Deployment of Restaurants Websites’ Marketing Features: The Case of Spanish Michelin-Starred Restaurants

ABSTRACT

Websites have become a fundamental marketing tool for tourism businesses and have a special importance for highly rated restaurants. The aim of this article is to propose and apply a model to evaluate the deployment and adoption of website marketing features of restaurants from a specific category. The model is based on the application of an extended model of Internet commerce adoption (eMICA) technique for technical depth, combined with content analysis for breadth. This study analyzes the website features and capabilities for Spanish restaurants in the 2015 Michelin Red Guide. A total of 102 restaurants were analyzed. The results of the website evaluation model suggest that, despite the importance of the restaurant sector in the economy and in the tourism industry, the websites of high-quality restaurants require improvements to adapt to customers’ demands. Results further found that these websites are not tourist-orientated and are established at different stages of development.     

Is there a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth in South America?

This article estimates agricultural productivity growth in 10 South American countries in 1969–2009 with the objective of investigating if the slowdown being measured in other countries is present in the region. Results show that productivity growth accounts for half of the three‐fold increase in agricultural output during this period and that performance is sensitive to R&D investments in the sector. The slowdown found for the 1990s to 2000s in the U.S. and some European economies does not seem to be present yet in South America. The region's total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate increased steadily from 1.07% during the 1970s to 2.29% during the 2000s. Given lags in adoption and the adaptive nature of innovations in these economies, we have yet to see the potential effects in South American agriculture of decreases in R&D in advanced economies.     

THE SPANISH EXTERNAL SECTOR: A POLICY OF TRADE OPENNESS

This paper describes the process of trade liberalisation experienced by the Spanish economy between 1960 and 2000. The path towards liberalisation involved progressive reductions of quantitative restrictions, which were replaced by border taxes. Over the period external openness grew, although along an irregular path.     

Climate Variability in the Origin Countries as a “Push” Factor on Tourist Arrivals in the Philippines

The objective of this paper is to test the impact of climate variability in origin countries as a “push factor” on tourist arrivals, specifically in the Philippines, and to select a suitable proxy to measure climate variability. This paper uses the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) constructed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Climate variability is strongly linked to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and this link is used by meteorologists to forecast changes in weather globally. SOI is a widely used indicator of the ENSO and its best known extremes are the El Niño (warm phase) and La Niña (cold phase) effects. The study proves to some extent that there is a significant increase in US tourist arrivals in the Philippines when La Niña-like weather conditions prevail in the USA. More importantly, the SOI proved to be a good measure of climate variability.     

A Webometric Analysis of Travel Blogs and Review Hosting: The Case of Catalonia

Today, destination-marketing organizations and researchers are increasingly focusing their attention on travel blogs and reviews due to their potential for projecting the image of a specific destination and for influencing travel behavior and decision making. However, the criteria used to select the Web sites hosting travel blogs and reviews for study are unclear, and very few quantitative or demographic studies about users (bloggers and readers) have been conducted. The aim of this study is to propose a method in which a webometric analysis is used to select the most suitable Web sites for a specific case study and to obtain information about users. The proposed webometric analysis consists of an integrated formula including visibility, popularity, and size metrics. This method was used to rank 11 suitable Web sites for studying the case of Catalonia.     

Happiness perception in Spain,a SEM approach to evidence from the sociological research center

Quality & Quantity - In the current study, we examined the relationship between perceived person happiness and factors that influence this perception, also, is inferred that life satisfaction...     

The multichannel customer’s service experience: building satisfaction and trust

Multichannel retailers dominate today’s retail landscape. Practitioners and researchers are particularly interested in understanding how the multichannel strategy helps establishing and developing relationships with customers. Our findings, from 302 customers of multichannel financial services firms, show that frontline employees’ customer facilitation behaviors (traditional channel) have a stronger impact on satisfaction than e-psychological benefits (derived from the company’s Web site), while their positive influence on trust is not significantly different. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.