Tea tourism development in Xinyang,China: Stakeholders' view

Tea continues to be a popular beverage in the world. As a new niche tourism market, tea tourism has developed both in China and many other countries for decades, but academic research has lagged behind tea tourism development. This paper focuses on stakeholders' views of tourism development, their potential roles and concerns in the case of tea tourism in Xinyang prefecture of central China. Interviews and open ended questionnaires were conducted in 2007 and 2008. Qualitative analysis indicates the following: 1) According to stakeholders' view, tea tourism development in Xinyang failed despite many good tea tourism attractions, and better tea tourism planning, marketing and collaboration between stakeholders in Xinyang is required for successful tea tourism development; 2) Local government, tea garden owners, media, travel agencies and tea tourists are thought to be the principal stakeholders with different roles to develop tea tourism; 3) Collaboration between stakeholders is crucial for tea tourism development. The implications of the findings are discussed with a view to permit recommendations to be made.     

Willingness to Pay for Biodiversity Conservation

Nature-based tourism is the fastest growing tourism in many parts of the world. The attitude toward conservation of nature is measured by individuals' willingness to pay. This study has made an attempt to investigate the determinants of tourists' willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity conservation. The determinants include a combination of socio-economic and site-specific characteristics of tourists. The study was conducted in Sikkim, which is India's prime nature-based tourism destination. Results show WTP, and effects of education, and income of tourists. Among site-specific characteristics, length of stay and number of spots are the significant determinants of WTP. This empirical research is a valuable input to identify market segment among tourists, which might help to generate more revenues for biodiversity conservation in Sikkim.     

Behavioral responses of 3S tourism visitors: Evidence from a Mediterranean Island destination

This empirical research deepens the current knowledge of tourism destination images by conceptualizing the effects of sun, sand, and sea (3S) tourism. The study investigates its impact on tourist attitude toward 3S tourism. This project also examines the impact of attitudes toward 3S tourism on visit intentions and word-of-mouth intentions as two behavioral outcomes. The study focuses on the mental representations of 3S tourism by tourists. Destination images (mental representations of destinations) can be defined, operationalized, and measured in a variety of ways; this study investigates the images and attitudes held by tourists toward 3S tourism in Cyprus, along with their desired behavioral responses. In the study, 410 survey questionnaires were administered to tourists during the summer of 2017. The results revealed that images of 3S tourism had a positive impact on tourist attitudes. Visit intentions and word-of-mouth intentions were enhanced by improving tourists' attitudes toward 3S tourism.     

Exploring tourists' perceptions of tourism impacts

Unlike how tourism is viewed by residents, little is known about how tourists feel about tourism in the destination. Nevertheless, studies have shown that tourists' emotional bonds with the destination positively affect their perceptions of and reactions to tourism in the destination. Such emotional bonds often vary based on tourists' previous experience in the destination. Thus, this study explored how tourists' emotional solidarity with residents influences their perceptions of tourism and how first-timers and repeat tourists differ in their views. To this end, 404 responses from South Korean sport tourists were analyzed. Though differences were not evident between first-timers and repeat tourists in their emotional solidarity or attitudes toward tourism, a positive relationship was confirmed between emotional solidarity and perceptions of tourism. The findings suggest that attitudes toward tourism is no longer a construct exclusive to residents and destination managers should also consider tourists' views.     

Activity Segmentation of the International Heritage Tourism Market to Taiwan

The heritage tourism market has developed from being regarded as a small niche segment to a mainstream market of considerable size. In Taiwan, diversified heritage resources hold considerable appeal to the international tourism market. Little research has been completed on international heritage tourists to Taiwan, so this study utilized Taiwan as a case study and examined international tourists to the destination. It first employed cluster analysis based on activity participation to segment the market and test for the existence of “heritage tourists”. Three groups of international tourists to Taiwan were identified and they were labelled as “heritage”, “shopping” and “non-specialists”. The heritage group had a high participation rate in visiting heritage relics (90.6%). The study also profiled tourists according to the reasons they travelled to Taiwan and socio-demographic variables. The heritage tourists and other activity participation groups were compared to reveal the major motivational and socio-demographic differences involved. The findings showed that “international heritage tourists to Taiwan” were a group of visitors with relatively younger ages, middle levels of income and higher educational levels. The study defined heritage tourists who indicated visiting heritage sites as part of their reason for visiting Taiwan as “motivated heritage visitors”. Other heritage tourists who participated in heritage activities, but did not list heritage tourism as a reason for visiting Taiwan, were defined as “heritage site visitors”. Finally, the study profiled the two groups of heritage tourists and compared them, with significant differences being found in ages and nationalities.     

Persian literary heritage tourism: travel agents’ perspectives in Shiraz,Iran

Literature is a cultural component and literary niche tourism is a novel strategy for preserving and transferring literature heritage. This research has four major purposes: (1) to discover why Shiraz can be a destination for promoting literary tourism in Iran; (2) to identify strategies for stimulating this niche tourism; (3) to measure travel agents’ awareness of literary tourism; and (4) to investigate the attitude of travel agent managers towards this niche market. The results illustrated that travel agents are interested in the literary tourism development and they have a high interest in offering and organizing literary tours for tourists, but they are not familiar with this concept.     

Wine Tourism,Environmental Concerns,and Purchase Intention

Sustainable development and marketing are applied across the tourism spectrum, yet a need exists to make them relevant to specific forms of tourism, such as wine tourism. In this consumer-driven economy, tourism marketers often seek effective ways to market destinations. This study attempts to identify the environmental wine tourist by examining environmental personality characteristics and certain demographics on purchase intention, thus making it possible to better understand their concerns and motivations, which should aid marketing and advertising efforts. The results suggest wine tourists may be willing to pay for environmentally friendly wines with females possessing stronger environmental attitudes about protecting wine region destinations, thus influencing stronger behaviors toward purchase intention.     

Tourist development and host–guest interaction: An economic exchange theory

Theoretical research on the impacts of tourism has a discernible bias towards residents’ perceptions. To understand the evolution and dynamics of tourism, residents’ perceptions have to be analyzed as part of an exchange process involving both residents and tourists. A conceptual framework of host–guest relations is required. This paper presents an economic model that builds on evidence that tourism involves the meeting of two populations. Their interactions and experiences influence their attitudes and opinions. This causes structural changes in individual preferences that affect residents’ perceptions of tourism and tourists’ willingness to pay. To interpret this process we use the Edgeworth Box, representing the “exchange” in terms of “resource-space” against income.     

Off-season tourists and the cultural offer of a mass-tourism destination: The case of Rimini

This paper assesses the potential implications on off-season tourism of enhancing the cultural offer of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside holiday destination hosting about 12 million overnight stays per year. Since more than 9 million of these stays are concentrated in the summer season, in the last 20 years. Rimini has been undergoing a policy of seasonality smoothing, which mainly pivots around business and cultural tourism. This assessment has been carried out through discrete choice experiments submitted to a sample of about 800 tourists who visited Rimini outside the summer months. Since tourism can be viewed as a composite good, which overall utility depends on how the component characteristics are arranged, the choice experiments allow to disentangle the importance and the willingness to pay of tourists for different attributes of the holiday. The choice model incorporates a number of possible changes to actual tourism features (which are also the subject of public debate), including them in hypothetical alternative “holiday packages”. The conditional logit analysis of the choice experiments can highlight any synergy or trade-off between cultural and business tourism. Results suggest that business and leisure tourists share many features related to the use of the territory, while there are important trade-offs between these two groups and cultural tourists. Since business tourists have a higher willingness to extend their stay, a softer budget, and their demand is also complementary to the demand of summer tourists (Brau, Scorcu, & Vici, 2009), from the destination point of view investing in this market segment would be the best option. Although a “second best”, however, cultural tourists share with the local population of Rimini many aspects of the demand of territory (Figini, Castellani, & Vici, 2009). Hence, cultural tourism can play a fundamental role in the intermediate season as a tool for smoothing seasonality, to diversify investments and to give value to the city’s cultural heritage.     

Tourists' perceptions of environmentally responsible innovations at tourism businesses

This paper investigates tourists' perceptions of environmentally responsible practices by tourism businesses by analyzing the attitudes of tourists toward “green” innovations in tourist places. It was hypothesized that tourists who were more strongly motivated by nature-oriented experiences would perceive environmentally responsible practices as more valuable than tourists less motivated by nature-oriented experiences. The study is based on a survey of individuals who visited the Arizona Welcome Center in northeastern Arizona and the Chamber of Commerce offices in Holbrook and Springerville, Arizona. As expected, visitors with a stronger nature orientation had more positive views of environmentally responsible practices by tourism businesses than tourists not nature-oriented. They felt such innovations are important and valuable.     

An Empirical Examination of the Form of Relationship Between Sustainable Tourism Experiences and Satisfaction

This paper problematizes the terms “sustainable tourism and satisfaction”. It conceptualizes sustainable tourism as a future trend in tourism and argues that although sustainable tourism and satisfaction frequently function as a means of tourist evaluation and experience for attractions, their social significance extends far beyond current tourism planning. This paper uses empirical material from 642 tourists who had sustainable tourism experiences and gathers samples from several natural resource conservation zones in Taiwan. If tourists feel a sense of novelty about a tourist destination, they may increase their sustainable experience and further enhance their willingness and satisfaction toward sustainable tourism. In addition, sustainable tourism studies suggest that novelty enhances emotional excitement, which in turn leads to more overall valuable evaluations and higher satisfaction. This paper tests both direct and indirect mechanisms simultaneously using structural equation modeling methods. The results support the predictions.     

Sustainable Transport,Market Segmentation and Tourism: The Looe Valley Branch Line Railway,Cornwall, UK

This paper uses cluster analysis, a form of a posteriori market segmentation, to understand the attitudes of tourists and the local community towards using the Looe Valley Branch Railway Line. The research revealed five segments of users distinguished by their attitudes towards using the train. Following this, the paper discusses the implications of the survey findings for attracting more people to use the Looe Valley Line. It sets its findings in the context of the sustainable tourism aims of reducing transport congestion and emissions, as well as recent work on assessing the scope for sustainable transport development in the leisure and tourism markets.     

Towards Assessing the Knowledge Gap in Medical Tourism

The medical tourism industry is a fast growing global niche market that generated $20 billion in income for destinations around the world. This study suggests and tests a mechanism to assess the medical tourism providers’ perceptions about the tourists’ perceived important product attributes when selecting a medical tourism destination. The results indicate that the various medical tourism providers groups do not vary in their perceptions regarding 24 important attributes of the medical tourism product and that they all agree that tourists perceive the medical variables to be more important than the tourism related variables. Using the Korean market for data collection, the study’s additional contribution is providing insights for Korean government agencies, operators of medical tourism hospitals, policymakers, and marketers.     

新生代游客涉入度与文化认同对红色旅游忠诚度的影响研究

红色旅游是红色文化宣传和教育的实现方式之一,但作为旅游主力军的新生代游客对红色文化的认同逐渐式微,存在认同危机风险,并对红色旅游的后续发展和持续经营产生影响,已成为当今显著且亟待关注的社会现象。本研究运用文化认同理论,以新生代游客为研究群体,尝试探索影响新生代游客文化认同的因素并寻找增强其红色旅游忠诚度的作用机制,由此建构新生代游客涉入度、文化认同与红色旅游忠诚度影响关系模型并进行实证验证。研究发现：(1)新生代游客涉入度对红色旅游的文化认同和忠诚度均具有显著的正向影响,其中对文化认同的影响更为显著;(2)新生代游客对红色旅游的文化认同正向影响忠诚度;(3)文化认同在新生代游客涉入度与忠诚度之间存在部分中介效应。本研究揭示了新生代游客涉入度对培育红色旅游忠诚度的重要作用,拓展了文化认同的应用边界;认为增强新生代游客的涉入度,培育其文化认同,对于忠诚度及红色旅游持续经营和后续发展具有积极的现实意义。     

Transitions to Sustainable Tourism Mobility: The Social Practices Approach

In this article, we argue that current research on sustainable tourism mobility can be divided roughly into two streams. One covers primarily the organisational and technological side of tourism mobility, while the other concentrates on travellers' attitudes. To date, these streams have been organised as separate bodies of research. There is much to be gained by being able to create linkages between the two. To do this, tourism research will have to develop a less generalised and more context-specific approach to travelling behaviour. In this paper, the Social Practices Approach is suggested as an interesting conceptual tool to interrelate current approaches. By giving greater consideration to the contextual dimension of tourism practices, citizen-consumers might be mobilised more effectively as change agents. To analyse the potential roles of citizen-consumers in transition processes towards sustainable tourism mobility, two citizen-consumer-led change processes are differentiated. The first is directed at tourists in their consumer-role, by providers developing sociotechnical innovations enabling and tempting tourists to behave more sustainably, and by incorporating consumer-logics in supply. Second, tourists can be mobilised in their role as citizen-consumers through processes of sub-politics, social movements and political consumerism.     

Legacy tourism: the search for personal meaning in heritage travel

In recent years, the existence and nature of the heritage tourism market has attracted substantial attention in the tourism industry. There appears to be a sub-segment of the heritage market that consists of tourists who have a personal connection with their heritage beyond a general relationship of collective ancestry. Those that travel to engage in genealogical endeavors, to search for information on or to simply feel connected to ancestors and ancestral roots are categorized as legacy tourists. This paper describes the heritage tourism market, discusses distinguishing characteristics that identify legacy tourists, and emphasizes to tourism managers the importance of recognizing and responding to this segment.     

The human dimensions of wildlife tourism in a developing country: watching spinner dolphins at Lovina,Bali, Indonesia

The number of cetacean watching tourism operations in developing countries has doubled in the past decade. Practices are typically unregulated and not informed by research, especially research into the human dimensions of the tourist experience. Dolphin watching tourism at Lovina, Bali, started in the late 1980s when local fishers formed self-regulating cooperatives. Up to 180 dedicated operators use small fishing vessels to carry passengers to watch dolphins close to shore. Most tourists come from western countries, although the industry also attracts Asian visitors. Most visitors are tertiary-educated. Tourist satisfaction ranges from low to medium. While there was no significant difference between the average satisfaction of western and Asian tourists, the associated variables were different. The satisfaction of western tourists was associated with encounter management, preferred number of boats and the number of dolphins seen. Encounter management was the only variable associated with the satisfaction of Asian tourists. Satisfaction was positively associated with willingness to recommend the tour: western respondents who felt neutral to very comfortable with their dolphin encounters were more likely to promote the tour. Better understanding of the tourist experience is crucial in designing sustainable marine wildlife tourism in developing countries; such research appears to be rare.     

Inversionary and Liminoidal Consumption: Gluttony on Holidays and Obesity

This study aims to explore gluttony as a liminoidal and inversionary form of behavior on all-inclusive holidays and its possible relationship with obesity. The study particularly looks at tourists’ attitudes toward food and drinks on all-inclusive holidays, that is, whether they consume food and drinks excessively on holidays; and if they do, whether their excessive eating and drinking habits are continued after their all-inclusive holidays. The findings suggest that people who go on all-inclusive holidays consume more food and drinks (both in terms quantity and variety) and a significant proportion of them, though to a varying extent, continue their excessive consumption habits after their holidays.     

Local reactions to mass tourism and community tourism development in Macau

By 2014, it became apparent that a popular debate was emerging in many destinations about the “annoyances” felt by local residents in the face of an upsurge in inbound tourism. This study investigates residents’ attitudes toward mass tourism and tourism development in Macau. It comprises an examination of three emotional solidarity factors of residents’ perceptions of the contribution of tourism to the community and the community's experiences of so-called “annoyances” from tourists that may ultimately influence residents’ attitudes toward community tourism development. The results of this study reveal that three emotional solidarity factors play different roles in influencing residents’ attitudes about community tourism and community tourism development. The theoretical contributions, as well as implications, are discussed and future research opportunities are proposed.     

Market segments based on the dominant movement patterns of tourists

This paper presents an innovative method for tourist market segmentation-based on dominant movement patterns of tourists; that is, the travel sequences or patterns used by tourists most frequently. There were three steps to achieve this goal. In the first step, general log-linear models were adopted to identify the dominant movement patterns, while the second step was to discover the characteristics of the groups of tourists who travelled with these patterns. The Expectation–Maximisation algorithm was then used to partition tourist segments in terms of socio-demographic and travel behavioural variables. The third step was to select target markets based upon the earlier analysis. These methods were applied to a sample of tourists, over the period of a week, on Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia. A significant outcome of this research is that it will assist tourism organisations to identify tourism market segments and develop better tour packages and more efficient marketing strategies aligned to the characteristics of the tourists.