Advances in Hospitality and Leisure: Volume 14

Tourism is a key source of income to South Africa. Food and beverages is a key part of tourism and the literature reveals that tourists spend up to a quarter of their budget on cuisine. South Africa has, however, been rated as the least-prepared culinary travel destination and the travel destination with the greatest potential for growth. Therefore, a segmentation taxonomy based on culinary preferences of international tourists to South Africa is put forth which can be used to prepare South Africa as a culinary travel destination. The 627 international tourists surveyed were divided into five segments with the use of factor analyses, t-tests, Spearman rank correlations and analysis of variance. The segments were named conservationists, experience seekers, devotees, explorers and socialisers (CEDES taxonomy). Multiple results and implications are discussed in the paper.

A number of scholars have discussed the role of perceived risk as a significant factor in destination selection. In response to these concerns and in an effort to increase their competitiveness, a number of countries have introduced tourism quality schemes (TQSs) as a mechanism to build tourist confidence in the destination and the products and experiences that it offers and in so doing reduce the level of consumer risk. Existing TQSs run by national or regional governments vary greatly in terms of scope, assessment criteria and procedures and have received little attention by academic researchers. Indeed, in an era of increasing use of user-generated content, TQSs may become increasingly irrelevant. This paper examines Hong Kong’s Quality tourism Services (QTS) scheme and identifies a number of weaknesses that need to be addressed if the scheme is to be viewed as an effective tool to build consumer confidence. The findings are based on a survey of the views of QTS scheme members and tourists departing Hong Kong.

This research attempts to examine the co-creation process involving Chiayi City International Band Festival (CIBF). It deploys a questionnaire survey which assesses the level of activity involvement, preference to local products, and place attachment. The questionnaire is pretested, which utilizes college students as the samples to screen the clarity of wordings covered in the questionnaire and the reliability of the study scales. Subsequently, 342 festivity attendees, who are not local residents, are invited to participate in the survey. Structural equational modeling is used to test the study hypotheses. The results show a mediating effect of co-creation between activity involvement and place attachment.

Increased competition amongst the hotel industry players has challenged managers not to focus their attention exclusively on ways to attract and satisfy their customers, but to invest in customer retention strategies with the potential to ensure superior performance of their hotels. This study aims to determine strategies to retain customers in hotels in Ghana, an emerging market. A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect data from 677 hotel employees in 56 Ghanaian licensed hotels. Based on SmartPLS, study findings indicate that customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention embedded in the tangibility and reliability dimensions of the lodging quality index are important for customer retention among hotels in Ghana.

Given the rapid growth of the Chinese cruise market, several Chinese cities are attempting to become a hub for cruise ships. The aim of this study is to evaluate the competitiveness of those cities with regard to hosting cruises. It employs a cloud model that transforms the qualitative description of competitive indicators into quantitative measurement and assesses the competitive advantage and specialization of the top homeports in China. Questionnaires are delivered to experts from eight cruise ports in China and the cloud model based on 14 evaluation factors is used to analyze the competitiveness of the ports under investigation. The result shows that the city’s scale, population, and development have been the main factors for assessing the competitiveness of port cities. The research provides insight about the Chinese cruise port cities’ competitiveness, which is particularly useful for future development decision and marketing strategies of ports and prospective destinations.

This research constructs the critical predictors of visitation that shall allow the practitioners to foresee the visitation in the years to come through secondary data. For this study, tourist arrival data associated with the most popular forest park (i.e., Xiton Forest Park) in Taiwan along with relevant socio-economic data are utilized. This research adopts a group of analytical procedures involving correlation analysis, regression, and curve estimation analyses. The results show that the number of holiday per month and the average monthly rainfall have positive and negative correlations, respectively, with the visitation. Meanwhile, average monthly temperature and monthly gross domestic product per capita show a positive correlation in all three analytical methods and therefore are regarded as the primary predictors of tourist arrival. Consequently, this study provides managerial implications to increase the tourist arrivals to the forest park.

With the development of tourism industry, online travel agencies (OTA) have gradually become an important channel for tourism product supplies and sales. Some OTAs provide consumers with a platform for tourism guidance and online travel sharing. They not only satisfy some tourists’ desire to share their experiences but also provide reference for more consumers to choose travel products. This process is the process of value co-creation by customers and online travel companies. This study is conducted under DART theory, a theoretical framework of value co-creation composed of four dimensions, namely dialog, access, risk-assessment, and transparency. Brand equity is divided into four aspects: brand loyalty, brand awareness, customer perceived value, and brand image. This study uses the structural equation model to investigate the impact of customer value co-creation behavior on brand equity of online travel enterprises and interprets the process and mechanism of customer value co-creation behaviors for online travel business brand equity, which provides more efficient strategies and methods for platform interaction and value co-creation.

In the development of a firm’s market orientation, management commitment plays a critical role. This study aimed to examine the influence of management commitment on market orientation on the basis of the MARKOR framework of market orientation. This was done through a survey of three-star, four-star and five-star licensed hotels located in Ghana. PLS-SEM was used to analyse data based on SmartPLS. Results showed a positive relationship between management commitment and the behavioural processes included in the MARKOR framework of market orientation: intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness to intelligence. Results also revealed that intelligence dissemination mediates the relationship between management commitment and responsiveness to intelligence. Intelligence generation was not found to mediate this relationship. This study has extended current knowledge by elaborating how management commitment influences market orientation practices.

This study investigates the structural relationships among humor leadership, psychological empowerment, innovative behavior, and job performance in the Korean hotel industry. This study reveals following key major findings. First, a leader’s use of humor in leadership significantly and positively influences an employee’s psychological empowerment. Second, an employee’s psychological empowerment significantly and positively influences innovative behavior and job performance. However, innovative behavior does not significantly influence job performance. In the final section, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Two major obstacles to tourism development in India have been identified as shortage of skilled manpower and dearth of rural tourism projects. Through the provisions under Section 135 of the new Companies Act 2013, the Indian government has initiated a reform process on how private companies, including leading hospitality businesses, should conduct their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Recognizing this opportunity for action, this paper looks at the opportunity for tourism growth under the new CSR regime by reviewing the barriers for hospitality companies falling under the ambit of Section 135 to make CSR investments toward tourism development. Upon establishing these barriers, the argument reviews the current CSR trends and the absence of diversification in spending CSR funds. Finally, the paper discusses the need for enhancing the capacity of tourism NGOs in India and for developing strategic partnerships between these institutions and hospitality companies.

In this paper, we investigate the connection between ethics and aesthetics with a supporting case from the international tourism industry. Researchers in sustainable tourism have ignored, resisted or simply been reluctant to include the aesthetic perspective in the analysis of sustainable development, social responsibility or climate adaptation. The consequence is that we know very little about the ways aesthetic affects ethical considerations among guests and travellers. A more comprehensive reconciliation of the ethical and aesthetic dimensions may lead to the recognition that a stronger emphasis on aesthetics can enhance the guest’s experience of sustainable tourism within a responsible experience economy. We argue that this economy can thrive under sophisticated capitalism.