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Importance bias in business hotel quality surveys: the role of travelers’ heterogeneity
No full textThanks to a wide survey, recording business travelers’ perceived overall hotel quality, importance and
performance of room and bathroom, external services and personnel, this work aims at investigating
whether socio-demographic, trip and business-related variables influence an eventual tendency of respondents
to over/understate the importance of hotels’ attributes. Moreover, we test the dependence
of the interviewees’ evaluations of the importance of each of the three mentioned aspects on both
the overall satisfaction and the perceived performance with the corresponding aspect, highlighted by
the extant literature. In addition, we empirically verify if the importance statements for each aspect
are affected by both the importance and the performance of the other hotel’s attributes. Results indicate
that the differences in importance statements between individuals with certain characteristics,
taking business trips with determinate features, can be ascribed to differences in their tendency to
state higher or lower importance values, than they actually conceive, that is explained by these characteristics
and features. Furthermore, findings concerning room and bathroom and external services
point out that the response bias is negatively correlated with the overall satisfaction and directly related
to the performance of both the personnel and the attribute itself. This evidence disconfirms the thesis
that the poor performance of an attribute makes it more important in the perception of the customer.
For all the aspects, the bias is positively influenced by the importance of the other attribute
Best buy: what does it mean in corporate travel?
No full textCorporate travel departments manage travel costs prescribing best buy decisions. With
reference to flights, the crucial choice concerns the fare. As the difference in price can be
great, it might seem convenient to always purchase the cheapest ticket, neglecting that
the more expensive a fare, the lower the cost of change or cancellation. We define “best
buy” minimizing the expected global cost of flights, whence estimating the probability
distribution of travellers’ behaviour is necessary. Variables useful to this aim are
detected. This statistical approach can improve the efficiency of corporate policies,
leading to diversified purchasing strategies
The Value of Sustainable Tourism Destinations in the Eyes of Visitors
Get PDFThe first objective of this study is to analyze visitors’ perceived value of four Italian small areas, that have been granted the European Regional Development Fund’s financing for developing sustainable tourism. The second objective of this work is to investigate the influences of socio-demographic and trip-related characteristics on the tourists’ assessments of the main aspects of such destinations, for detecting variables useful for market segmentation and for designing better-targeted marketing actions. These areas host protected natural reserves, historical heritage, rural or mountain traditions, and ways of life, the conservation of which is combined with local economic growth through the development of green, cultural, and slow tourism. Thus, insights on how visitors’ perceived value is configured there might provide hints useful for upgrading the local tourism supply consistently with the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and the European Green Deal Strategy. Results confirm that the perceived value is a fundamental construct, as it strongly and positively influences satisfaction, intention to recommend, and destination image. The value of sustainable destinations, as perceived by visitors, is mainly based on the affective benefits that sustainable experiences provide, starting from positive social interactions making tourists feel welcomed. The tourist segment valorizing sustainable destinations is mostly composed of old people and low-income travelers, who seek basic services and facilities, as their satisfaction depends mainly on relaxing immersed in pristine nature
A Non-Compensatory Index of Community Participation in Cross-Border Tourism Development Processes
Get PDFWe propose a composite index to measure and benchmark community participation in cross-border tourism development processes. The index synthesizes information regarding three dimensions of this construct, deemed as very important by the extant literature: residents' engagement in the planning process and willingness to proactively welcome tourists and provide tourist services directly through sharing-economy platforms. The latter aspect is crucial to develop a local tourist supply able to combine environmental sustainability and financial feasibility in marginal areas, where public funding is scarce and private investments are unprofitable. This study offers a methodological innovation using response rates to open-ended questions to measure residents' engagement in tourism planning. By applying the ELECTRE III algorithm, which is non-compensatory and ensures reliability in the presence of a high degree of uncertainty, survey information is aggregated in a single figure, which can be easily interpreted by destination managers and policymakers. After COVID-19, in readying for the next pandemic, decision makers should find our index as a very relevant and useful tool for tourism recovery and innovation planning, including compliance with measures to prevent the spread of future infections. We apply the proposed index to ten Croatian and Italian lands involved in a European development project. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with residents, according to an availability sampling design. We obtained 879 valid questionnaires. The robustness of the resulting index is tested through an uncertainty and a sensitivity analysis
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A temporal construal theory explanation of the price-quality relationship in online dynamic pricing
Get PDFAccording to construal theory, the desirability of a product influences consumers’ choices from a temporally, socially, spatially and hypothetically distant perspective. The purpose of this study is to test the temporal dimension of such theory with reference to hotel room prices, also distinguishing by firm size. Temporal distance is measured through the days of advance booking, in a varying-coefficient model reflecting both the dynamic pricing behaviour of the supply and the seasonal oscillation pattern of the demand. Results support the appropriateness of the temporal construal theory as an interpretative framework for the effectiveness of dynamic pricing, from the perspective of behavioural psychology. On average, the influence of quality on price in small hotels is lower than in large hotels; however, its variability is higher in small hotels. Large hotels charge a premium price during peak season dates, while small firms apply discounts, likely aiming to reach full occupation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Web reputation of protected areas as tourism destinations: a case study
Get PDFThe purpose of this study is to investigate the reasons why tourist inflows in three Italian
protected areas, endowed with valuable natural and cultural heritage, are below their potential.
These sites participate in the European Regional Development Project EXCOVER, that aims at
developing sustainable tourism in underrated Adriatic areas. To this goal, it is important to
investigate the reputation of the sites among the general public, especially in the imaginary of
people who have never visited it, to understand and change what keeps tourists away. This task
is brought about through a semantic analysis of online reviews, that are crucial in the
construction of non-visitors’ imaginary about a destination and influence travel choices.
Customers’ reviews are scraped from TripAdvisor through a code written on-purpose. Topics are
modelled through an unsupervised machine learning algorithm, chosen because a consolidated
theoretical model of destination reputation is still missing, so reviews are allowed to tell what is
relevant to reviewers, without prior constraints. Moreover, to the exploratory aim of this study,
online opinions are not considered as answers to predetermined questions, but as free instances
of word-of-mouth. The resulting proxies of web reputation are compared across time and space,
to get the information needed to devise effective tourism development strategies and marketing
initiatives. The originality of this contribution lays in the investigation of the web reputation of
protected areas still to be developed into tourism destination. Moreover, it may provide some hint
useful to the formulation of a solid theoretical model of destination reputation
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