Thailand as a tourist destination: Perceptions of international visitors and Thai residents

In the tourism industry, the perceptions of a tourist destination are critical to its image. Image can be either a mental image of a product created by a marketing department or an associative image of a product that is developed by the consumer. Tourism destinations must be careful about their image so the perception that they have is not different from the way that they are perceived by potential travelers. This study examines the perceptions of international visitors and Thai residents on the image of Thailand as a tourist destination. International visitors and Thai residents were both surveyed to determine their perceptions of the image of Thailand. Some results of the study found that Thai residents and international visitors felt cultural sightseeing, friendly people and food were significantly important when thinking of Thailand as a tourist destination, while international visitors felt that nightlife and entertainment were significantly more important than that of Thai residents.     

Estimating the effect of overcrowding on tourist attraction: The case of Canary Islands

This paper analyzes the influence of the tourist’s perception of overcrowding on a destination’s appeal. To do so, the use of the population density estimates is suggested to measure degrees of overcrowding in a tourist area, which in this paper is undertaken using panel data analysis. A tourist demand model is estimated in the study case, which consists of a number of resorts located in five islands of the same archipelago, Canary Islands. This distinctive case of close but different destinations makes it possible to isolate variations in demand due to changes in population density and other supply-side factors from other demand-oriented ones. Annual tourists coming from two different European countries to the islands were considered as endogenous variables. The empirical findings provide an indicator of each island’s maximum capacity and test some policy measures laid down to extend these limits. The estimation of the effect of population density on demand can serve as a useful tool for planning the future development in destinations where tourist attraction is mainly based on the natural values of the site.     

Tourism life cycle and sustainability analysis: Profit-focused strategies for mature destinations

Tourist destinations tend to follow similar development patterns. Eventually, all destinations enter the market maturity stage leading to a decline in visitors. To prevent visitor decline, tourism managers and policy makers try to reposition their destinations appealing to more tourist segments. A multi-segment strategy is expensive and may create a fuzzy destination image, further accelerating the decline. An alternative strategy extends Zeithaml, Rust, and Lemon’s (2001) customer pyramid theory. This paper applies customer pyramid theory to Turkey’s tourism industry. Precise targeting of the most loyal visitors (Platinum tourists) creates a less costly and more focused marketing strategy leading to a sustainable tourism industry. Loyal Platinum tourists tend to be less price sensitive than other visitors. The discussion includes strategies to convert Gold and Iron category tourists to Platinum providing additional growth opportunities.     

Visitor cycles : Outlook for tourism in Lancaster County

Various writers have suggested that tourist areas undergo a cycle of evolution ending eventually in decline. This article suggests a five-stage evolutionary sequence appropriate to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one of the leading tourist destinations in the United States. Elements of the County's physical and psychological carrying capacity are considered in ascertaining whether Lancaster County will undergo a significant permanent decline in tourist activity. The magnitude of possible future decline is influenced by relative location, diversity of the tourist base, and effectiveness of planning. Diversity and relative location clearly favor Lancaster County in comparison with competing tourist areas and will help to prevent significant long-term decline in number of visitors.     

An exploratory inquiry into destination risk perceptions and risk reduction strategies of first time vs. repeat visitors to a highly volatile destination

The paper examines the relationships between first-time vs. repeat visitors to a highly volatile destination in terms of destination risk perceptions, risk reduction strategies and motivation for the visit. The exploratory research question centers on possible differences in tourist behavioral profiles associated with their decision to visit a foreign destination again. Set in Israel, a highly volatile tourist destination, researchers interviewed 760 international tourists using a questionnaire classifying them as either first-time or repeat visitors. Discriminant analysis revealed that first-time visitors were characterized by human-induced risk, socio-psychological risk, food safety and weather risk. In contrast, repeat visitors were associated with the destination risk factors of financial risk, service quality risk, natural disasters and car accidents. First-time vs. repeat visitors were also compared and contrasted in terms of risk reduction strategies such as consulting with people who had previously visited specific destinations and gathering information from travel agents. Differences between first-time and repeat visitors were also found regarding motivations for the visit. Similar analyses were conducted on the three sub-groups of repeat visitors, classified in terms of number of visits.     

Scale development for tourist trust toward a tourism destination

The increasing occurrence of tourist trust crises in various destinations in recent years has made tourism researchers and practitioners aware of the important role of trust. However, the previous literature has not provided a generally recognized scale for measuring tourist trust toward tourism destinations. In the current study, a qualitative analysis of social media posts and a quantitative examination of destination visitors were used to measure and validate tourist trust in a destination. The results revealed that tourist trust in a destination consists of five dimensions involving multiple stakeholders, including authorities, tourists, residents, employees, and the agency, which demonstrated that each party in the overall ecosystem of tourism destination plays a critical role in building positive tourist trust. Evidence from about 1100 tourists' responses at multiple destinations indicated that tourist trust has a significant positive impact on destination image. The study findings have many theoretical and practical implications.     

The summer of the Spirits: Spiritual tourism to America’s foremost village of spirit mediums

The historic Spiritualist village of Lily Dale, New York, is a popular summer tourist destination in America, attracting approximately 20,000 visitors per year. This research argues that many of these visitors are “spiritual seekers”. Spiritual seeking is an important movement in the west. To date, however, there has been insufficient attention paid to the specific places in which this spiritual questing is undertaken. This research uses the concept of spiritual tourism to understand the summer journey to this part of America. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data, it finds that affective destinations play an irreducible part of many people's spiritual lives; it may only be through travel to dedicated places that seekers’ aspirations can be fully realized.     

The Role of Quality and Eco-Labelling Systems in Destination Benchmarking

There have been limited applications of benchmarking in tourism, particularly for tourist destinations. This paper proposes that benchmarking may be used in managing the performance of tourist destinations. It suggests that eco-labelling and quality systems may be used as enablers of destination benchmarking when eco-label and quality system information is available but other benchmark information is not. Further, the paper argues that there are a number of potential benefits in using eco-label and quality system information as a substitute for conventional benchmarking material.     

Environmental Management,Environmental Image and the Competitive Tourist Attraction

Studies of competitiveness have been most often conducted at the destination rather than the attraction level. However, a destination is an aggregation of tourist attractions plus supporting infrastructure and services, and many attractions are small-scale destinations in themselves, providing visitors with multiple opportunities. This paper, by examining the environmental strategies adopted in the development process of Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone, the most visited attraction in Hainan, China, shows that the image, and hence the competitiveness of tourist attractions can be enhanced through sound environmental management practices.     

Survival in the lodging sector: An analysis at the firm and location levels

this paper studies the determinants of survival of 6494 Spanish hotel firms located in 97 national tourist destinations in the period 2005–2011. The characteristics of the firms and the tourist destinations where they are located have been studied through survival analysis techniques. This is relevant because the impact of the financial and economic crisis on the Spanish lodging sector has shown different effects among tourist destinations. The results confirm that the location significantly affects the probability of survival. In particular, the main determinant of firm survival is the level of occupancy in a tourist destination which has a positive effect. Also, we have found that a low level of competition reduces the average expected survival while the average profitability of a tourist destination has a positive effect on firm survival. Finally, the total effect related to destinations factors can reduce the expected survival by up to 90% (hazard ratio).     

Characterizing destination networks through mobility traces of international tourists — A case study using a nationwide mobile positioning dataset

This article demonstrates how large-scale tourist mobility data can be linked with network science approaches to better understand tourism destinations and their interactions. By analyzing a mobile positioning dataset that captures the nationality and movement patterns of foreign tourists to South Korea, we employ a few metrics to quantify the network properties of tourism destinations, aiming to reveal the collective dynamics of tourist movements and key differences across nationalities. According to the results, the number of inbound tourists to destinations follows a log-normal distribution, which indicates a notable heterogeneity of destination attractiveness. Although this finding holds across different nationalities, we find that tourists from different countries tended to visit different places in South Korea. A community detection algorithm partitions South Korea into several tourism regions, each covering a set of destinations that are closely connected by tourist flows. The implications for transportation development and regional tourism planning are discussed.     

The influence of artistically recreated nature on the image of tourist destinations: Lanzarote's art,cultural and tourism visitor centres and their links to sustainable tourism marketing

Can distinctive natural assets in tourist destinations be artistically recreated and used to improve destination image and attract more visitors? This paper analyses the formation of the tourist image based on artistically recreated local nature icons, and shows how those images can enhance the overall destination image. It focuses on the island of Lanzarote, a destination with its development based on promoting an environmental image founded on the creation of a network of multifunctional, high-quality art, culture and tourism centres exhibiting artistic recreation of its unique environmental assets. The methodology utilizes a questionnaire (n = 453) structural equations modelling approach in which the overall image of the destination is directly dependent on the image of the environmental conditions and indirectly influenced by the image of the artistically recreated centres. Results show that the destination's image is significantly grounded on the image of the art, culture and tourism centres using art based on Lanzarote's natural assets. They suggest that destinations have relevant opportunities to artistically enhance natural assets to improve their tourist image and marketing, that quality multi-functional visitor centres can be important within a sustainable tourism policy, and part of the emerging breadth of approaches taken by sustainable tourism marketing.     

Modelling perceived quality,visitor satisfaction and behavioural intentions at the destination level

Visitor perceptions of the quality of a tourist destination, satisfaction with their experience and the resulting behavioural intentions are vital for successful destination management and marketing. The purpose of our research is to explore the complex relationships between these constructs using structural equation modelling, whereby both formative and reflective constructs are included. The structural model was tested on a sample of 1056 visitors at four tourist destinations in Slovenia. The empirical validation of the conceptual model supports the research hypotheses. Destination attributes affect the perceived quality of tourist offerings, which positively relates to satisfaction as well as visitors' behavioural intentions. The link between satisfaction and behavioural intentions was also confirmed. These research findings contribute to a better understanding of which behavioural mechanisms and factors represent a viable basis for increasing customer retention at the level of individual providers as well as a destination as a whole.     

The effect of price on word of mouth: First time versus heavy repeat visitors

Many tourist destinations strongly focus and depend on repeat visitors. A central assumption thereby is that repeat visitors are more profitable (e.g. through lower marketing costs) and that their positive word of mouth (WOM) is essential to attract new guests. In this paper, we present a large-scale empirical study to investigate the effect of price for first time and heavy repeat visitors of ski resorts. Applying a hierarchical linear modelling approach, we show that price is negatively related to WOM for first time visitors and that price has no effect on WOM for repeat visitors. Thus, we show that the effect of price on WOM decreases for repeat visitors.     

我国旅游景区门票多目标定价机制研究

传统产品定价研究大都从市场供需出发,以利润最大化来设置产品价格.然而景区门票价格是由市场因素和政策因素共同作用形成,景区门票定价不仅要满足景区经营方的利润最优目标,还应符合景区的生态承栽能力和社会福利目标.文章通过建立景区基于利润最优目标、生态承裁力目标和社会福利最优目标模型,证明了当追求利润最大化目标时,景区应该以产业利润最大化来制定门票价格;当景区生态承载能力低于产业利润最优的游客数量时,票价应该根据生态承栽人数来制定;当公共景区基于社会福利最优定价时,完全免费并不一定是社会福利的最优选择.在此基础上,对多目标定价机制进行比较分析,并结合杭州西湖景区案例对多目标门票定价机制进行了动态综合研究.     

Visitation of tourism attractions and tourist expenditure patterns ‐ repeat versus first‐time visitors

Marketing wisdom suggests that it is less expensive to reattract previous customers than to acquire new ones. Yet, few tourism destinations are actively trying to understand their current visitors in order to more effectively market to them. The present study analyzes international repeat and first‐time visitors to Rotorua, New Zealand, in order to gain insights into their respective visitation patterns of tourist attractions in the area, as well as their trip and expenditure patterns. The results of this study indicate that there are significant differences with regards to trip characteristics, and it offers a few insightful differences with respect to the attractions frequented.     

基于旅游经历的目的地吸引力感知差异研究

关于旅游经历对旅游者目的地感知的影响,现有的研究文献从感知形象和感知价值等方面进行了探讨,但尚未出现从目的地感知吸引力角度进行的相关研究。目的地的初游者和重游者代表着两类具有不同旅游经历的目的地游客,本文的研究目的在于探讨二者对旅游目的地吸引力的感知及其差异。实证研究结果表明,目的地感知吸引力包含了整体环境吸引和观光体验吸引两个维度,重游者在整体环境吸引上的感知显著高于初游者,二者在观光体验吸引的感知上没有显著差异。     

Forecasting tourism demand with ARMA-based methods

The forecast of tourism volume in the form of arrivals is of special importance for tourism and other hospitality industries because it is an indicator of future demand, thereby providing basic information for subsequent planning and policy making. In this paper, three univariate ARMA-based models are applied to tourism demand, as represented by the number of world-wide visitors to Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. The study employs both monthly and quarterly time series generated from nine principal tourist destinations in Asian-Pacific region in the forecasting exercise to ensure the reliability of the forecasting evaluation. Forecasting performance based on disaggregated arrival series in a particular destination is examined as well. The general impression is that the ARMA-based models perform very well and in some cases the magnitude of mean absolute percentage error is lower than 2% level.     

Assessing the economic impact of a UNESCO World Heritage designation

Grand Pré Historic Site in Nova Scotia (Canada) is in the process of applying for a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site (WHS) designation. Conventional wisdom is that such a designation would generate public awareness and increase visitation to the site. The goal of this paper is to estimate the impact of a WHS designation on tourist visitation and related expenditures. Various tourism statistics (covering 1990–2008) for Nova Scotia and its only other established UNESCO site – Lunenburg (designated in 1995) – served as data. Regression analysis produced an estimate of the tourist visitation impact that a WHS designation had on Lunenburg, and could be expected to have on Grand Pré. An increase of 6.2% in tourist visitors due to a WHS designation was estimated. Survey data collected at Grand Pré provided average spending per visitor. The economic impacts were analyzed under both a projected and a historical scenario of visitation. Based on its 10-year historic visitation average, a WHS designation for Grand Pré would generate an increase of 3000 visitors per year. These visitors would generate spending of approximately $200,000 annually in the local economy. Such spending would provide a boost to the local tourism industry, which has experienced significant decline in recent years.     

日本主要国际客源市场研究——以20世纪90年代访华国际客源市场为主

一般而言,主要客源市场,其最大的特征不仅仅是市场规模大,而是它能直接影响接待国的旅游发展。但对接待国而言,真正的客源市场则要看实际来访者占该国或该地区的比率而非来访者的总量。因此市场的动向是我们必须关注的焦点。本文想通过这个研究了解访华日本国际客源市场的真正面目,并借此提供中国在争取日本国际客源市场时的一个科学参考依据。