatives that have been widely adopted by many travel organizations: tourism accreditation and codes of ethics. A large-scale survey collected data on how potential travelers responded to an online tour brochure. The results showed that both accreditation and code of ethics information in a brochure have significant but varying impacts on perceived tour value, trust, and tour booking intention.     

Stakeholder stories: Exploring social tourism networks

Social tourism networks are uniquely diverse, as they include beneficiaries who are usually excluded from tourism participation. They often rely on collaborations with social organisations outside of tourism. This paper discusses the ‘Large Scale Listening’ project conducted by the Holiday Participation Centre, the social tourism division of Tourism Flanders (Belgium). In the project, 1004 micro-narratives were collected. After narrators told their stories, they were presented with a list of follow-up questions that allowed them to tag and code their own stories, enabling them to directly influence how their stories were interpreted. The findings of the study highlight a joint commitment to social tourism, but differences in perspectives between different stakeholder groups in terms of the travel participation enablers and inhibitors.     

TOURISM SENSE‐MAKING: THE ROLE OF THE SENSES AND TRAVEL JOURNALISM

The tourist experience is corporeal and multisensory. Tourism organizations, therefore, need to pay attention to the sensual content of promotional messages conveyed to potential tourists to provide incentives for seeking enriched experiences of place. Together with other image formation agents, travelogues (travel articles published in newspapers and magazines) offer information on and prompt imagination about destinations that help frame visitors' expectations and influence their subsequent travel decisions and behaviors. This article content‐analyzed 199 travelogues about New Zealand to identify relationships between regions and perceptions based on sensory allusions. It was found that the reporting of New Zealand as a whole by visiting journalists tended to utilize an appeal to all senses, but this was not true of individual destinations. It is suggested that urban destinations such as Auckland and Wellington possess potential for a wider sense appeal than is currently used through products based on urban adventure tourism and culinary tourism. An “ideal” itinerary is proposed that would permit journalists to capture a sensory experience of New Zealand.     

中国城市居民旅游需求函数的实证研究

旅游需求问题是旅游研究的核心问题之一,中国居民旅游需求函数是旅游需求问题研究的基础,旅行成本模型广泛地被用于估计居民旅游需求函数。文章基于停留时间内生的旅行成本模型,在考虑游客动态出游行为的情形下,使用中国39个城市2000~2007年间国内旅游抽样调查数据,采用广义矩估计方法对中国居民旅游需求函数进行了估计。研究表明,旅行成本、时间成本和居民收入是影响居民旅游需求的关键因素;旅游需求收入弹性的绝对值大于旅行成本弹性的绝对值,城市旅游产业发展的居民收入激励政策较之于成本竞争策略更有效;旅游需求的旅行成本弹性和时间成本弹性差异显著,减少旅行成本政策较之于缩短旅行时间政策更能提高城市的旅游收入;旅游需求和停留时间的影响因素存在异同,扩大旅游需求和延长停留时间的选择面临"两难",但也可"两顾"。     

INDUSTRY RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Emotional intelligence, a type of social and personal intelligence, is important in managing interpersonal relationships and interactions, especially in the business sphere. Businesses that involve frequent customer contact and interaction, such as those in the field of tourism, can benefit from the application of multiple intelligences. This study examines how, and to what extent, emotional intelligence can benefit the travel and tourism industry. Seven tour operators were interviewed to assess their attitudes, opinions and observations about emotional intelligence and its application to the relationship between tourists and residents of a community. Results showed that all tour operators, to a certain degree, utilized emotional intelligence to offer more personalized travel solutions for tourists. It was found that understanding the cultural values and social etiquette particular to each travel destination was essential for healthy tourist-resident relations.     

Domestic tourism expenditures: The non-linear effects of length of stay and travel party size

The independent variables length of stay and travel party size are recurrent determinants of expenditures in micro level tourism studies. In most of this research it has been tacitly assumed that these variables have linear effects on tourism spending. This study, situated in a Norwegian setting, questions this approach by explicitly scrutinizing the possible non-linearities in the relationships between tourism expenditures on the one hand and length of stay and travel party size on the other. The empirical results suggest a positive but diminishing relationship between length of stay and tourism expenditures and a convex (i.e. U) relationship between travel party size and tourism expenditures. The study also considers how a number of other key independent variables affect tourism expenditures. Finally, some managerial and scholarly implications are discussed.     

Decision making by specialist luxury travel agents

We report an ethnographic study of specialist travel agents in luxury wildlife tourism. Agents consider 30 factors in 5 groups, related to client, destination, attraction, operator and agent. They consider the groups in sequence rapidly and intuitively. They are driven by a powerful regard for the high expectations of wealthy clients, and a sense of responsibility to the clients, but they assume authority over the decision. They rely on personal experience with each particular place and tourism product, and sell only what they know. One of their skills is to project themselves into the client's perspective so as to imagine a trip in great detail. This process contrasts strongly with the explicit deterministic approach used by retail travel agents in high-volume lower-priced subsectors, where earnings are driven by commission and incentive structures. For high-end agents, establishing long-term relationships of mutual trust with individual clients and tour operators is paramount.     

TOURISM AND SPIRITUALITY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Using phenomenological analysis, this paper examines the concept of ‘spirituality’ in the lived travel experience of an individual tourist. The paper contributes a phenomenological snippet of the tourist’s ‘portrait’ (the individual’s rich story, much like a portrait painting) to reveal the spiritual meaning Amber reportedly gained from and imbued onto her travel experiences with the tour operator, Hands up Holidays. The paper argues that when discussing the ‘spiritual’ dimension of tourism, one potential avenue is to seek to understand how people seek meaning and life purpose themselves, their quest for meaning, and experiences of transcendence and connectedness as subjectively lived through their travel. The paper concludes that the phenomenological view may be a useful frame through which to further examine the personal meaning of travel as lived by people, both in religious and non-religious contexts, but contextualised within the wider meaning of their lives.     

Travel Package Modeling: Optimal Bidding Strategy of Tour Operator to Cooperative Hotels

In the travel package industry, in order to obtain stable and sufficient source of hotel rooms for package products, the tour operators would like to cooperate with hotels located at the tourism destination. Meanwhile, the hotels also appreciate the cooperation as a way to improve occupancy rate and then revenue. This paper develops models of travel package in several scenarios to analyze the relationship between the tour operator and the hotel. Through theoretical analysis and numerical studies, this paper finds that the tour operator will bid a low wholesale room rate to the hotel with high capacity or/and a small number of individual tourists. On the other hand, the hotel with large capacity or/and less individual tourists will reserve more rooms for the travel packages, while the one with high room rate and stable source of individual tourists is not likely to remain so many rooms for the tour operator.     

Investigating the motivation–experience relationship in a dark tourism space: A case study of the Beichuan earthquake relics,China

This study identifies implications of dark tourism and describes how tourists and destinations, which are principal collateral cores, define what constitutes “dark” travel. The study also examines the dimensions of dark tourism motivation and experience and finds that the former partly affects the latter. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis aimed to examine why tourists approach and engage with disaster sites and how such experiences may affect tourists motivation and emotional reaction. It is the first paper that applies structural equation modelling to dark tourism research. We focus on the causal relationships between dimensions of motivation and experience, and the relationship that the emotional reactions effect on tourist experiences. We find that the curious visitors are likely to engage cognitively by learning about the incident or related issues and tourists' emotional reaction to the “dark” space influence more heavily emotional tourist experiences than cognitive experiences do.     

Why do people share their travel experiences on social media?

Tourism practices and destination decisions are more and more affected by the opinions of trusted friends channeled through social media, and it is therefore of great interest to explore the role that this plays in the travel context. It is also valuable to understand the behaviour of people commonly known as “lurkers”, who travel but do not share their experiences with others. We draw on social influence theory and its three constructs – identification, internalization, and compliance, as well as the users’ personality, to investigate these issues. Based on 381 responses, findings reveal two dominant reasons: first, perceived enjoyment was the most important motive for travellers to share their travel experiences on online networks and travel websites. Second, security and privacy issues are the top latent reasons. This study extends the tourism literature by combining all online behaviours into one single model. We also provide suggestions for further research.     

旅游信息服务视阈下的智慧旅游慨念探讨

智慧旅游的丰富实践使研究者不断思考“什么是智慧旅游”的问题,而对这个基本问题虽有很多解答但仍然需要进行探索。文章试图通过对国内外有关智慧旅游的概念进行了梳理,建立起以旅游信息服务为基础的智慧旅游的基本概念,即把智慧旅游定义为旅游者个体在旅游活动过程中所接受的泛在化的旅游信息服务。该定义旨在强调智慧旅游以旅游者个体为核心、以信息服务为载体的支撑体系,以泛在化作为核心内涵,以旅游者行为方式、旅游业营销方式、管理方式和服务方式的根本性变化为主要外延,并据此对国内外智慧旅游概念进行了全面评价。文章的价值在于将智慧旅游的概念与旅游信息化（特别是旅游信息服务）有机结合,既承上启下又能开启智慧旅游发展的新思路。     

导游与游客交互质量对游客感知的影响——以游客感知风险作为中介变量的模型

导游服务质量一直是旅游服务领域中争议的焦点。文章通过构建以导游与游客交互质量的3个维度（行为、专业技能和问题解决）为前置变量、游客个人风险和非个人风险感知为中介变量、游客感知价值和满意度为结果变量的结构方程模型,尝试研究了导游人员与游客的交互质量与游客感知之间的作用机制。以530名使用过旅行社导游服务的旅游者作为样本,研究发现,通过提升导游人员的行为、专业技能和问题解决能力能够显著降低游客的个人风险感知,从而提高游客感知价值和满意度,但导游人员与游客的交互质量对游客非个人风险感知及游客非个人风险感知对游客感知价值和满意度的影响作用则相对复杂。     

论旅游服务提供者在包价旅游合同中的法律地位及责任

针对旅游服务提供者的法律地位及责任问题,《关于审理旅游纠纷案件适用法律若干问题的规定》和《旅游法》都设置了若干规则,但其中某些规则值得商榷。在包价旅游合同中,旅游服务提供者并非旅游合同当事人,而是向债权人(旅游者)履行义务的第三人,也是《合同法》第121条中的"第三人"。旅游服务提供者是否属于旅游经营者的履行辅助人,在我国《合同法》对旅游合同中的违约责任不以过错为要件的背景下并不重要。旅游经营者无干涉、控制可能的公共交通运营者仍应属于旅游服务提供者。根据《合同法》第64条,旅游者对旅游服务提供者应享有履行合同义务或承担违约责任的直接请求权。因旅游服务提供者的原因而致旅游者人身损害或财产损失的,《旅游法》施行以后,旅游服务提供者与旅游经营者承担的是不真正连带责任。     

旅游权内涵解析及其保险保障机制探讨

公民旅游权是基本人权的重要延伸,是一种综合性权利,可分为基础性旅游权和消费性旅游权两大类,旅游保障权、旅游自由权、旅游平等权、旅游资源共享权、旅游发展共享权、旅游消费权和出入境旅游权等七项权利。在我国旅游发展与旅游者权益保护亟待加强的情况下,建议通过相关制度设计构建全面广泛的公民旅游权保障体系,完善我国旅游业持续健康发展的制度基础。在保险制度方面的保障措施主要包括:借助强制保险和商业保险提供公民旅游休闲保障,完善保险制度安排,加强旅游资源保护,进行保险创新,保障公民旅游自由权,加强保险国际合作保障,公民出入境旅游权等。     

Development of virtual cyber‐tour in the virtual reality system

This study is to explain the importance and the necessity of virtual cyber‐tour in a virtual reality environment, and to present a way of its realization as a means to surmount the fundamental constraints in current tourism, arising mainly from the individual health, cost, leisure time, and the low perception on tourism culture. This virtual cyber‐tour using virtual reality technology will not only provide various indirect tour experiences to the existing tour resources, but also develop a new type of tour system, leading to new worlds which have not been accessible to the public because of various restrictions coming from the current technology, transportation means, and physical limits of human body. Thus, the cyber‐tour will be a new tour resource of totally different concept and also, its industrialization will result in the developments of new industries for virtual reality system, video production, and display media, creating lots of jobs and added value.     

Applying endosymbiosis theory: Tourism and its young workers

Building on systems theory and its applications in tourism management, we introduce the natural science evolutionary ‘endosymbiosis theory’ to interpret the inter-dependencies of youth employment and tourism. Tourism organisations are located within a tourism industry or a sub-system, which in turn is bounded within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. We mobilise three classifications of symbiosis - mutualism, commensalism and parasitism to: a) test the analytic utility of this theoretical approach as a means to unpack the young worker and tourism employment relationships, and b) unify hitherto disparate literatures on the youth-tourism employment relationship. In particular, we model the explanatory value of endosymbiosis theory, navigating the ethicalities and moralities of the social sciences, in progressing our understanding of the tourism-young worker intersection.     

Exploring well-being as a tourism product resource

This study employs a qualitative research approach where focus groups (n = 11) with key stakeholders were used to understand how tourism investors view the concept of well-being in relation to tourism and the potential to use it as a tourism product resource. Findings validated by a wider group (n = 50) exposed the barriers and enablers of implementing well-being in this way. The potential for businesses and policymakers to transform these barriers into enablers was also identified. In addition, study findings were mapped onto a robust model extracted from the public health sector and applied in a tourism context using a systems theory approach. This further highlighted the potential offered to the fields of public health and tourism in the concept of well-being, and demonstrated the well-being value of tourism. Data from this research will aid tourism business practice and development by embedding a well-being philosophy for tourism destinations' strategies.