On-screen tourism destinations provide tourists with a mixture of reality and mass-media experience. This study builds a conceptual framework of authenticity evaluating the relationship between ...fantasy proneness, authenticity, and destination loyalty. It is among the first to compare perceived authenticity of dual images of a destination, both the film location and the story’s setting. Using Game of Thrones and the city of Dubrovnik as a case, it applies a mixed method of interviews followed by a main survey with both closed- and open-ended questions. The primary findings show that the relationship between authenticity of the film location (Dubrovnik) and loyalty is positive, but such relationship is insignificant for the authenticity of the story’s setting (King’s Landing). This investigation enriches our understanding of the complex assessments of authenticity and expands the theory of imagination by evaluating the effects of fantasy proneness on perceived authenticity in the context of on-screen tourism.
This study examines the evolution of the destination image of Athens from 2005 to 2015, in order to exploit the impact of the recent economic recession on individual perceptions. It uses advanced web ...content mining to analyze TripAdvisor messages that were posted in Athens Travel Forum. The findings show that the image of Athens has remained positive, facing a significant, but short-term, shift during the first years of the crisis. The findings also reveal that the destination image of Athens is only partially shared by individuals residing inside and outside Greece, and that non-Greek residents have more favorable perceptions toward the destination. The study expands understanding on the destination image literature by demonstrating the normative nature of destination images, which—once established—can be particularly resistant to change, even during sustained crises.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of microblogging word of mouth (MWOM) through twitter on value co-destruction for Athens, as a tourism destination facing a sustained crisis. ...The study demonstrates the sentiment and sharing evolution of tweets, illustrating the value co-destruction of a tourism destination. Overall, the study expands understanding on the online footprints of MWOM in the field of tourism.Design/methodology/approachIt uses social media focused data mining and sentiment analysis, to analyze more than 90,000 tweets posted by top twitter influencers between 2013 and 2015. The methodology that the authors have adopted follows seven steps: first, identification of the top-5 twitter influencers who use the hashtag #Athens, based on their klout score; second, collection of tweets from the top-5 twitter influencers, for the period from January 2013 until June 2015; third, collection of the retweets metadata of the above tweets and of the corresponding retweeter accounts (i.e. user id, name, screen name), together with the frequency of retweeting per tweet; fourth, collection of user metadata (i.e. location and number of followers) from the retweeter accounts; fifth, influence computation of retweetwers using their klout score; sixth, tweets classification based on the klout score of their retweeters; and seventh, sentiment analysis of the collected tweets.FindingsThe findings show the high potential of value co-destruction in virtual environments, through negative MWOM related to tourism destinations in crisis, and shared among highly influencing users, that disseminate negative stories through microblogging. The findings also reveal the existence of negativity bias that can reduce the risks of visiting a new destination facing a crisis and, at the same time, significantly destroy the destination’s value.Originality/valueThis is the first study to examine the impact of MWOM through twitter on a tourism destination facing a sustained crisis, such as Athens. This study uses social media focused data mining and sentiment analysis, to analyze more than 90,000 tweets posted by top twitter influencers between 2013 and 2015. The findings reveal the existence of negativity bias that can reduce the risks of visiting a new destination facing a crisis and, at the same time, significantly destroy the destination’s value.
Gkritzali identifies how long it takes for individual attitudes to turn favorable again during a sustained destination crisis. She shares insights to researchers and DMOs on the recovery process of ...online destination sentiment, as an indicator of destination image, by investigating the representation of the city of Athens in a popular forum. The case of Athens is topical, as the city faces a sustained financial crisis, which officially began on Apr 2010 and has been marked by a series of major financial events, such as credit downgrades and international loans.
To mainstream sustainability, we need to understand the value gained from sustainability by users. We apply a user-centred design methodology to develop an agile, iterative, incremental and reflexive ...process to understand the sustainability value proposition for Lufthansa City Center travel agents. We analyse the failure of sustainability communications within the online platforms used by these agents and explore why the agents factor out sustainability information during the customer sales process. We identify how agents and customers understand sustainability, and we explore opportunities to co-create sustainability value. Furthermore, we prototype, and then test, methods of empowering travel agents to communicate sustainability to their customers as a value-adding proposition.
•Sustainability value needs to be co-defined and co-created.•Sustainable design for services requires a willingness to experiment.•Experience-based sustainability value is hedonic.•Sustainability has emotional rather than functional value.•Travel agents can use sustainability to reinforce trust and professionalism.
This paper explores the way location myths conveyed through Hollywood movies influence consumer expectations, by looking at how the city of Paris is represented in motion pictures. We develop ...measures of the location image of Paris in a sample of Hollywood movies released between 1985 and 2011. These are used to examine the images of Paris held by American consumers who have never directly experienced the location. Our results show that Hollywood movies project specific location images and myths of Paris. More specifically, we show that these images fall into two distinct stereotypic patterns and are widely shared by consumers. Individuals who seek information on location from popular culture are shown to embrace and reproduce Paris myths. The study concludes that the cultural industries influence the cognitive consumption of location through the production and dissemination of meaning, via stories and fueled by perpetual myth making.
Efforts to design and communicate sustainable tourism products have been based on the premise of explicit market demand for sustainability. This study tests whether it is possible to design ...mainstream sustainable tourism products that circumvent customer scrutiny of their sustainability features, by making sustainability implicit (as part of quality product design) and communicating hedonistic benefits instead. This is akin to using the peripheral route of communication, as explained in the Elaboration Likelihood Model, as the central route emphasises the consumer-driven message of overall quality of experience; the approach lessens the need for customers to be conscious of the sustainability consequences of their actions. The methodology proposed to achieve this is user-centred design (UCD), which places insights into customer needs, values and demands at the heart of new product design. We designed sustainable tourist activities using UCD and then appraised customer demand for them. Although this may seem counterintuitive, the results show that it can be more effective than traditional methods in mainstreaming sustainable activities, through choice-editing of unsustainable ones and normalising the appearance and communication of sustainability, provided a focus on sustainability is maintained by the product provider.
Experiences are at the core of tourism and hospitality. Understanding how to design, manage and measure such experiences has become a key topic in academic literature focused on this sector. This ...paper presents the characteristics of an optimal design process model for experiences, based on the results of a meta-ethnographic synthesis of such processes. The characteristics can be seen as critical success factors in delivering the right solution to the right problem efficiently and effectively. Depending on the context, starting level and aim of the design, designers can benefit from applying several different design processes. Such a process benefits from design capabilities developed in multi-disciplinary teams. Moreover, the design process aids design teams through steering the collection of explicit and tacit knowledge on problem and solution aspects with stakeholders in a specific order. The success of a design process depends on procedural knowledge of lead designers and their ability to orchestrate and integrate contributions from various disciplines and stakeholders at the right times. Existing design processes for tourism and hospitality experiences lack maturity and flexibility, resulting in them having poor structural validity. However these processes, with insights from design science, can form a base for further theoretical development.
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