Tourists’ Perceptions and Assessments: Volume 8

This primer defines and describes conscious and nonconscious perception and assessment processes by tourists. The primer links the field of tourism perception studies to the literature of experimental social psychology. The primer describes the important roles that metaphors play in connecting conscious and nonconscious thinking and how both tourism brand managers and tourists use metaphors to use stories to enable enactments and favorable outcomes of archetypal motivations. The primer introduces formal implementable models of the major tenet in Urry’s tourist gaze – visitors’ home culture automatically and mostly nonconsciously profoundly influences their perceptions, assessments, and interpretations of what they see when traveling and visiting away destinations. Model implementation includes applying Boolean algebra-based asymmetric tests instead of symmetric matrix algebra-based statistical tests – the asymmetric tests examine for the consistency of high scores in perceiving, assessing, and behaviors of complex configurations of antecedent conditions. A detailed empirical example of asymmetric testing includes consistent high scores for Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Germans for not shopping for gifts to take home during their visits to Australia. This primer also introduces the concept of the tourist meta-gaze – seeing and assessing outside the automatically activated culturally based tourist gaze.

The chapter investigates the evaluation and rating practice of individual travelers, through the examination of user-generated comments on the Internet. The study focuses on determining the most mentioned attributes of the accommodation experience, with consideration given to nationality differences. The individual evaluations of 40 Istanbul hotels are examined through an analysis of guest comments and hotel ratings posted in the Booking.com web site. The results obtained through content analysis provide knowledge to the accommodation industry in Istanbul regarding the areas in need of improvement, with consideration to variations among guests from different nationalities.

This study compares the applicability of the zone of tolerance and importance-performance analysis (IPA) techniques in the evaluation of convention delegates’ perceptions of products and services. Overall, 217 cases out of 400 were used for analysis, a response rate of 54 percent. The study results indicate that although an IPA technique is still useful in assessing the service performance of a convention facility, IPA should be employed with caution, concrete criteria, and clear goals. The study results also show that the zone of tolerance is practically applicable into business practice to assess service performance item by item.

Luxury tourism is the behaviour of a minority of travellers. Our objective is to assess how Celebrities perceive and experience tourism luxuries. Furthermore, their inner concept of luxury tourism is analysed by comparison with their everyday perception of luxury, and, finally, to understand to what extent luxury relates to outrageous spending. We interviewed 36 Portuguese Celebrities and a group comprising ordinary individuals in order to account for heterogeneity control. A mixed approach of quantitative and qualitative methods was applied in the interpretation of the interviews. The findings reveal diverse perceptions of luxury tourism by the different groups.

The internet is rapidly becoming the main channel for seeking and booking travel services. The consequent human–interface interactions are now the focal point of many studies being conducted by both scholars and practitioners. The development of websites involves many design choices, such as background, colors, fonts, and different ways of presenting information. The study here argues that these seemingly “trivial” design choices may have nontrivial effects on customers’ behavior. The study presents three empirical examples supporting this idea. The first example refers to the presentation of hotels as items on a list on websites, which creates a “mere position” effect. The second example shows that different partitioning of an attribute’s values can impact their relative importance. The third example shows that background features (color, picture) may result in priming effects. In all cases, the seemingly trivial changes in design directly alter customers’ choices although, rationally, they should have no impact at all.

The tourism experience model (TEM) is a meta-analytical, phenomenological inspired model of how tourists experience destinations. This essay argues that social and cultural psychology form only part of the analysis of how the tourist’s consciousness filters interactions. By considering the existential self versus the role-authentic self of social psychology, the TEM adds to social psychology’s scope explaining how and why tourists may experience social interactions. In addition, it models the dynamics of how the tourist experiences his own activity (exploratory vs. recreational). The model thereby goes beyond both the exclusive social focus and the ego-centric notion of the Individualism–Collectivism dichotomy.

This chapter analyzes the tourism industry from national and regional perspectives, in order to understand the past and current trends in Costa Rica’s positioning and branding attributes and strategies for tourism development. The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive comprehensive literature review of academic research on country branding; and so it is by all means a case study as it describes the evolution of the tourism industry in Costa Rica – including the transformative stages the country went through since the 1980s – as planned tourism national management programs evolved toward reaching the target of creating a nature-based tourism brand. The medical industry and then medical tourism industries are analyzed in a global basis and the US market is examined in detail because of its potential to develop a new complementary niche for Costa Rica’s tourism industry. The chapter intends to asses Costa Rica’s potential to become a country brand in medical tourism, leveraged on its natural tourism destination branding status quo.

With increasing investments being made in brand development by destination marketing organisations (DMO) since the 1990s, including rebranding and repositioning, more research is necessary to enhance understanding of how to effectively monitor destination brand performance over time. This chapter summarises key findings from a study of brand performance of a competitive set of destinations, in their most important market, between 2003 and 2012. Brand performance was measured from the perspective of consumer perceptions, based on the concept of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). The results indicated almost no change in perceptions of the five destinations over the 10-year period. Due to the commonality of challenges faced by DMOs worldwide, it is suggested the CBBE hierarchy provides destination marketers with a practical tool for evaluating brand performance over time; in terms of measures of effectiveness of past marketing communications, as well as indicators of future performance.

Generation Y is a new sizable market that is fast changing as the landscape of the internet rapidly evolves. Until now, research has examined mainly the perceptions of different online buyers of accommodation in specific geographical areas, with little attention devoted to Generation Y. This study examines Generation Y travelers’ perceptions of hotel disintermediation in France. The results, based on a sample of 378 French travelers, show four underlying dimensions of perceptions. Findings also reveal that only gender and age significantly influence perceptions. The chapter closes with implications for increasing trust and attractiveness of the online accommodation offer to French Generation Y.

This chapter aims to develop a holistic conceptual understanding of how tourism experiences are constructed, contextualized and packaged in the context of travel blogs. Tourist experiences are highlighted as an on-going process, continuously changing and altering during pre-, on-site-, and post-visit of tourist experiences. This chapter also examines the relationships between travel blog users’ motivation and engagement and tourist experience construction. As a result, a new dimension to the previous tourist experiences is offered.

This study aims analyzing facilitators/constraints Portuguese women golfers face. The research presents 33 intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural factors, being supported by a theoretical sampling and data triangulation. The 39 interviews were interpreted by content analysis. Results suggest all participants perceive factors that moderate their participation and highlight dissimilar perceptions by professional and amateur players. Contributions address a manifest heterogeneity: social values prevail even when women are encouraged to join leisure activities. Study limitations derive from the geographical scope restricted to Portugal, yet raising awareness to gender in golf. Stakeholders acknowledge women’s low participation; however, this study appears to be the first paper about the subject.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify hospitality meanings among hotels employees and guests and its consequences on guests’ intention. A qualitative approach using in-depth interviews was used for data collection. The study findings reveal that hospitality definitions range from state of mind to service management oriented. Also, hospitality conception seems to have a pentagonal structure revolving around personalization, comfort, relationship guest/host, hospitableness and warm welcoming dimensions. Besides, Mediterranean culture, satisfying and understanding guests’ needs appear to influence hospitality perceptions. Cultural sensitivity is a critical skill that may help hospitality providers in coping with guests’ cultural differences. Finally, hospitality perceptions may foster behavioral and affective loyalty.

This chapter enhances insights into destination image and competitor assessments by extending the research framework of perception-based market segmentation by two perspectives: allowing generating individual sets of competitors and contrasting two stages of travel experience: pre- and after trip. The empirical study is based on two samples of leisure travelers: a mix of international travelers who just finished their trip to Thailand and a group of European travelers interested in visiting Thailand. Against conventional assumptions though supporting more recent findings on destination decision making the majority of travelers did not identify any direct competitor.