Tourism and online photography

This paper documents the use of online travel photo-sharing technologies among Hong Kong residents. The advent of Web 2.0 is changing fundamentally the tourist information search and destination choice process. Yet, to date, no study has documented Web 2.0 usage levels and preferences for certain media for posting travel photographs across an entire community. This study reveals that some 89% of pleasure travelers take photographs and that 41% of them posted their photographs online. Social network sites (SNSs), instant messaging, online photo albums and personal blogs were the most popular media used. In general, people who post photographs online tend to be younger, better educated, and earn a higher income than those who do not. The study determined that most people also use multiple media platforms to disseminate their images. Cluster analysis based on the four major styles of online platform identified five cohorts of users who differed in number and type of media used, demographic profile and travel motive. Implications for destination promotion are discussed.     

Market Performance of Potato Auctions in Bhutan

Abstract

Market performance with respect to a main horticultural export commodity in Bhutan is the subject of this paper. Imperfections in (market) infrastructure and market structure and conduct may prevent an optimal price for farmers. Market performance is assessed by testing the law of one price for this commodity. This is done by testing three series of auction price data on both long-run and short-run price integration. It is concluded that for the period 1996-2000 the auction prices were interrelated both in the long and short run with one of the three auctions as the price-leading market. In contrast, in the period 2001-2005 the market arbitrage process slowed down, indicating the rise of market imperfections. Policy implications are suggested.     

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.     

Mix,match & move: Shaping the future of tourism Asia pacific tourism association seventh annual conference Manila,the Philippines, 2001

This research investigates the psychological turnover theory, which is developed based on the Mobley's model, and compares the hotel employees of two culturally different countries: U.S.A. and South Korea. It takes the controversy of transferability of management theories in different cultures into consideration. This study also compares the influencing factors in the particular behavior between the two groups. For both samples, the path analyses using a series of multiple regression analyses have shown the existence of a particular linkage among the four psychological construct variables studied: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, thinking of quitting, and withdrawal intentions, thus supporting the model. Given the possible problems of collinearity between the predicting variables and thereby instability of the regression coefficients, stepwise regression analyses have been employed to serve the second objective of this study, resulting in significant differences between the two samples. In addition, a dummy variable has been created to examine the role of nationality in predicting the turnover behavior, with the nationality turning out to be an important predictor, however, its influence is indirect through organizational or psychological factors.     

Relationships of Perceived Justice to Service Recovery,Service Failure Attributions,Recovery Satisfaction,and Loyalty in the Context of Airline Travelers

In recent years, hospitality and tourism researchers have presented their findings of many studies on website performance and evaluations. Although these prior studies have achieved a certain degree of success for assisting industrial practitioners to develop and maintain their websites, it remains largely unknown how consumers find a specific travel or hotel website. This paper reports a study that investigated the perceived importance of different channels for finding travel or hotel websites from an international travelers' perspective. Empirical results from 153 travel or hotel website users indicated that the Google search engine was the only channel that was perceived as important, and 47.4% of the respondents viewed up to three screens in the list of search results when using search engines. The paper should be of interest to industrial practitioners and academic researchers to understand better the behavior of users of travel and hotel websites during their website search procedure.     

The internet and tourism‐part IV: TravelWeb

Abstract

The sporadic domestic political instability during the last decade, compounded with the ongoing international war on terrorism in Afghanistan and beyond, has created a substantial decline in tourist visits to Nepal. Safety and security are important aspects of travel destination choice and the perceived risk within Nepal and the South Asian region has mired the pace of international tourist arrivals. The objectives of this paper were to examine the state of tourism in Nepal and the negative repercussions of the political instability and international conflict that has thwarted the potential for growth.     

Retirement Choices in Italy: What an Option Value Model Tells Us*

Using Italian data, we estimate an option value model to quantify the effect of financial incentives on retirement choices. As far as we know, this is the first empirical study to estimate the conditional multiple‐years model put forward by Stock and Wise (1990) . This implies that we account for dynamic self‐selection bias. We also present an extended version of this model in which the marginal value of leisure is random. For the female sample, the model is able to predict almost perfectly the age‐specific hazard rates. For the male sample, we obtain a good fit. Dynamic self‐selection results in a downward bias in the estimate of the marginal utility of leisure. We perform a simulation study to gauge the effects of a dramatic pension reform. Underestimation of the value of leisure translates into sizeable over‐prediction of the impact of reform. Due to lack of data, results for males should be interpreted with caution since we are not able to fully correct for dynamic self‐selection bias.