Ecotourists' Perception of Ecotourism Experience in Lower Kinabatangan,Sabah, Malaysia

This paper presents the empirical findings of an exploratory qualitative study which looks at ecotourists' perceptions of ecotourism experiences in Sabah, Malaysia in order to identify the expressive dimensions that describe the quality of their experience. In-depth interviews were conducted with European ecotourists who stayed at two ecolodges in Sukau. Positive and negative experiences were identified from an analysis of the expressive dimensions of their service experience. The findings show that the ecotourists' experience is multidimensional. Respondents place particular emphasis on the ecotourism activities in which they physically engage at the sites and the natural environment in which they are located; their interaction with the site service staff; socialisation with other ecotourists, and the information acquired during the visit. The six expressive dimensions describing the positive experience are consistent with previous research. The study explores understanding of ecotourists' experience in the ecotourism environment – an under-researched area. The paper points out that the evaluation of quality of experience appears to involve both attributes – functional elements that are provided by the service suppliers and affective/emotional elements that are brought about by the ecotourists themselves.     

The sacred and the profane: Identifying pilgrim traveler value orientations using means-end theory

This study explores the values exhibited by travelers along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. Drawing upon data that were collected en route, pilgrim value systems are identified and explored using the hard laddering method and applying means-end chain (MEC) theory. The researchers examine the hierarchical relationship between pilgrimage attributes, the benefits that pilgrims subsequently acquire and the fulfillment of personal values as ends. The strongest associations are found between attributes, consequences, and values with social bonds that are acquired by socializing with peer pilgrims, followed by the search for happiness through an appreciation of natural beauty and the pursuit of contemplation during the pilgrimage walk. These findings provide novel insights into the profane and sacred dimensions of the pilgrimage experience.     

世俗的朝圣:西藏旅游体验研究

西藏正成为越来越重要的旅游目的地,然而对西藏旅游体验具体的微观研究却相对缺乏。文章通过对西藏旅游者的深度访谈,来探讨他们的旅游体验。游客往往将西藏想象成一种神圣之地,西藏的旅游体验对于游客而言也具有神圣的意义,主要体现在游客对自然、宗教和藏族人的体验上。西藏纯净的自然可以净化游客的心灵,让他们联想到远离喧嚣的生活。西藏的寺庙和朝拜的信徒营造出一种虔诚而神圣的氛围,让游客内心备受震动。看到藏民的执着和虔诚,游客心中会产生一种满足感。而藏民淳朴的为人处世的方式更让游客感到一种自己社会所缺失了的真实。西藏的神圣不在于游客对其宗教的信仰上,而在于其社会文化意义,西藏提供了游客日常生活所缺失的自然与人文,满足了游客的精神需求。西藏的旅游体验与其说是宗教朝圣,毋宁说是一种世俗的朝圣。     

Dialectical emotions in a dark heritage site: A study at the Auschwitz Death Camp

This study was designed to explore the emotional experience during the visit to the Auschwitz Death Camp, and its relationship to the perceptions of benefits gained from the visit as well as the quality of the experience. A mix method approach was adopted. Following a qualitative study, questionnaires (n = 553) were distributed in four languages. The findings which are based on the PANAS index revealed an emotional duality. The study highlights the central role of the negative emotions and the significant contribution of these emotions to visitor's satisfaction, as well as to the perceived benefits derived from the visit. The study challenges the emphasis of tourism research on positive emotions and its view of negative emotions as having a negative impact, leading to dissatisfaction with the visitor experience. The findings emphasize the need to conceptualize the visitor experience and address the positive contribution of negative emotions.     

Understanding culinary tourist motivation,experience, satisfaction,and loyalty using a structural approach

Research on culinary tourism lacks an empirical examination of the relationship between motivation, experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. Drawing on the extant literature, this paper examines the relationships between antecedents and outcomes of culinary tourist participation in cooking classes using a structural equation modelling approach. Based on a convenience sample of 300 international tourists at cooking schools in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the structural model confirmed direct and indirect interrelationships among four main constructs of the study. It was found that culinary tourists’ motivation positively influences both the culinary experience and satisfaction; and that the culinary tourist experience is positively associated with both culinary tourist satisfaction and loyalty, suggesting that the more tourists are motivated to participate in cooking classes, the more experiential value and satisfaction are perceived. Moreover, the more experiences encountered at the cooking class, the more satisfied and loyal the tourists become. Understanding the key motivators and elements of satisfaction in cooking classes can contribute to the achieving of sustainable destination loyalty. The findings are relevant to Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) as part of developing sustainable strategies that are in line with specific culinary needs and experiences of cooking class participants.     

Can gamification improve the virtual reality tourism experience? Analyzing the mediating role of tourism fatigue

Although virtual reality (VR) technology has been increasingly applied in the tourism industry, improving the VR experience of tourists remains a challenge. Based on two studies, this paper examines how gamification can improve the VR tourism experience through reducing tourism fatigue. Study 1 explores the relationship between gamification, tourism fatigue, and tourist satisfaction. The results show that tourists are more satisfied with a gamified, rather than non-gamified, VR tourism experience, and that motivational fatigue plays a mediating role between gamification and tourism satisfaction. Study 2 provides further evidence that four elements in gamification (challenge, feedback, reward, and leaderboard) can alleviate motivational fatigue and improve tourist satisfaction, with feedback playing the biggest role. The findings have valuable practical implications for VR experience providers, for destination practitioners in VR experience enhancement, and for the application of gamification to the VR tourism experience.     

The Monasteries of Putuoshan,China: Sites of Secular or Religious Tourism?

The article reports an analysis derived from a sample of 640 respondents visiting the Buddhist site of Putuoshan that is sacred to the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara. Drawing on literature and observation over a 12-month period, the article adopts a fourfold designation of visitors: Xiankes, Sushi, Sightseers, and Cultural/Heritage Visitors. Three scales are developed and exploratory factor analysis supports distinctions between the clusters with reference to motives, activities and beliefs, and the categorization is supported by logistic regression analysis. The findings are discussed in the context of destination management with reference to two considerations—namely: (a) sites of religious importance often possess secular as well as religious significance; and (b) the numbers of tourists appear to be growing, thereby raising concerns of future negative tourism impacts.     

The antecedents of behavioral intention regarding rural tourism destination

The main purpose of this study is to build an understanding of the effects of customer experience on trust and behavioral intention. The samples used in this study were 155 local tourists who made a one-time visit only to a village tourism in Sleman Regency, the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It is the village that is located on the slopes of Mount Merapi, offering recreational activities, entertainment, cultures, and outdoor adventures for tourists. Generalized Structured Component Analysis is used to analyze the correlation between customer experience and trust and behavioral intention. The findings reveal that customer experience has a significant effect on trust. Moreover, it also indicates that customer experience has a significant effect on behavioral intention, and so does trust. The findings of this study suggest that customer experience on trust is the antecedent of behavioral intention.     

The embodied tourist experiences of people with vision impairment: Management implications beyond the visual gaze

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study that investigated the embodied tourist experiences of 40 people who are vision impaired. The study, informed by the concept of “embodied ontology”, explored the corporeal and socially constructed experience of tourism. The findings highlighted the benefit of holidays for the participants and de-centred the “visual gaze” in the tourist experience. The quality of the tourist experience related to participants’ feelings of inclusion or exclusion in terms of their access to information, experience of wayfinding, travelling with a guide dog, and the knowledge and attitudes of others. It was evident that participants needed to manage their tourist experiences closely and constantly. The paper concludes that the tourism industry and community must understand the multi-sensory nature of the tourist experience if quality accessible experiences are to be available for tourists with vision impairment. Provision of multi-sensory experiences also enhances the experiences of sighted tourists.     

Heritage and identity: engagement and demission in the contemporary world

African traditional religions (ATRs) in the Caribbean and Brazil are currently undergoing processes of transformation and commodification due to the influx of religious tourism. This research note reflects preliminary findings on the marketing of ATRs in four locales: Santería (Cuba), Candomblé (Brazil), Vodou (Haiti), and Orisha (Trinidad). Methods employed include participant observation, data collection, and textual analysis. This research can assist in assessing the overall impact tourism has on ATRs, potentially influencing public policy on tourism development in the region, as well assisting religious communities to define how and why they engage in tourism, and what forms their tourism product will take. Further research is necessary to track ongoing trends and new developments, particularly where areas of cultural resistance are evident, and more ethical ways of marketing the sacred are being adopted.     

Effective restaurant rating scale development and a mystery shopper evaluation approach

Dining is a major attraction for tourists visiting Taiwan. In 2008, the Taipei City Government commissioned a project to produce a list of recommended restaurants in Taipei for tourists. To facilitate the selection process, we developed a restaurant rating scale using a mystery shopper approach. This study entailed 20 questions that covered all elements of the consumers’ dining experience in a table-service restaurant setting, as well as a comprehensive mystery shopper training program to ensure consistency of quality in the evaluation process. This research involved the top 500 restaurants in Taipei. The findings revealed that our rating scale achieves internal consistency, validity and model fit. This study provided an important tool for further industrial applications and research opportunities. Further, this study proposes future research directions.     

Process,goal, and social interaction differences in recreation: What makes an activity substitutable

Abstract

In the present study two recreational activities, deer hunting and goose hunting, both similar in form, are compared. The study shows that the activity with the fewest perceived substitutes, deer hunting, also showed higher mean ratings on items measuring the importance of various elements of the experience, such as the process of participation, the goal of the activity, and the social interaction that accompanies the activity by the participants. Deer hunters also reported greater participation in the activity by peers and were more likely to be introduced to the activity by a family member. It is argued that these differences in the importance of the elements of the experiences influence the perceived substitutability of a recreational activity.     

The Influence of Leisure Involvement on Flow Experience During Hiking Activity: Using Psychological Commitment as a Mediate Variable

This study investigated the mediating role of psychological commitment in the relationship between leisure involvement and flow experience and focused on selected hiking trails from the National Shoushan Nature Park in Taiwan. A sampling of recreationists on site was taken using the next-to-pass method. Structural equation modeling was employed in order to construct the correlation among variables. The findings confirmed that a higher level of leisure involvement is associated with a stronger flow experience. A recreationist's stronger psychological commitment was associated with a higher flow experience, higher leisure involvement was associated with a higher level of psychological commitment, and psychological commitment was found to play a mediating role in the relationship between leisure involvement and flow experience. Based on these findings, implications are discussed and directions for future research are also highlighted.     

The co-creation/place attachment nexus

Co-creation in tourism has investigated a range of ways in which consumers are becoming increasingly involved in defining and creating services and products. These activities, however, constitute only a small portion of the full range of tourism experiences. The current concentration on co-creation of (mostly service-dominated) tourism products needs to be expanded to accommodate elements such as the physical environment and local social and cultural milieus of tourism. This article appropriates concepts and models from the discourse of place attachment to demonstrate an approach to extending the co-creation concept to include experiences of the physical tourism site, not merely as the setting of a service relation, but as a fundamental dimension of the tourism experience. This approach is tested and demonstrated based on an analysis and discussion of the findings of a survey study of tourists to the Historic Center of Macao.     

Coping with Stress in Outdoor Recreational Settings: An Application of Transactional Stress Theory

This study uses a transactional model of stress and coping as a way to understand how outdoor recreationists deal with negative setting elements during a recreation experience. Within the transactional model, coping behaviors can be viewed as the result of on-going transactions among personal and environmental factors, perceptions of threat or stress, and the perceived effectiveness of coping strategies. The current study focuses specifically on the relationship between reported levels of stress and the types of coping strategies used by recreationists in Glacier National Park. Findings suggest that certain behavioral and cognitive coping responses to stress are associated with different levels of reported stress. Specifically, respondents with lower levels of stress were more likely to engage in certain cognitive adjustments to cope with detracting situations. Respondents reporting higher levels of stress were more likely to engage in either direct action aimed at changing the environmental conditions or are displaced entirely from the recreational setting. In addition to these primary findings, the study discusses the range of coping behaviors employed.     

Satisfaction and Destination Loyalty

ABSTRACT

First-time and repeat tourists engage in different tourism experience with a destination. Based on previous studies, the main purpose of this research is to investigate how tourists' previous experience with a tourist destination influences on the satisfaction evaluation, destination loyalty and destination attractiveness. An empirical study is carried out among 806 tourists visiting Calpe, a Spanish tourist destination, in the summer of 2000. Research findings evidence that the level of satisfaction and the number of past visits considerably influence tourists' intentions to make repeat visits.     

Servicescape elements,customer predispositions and service experience: The case of theme park visitors

As the demand grows for customized services, so too the management of those experiences becomes more important. This study examines the relationship between service environment, customer predisposition and service experience evaluation. Based on data derived from 366 visitors to two theme parks in Hong Kong, a link was found between the servicescape and tourist evaluation through the moderating effects of customer predispositions. Consequently, both the substantive and communicative aspects of the servicescape reliably predicted visitors' evaluations. In addition, a visitor's predisposition to fantasize and/or participate was found to influence the ability of servicescape elements to shape a favorable service experience. Theoretical contributions of this research are elucidated. Moreover, managerial implications related to servicescape design, promotion strategies and service experience enhancement are discussed.     

Tour guide performance and sustainable visitor behavior at cultural heritage sites

Abstract

Using structural equation modeling, this study investigates how tour guide performance influences visitors’ sustainable behavior at cultural heritage sites by examining the mediating effects of visitor experience and satisfaction. The structural model was tested on a sample of 390 visitors at Petra Archaeological Park in Jordan. Tour guide performance was found to have a significant direct and indirect effects in enhancing visitor sustainable behavior. Moreover, the findings showed that visitor experience and satisfaction significantly mediates the relationship between tour guide performance and visitor sustainable behavior. This research contributes to our understanding of the tour guide role in maximizing visitors’ appreciation and enjoyment, and minimizing their negative impacts on heritage sites. Managerial implications are discussed in light of the empirical findings.     

The complexities of religious tourism motivations: Sacred places,vows and visions

The aim of this paper is to understand the complexity of travel motivations to sacred places. Using ethnographic techniques within the Greek Orthodox context, we argue that while motivations are institutionally constructed, they are fragile, dynamic and progressive; being embedded within everyday performances of religion. This calls into question the fixed centeredness and predetermined sacredness of religious sites. Travel motivations become directly influenced by believers’ intimate and emergent performances not only of places but also of religion itself; the meaning of places being based on lived experiences of doing religion and interacting with the sacred, as exemplified in vows and visions. Such understandings are crucial in predicting the effects of failing pilgrimages and the processes of authentication of places, which can help explain visitation patterns.