阐释“旅行的意义”——现象学的视角

流行文化中有关“旅行的意义”的说法并不少见,但如何对“旅行的意义”进行阐释却很少有人研究.该研究从“意义”的3种常见用法——价值与目的、含义与语义、语境与范畴——入手,主要借鉴现象学的分析方法,得到了如下主要观点:①存在两种阐释“旅行的意义”的可能方式,即可以将其理解为旅行行为本身在语境、含义、价值之间的一种整体性关联,也可理解为嵌套于人们的整个生命时空或生活世界之中的一种基于“旅行-意义”的关联,因此未来的相关研究需要从旅行这个相对封闭的小世界跨入日常生活这个开放的大世界;②人们是先行在前语言的层面上获得了原初的“旅行-意义”,然后才有可能在一定的语境中用语言来获得派生的“旅行的意义”;③对“旅行的意义”这个命题来说,更合理的提问方式应该不是问旅行的意义“是什么”,而是问旅行的意义“如何(发生)”.     

Peer-to-peer accommodation experience: A Chinese cultural perspective

With the growing popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation worldwide, this conceptual paper reviews and explores Chinese users’ P2P accommodation experiences from a cultural perspective. The paper conceptually explores the influence of Chinese cultural traditions on the P2P accommodation experience. These cultural traditions include renqing (人情), guanxi (关系), mianzi (面子) and yuan (缘). Renqing was revealed to have an enduring impact on Chinese users’ loyalty. A conceptual yuan-based host-guest relationship framework was established including four stages - “to have yuan” (有缘), “match yuan” (投缘), “cherish yuan” (惜缘) and “continue yuan” (续缘). By revealing the influence of deep-seated values underpinning Chinese hospitality, this research contributes to the globalization of hospitality knowledge by painting a new understanding of Chinese user P2P accommodation experiences.     

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.     

Re-materialising the religious tourism experience: A post-human perspective

Using ethnographic research into Christian Orthodox religious tourists' performances in Tinos, Greece, this paper traces the complex pathways of human and material entanglement in creating religious experiences. While religions stage material performances by ascribing sign and use value to objects, affect through doing allows for different modes of understanding and performance, in which the material nature plays an essential role. This paper contributes in recognising the importance of materials' thingness in the religious experience, allowing for alternative performances and expressions of belief. Understanding the way materials can enable or even overshadow the sense of religiousness is important for the successful management of the spatial distribution of objects in religious sites.     

Networks, clusters and innovation in tourism: A UK experience

In an era where tourism is dominated by requests for tailored experiences, SMEs play a key role in providing adequate products and services to tourists by responding to their most specific requirements.This paper uses network and clusters as a framework providing SMEs with innovative opportunities to operate in a competitive tourism environment. A review of relevant literature on clusters, networks and tourism business innovation is undertaken, then focusing on the specific issues of Healthy Lifestyle Tourism.The UK ‘Healthy Lifestyle Tourism Cluster’ experience is employed to discuss the process and the implication of network and cluster development in tourism. However, the development of clusters should not be seen as a simple and spontaneous process due to the nature of businesses involved, but as a very complex process linked to strong stakeholder collaboration.     

Visitors' spatial-temporal behaviour and their learning experience: A comparative study

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize how learning patterns differ between two modes of museum visitation: free-independent visitors (FIV) and an interpretation-guiding tour (IGT). Based on principles of experiential learning, eye tracking and personal mapping with 32 visitors to an ancient Egyptian exhibition in Shandong Museum, findings indicate: (1) There are differences in spatial-temporal behaviour between the FIV and IGT groups, (2) both visitor groups acquire knowledge, (3) the IGT group gains more in both reflective observation and abstract conceptualization, (4) previous experience, individual interests, and preferences also positively affect visitors' learning experience in both instances, and (5) visitors from the IGT group express higher identification with ancient Egyptian culture. The paper illustrates how eye tracking exercises can both contribute to learning theory and practical management practice.     

A holistic view of the service experience at coffee franchises: A cross-cultural study

Service quality alone is no longer a sustainable advantage in today's competitive hospitality industry, and marketers are paying more attention to strategically managing the customer's experience. The purpose of this study is to examine the customer service experience from a holistic standpoint, and further consider how different components of the customer service experience influence perceived value, attitudes, and loyalty at coffee franchises. Further, this study conducts a comparative analysis to find the similarities and differences that exist cross-culturally between Americans and Koreans. This study develops a self-administered questionnaire for data collection: we adopt a convenience sampling method and collected data at two Starbucks franchises and two Coffee Bean franchises in both Seoul, South Korea, and Miami, US. Further, the study implements structural equational modeling to analyze the data. Overall, the results support the study hypotheses, and indicate that nationality has a moderating effect on the relation between the latent variables.     

A behavioral urban recreation site choice model

Abstract

A multinomial logit site choice model (MNL) derived by utility maximization and based on reported travel distance and perceived site attributes was estimated for 21 forest‐related urban recreation sites in Chicago. Reported travel distance was the dominant explanatory variable. Perceived site attributes included stimulating/educational, quiet, safe, and forested. When estimated for subsets of the 21 sites, the coefficient for travel distance remained stable in sign, magnitude, and significance, while coefficients for “quiet” and “forested” changed in sign and significance. This supports the application of travel cost models at the urban scale, but suggests that site choice criteria may be sensitive to variables not included in the study.     

Peer-to-peer accommodation experience and guest actual recommendations: A novel mixed-method approach

Obtaining recommendations from guests is critical for Airbnb hosts to thrive in the peer-to-peer accommodation business. By extracting the dominant aspects of the Airbnb experience and the guests' sentiment ratings in online comments, this study examines the impact of the aspects and sentiment on guest actual recommendations. A novel mixed-method was adopted to analyse the online reviews of Airbnb guests in Los Angeles, USA. The text-mining results reveal that hosts, location, and amenities are the dominant aspects of the guests' Airbnb experience. Results show that the guests' sentiment ratings for hosts and amenities have significant impacts on the guests' recommendations, while location only influences the private-room guests' recommendations. This study contributes to the extant literature by offering an innovative methodological approach to building the link between experience aspects and guest actual recommendations.     

User preferences for web site attributes: A study of the Hong Kong Disneyland

The Hong Kong Disneyland will be open in 2005 and the theme park is very likely to have an official web site. In order to determine the nature of a model/ideal official web site that would serve the promotional purpose, this study is conducted with two objectives. First, the study makes an attempt to understand the information types that the target markets, namely local Hong Kong residents, Western visitors and Chinese visitors, would like to have on the future Hong Kong Disney web site. Secondly, this research examines whether e‐ticketing is feasible for the web site. Using a questionnaire and a convenience sampling method, 198 responses were received. Empirical results indicate that the respondents all agreed that the suggested attributes should be listed in the web site. In addition, no significant difference was found among different groups of respondents on homepage information. However, significant differences were found among the interviewees’ views regarding products/services information, and ticketing information. To communicate effectively, the adoption of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is recommended in a value‐chain system for achieving successful e‐commerce.     

A process perspective on experience co-creation: How pre-trip involvement prompts destination loyalty

Although the existing literature has suggested that tourists' experience co-creation during or after trips benefits destination loyalty, knowledge of how pre-trip behavior impacts future behavioral intention from a process perspective is limited. To address the gaps, we develop a logic chain linking past behavior, cognition, emotion, and future behavioral intention under a stage-by-stage process of tourists' experience co-creation using the service-dominant logic of value co-creation theory and the self-consistency principle of attitude theory. Empirically, utilizing PLS-SEM and mediation analysis in a survey (n = 500) and an experiment (n = 128), we found a serial mediation pathway whereby high-degree pre-trip involvement heightened satisfaction with the co-creation of experience, which increased place identity or place dependence, and which ultimately enhanced destination loyalty. This research is the first attempt to examine the impact of past behavior on future intention for tourists’ experience co-creation from a process perspective.     

Impact of customer-to-customer interactions on overall service experience: A social servicescape perspective

Utilizing the appraisal theory, this study proposes a dynamic and sequential customer future interaction intention model that deconstructs customer-to-customer interactions and illustrates how customer-to-customer interaction experience perceptions are formed and how those perceptions may influence customers overall experience evaluation and their future interaction intentions. The model was tested using data from a sample of 460 casual restaurant consumers. Of the three dimensions of interaction, functional interaction only exerts influence on RELATE; hedonic interaction impacts both SENSE and RELATE; expressive interaction influences THINK, SENSE and RELATE. Further, SENSE and RELATE are positively related to FEEL, while THINK has no significant effect on FEEL. FEEL impacts customers’ overall experience evaluation, which has positive influence on approach ACT and negative influence on avoidance ACT.     

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.     

Customer experience in tourism: A review of definitions,components, and measurements

The concept of customer experience has received increasing attention in different disciplines. However, the pathway for handling experience has not been clearly set forth due to divergent conceptualizations and insufficient measures of customer experience. This study critically analyzes empirical and conceptual literature on experience, provides a holistic definition of experience, proposes an experience model with four main components (emotional, cognitive, sensorial, and conative), and suggests using a combination of several measures to capture the totality of tourism experience at pre-visit, onsite, and post-visit stages. These suggestions provide important implications for researchers and practitioners by offering new ways to explore customer interaction with tourist products, detect affective and sensory components leading to important consumption outcomes, investigate individual impacts of anticipation, onsite experience, and recall, as well as analyze effectiveness of destination marketing practices.     

A happy experience of a dark place: Consuming and performing the Jallianwala Bagh

This article adopts a phenomenological, ethnographic approach to examine place consumption and place experience through visitors' practices in situ. It focuses particularly on an examination of the embodied practices and performances of both tourists and the local community. Viewing memorial places as ‘performative fields’, we argue that a set of processes are simultaneously at play: while consuming the place and its representations (place consumption), visitors are also producing the meaning of the place through their embodied practices (place production) and, simultaneously, form and project a construct of their own selves (self-identity construction), within wider social narratives (social/national-identity construction). The simultaneity of these processes is empirically illustrated and supported by the findings from the qualitative research in the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar, India, where British colonial forces massacred more than one thousand peaceful protesters in 1919.     

Examining key drivers of customer delight in a hotel experience: A cross-cultural perspective

Welcoming all guests is the calling shared by those who work in the hotel industry. Everyday hoteliers strive to provide a service of excellence to all of those who visit. This can be somewhat of a complex endeavor, as hotels receive guests from different nationalities and cultures. Previous research in the area of customer delight has revealed some of the factors that define and drive the customer delight experience. Despite the emerging literature on the subject, the question remains: are guest from different cultures likely to be delighted by different things? In the present study, the researchers conducted extensive semi-structured interviews (n = 228) with guests from different nationalities visiting the Central Florida area. The guests interviewed came predominantly from the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Canada. Using a process of content analysis, the researchers analyzed the drivers of customer delight and concluded that while some universal service elements exists, guests from different cultures can also be delighted by different services and amenities.